by Eando Binder
Chapter 15
But meanwhile, Hillory had noticed a huge stalactite near them, whose base was worn thin. Holding his tektite, he strained to produce one more psi-blast. It was a weak one but it cracked the base and the stalactite fell with a crash—directly in front of the idol’s lumbering feet.
As the three tiny humans huddled to the side, they saw the giant stone figure stumble and fall, pitching headlong into the huge crevasse. The falling idol vanished, and seconds later they heard a deafening rumble from far below where it landed, broken to bits.
“That was a narrow squeak,” shuddered Barton. “Jorzz meant to have the idol stamp us flat under his stone feet.”
“He failed to get this,” said Hillory exultantly, holding up the treasure globe.
“But let’s hurry out of this horrid place,” said Merry in a trembling voice. She caught up the guiding string and followed it hand over hand as the other two followed, lighting the way with their flash-lamps. The rest of the trip seemed routine.
But when they came to the high-domed cavern hung with sharp stalactites, one of them broke off and hurled down at them, as a sort of farewell shot from Jorzz it seemed. Merry’s scream warned them in time to dodge. But as the stalactite shattered, one long sliver lanced through the air and struck Barton, piercing his chest. He fell, groaning. Merry knelt at his side then, looked up at Hillory in horror. It was a fatal wound.
Hillory’s insides twisted into a knot. He felt responsible for Barton’s coming death. If he had not insisted on carrying through this mad game of alien treasure-hunting, it would not have happened. Now a life would be taken, the life of young brilliant Jim Barton.
Hillory cringed as he seemed to hear silent laughter in the air, the psychic mockery of their enemy, Jorzz. How had he hoped to beat the mind-alien, who could strike invisibly with his fantastic psi-tricks?
“I—I’m done for,” gasped Barton, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t waste time. Go…let me die here….”
“You won’t die,” said Hillory, in sudden firmness, a strange gleam in his eye. “I’ll beat Jorzz at this game too.”
Merry stared at him, wondering if his mind were slipping. “We can’t get him to a hospital in less than an hour!” she whispered. “He won’t last that long.”
“Just get him to the psi-bubble outside,” ordered Hillory. “You lead the way, following the string. I’ll carry him.”
Hoisting Barton carefully over his shoulder, Hillory stumbled along in the uneven footing of the caves. Barton moaned with pain at the jogging and then passed out, to Hillory’s relief. After what seemed an eternity, they climbed up out of the slanting hole by which they had entered. It was still night.
As soon as they were safely in the rising psi-bubble, Hillory rapidly ripped Barton’s jacket and shirt off, exposing the wound with the end of the stone sliver still sticking up. Gripping the tip, he slowly withdrew it.
“But that will only make him bleed freely,” said Merry, aghast. “Thule, have you lost your reason? Barton might have had a chance if we had rushed him to the nearest hospital here in Africa—”
She broke off and turned her horrified eyes away as blood came spouting out of the raw wound after the splinter was drawn out. Hillory now took out his tektite crystal and began concentrating.
Merry stared, half in pity. “What good will that do you? Psi-tricks can’t help a dying man.”
Hillory said nothing. He had recovered somewhat from his previous draining of psi-energy. Still, sweat beaded his brow as he forced himself to gather more psi-energy. But now he was going to do something different with it, something much greater than before. Something nearly magical….
Merry heard a grunt from Hillory, and then she stared in utter disbelief. The bleeding from Barton’s wound had abruptly stopped. Still more astoundingly, the edges of the wound began to constrict as if they were rapidly healing.
Hillory suddenly collapsed and fell back with a low moan. “Can’t carry it any further…played out…but I think Barton will live.”
“Psychogenesis!” said Merry suddenly. “One of the psi-phenomena marked on your chart. You used psi-healing, in other words.”
Hillory nodded weakly. “Never tried it before. Based on those cases of people with terminal cancer who suddenly get well or on men badly wounded in war who miraculously healed up. Somehow, they had tapped the great psi-pool and subconsciously converted the psi-energy into killing off cancer cells or in creating and building up new body cells inside a wound. The evidence was there.”
