“Wait a minute!” Cloud broke in. “I’ve worked closer than that!”
“You got badly burned once, too, remember; and, according to the medics, you’ve been taking some damage since. You won’t from here on. But to resume; since the muzzle velocity we can use is limited, by the danger of prematuring on impact, to nine hundred sixteen meters per second, the time from circuit-closing to detonation is something over three and a half seconds—how much over depending on atmospheric conditions. That’s absolutely the best we can do, so we gave Joan a minimum of three point six seconds of prediction to shoot at with her mechanical brains. She isn’t quite there yet, but she’s far enough along so that she has to work with you, on actual blasting, the rest of the way.”
“Why?” Cloud argued. “If she stayed on the high side there’d be no danger of scattering; only of intensification, which wouldn’t do any harm out in the badlands.”
“Too chancy.” The Lensman swept Cloud’s argument aside with a wave of his hand. “So the quicker you get moved into your new ship, the Vortex Blaster Two, and get your practicing done, the sooner the two of you can be on your way to Chickladoria. Flit!”
“Just as you say, chief. Here’s my report in full. Some of the stuff will jar you to the teeth; particularly Fairchild and the fact that every blow-up that has ever happened has been deliberate, not accidental.”
“Huh? Deliberate! Have you blown your stack completely, Storm?”
“Uh-uh; but the proof is too long and involved to go into off-hand. You’ll have to get it from the tapes and it’ll take you at least a week to check my math. Besides, you told us to flit. So come on, Joan—clear ether, Phil!”
The Blaster and his new assistant left the laboratory; and in the copter, en route to the field, Cloud wondered momentarily what it was about the Lensman’s explanation that had not rung quite true. The first sight of his new vessel’s control room, however, banished the unformed thought from his mind before it had taken any real root.
* * * * *
The transformed scout cruiser Vortex Blaster II hung poised and motionless over the badlands. The optical systems and beam-antennae and receptors of dozens of instruments, many of which were only months old, were focused sharply upon the loose atomic vortex a scant two miles distant.
A few of these instruments reported only to a small and comparatively simple integrator which, after classifying and combining the incoming signals, put out as end-product the thin, black, violently-fluctuating line which was the sigma curve. Some others reported only to a massive mechanism, too heavy for any smaller vessel to carry, upon whose electronic complexities there is no need to dwell. Most of the information-gathering instruments, however, reported to both integrator and computer.
Not strapped down into a shock-absorber, but sitting easily in an ordinary pilot’s bucket, quietly but supremely intent, “Storm” Cloud concentrated upon his sigma curve; practically oblivious to everything else. Without knowing how he did it he was solving continuously the simultaneous differential equations of the calculus of warped surfaces; extrapolating the sigma curve to an ever-moving instant of time three and nine-tenths seconds—the flight-time of the bombs plus his own reaction time—ahead of the frantic pen-point of the chart.
In his flitter, where he had required a nine- or ten-second prediction, he had always seized the first acceptable match that appeared. Now, however, needing only to extrapolate to less than four seconds, his technique was entirely different. He was now matching, from instant to instant, the predicted value of the curve against one or another of the twelve bombs lying in the firing chambers of heavy guns whose muzzles ringed the cruiser’s needle-sharp nose.
And, as he had been doing ever since beginning to work with Joan and her mechanical brains, he was passing up match after match, waiting to see whether or not the current brain could deliver the goods. There had been a long succession of them—Alice, Betty, Candace, Deirdre, and so on. This one was Lulu, and it didn’t look as though she was any good, either. He waited a while longer, however; then fined down his figures and got ready to blast.
The flight-time of the bomb, under present atmospheric conditions, would be three point five nine eight seconds, plus or minus point zero zero one. His reaction time was point zero eight nine…
“Storm!” Joan broke in sharply, “Can you hold up a minute?”
“Sure.”
“That reaction time. I never spotted that before. Why didn’t I?”
