by Eando Binder
Jorzz paused as if to collect his thoughts.
“I found myself invisible, wafting away from my planet into open space, at will. I did not need air or food, only energy from any sun or star, which I absorbed. Experimenting, I found I had certain psi-powers, such as the ability to animate objects—as you well know.”
Hillory grunted at the implied sarcasm. He spoke up. “But how did the tape ever get on earth, split up into four parts?”
“That goes into another story that I pieced together after the event. A band of space pirates knew that the Kaljj tape was stored in the underground vaults of the GU. They made a daring raid and snatched the tape away.”
“What was their aim?” Hillory inquired.
“Their aim was to play the tape and recreate Kaljj, and then rule it. They knew I had been disposed—or thought so, not knowing of my escape as a free-mind. But they knew the space patrol would hound them relentlessly after this major theft, so they had to let things quiet down. In their spaceship they then searched for a small, obscure world, one not even marked on the GU charts. Earth was their choice. They split the tape and buried it in four unique places, then made the metal scroll map so they could find the treasure again. Their plan was to return in ten years and pick up the tape when they were no longer marked men. As further crimes and coups occurred to occupy the patrol, their crime receded in importance.”
They would no longer be space enemies number one, translated Hillory. The heat would be off, and they could dig up their treasure and enjoy the reward. A crime of macrocosmic scope but still essentially no different from similar piratical practices on earth all through history.
“But as I briefly explained once before,” resumed Jorzz, “the pirates were apprehended before the ten years were up. They put up a fight and had to be killed—all except one, who slipped away in a flying saucer lifeboat. He had the metal map along and came to earth to retrieve the four-part treasure himself. The rest you know.”
That pirate’s saucer craft had crashed on earth, to be found that vital day by Hillory and Merry.
The robot now swiveled its eyes around at the company.
“I told you that when Kaljj is created and starts empire building again, earth will be one of its conquests. Not only that, but the playback machine will be built right here on earth—by Serendipity Labs.”
Chapter 18
A gasp of horror filled the room. Hillory writhed inwardly at this culmination of their treasure hunt. The treasure they had unearthed was hardly something valuable. It was instead something of frightful menace not only to earth but to a million other worlds. Hillory could see now why the mind-alien had hounded them so mercilessly for the prize which would be the revival of Jorzz’s world and mad career.
A thought struck Hillory. To the robot he said, “But if you’re a free mind, a disembodied mind, you won’t return to life with a body, as your people will.”
“Ah, but I will. When my mind had been centrifuged from my body, my mindless body remained on Kaljj. It was not lifeless. And when Kaljj was taped into non-death, my body was included. Thus, when Kaljj is recreated, my living body will be waiting for me.”
Hillory sagged. Jorzz had thought of everything. Yet maybe not. “If the Galactic Union’s space patrol defeated you last time with the space-shaker weapon, how can you oppose them a second time?”
A gleam seemed to come into the robot’s eye-lenses. “But I will have a greater weapon than the space-shaker. Remember that I drifted through the universe for 35,000 years as a free mind. Besides tracking down the story of the space pirates who stole and hid the tape, I had time to dabble in science, using telepathy to read the minds of great galactic scientists. One of them had studied the secrets of time and came close to a great discovery. He did not carry out the last step in his calculations, but I did. Then it sprang into my mind—the time-shaker weapon. It is greater than the space-shaker weapon.”
Jorzz went on almost fiendishly with his robot larynx.
“The space-shaker takes time to vibrate a warship and disintegrate it. But the time-shaker will work instantly. It will send the space patrol ships to the end of infinity, or into oblivion, all in the wink of an eye. My ships will easily wipe out the GU space patrol fleet. Then the entire galactic universe and its millions of civilized worlds will become the Star Empire of Jorzz.”
Hillory’s mind reeled. His treasure hunt had unwittingly unleashed an intelligent monster upon the universe. Human he might be in form when he regained his body, but mentally he was a super-tyrant, power-hungry to rule billions and trillions of people on millions of worlds. No Alexander nor Napoleon nor Hitler on earth had ever had such grandiose ambitions. The worst of it was that with his super-science knowledge, Jorzz could attain his goals and browbeat a whole galaxy.
