An hour of painstaking effort produced a carefully trimmed wafer of unactivated menergy with a knot of microlek components at its center, with two raw-ended wires trailing away from the knot. Starn took a deep breath, stood back, and touched the wire ends together. The sphere expanded to a nine-inch diameter, glittering with escaping energy, then over a period of seconds dimmed and shrunk to the size of a tennis ball. As it did so a soundless "noise" poured into Starn's brain, a noise that made. him whirl and crouch reflexively, alert for whatever monstrous danger was creeping up behind him. In his alarm, he dropped the wires and their ends fell apart. The tennis ball collapsed into a wafer, the noise vanished, and with it the monstrous danger.
A bearlike bellow of protest came dimly to his ears from some distance away. Closer at hand he heard Billy's alarmed screech, "Daddy!"
Starn galloped down the mountain slope in the boy's direction, filled with puzzled concern. If his experiment had harmed the boy he . . . !
Billy came in sight legging it hard toward the camp. He slowed when he saw his father and his fright diminished.
"There was an awful loud noise, Daddy!" he exclaimed, wide-eyed. "Do you know what made it?"
"I made it, son, with a gadget I was working on. Did it hurt you?"
"No, I guess it didn't," said Billy. "It just scared me. A little bit. It was such a funny kind of noise."
Starn took the boy's hand and walked back toward the camp. "You mean it wasn't a noise you heard, but one you percepted?"
"That's right!" said the boy. "It was like . . . like perception-stuff was packed tight all around me, and making an awful racket! Gosh, you made a gadget that really works, this time, Daddy!"
Starn nodded slowly. "Looks like I did at that, son. But it doesn't work the way I meant it to."
"What was it supposed to do?"
"It was supposed to be a . . . a kind of light for perception, to let your perception see better. But instead of lighting up things, it shined in your eyes instead, and blinded you."
"You don't see when you percept, you hear, kind of," the boy objected. "But it did make a kind of light, too. But the light wasn't as much as the noise."
Noise and light? Starn considered this. Telepaths always spoke of "reading" thoughts, as if the process were related to seeing. And for Billy, with perhaps an unusably weak telepathic sense, the gadget had made a light that was, to him, minor compared to the noise. Probably a telepath would have experienced a blinding flash of "light" accompanied by a slight noise.
But it was not strange for an energy source to produce signals that reached more than one sense. A dynamite explosion, for instance, was quite evident to ears and eyes—and if close enough it could also be smelled, tasted and felt! Quite possibly, then, the gadget was an undiscriminating transmitter of Novo energy. Just how it could be used, and what effect it would have on the Novo senses . . .
Careful to hide his sudden worry, Starn said, "What can you find with your needle rods here, Billy?"
The boy got the sensor unit out of his pocket and held it in front of him as they trudged up the mountainside. He watched it a moment, then slapped it against the palm of his other hand. "It's stopped working, Daddy. It don't show anything at all."
"What can you percept without it?"
After a moment of concentration, Billy replied in consternation: "Nothing. Nothing at all!"
Starn nodded grimly. "I'm afraid that noise deafened your perception, Billy," he said.
The boy's face puckered. "Forever?" he asked after a moment.
"We can hope not. We'll have to wait and see."
Lunch was a sober affair for both of them. Afterward Starn sat in his chair, glumly puzzling over what had happened to Billy, and why. The boy stretched out on the dead leaves where a spot of sunlight came through the trees and was soon napping.
An hour and a half later he sat up suddenly. "Daddy, I can percept again! Just as good as ever!"
Starn heaved a mighty sigh of relief and grinned. "That's fine, son, just fine!"
The boy went to the water jug and drank thirstily.
"What are you going to try now?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Starn. "That gadget proved that this is too risky to fool with."
"Aw," said Billy. "It wasn't that bad! It was like looking at a bright light, and then looking at something else and not being able to see it right off. But it went away in a little while!"