He glanced at Barton, who was breathing more easily now in his unconscious state. “In the case of Barton, I commanded his veins and arteries to close off, first. Then the body’s healing mechanism was told to accelerate. Psi-energy made it happen, at least partially.”
“Think what this can mean to doctors,” breathed Merry, eyes shining. “Lives saved by psychogenesis. Maybe amputated arms and legs re-grown even. People cured of fatal ailments….”
“Let’s not dream too far,” admonished Hillory; “It will take a long time to convince the establishment that it isn’t fakery. Look how they’ve rejected all faith healings, which are really inadvertent applications of psi-genesis. Then it will take a longer time for doctors to develop psi-skills for healing. Remember it’s taken me ten years to even begin using psi-powers.”
Barton’s eyes opened suddenly. He sat up, with infinite bewilderment stamped on his face. “I don’t feel like I’m dying now. Why do I feel so good? Why do I feel as if my wound is healing?”
“Because it is,” laughed Merry, briefly telling him of Hillory’s remarkable feat.
Surprise spread over Barton’s face as if it would stay there forever. “You pulled me back from the dead. Saved my life.”
“Take it easy,” said Hillory, flushing at the awed gratitude in Barton’s eyes. “Your wound hasn’t fully healed yet. And by the way, I feel like a surgeon who forgot to suture the patient’s wound. I’ll finish the job back at Serendipity Labs after I’ve recharged my psi-batteries, so to speak.”
* * * *
Dr. Clyde ran his finger over the smooth skin on Barton’s chest “Completely healed,” he marveled. “All in one hour.”
Hillory put aside his tektite crystal. “Now don’t go yelling this from the rooftops, or Serendipity Labs will be mobbed as the faith-healing center of the world. Like all other scientific discoveries and processes, this must be thoroughly investigated for years before the technique can be given to medical science.”
Clyde nodded soberly. “We can’t go off half psi-cocked.”
“Besides,” piped up Barton, “we still have to finish our alien treasure-hunt. I’m perfectly well and able to go for No. 4. I feel fine.” He danced a little jig, then took Hillory’s hand. “I’m a dead man come alive, living on borrowed time—thanks to you.”
“Spend some of your borrowed time with Brains now,” said Hillory, to hide his embarrassment, “to locate the fourth and final spot. Then we’ll have the complete four-part alien treasure tape.”
“That is,” came the voice of Dr. Cheng who had just come in, “if we ever succeed in opening these globe-crystals.” He held up one, and his oriental face looked sad.
“Did you try smashing two of them together?” asked Merry. “Maybe the only thing that will crack open that super-hard object is another super-hard object.”
The little scientist stared at her as if stunned. Then he galloped out as if driven by devils.
“You may have given him the big breakthrough he needed,” Hillory said to Merry. “But let’s get on with our job. Merry, have Dr. Torreo bring back the metal map from the fifth dimension. Then bring our remaining ancient earth maps to Barton’s lab.”
The computer stubbornly refused map after map until Merry handed the last one to Barton. “If that doesn’t work, we’re sunk. Nobody else in the world has devised any other map for earth of 35,000 B.C.”
They waited anxiously for Brains to give
his decision. The lights flashed—REJECTED. They all groaned. But then the computer placed another message on the screen—PICTURE OF EARTH IS INCOMPLETE.
“Incomplete?” echoed Barton. “What does that mean? If you have all the ancient oceans and land masses in place, plus the presumed icecaps, what else is needed for a global map of earth?”
“Hmm, I wonder,” mused Hillory, a thought stealing into his mind. “Earth is composed of the mesosphere down inside, and the lithosphere at its surface. But a true picture should include the atmosphere around it.”
Hillory sent Merry to the drafting room where drawings were made on order for scientific projects. She returned with a new kind of earth map, one that showed earth as a globe in space, with most of the land masses and seas below hidden by clouds. But the atmosphere was marked in, broken down into its prime layers—troposphere, stratosphere, ionosphere, and the final magnetosphere that stretched out for thousands of miles into empty space. The Van Allen doughnut belts were also marked in around the equator.