But first he had to browbeat the members of Serendipity Labs—if he could. “How will you get us to help you and make the tape playback machine?” said Hillory defiantly. “If you’re thinking of hypnotism, you know it didn’t work too successfully. The spell can be broken. How else can you get us to do your dirty work, if we refuse? Threatening to kill us won’t work either, for killing us is the last thing you want.”
Yet even as he said it, Hillory had the sinking feeling that Jorzz had figured out some psi-plan to coerce them. His hunch was right.
The robot first took a tektite crystal from its chest storage space. At Hillory’s startled glance he said: “Stole it from your lab. Now to draw down psi-energy and….”
A moment later, Hillory felt the stab of psi-power in his mind. He yawned, suddenly feeling sleepy. Around him, the others all exhibited signs of weariness, and some lay down on the floor. Warning leaped into Hillory’s mind.
“Fight it,” he yelled. “Fight the desire to sleep or…ahhh…”
Yawning prodigiously, Hillory was unable to go on. Nobody could fight the powerful urge to sleep. “You see?” said the robot triumphantly. “I’ve used another portion of your psi-chart—dreams. That is, my psi-projection is putting everyone to sleep in a dreaming state.”
It was true. Everyone else had succumbed to the overwhelming craving for sleep and lay on the floor. Only Hillory was still standing, trying to fight it off, but swaying on his feet.
To him the robot said, “The significant part of the dream state is somnambulism. Watch what happens at my mental command now—ARISE! ARISE AND OBEY MY INSTRUCTIONS.”
Hillory saw them all struggle to their feet, eyes closed, still asleep. But now they became sleepwalkers as Jorzz ordered them around the room. It was like a psi-drug, more powerful than any tranquilizing drug. They were like zombies with no will of their own. It was, Hillory realized, the step beyond hypnotism, placing the subject completely under the control of Jorzz.
The robot eyed Hillory, who still was not fully in a somnambulistic state and did not join the others marching aimlessly in the room. “Only you, with your psi-practice, are still defiant. Hmm, if you do not become completely somnambulistic in a few more seconds….”
Warning lanced into Hillory’s mind. He was expendable. If he remained free of Jorzz’s control, the mind-alien would consider him a menace and crush him in the robot’s powerful arms. Hillory let his head droop and his eyes close. Slowly he shuffled his feet and joined the other sleepwalkers going in a circle.
“Ah, even he succumbed at last,” crowed the robot. He held up a hand. “Attention, all of you. You will now each return to your labs. I will give you instructions what to do. You will be making parts for the planet playback tape that will recreate my world, Kaljj. But you will open your eyes and act alert, so that if any visitors come, they will think you are merely working on your own experiments, as before. If they ask questions, you will answer normally. You will say nothing about the treasure tapes, or Jorzz, or the playback machine. Understand?”
They all snapped their eyes open and nodded.
“Good. And the visitors will never suspect that the robot they see standing motionlessly is real
ly the psi-master of Serendipity Labs, working toward his goal of the second Star Empire. Now go.”
Obediently they left, but acting quite alert, not looking at all like somnambulists in a deep sleep. Hillory left with them, filled with black despair. There seemed no way to stop Jorzz. By animating the indestructible robot, Jorzz was invulnerable to attack. Even if the army came, their biggest guns would not destroy his impervious form. Dr. Cheng could not be wrong on that score. So what good would it do for Hillory to escape and inform the authorities? Inform them that even nuclear bombs could not wreck the robot?
And no psi-powers either could finish off the robot, at least none that Hillory could bring to bear. It would take a hundred psi-experts perhaps, drawing down psi-energy from the universal pool, to project a psi-blast powerful enough to smash the interlocked protonic matter of the robot’s body.
Hopeless. Hillory went back to his lab. By using his clairvoyant goggles, he was able to see the robot going from lab to lab and handing out blueprints for them to work on. The blueprints of the playback machine that would recreate Kaljj, world of tyranny. And create havoc in the universe.