"Yes," said Starn, "but if a person looks directly at the sun too often, or too long, he can blind himself permanently."
Billy thought this over. "Could you make the noise dimmer, so it wouldn't hurt? Or maybe aim it so it would hit what I was trying to percept instead of hitting me?"
"I've been trying to think of a way to shield it in specific directions," replied Starn, "but I don't believe it can be shielded. Once this energy is generated, there's no stopping it."
"But do you have to generate it every which way?" asked Billy insistently.
"I don't know," replied Starn, eyeing the boy curiously. "You seem awfully eager about this," he remarked.
"Gosh, yes!" exclaimed Billy. "If you could make something that would percept for miles and miles, through mountains and everything, that'd be the best thing you've ever made for me! It would be a lot of fun!" A toy! That's what it would be to Billy. What would it be to others? If others unbent from their prejudices sufficiently to accept it? To Higgins, a way to find needed oil and other resources, or a means of spying on the Pack men. To the Pack men, a weapon to be used in their feuds with each other, and perhaps against Olsaperns. Certainly as a weapon against anyone employing a Novo sense. In fact, the transmitter Starn had already made was that. Whatever else he did, he decided he would produce a supply of such transmitters before nightfall, and keep them handy just in case.
But a Novo energy transmitter that could be aimed at the thing to be sensed, without overloading the mind's sensors with a flood of energy . . . The only way was to create a directional radiation of the energy at the beginning, instead of attempting to provide directional shielding after it was created. And the amount of energy should be far less than the transmitter had produced. The spherical menergy matrix leaked entirely too much . . .
And there was the answer, of course, neatly packaged for him by Olsapern technology, which was as it should be. The cubical matrix leaked no energy at all. So all he had to do, really, was make another transmitter like the first, but housed in a matrix flat on five faces and bulging only the slightest amount on the sixth. Only as the energy leaked away from the matrix was it converted into the medium that impinged on the Novo senses, and it would leak away in one direction only, from the one, bulged face of the cube.
"All right, Billy," said Starn, "I'll have another go at it."
The boy wandered off to a nearby spring while Starn worked. The beam was finished before he returned. Starn aimed it straight up as he activated the matrix, which in appearance at least was little different from those into which Cytherni injected paint. The curvature of the bulged side was too slight to be visible, and the energy escapage was too minor to gray it noticeably. It differed from the other sides only in appearing to be covered with a light film.
Holding his breath, Starn aimed the Novo beam at himself. A sound? Yes, perhaps, it could be called that. It was barely noticeable. The sense was definitely there, though, that something was creeping up behind him. It was less powerful than the real thing. Perhaps with the beam generator at an appreciable distance, the effect would not come through at all.
He pointed the beam in front of him and slowly turned around. It was as if he had been blind all his life and someone had suddenly supplied him with eyes. There was Billy down by the spring. Does he know the beam is on him? Apparently not. Hey, Billy, what are you doing? That made him jump! He's looking up here and grinning. Now he's coming this way.
Starn continued to turn. There's a family of bears, over on the next mountain. One roared this morning. Minerals? Yes, but I don't kno
w how to identify them from what I sense.
"Let me try it, Daddy," pleaded Billy, dashing up panting.
Starn handed it over with the admonition, "You will probably be able to reach farther than I can with it, son. If you reach any people, don't call to them, or you'll give our presence here away, and we're still in that hide-andseek game."
"All right, Daddy." The boy seized the beam and began avidly studying his surroundings, exclaiming excitedly over the results. Starn stood watching, feeling that supreme exaltation that comes only in a moment of high discovery.
"Hey, there's Mommy!" yelled Billy.
"What? Where?"
"She's at Foser Compound. That's hundreds of miles away! But it's her all right."
"What is she doing?" asked Starn, feeling a pang of guilt.