“I don’t know. Never thought of it. Lumped it in, you know. Separated it now, I suppose, because I’m working so slowly, to give Lulu more of a chance. Why?”
“Because I’ve got to know all the odd things about you, and that isn’t merely odd; it’s superhuman.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Chickladorians average about point zero eight, and Vegians are still faster, about point zero seven. I checked up on that because they always test me three times when I renew my driver’s license and always pull a wise crack about me having a lot of cat blood in me. S’pose I could have?”
“Um…m…m. Probably not… I don’t know for sure, but I don’t believe that a Tellurian-Vegian cross would be possible; and even if possible, such a hybrid couldn’t very well be fertile. But the more I find out about you, my friend, the more convinced I become that you’re either a mutant or else have some ancestors who were most decidedly not Tellurians. But excuse this interruption, please—go ahead.”
Cloud went. The flight time of the bomb, under present atmospheric conditions, would be three point five nine two seconds, plus or minus point zero zero two. His reaction time was point zero eight nine. In three point six eight one seconds the activity of the vortex would match bomb number eleven to within one-tenth of one percent.
His left hand flashed out, number eleven firing stud snapped down. The vessel shuddered as though struck by a trip-hammer as the precisely-weighed charge of propellant heptadetonite went off. The bomb sped truly, in both space and time. There was a detonation that jarred the planet to its core, a flare of light many times brighter than the sun at noon, a shock-wave that wrought havoc for miles.
But the scout cruiser and her occupants were unharmed. Completely inertialess, invulnerable, the vessel rode effortlessly away.
Neal Cloud glanced into his plate; turned his head.
“Out,” he said, seemingly unnecessarily. “How’d Lulu work. Joan?”
“Better, but not good enough. She was on track all the way, but three point three was the best she could get…and I was sure we had it licked this time…oh, damn!” The voice broke, ending almost in a wail.
“Steady, Joan!” Cloud was surprised at his companion’s funk. “Only three tenths of a second to get yet, is all.”
“Only three tenths—what d’you mean, only?” the woman snapped. “Don’t you know that those three tenths of a second are just about in the same class as the three thousandths of a degree just above zero absolute?”
“Sure I do, but I know you, too. You’re really blasting, little chum. Both Jane and Katy, you remember, were just as apt to be off track as on. You’ll get it, Joan. As Vesta says, ‘Tail high, sister!’”
“Thanks, Storm. I needed that You see, to keep her on track we had to put in more internal memory banks and that slowed her down…we’ll have to dream up some way of getting the information out of those banks faster…”
“Can you tinker her—what’ll the next version be? Margie?—up en route, or do you want to keep this ship near Sol while you work on it? Phil tells me I’ve got to flit for Chickladoria—and chop-chop, like quick.”
Oh… Thlaskin and Maluleme have been crying in his beer, too, as well as yours?”
“I guess so, but that wasn’t it. It’s next on the list, an urgent—they’ve been screaming bloody murder for months. So, with or without a brain, I’ve got to blast off.”
“Start blasting as soon as you like, just as we are,” she decided instantly. “Much more important, at this stage, to work wi
th you than to have Earth’s resources close by. Besides, I think everything We’re apt to need is already aboard—machine shop, electronics labs, materials, and experts.”
“QX.” He gave orders. Then:
“As for me. I’m going to hit the sack. I’m just about pooped.”
“I don’t wonder. That kind of stuff takes a lot of doing. ’Night, Storm.”
Chapter XI
JOAN THE TELEPATH
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, en route to the planet of the pink humanoids, Cloud was studying a scratch-chart of the First Galaxy. He had been working on the thing for weeks; had placed several hundred crossed circles, each representing a loose atomic vortex. He was scrawling weird-looking symbols and drawing freehand connecting lines when Joan came swishing into the “office.”
“Good morning, Effendi of Esoterica!” she greeted him gaily. “How’s the massive intellect? Firing on all forty barrels, I hope and trust?”