But how would it work, the machine? As if in answer to his question, the robot stumped into Hillory’s lab.
“Listen, my psi-slave,” chortled Jorzz, “you cannot make any mechanical parts of my machine, but you will be useful later for forming a huge psi-levitation bubble to transport the machine into space. You will guide it into an orbit around your sun, between the orbits of Venus and Earth. There, the tape will be automatically fed into the playback machine which will tap the universal psi-pool for immense amounts of psi-energy. That energy will be converted into matter which will follow the tape’s coding and fashion the world Kaljj.”
Hillory wanted to ask a question but didn’t dare. A somnambulist did not speak but only listened and obeyed. However, Jorzz wanted to get Hillory’s later job clear and answered his unvoiced question.
“Yes, Kaljj will remain in your solar system, which I will adopt. When my armadas are ready, they will first come and take over earth. Quite an honor, you know, for your world to be the first member of my new Star Empire.”
A scathing remark surged into Hillory’s mind, and he suppressed it with an effort. But he also shuddered at the coming fate of earth.
“Don’t worry,” mocked Jorzz as if to be soothing. “Earth will not suffer much disaster. Your military forces will be defeated in a short time, and the world will be taken over with hardly a shot fired. That ought to comfort you.”
Hillory writhed, trembling in his effort to keep from blurting out his scorn and hatred for this vile mind-entity.
The robot patted Hillory on the back, less than gently.
“I am not even angry with you for opposing me during the treasure hunt and evading all my clever psi-tricks. After earth is mine, I might even make you my Master of Psionics to teach my people your psi-powers. Does that please you?”
Only superhuman will kept Hillory from grabbing up a tool and smashing it in the robot’s face, behind which leered the invisible mind-alien who had things all his own way now.
Humiliated, Hillory said or did nothing as the robot strode out. Once alone, Hillory pounded his fist into the wall till his knuckles were bruised. Then he slumped into a chair in abject frustration. He felt like crying and almost did.
The most hideous part of the whole deal was that he—Hillory—had been chosen for the “honor” of psi-levitating the playback machine into space for its Machiavellian task. Hillory would be launching the mind-alien’s whole horrendous plot into the universe.
Hillory could not cry. But he could groan in super-misery.
* * * *
A month went by. No news leaked to the outside world as to the horror going on in Serendipity Labs. When supply trucks came, or visiting scientists dropped by, all seemed normal. The somnambulistic staff were well schooled by Jorzz to act normally, creating no suspicion.
Dr. Clyde also acted his part, guiding visiting officials around and explaining each scientist’s researches—his former researches. The innocent-looking parts for the playback machine were ignored.
Hillory also kept mum when outsiders came. What use to tell them? What good to let the government or the world know about Jorzz’s plan—if they could not destroy the robot? Even if they destroyed the robot, Jorzz’s free mind would waft away with the psi-towed tapes and start his project all over again on some other world. One thought kept going like a squirrel-cage in his mind—Jorzz would have to be stopped right here in Serendipity Labs, or not at all. There must be some way to circumvent him, Hillory kept telling himself every day. But a dozen schemes bubbled up in his mind only to be discarded. An indestructible robot plus a super-scientific free-mind…it was a formidable combination whose defeat seemed almost inconceivable.
In one big engineering lab, the playback machine began to take shape under the hands of Jorzz’s somnambulistic slaves. Hillory was rather surprised at its unimposing appearance. It was no more than the size of a computer cabinet. But then, the machine did not have to be some giant complex just because it would perform the giant task of “replaying” a world and making it materialize out of nothingness. It would be the boundless input of psi-power that would do the real job. The machine was only a relay and guidance system for those mighty forces.
Intricate parts went into the playback cabinet.
Hillory winced as he saw his colleagues troop in one by one and add a part. They had fixed stares and did not even greet each other.