"Nothing much. Just sitting around. I think she's mad at somebody, but I can't tell why." He held the beam steady for several seconds before moving on around. Starn, momentarily distraught by his regrets concerning Cytherni, was not aware of Billy swinging the beam toward him until his danger sense alerted him. He jumped.
Billy had lowered the beam and was staring at him in hurt surprise. "Gosh, Daddy! If you flipped her out of the flier, no wonder she's mad!"
After a stunned moment, Starn asked, "Did you see that in my mind?"
"I guess so," said Billy. "It was there when I pointed the beam at you."
"Don't point it at me again while we're here, son," said Starn. "Did you see that I didn't really want to do that to your mother?"
"Yes. You didn't want to but you had to, but you didn't think why."
"Good. I don't want you to know why just yet, Billy. If you know I regret that I—"
"It's all right, Daddy. I'm not mad or anything. And maybe Mommy's mad about something else. She's so far away that all I could tell was that she was mad."
Starn nodded, greatly relieved at the way Billy was taking his discovery. "What do you say we quit working and go exploring?" he asked.
"Hot dog!" Billy shouted, and thoughts of his angry mother were forgotten.
But every few hours after that, Billy would reactivate the beam and aim it northeast for a few minutes, to see what his mother was doing. Starn was glad he did, because Billy reported on what he saw and, in a way, kept Starn in touch with his wife.
It was two days later before Billy reported anything unusual. "She's awful worried and scared," he said half tearfully. "She's running somewhere with somebody—Now she's looking at me! No, not at me, at one of her paint things of me! Gosh, I thought for a second there that I'd showed her—Now somebody else is looking at me, Daddy! He's an old man, kind of scrawny, and he's looking at Mommy and seeing me! He sees that mountain over there, and our tent, and me sitting on that big rock, but I'm not on the rock! How come he sees me like that?"
It took Starn a moment to figure out what was happening. "Old Harnk, the finder," he muttered. "I'd forgotten about him. We'll have to—" He stopped. What should he do now? This was an unexpected development that would destroy his scheme before it had a chance to bear fruit.
Obviously, he had to get away from the camp immediately—and leave Billy behind. With old Harnk in the picture, the boy would be found anywhere he went, and if he stayed with his father, then Starn could be found, too. That is, if—
"Are the Olsaperns going to help them come and get you?" he asked.
"I guess so. They're talking about it."
"Then they'll be here soon, Billy. Our game is half over. They've found you, but not me. You'll have to stay here and wait for them, and I'll go hide somewhere else." He began putting together a light pack, taking nothing but what he had to have, or didn't dare leave behind.
"Did you watch me close enough, Billy, to see how I made the energy transmitter, or the beam?"
"No, I don't guess so. But, if you'll show me how, I'll remember it, all right."
Starn smiled. "No. It'll be more fun to make the Pack men and Olsaperns hunt me without knowing how to make such gadgets, and if you knew, the telepaths could find out from you."
Starn was careful to gather up all the needle rods, transmitters, and beam projectors he had made in his experiments and stuff them into his pack. "Sorry our camping trip has to end so quickly, son," he said to the glum-faced boy. "But they'll be here to get you in an hour or two, and then they'll take you to Mother. You'll like being with her again, won't you?"
The boy nodded.
Starn strapped on the pack, then knelt and gave the boy a squeeze. "Give her my love, won't you?"
"O.K., Daddy."
Rising hurriedly, Starn strode away from the camp and Billy sat down on the big rock to wait.
5
The two fliers were manned by a mixture of Olsapern defensemen and Foser raiders. Men from both sides were lowered into the camp from the craft that hovered over the trees, while the other began circling in search of Starn's telepathic scent.
He had not been able to go far over such difficult terrain in so short a time. Soon they had him located. Both fliers hovered near the spot and the Pack men swarmed down the droplines.
Peering upward, Starn guessed that the Olsapern defensemen were, very wisely, being held in reserve. This kind of action was not their meat. He had to guard his thoughts carefully with so many telepaths within range . . . think only of the immediate problem of escape and nothing else.
