IX.
Hotang Lu came at the call of his fellow. He saw the tableau. Thompson stricken rigid with mental effort, and Toralen Ki, tense and firm, before him. The Little Man's eyes were closed lightly, and his hands were clenched tight. Every muscle was tight in the mental effort, trying to drive the Loard-vogh out of Thompson's mind.
The waves of mental energy spread. Invisible and silent, they were not undetectable, for the men in the ships felt the waves of mental bleakness and strife and knew a deep and unreasoning fear.
Toralen Ki fought—and Hotang Lu stood by. To connect himself into the mental hookup at this point might destroy the balance. To destroy the balance might permit the hated Loard-vogh to enter, and no matter how brief the entry, it would be fatal.
So he waited, alert and ready to snap the transmentor over his head if Toralen Ki failed. He would give the Loard-vogh no chance to get set again; he would strike quickly while the Loard-vogh was still recovering from the headlong success. For in the moment of mental victory, the Loard-vogh's mind would be reeling forward like a man forcing a door that suddenly gives way before him.
Thompson's frame was rigid, his eyes open but glassy and—but they were not vacant. They were ablaze with an unreal light, the conflict in the helpless mind behind the eyes energized them.
But—the machine was destroyed.
And—there were waves of mental energy in the Terran's mind.
The conflict raged, and despite the helplessness of the Terran's mind and control, there was the untouchable subconscious that told him that he must fight for the beliefs he had always held.
His faltering breath strengthened. His rigid muscles freed, slightly, and the creases of sheer pain left his forehead. Still in fog, his mind scanned the mental data. Two forces struggled for control—of his mind. The thought came:
Hurl them out!
But one was—friendly—fighting for him.
The other was alien, inimical.
And with an effort of will, Thompson set his mind against the Loard-vogh, and with the efforts of Toralen Ki and Hotang Lu, plus their mental amplifier, Thompson hurled his weight of mind against the invader.
Thompson was annoyed, confused and not too logical. To his mind, this was sheer pain, caused by the Loard-vogh. He hurled his hatred at the distant alien.
And the pressure of the conflict died. Thompson's body resumed its natural looseness, and the light of reason returned to his eyes. He smiled his usual smile and relaxed, breathing hard, and rubbing his temples with the palms of his hands.
The severe headache was leaving with noticeable rapidity. He faced the Little Men with an attitude of power and great will.
Hotang Lu stood in amazement.
Toralen Ki relaxed slightly also. They still faced one another, Little Man and Terran. But in their attitude was a vague feeling that they were fighting side by side.
And Hotang Lu understood. Toralen Ki intended to excite the minds of Lane and Downing by forcing them, psychological opposites, into mental contact. And he, Toralen Ki, was right now in bitter conflict with his own mental opposite—the Loard-vogh. The mental energies released in Thompson's mind had given the Terran the full and perfect control of his own mental ability.
They opened their eyes, both of them.
"Won," said Thompson, wiping his brow.
Toralen Ki inspected the Terran carefully. "You know, now?"
Billy nodded. "The rest of Terra and Sol must be excited. Wait—I must order Lane and Downing to stop."
The planetoid loomed larger and larger, and Downing crowded Lane closer. On approaching courses, it was becoming evident that the conjunction of courses would occur simultaneously with their arrival at the huge meteor. And yet Downing was the better off, for if he and Lane kept their courses doggedly true, Lane's ship would hit the meteor first. The carom, of course, would drive the flaming remnants of Cliff Lane's craft upward into Stellor Downing's ship, with the resulting injury to the latter.
Downing jacked up the magnification of his course-scanner with a twitch of his free hand. A rounded knoll of rock covered the scanner plate, and the cross-hairs that marked Stellor's course were just above and just to the left of the top of the knoll. A full-power shot with the dymodine in the right place—
And the caroming ship would deflect sidewise instead of straight up!
Stellor Downing trained the dymodine projector until the tiny circle in the course-scanner was still farther to the left of the top of the knoll than his ship's course.
The course-scanner in Cliff Lane's ship told him that he was heading for the knoll of rock. It would be a slicing blow, with Cliff's ship bounding up into Downing's craft. That much he knew.
Unless he did something.
He could drive up into Downing's ship right now. But that would be no solution as to whom was the better man. That would get Terra two corpses, but finely divided ones.
He could swerve.
And give Stellor Downing the right to say that he, Cliff Lane, had been bluffed?
Now if he were Stellor—?
Cliff Lane's dymodine sight was centered on the cross-hair of the scanner. He trained it slightly to the right and down, and then he touched the trigger.
Both dymodines blasted at once. Both beams raved out from positions one above the other, and both beams hit the knoll of rock in slightly different places. The splatter of energy from the coruscation ahead blinded both men, and set up shock-interference in the scanners.