“Missing on all forty is more like it. Ideas are avoiding me in droves.” He looked her over amiably, in what he hoped she would think was a casual way.
He’d found himself doing quite a lot of that, lately…but she was such a swell egg! Why hadn’t she ever married? What a waste that was! Face a bit on the strong side for vapid, calendar-girl prettiness, but…
“But kind of attractive, at that, in her own gruesome way, eh?” she finished the thought for him.
“Huh?” Cloud gulped, and, for the first time in years, blushed scarlet; flushed to the tips of his ears.
“I’m sorry, Storm, believe me. I don’t think I was supposed to tell you—in fact, I know very well I wasn’t—but I’ve simply got to. It isn’t fair not to; besides, I’ve thought all along that Lensman Strong was wrong—that we’d go faster and farther if you knew than if you didn’t.”
“Oh—that’s what Phil was holding out on me back there? I thought there was something fishy, but couldn’t spot it.”
“I was sure you did. So was Phil. You told me what the Tomingans call telepaths—snoopers? I like that word; it’s so beautifully appropriate. Well, I’m snooping all the time. Not only while we’re working, as you thought, but all the time, especially when you’re relaxed and…and off-guard, so to speak. I’ve been doing it ever since I first met you.”
Cloud blushed again. “So you knew exactly what I was thinking just then? You gave me a remarkably poor play-back.”
“The portrait was much too flattering. But we’ll skip that. Part of my job is to make a telepath out of you, so that you can show me with your mind—it can’t be done in words or symbols—what it is that makes a mathematical prodigy tick.”
“How are you figuring on going about it?”
“I don’t know—yet.”
“Phil tried, and so did a couple of Gray Lensmen, and I wasn’t holding back a thing…oh, he emphasized that you’re a self-made telepath. A different angle of approach? How did you operate on yourself?”
“I don’t know that, either; but I hope to find out through you. I read, and studied, and tried, and all of a sudden—bang!—there it was. But words are useless; I’m coming into your mind. Now watch me closely, concentrate: really concentrate, as hard as you possibly can. Ready? It goes like this…did you get it?”
“No. I couldn’t follow the details—it seemed like an instantaneous transition. Didn’t you have more to begin with than I’ve got?”
“I don’t think so…pretty sure I didn’t. I could receive—I think it’s impossible for anyone to become a telepath who can’t—but I couldn’t send a lick. My psi rating was a flat zero zero zero. Now try it again. Take a good, solid grip on a thought and throw it at me.”
“QX. I’ll try.” Cloud’s forehead furrowed, his muscles tensed in effort. “Since you already know I’ve been wondering why you never married—why? Standards too high?”
“You might call it that.” It was the woman’s turn to blush, but her thought was clear and steady. Cloud was working with her better than he had ever worked with either Luda or Nadine. “Since the days of my teen-age crushes on tri-di idols I simply haven’t been able to develop any interest in a man who didn’t have as much of a brain as I have, and the only such I met were either already married or didn’t have anything except a brain—which wouldn’t do, either, of course.”
“Of course not.” Cloud felt something stirring inside him that he thought completely dead, and tried, in near-panic fashion, to kill it again. He changed the subject abruptly. “No luck—I’m not getting through to you at all. We’d better start all over, at the bottom. What’s the first thing I’ve got to do to learn to be a snooper?”
“You must learn how to concentrate—intensively and in a very special way. You’re very good at ordinary concentration—especially mathematical stuff—now; but this kind is different—so much so as to be a difference in kind, not merely of degree.”
“Check. Point one. a new kind of concentration. Next?”
“No next. That’s all. When you get so you can concentrate correctly—I’ll coach you mind to mind on that, of course—we’ll concentrate together, first on one gateway, then another. Something will click into place, and there you’ll be.”
“I hope. But suppose it doesn’t? Can’t it be worked out? You’re on record as saying that the mind is simply a machine.”