Alloway Argyle, with his pirate’s black eye patch, came in and fitted a radioactive scanner to the machine. Allen Chumley attached servo-mechanisms that looked like human hands, based on his android work. Ivan Yonah contributed a timing device without saying a word, not even a cussword. Dr. Cheng fastened shielding plates into place, perhaps made of indestructible matter. Dr. Spindle hooked up some sort of organic growth in a sealed glass globe which might trigger the playback circuit into recreating human beings. Dr. Torreo put in a dimension probe which would probably play some eerie part in this materialization of a world out of limbo.
Jim Barton too was a vital part of the project, running complex equations and data through Brains, integrating all the functions of the playback machine. Barton, as Hillory looked in sadly through his clairvoyant goggles, no longer twirled his handlebar mustache. He worked with a dead face and expressionless eyes, like a human robot.
And Merry Vedec. Hillory felt most pained as he watched her and the other girl technicians laboriously putting microminiaturized circuits together. Merry’s eyes were watery from the exacting work with tiny things. She didn’t smile when Hillory walked in one day and impulsively leaned over and kissed her. She glanced at him as if he didn’t exist. Then she went back somnambulistically to her work under the orders of Jorzz to never rest.
The psi-slaves were allowed to eat and sleep. At night they simply went from a sleepwalking state to a bed-resting state without “waking up” at all. They were caught in the dreamlike psi-trap of the mind-alien, living a nightmare.
Chapter 19
Doomed, doomed. All of them. And all earth. And all the known universe. The terrifying words boomed constantly through Hillory’s aching mind. A month—and he hadn’t yet come anywhere near a plan to defeat Jorzz. Maybe there was no way….
Hillory began to feel like a somnambulist himself. He didn’t have to act when the robot came in his lab. Day after day Hillory worked with his new tektite “crown”, decorated with a dozen of his largest specimens. He practiced the technique of siphoning down psi-energy from a dozen different tektites. He would need enormous psi-levitation power to create the psi-bubble Jorzz had demanded. And he would need the multi-psi crown to propel the playback machine for millions of miles, to its own solar orbit where the world Kaljj would be conjured out of nothingness into reality.
Lift…lift…lift up and float. Hillory beamed his ESP forces at a heavy weight, equal to the playback machine, in a p
si-bubble. It rose tentatively an inch, then thudded back. Hillory did not want it to work, but he knew it would, when the time came. He had carried on his research because he couldn’t afford not to. He had to pretend to play ball with Jorzz, while his whirling thoughts kept seeking for the way to crush him.
Lift…float…don’t act like something super-heavy that….” Hillory’s whole mind seemed to light up at that lightning-flash thought. Super-heaviness, the opposite of levitation. The golden key.
* * * *
“Has your levitation power reached the proper level?” The robot glowered at Hillory. “Give me a demonstration.”
With a wooden face, Hillory put on the tektite-crown with its dozen crystals that flashed all dazzling colors of the rainbow. Jorzz did not notice Hillory’s eyes shifting and focusing on the robot form itself.
Then, summoning all the psi-energy pouring down through the twelve tektites, Hillory boomed out silent telepathic commands—ROBOT! TURN SUPER-HEAVY…HEAVIER THAN LEAD…A HUNDRED TIMES HEAVIER THAN LEAD. THE FORCE OF GRAVITY IS DOING IT…DOUBLING AND TRIPLING UNDER YOU AND MULTIPLYING CONSTANTLY…SINK…SINK!
The words were meaningless, merely a focal point for what he really projected—a psi-force that would intensify gravity under the robot to a fantastic degree.
Within the robot, Jorzz was startled and caught unaware. “Sabotage,” he yelled. “I’ll crush you, Hillory….”
But as the robot tried to step forward, its foot smashed through the floor as if it were paper. The whole body of the robot then ripped down through the floor—and kept going. It sank into hard ground as if it were cheese. When it struck rock, it plunged right through it without stopping. Its speed downward increased.
Looking down the hole, Hillory yelled telepathically, “Having fun, Jorzz? Your robot body is being yanked down by 100 g’s of force. In effect, it’s like a dense chunk of lead sinking through syrup. That indestructible form will keep going down…down…to the center of the earth, 4,000 miles below. That’s a trap you can’t rescue your robot body from, no matter how you try.”