A gout of flaming gas burst from the hit.
And within a few milliseconds of the hit, Cliff Lane arrived, with Stellor Downing almost on top of him.
Downing's ship hit the gout of flaming gas, and the velocity of ship was high. It deflected upward slightly, bending the spine of the little fleeter, rending a few plates, and dazing the Martian.
Lane's ship hit the flaming gas—which was almost homogenous where Lane passed through. The Venusite's nose plates dinged in slightly from the metal-to-gas impact. Right into the hit went Cliff Lane.
And out through the scar on the far side went the Venusite, roaring off in a halo of gases from the explosion.
They snapped radio sets.
"Well?" grinned Cliff saucily.
"Wise, aren't you?" grunted Downing.
"Try it again," advised Cliff. "I'm still spaceworthy."
"I'm buckled, but still capable," snorted Downing. "I'll be around—"
The ringing of the emergency alarm interrupted them. Thompson's voice came through. "Stop—at once!"
"Why?" asked Lane insolently.
"Don't even answer," scorned Downing.
"Stop, you fools. Stop—or Patricia Kennebec may die!"
Downing and Lane came around in tight arcs. As one they met on adjoining courses and raced like madmen for Thompson's command. They magnetted their ships beside the spacelock, breached it with the outside controls, and entered. They sent the door to Thompson's cabin slamming back against the wall and strode in.
"What's all this about Pat Kennebec?"
Thompson smiled. "It was about the only way I could stop that foolishness."
"Look, Billy, you've been interfering—"
"Don't be an idiot, Lane. Frankly I'm sick and tired of that schoolboy bickering of yours. As far as I'm concerned you can both go out and kill one another. But this is bigger than I am and it should be bigger than you are. Your job isn't through. We thought it was, but it is not. You, in fact, are just beginning."
"Quit talking in riddles and tell us what goes on."
"That machine restricted mental energy. It has been restricting mental ability for this entire sector of the Galaxy for twenty thousand years. It has been destroyed. But until the minds of Solarians are excited by a shock wave of mental energy, they will not have the use of their intellects fully and freely. You two are mental and psychological opposites, and the shock excitation of your minds in mental contact will excite the minds of all men." He turned to Toralen Ki and said: "I'm puzzled. There was sufficient mental conflict between you and the Loard-vogh to give me my release. Why hasn't it taken care of these two wildmen?"
"You mean the re-radiation from your mind operating on theirs as their radiation will free the minds of the rest?"
"Right. Why?"
"Lack of sympathetic tuning," explained Toralen Ki. "Your mind is unlike mine, and unlike the Loard-vogh known as Kregar, the one we fought and killed. Yet since you were at the focal point of the mental strife, your mind, untuned as it was, was excited by sheer brute force, so to speak. Selectivity could not keep out such sheer power. But selectivity would and did prevent re-radiation of the mental energy. You, therefore, have been freed, but no one else."
"Too bad," said Thompson critically. "It might have shoved some sense into their thick skulls."
"Hey!" exploded Lane. "He's talking to the Little Guy."
"How come, Billy?"
"You mean talking to him? Well, I was given mental release by a bit of a battle between Toralen Ki, here, and one of the Loard-vogh who was trying to control my mind."
"Give us more. You sound like a synopsis."
Thompson explained.
"Well, but how can you speak with him?"
Billy turned and asked Toralen Ki.
"You're surprised? Just as Lane and Downing will become mental twins, you, Billy Thompson, have gained twinship with my mind. Also that of Kregar, the dead Loard-vogh."
Billy smiled. "Simple enough," he explained to the pair. "After your minds are given release, you'll be able to understand him, too."
Thompson did not explain the twinship idea. Co-operation was one thing to explain, but the concept of accepting one another's personality would have to be given to them by someone who outranked them. Let them wonder—or even better, let them remain in ignorance, on the basis that what they did not know wouldn't harm Terra.
Toralen Ki shook his tiny head and looked puzzled, as well as shamefaced. "I didn't expect this," he said. "The concept of mental struggle between myself and another never occurred to me."
"It saved my neck," grinned Billy.
"And the collective necks of most of the Galaxy. And it is just as well that we didn't energize them, too. The main release for the solar sector must come when they go into the change. Had they gone into the change out here, in Sscantoo, the mental radiation would not have been strong enough to trigger the minds of your fellows near Sol."
Thompson nodded and turned to Lane and Downing. "You two are going to have something to fight—but against, not over. That's been a private fight of yours for years. If you'd like to continue it, you'd better knock off the battle long enough to stop the Loard-vogh cold. Then you can resume personal hostilities and be damned."
"What about this Sscantoo?" asked Lane.
"They have some stuff that'll come in handy in fighting the Loard-vogh," nodded Thompson. "But we're not running off half-cocked. We're heading back to Sol right now, to make plans.”