“No, it can’t. The mind is a machine; just as much a machine as one of your automatic pilots or one of my computers. The troubles are that it is almost infinitely more complex and that we do not understand its basic principles—the fundamental laws upon which it operates. We may never understand them…the mind may very well be so tied in with the life-principle—or soul; call it whatever you please—as to be knowable only to God.”
“I’m glad you said that, Joan. I’m not formally religious, I suppose, but I do believe in a First Cause.”
“One must, who knows as much about the Macrocosmic All as you do. But it’s too early in the morning for very much of that sort of thing. What are you doing to that chart besides doodling all over it?”
“Those aren’t doodles, woman!” he protested. “They’re equations. In short-hand.”
“Equations, I apologize. Doctor Cloud, elucidate.”
“Doctor Janowick, I can’t. This is where you came in. I had just pursued an elusive wisp of thought into what turned out to be a cul de sac. I whammed my head against a solid concrete wall.” His light mood vanished as he went on:
“In spite of what everybody has always believed, I’ve proved that loose atomic vortices are not accidental. They’re deliberate, every one of them, and…”
“Yes, I heard you tell Phil so,” she interrupted. “I wanted to start screaming about your hypothesis then, and it’s taken super-human self-control to keep me from screaming about it ever since. That kind of math, though, of course is ’way over my head… For a long time I expected Phil to call up and blast you to a cinder, but he didn’t…you may be—must be, I suppose—right.”
“I am right,” Cloud said, quietly. “Unless all the mathematics I know is basically, fundamentally fallacious, they’ve got to be deliberate; they simply can’t be accidental. On the other hand, except for a few we know about which don’t change the general picture in the least, I can’t see any more than you can how they can possibly be deliberate, either.”
“Are you trying to set up a paradox?”
“No. It’s already set up. I’m trying to knock it down.” Cloud’s thought died away; his mind became a mathematical wilderness of such complexity that the woman, able mathematician that she was and scan as she would, was lost in seconds.
He finally shrugged himself out of it. “Another blind alley,” he reported, sourly.
“With sufficient knowledge, any possible so-called paradox can be resolved,” Joan mused, her mind harking back to the, to her, starkly unbelievable hypothesis Cloud had stated so baldly. “But I simply can’t believe it, Storm!”
“I can’t, either, hardly. However, it’s easier for me
to believe that than that all our basics are false. So that makes it another part of our job to find out what, or who, or why.”
“Ouch! With a job of that magnitude on your mind, I’ll make myself scarce. When you come up for air sometime give me a call on the squawk-box and we’ll study concentration. ’Bye.” She turned, started for the door.
“Wait a minute, Joan—why not start the ground-work now?”
“That’s a thought—why not? But get away from that big table.” She placed two chairs and they sat down knee to knee; almost eye to eye. “Now, Storm, come in. Really come in, this time; the first time you didn’t really even half try.”
“I did so!” he protested. “I tried then and I’m trying now. Just how do I go about it?”
“I can’t tell you that. Storm; nobody can tell you that.” She was thinking now, not talking. “There are no words, no symbology, even in the provinces of thought. And I can’t do it for you: you must do it yourself. But if you can’t—and you really can’t be expected to, so soon—I’ll come into your mind and try to show you what I mean.”
She did so. There was a moment of fitting; of snuggling…there was a warmly intimate contact, much warmer and much more intimate than anything telepathic that either had ever experienced before; but it was not what they were after. Joan tried a different approach.
“Well, if that won’t work, let’s try this. Just imagine, Storm, that every cell of my brain—no, let’s keep it on the immaterial level; every individual ultimate element of my mind—is a lock, but you can see exactly what the key must be like. You must make every corresponding unit of your mind into the appropriate key… No? We’ll try again. Imagine that each element of my mind is half of a jigsaw puzzle—make yours fill out each picture…”
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