He fitted an arrow to which a—No! Don't think it!—was tied into his bow and shot it high into the trunk of a large oak. When the arrow struck a glowing ball lit up, dangling from it. The ball dimmed, and a confusion of shouts arose from the Pack men.
Every one of the Foser raiders would doubtless be strongly Novo-sensed, he assumed. The transmitter would do more than blind their special senses; the flood of "static" would drive them half out of their wits. He took the opportunity to change his position and pass between his would-be captors.
The difficulty was that on board the fliers were instruments such as infrared detectors that would not be confused by the Novo transmitter. As long as he stayed near Foser raiders, who were now stumbling about aimlessly and almost drunkenly, the Olsapern instruments would probably be unable to single him out. But if he began moving away, the action would identify him. Not that the defensemen could expect to come down the droplines and capture him where the Pack men had failed, but they could kill him very easily, if they wished, without leaving the fliers.
He crouched out of sight in a bush-covered crevice for several minutes, listening to the raiders call to each other and thrash about, trying to get themselves organized. If it were only dark, he thought with annoyance, he could mingle freely with the Pack men, even join their search for him, and if they dispersed to scout the surrounding mountains he could get out of range of Olsapern instruments. But darkness was hours away. Long before that someone would succeed in silencing his transmitter. Novo senses would remain blinded for a while, but with the static stopped the raiders would be less confused and—
Another sound joined the voices of the Pack men. It was distant but coming closer: the growls of bears, sounding extremely annoyed over something. The big animals had made themselves scarce in the vicinity of his camp, their old and well-learned distrust of man augmented by the barkings of his and Billy'srifles when they went hunting. Only once during their stay had Starn even heard a bear, and that one in the distance just after he had briefly activated his first Novo energy transmitter.
And that had been a roar of protest!
Whether or not bears were Novo-sensed was a question for later investigation. But obviously there was something about the radiations from a Novo transmitter that bothered them, and bothered them bad! Right now they were heading toward the scene of the search from several directions, with the evident intent of laying heavy paws on the source of those irksome energies.
"Bears!" a Foser man bellowed. More yells followed, then rifle shots, and roars of pain from wounded animals. Starn eased out of hiding in time to see a large female
bear, dripping blood from a flesh wound in her flank, retreating in his direction. He stepped aside and behind a tree to let her lumber past.
What annoyance the transmitter caused the animals was not enough to make them brave a barrage of rifle fire. They were leaving the scene, and scattering.
Starn joined them.
Relationships were strained at Foser Compound.
The Olsaperns were angry and suspicious over Starn's escape from the party of raiders. The Pack had Billy, under the agreement between Rob and Higgins, but the Olsaperns did not have Starn, who was to have been theirs. Therefore, they argued, the agreement was invalid, and Cytherni and the boy should be turned over to them.
And there was the embarrassing and somewhat dismaying fact that Starn's Novo "flare" had not only rendered the Foser raiders practically helpless; it had had similar if less drastic effects on a few of the Olsapern defensemen who had been in the fliers. Though the Olsaperns owned no usable Novo senses, it seemed hard to deny that some of them had the inherent ability for such senses.
Also, recriminations were harsh the next day, when it was realized that Starn's "flare" device should have been brought back for study, and a second visit to the mountain site discovered the flare was gone. There were claw marks on the tree in which it had been lodged, and the ground was covered with bear tracks. But except for a broken arrow, a few strands of wire, and the shredded remains of a de-energized menergy wafer, nothing was there to be found.
The strain was not eased by the Packs' failure to inform the Olsaperns of what they learned from Billy about the Novo energy beam device until after Higgins had figured out—from the fact that Starn had known to desert the camp and leave Billy behind—that the fugitive had devised some means of learning that the camp had been located.
A Sense of Infinity Page 44