“But what is going to come out of that?” queried Barton, puzzled. “How can this pinpoint another spot on earth? Well, here goes.”
He fed the new “map” to Brains, along with the alien map. Instantly the lighted sign showed acceptance and gave an eight-minute solving time.
Hardly a word was spoken among the tense people waiting. As before, others had stolen in caught by this breathless saga of space—Clyde, Argyle, Torreo, Cheng, and Yonah. They were almost as much involved as the trio of adventurers who had brought back three of the treasure globes.
At last Brains boomed forth his answer: “The fourth treasure spot is above earth, in an artificial satellite.”
“Wow, what a surprise,” murmured Barton, pressing the hold-button for a moment. But he saw by Hillory’s face that he had expected it.
Barton let Brains go on. “The satellite is tiny. In fact, it is a crystal globe like the others, orbiting by itself. Questions?”
“What kind of orbit?” demanded Barton.
“Equatorial. Exactly.”
“Altitude of orbit?”
“Twenty-three thousand five hundred statute miles.”
“The well-known stationary orbit,” said Hillory. “Like those of the telcom satellites used for worldwide relay of TV and radio signals. They’re called 24-hour orbits, matching earth’s rotation. Once placed in the precise position over the equator, the satellite stays fixed at one spot above earth. Naturally, the alien pirates would choose that sort of stable position so they could easily find the satellite when they returned.”
“But they never did,” added Merry. “Which leaves it up to us to retrieve this satellite treasure No. 4.”
“But why,” spoke up Clyde, “was this satellite never discovered if it was orbiting earth for 35,000 years, long before America or Russia sent up space vehicles?”
“Too high up and too small,” returned Hillory. “It’s difficult for even radar to spot a comsat at that height unless its position is known. The position is pinpointed actually by the radio signals that the comsat is constantly picking up and relaying. So a tiny object the size of a grapefruit—shades of Khrushchev!—that sends down no tracking signals could easily escape detection by all our tracking networks. Anyway, it’s there, unknown to the world at large.”
Barton turned Brains back on. “One more question. What spot over earth was the treasure satellite placed?”
“Over the tallest peak in the largest land mass that lies across the equator.”
“The largest land mass across the equator,” said Merry promptly, “is Africa. And the tallest peak there is Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, almost 20,000 feet high.”
“That gives us an easy landmark to find,” said Hillory. “We have enough information now to pick up No. 4.”
“But can your psi-bubble take you into space itself?” Clyde looked dubious.
“No problem there,” said Hillory easily. “We can beef up the psi-bubble to hold air as tightly as an astronaut’s craft. Of course we’ll take along plenty of bottled oxygen as reserves. If you supply those by tomorrow morning, Dr. Clyde, we’ll start then.”
“The last leg,” breathed Barton, eyes afire. “The home stretch. Then we’ll have all four parts of the treasure tape.”
“And maybe this time,” said Merry gaily, “we’ll have a quiet trip. What can Jorzz animate in empty space?”
They all grinned—too soon.
Chapter 16
“That meteor!” screamed Merry, pointing out of the bubble-wall. “Coming straight at us.”
“Big as a washtub,” choked Barton. “Can it crush the psi-bubble?”
“I’d hate to test that out,” admitted Hillory. “At meteoric speed of some 60,000 miles a second, it would probably smash through our bubble just as through a spacecraft’s hard metal walls. It’s Jorzz’s handiwork again. He somehow deflected the high-speed meteoroid and aimed it straight for us.”
Merry had detected the meteoroid with her clairvoyant goggles from a considerable distance. This gave them time to see it coming, rapidly enlarging, a big jagged stone slowly tumbling as it rushed through space.
Hillory was already using his tektite to concentrate and shove the psi-bubble aside. But to his alarm, the meteoroid also turned slightly, again on a collision course with them.
“Jorzz is guiding it like a missile,” yelled Barton hoarsely, watching in his clairvoyant goggles. “Thule, can you avoid it?”
Hillory used psi-power to fling the bubble in different directions but the oncoming meteoroid matched every maneuver with deadly precision.
Only split seconds were left now before impact. But Hillory had shot a telepathic command to his two companions. The space cannonball struck the psi-bubble with its three passengers…but only passed through three wraithlike figures sitting in a misty ball.
Merry looked at Hillory as they began to materialize again. “Thank heaven you gave us that telepathic tip-off to turn into our astral forms. The meteoroid went through nothing that was tangible in the normal universe.”
“And though our psi-bubble collapsed, I simply created a new one around us,” said Hillory.
Barton still looked shaken up. “If Jorzz throws more meteoroids at us….”
“I doubt it,” said Hillory. “He must have used a tremendous amount of psi-power to turn an object moving at super-speed. He probably can’t repeat the performance for a long while.”
Barton looked relieved. “Then onward and upward to treasure No. 4.”
Hillory was guiding the psi-bubble high over earth in a grand arch to the southeast until they swung over Africa at its midsection. Through their clairvoyant goggles set for long range, they spied the snowcapped peak of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
“It’s eternally cold at its top,” marveled Merry, “even though surrounded by equatorial jungles and great tropical heat.”
To find the precise point above the mountain, Barton used the Pathfinder to find an imaginary line extending straight up from the peak for 23,500 miles.
“A little more altitude,” he said to Hillory. “We’re 456 miles below the right level of 23,500 miles. There…that’s it. Now two degrees to the west…easy…ah, the satellite should be in sight.”
But it wasn’t.
They scanned the vicinity with their clairvoyant goggles, which would unerringly pick up anything within a mile. Barton re-read the Pathfinder and had Hillory make minute changes in their altitude and horizontal position until they were exactly above Kilimanjaro’s peak beyond question.
Still no object in sight of any kind.
“We’re in trouble,” growled Barton. “Something must have sent that satellite out of position. Maybe its orbit decayed in 35,000 long years….”
Hillory shook his head. “Up here, six earth radii high, there is no slightest wisp of atmospheric drag to slow an orbiter down. The lifetimes of comsats sent up to this level are estimated as ‘eternal’ or as long as earth exists.”
&n
bsp; “A meteoroid could have smashed it head-on,” ventured Merry.
“Chances of one in a million,” brooded Hillory. “Only a guided meteoroid, like the one Jorzz used, would do the job. It’s possible of course, but so highly improbable that it can be discounted.”
“Then where is the cussed thing?” demanded Barton.
“We’re not at the right spot,” said Hillory suddenly.
“Man, we’re so perfectly over Kilimanjaro’s tip that you could drop a stone and hit anybody sitting there.”
“Yes, but it’s the wrong equator,” said Hillory quietly.
“Huh?”
“I get it,” said Merry, snapping her fingers. “Theory has it that the earth’s axis changed in the past, more than once. Fossils of tropical animals and plants have been found in the frozen tundra of the lands near the north pole, for instance. And the discovery of coal in Antarctica proves that jungle forests once grew there.”
“Another proof of the earth’s axis and therefore its poles changing,” added Hillory, “is the famous Piri Reis map which was apparently copied from maps dating back 10,000 years. That map shows the coastline and interior of Antarctica free of ice—only 6,000 or 7,000 years ago”
“A fine kettle of fish,” rasped Barton, glaring down at the globe of earth. “The big question is, where were the poles formerly located 35,000 years ago?”
Silence rode in the psi-bubble as three baffled people looked at each other helplessly.
“Let me try something,” said Hillory, taking out his tektite crystal. “I’m going to try sending a telepathic message to Brains, the computer. If I can make my thoughts activate its circuit, I can ask a question.”
Hillory concentrated then spoke aloud slowly, knowing his telepathic “voice” would also be projected. “Brains! Review all the ancient earth maps we showed you. They’re in your memory banks. From them, try to deduce where the north and south geographic poles were 35,000 years ago, and where the line of the equator would run through.”
He turned to the others. “A long chance,” he confessed.
