A Gift For Terra Page 4

him.

  And the ship was there. Landed perfectly, stubby bullet-nose pointing tothe sky. And above it--

  _Run!_

  The command hit his brain with almost physical force. A will that wasnot his own took hold of his whole being, and he was running again,plowing his way through the sucking sand with strength summoned from awell of energy within his body that had never been there before.

  Through the thin glassite walls of his helmet he could hear the _thuk,thuk, thuk_ of his boots as they pounded somewhere below him, and therewas another pounding, a deadly rhythmic bursting pressure in his chest.And a whine in his ears....

  The wind-strewn sand stretched flat and infinitely before him. Thenleaped at him headlong and there was no horizon; there was only thesudden awful wrench of concussion, a tremor of pure sound which would,in denser atmosphere, have destroyed him with the inertia of his ownbody.

  He could not move. Only cling to the shifting desert floor that rockedsickeningly beneath his outstretched body ... cling to it for dear life.

  There was no thought, no understanding. Only a sensation which he couldnot comprehend, and the sure knowledge that none of this was real. Notreal, but the end of survival nonetheless.

  * * * * *

  Pain, and seeing two bright objects transiting the darkness at which helooked; seeing something then between.

  His brain began identifying. The darkness; sky. The bright objects;Diemos, Phobos.... And the something between--

  It was a transparency of some sort; curved, or he would not have beenable to detect it at all. A vaulted ceiling through which he couldsee....

  His full consciousness came flooding back, then. He tried the musclesin his neck, they hurt, but they worked, and he could move his head fromside to side. There was the same transparency, as though he were coveredby some huge, invisible bowl.

  And there were men. Big, muscular creatures, yet thin, tall.... Not likethe others at all....

  He sat bolt upright, and they did not move. It was not the same asbefore. No small room. No voice that he could not see. They had not evenremoved his suit or his helmet, and he was lying on a hard, coldsubstance.

  Then he saw what they were doing. There were two of them apart from theothers, working to bring a compact-looking machine into position nearhim. A gleaming, short cylinder, swung on gymbals between slender forks,mounted on a thin wheeled standard. They were aiming it at him.

  "No! _No_--" He tried to get to his knees, but it was as though therewere no muscles in his body.

  "Man of--Earth! We are friendly. Is that understood?"

  The thought-words formed in his brain as the strange images had before,and then he knew. _Should have guessed it_, part of his mind was tellinghim in a fantastically detached way, _the dreams ... the compulsionsover which he had had no control in the ship.... This--thing. Itprobably--_

  "You are quite astute, Earthman. But it is not our technology whichcreated this device. To save you and the civilization which yourepresent--and ultimately, our own--it was necessary for us to steal it.It cost six lives."

  "Steal...."

  "From your former captors. It is their invention, as are so many thingswith which they destroy. With this instrument, they have succeeded intaking one of Nature's more subtle phenomenon--psychokinesis--andamplifying its energies nearly a million-fold. Those stepped-up energiescan then be projected in a tight or fanned beam at will.

  "They can make a man 'dream,' as you did--or they can destroy himoutright, depending on which of the 'psi' factors, ESP or PK, is givendominance during projection. But we are not skilled in itsoperation--they detected our use of it on you while you slept, and fromthat moment on you were so well screened that even at the risk ofburning this unit out, we were not able to project powerfully enough todo more than merely touch your brain--"

  * * * * *

  There was a strange calm in his mind, now. He understood the wordsand accepted them as matter-of-factly as they were given. Even nowthey were manipulating him like some intangible puppet, yet he wasconvinced it was not a malevolent manipulation. Convinced. Theconviction--manipulation, too....

  "Only partly, Earthman. We said we are friendly, and we are. We havecalmed you and erased your fear. From this point on, we will use thisinstrument only for communication."

  And then he felt the fear in him again, gnawing, and his body was againdamp and cold. But he had control, now. Control enough to speak.

  They stood before him, immobile, watching.

  Somewhere, Johnny Love found his voice.

  "Look, I've been through this 'friendly' act before...." He hesitated,and they did not try to interrupt him. "Well don't just stand there!"The fear was suddenly turning to the bitter anger of frustration, theyhad him whipped, and he was tired. "Tell me why! You stick that thinginto my head when I'm blasting for home. You force me to drop back. Youblow up my ship. Real friendly! Real sports!" For a moment he had runout of words, and again they made no effort to answer him. "All right! Idon't understand you--I don't know what you want. But nobody is tryingto hurt you, nobody's after your little desert paradise. We had an idea,that's all. We thought we could make it work. People have been talking'go to Mars' on my planet for longer than most of 'em can remember. Sowe finally gave it a whirl! Sorry!"

  He looked at them hard, then, and thought that there was somethingalmost like a smile on the face of one. Smile, then, damn you....

  "We want nothing, Earthman, but to prevent from happening on your planetthe thing that happened on this. If they succeed in destroying you asthey have us, then this System will always be under their heel, and weshall never be rid of them. Understand, their numbers were too few everto conquer a planet with a civilization as large and as highly organizedas that of Earth, by physical means.

  "Knowing that, we--they call us gypsies, nomads, desert-scum today--wewere not too alarmed when they landed here two centuries ago. We wereglad to take from them, without paying a price. We were awed by theirgifts. Their papers and their books, which would show us how to rebuildour waning civilization--advance us a thousand years in less than fifty;restore to us our lost arts.... And compared to you, we were so veryfew.

  "In return, they said that all they wanted was permission to set up aresearch site. They told us they were a scientific expedition from farout-System. Aldeberan, they said. Part of a vast exploratory programwhich they had been conducting for centuries.

  "We believed them--why not? One day, we thought, we too will be inSpace. And with that day would begin one of the greatest projects ofexploration that our race had ever known. So we agreed, and gladly."

  "Hold it, hold it! 'They'--who the hell are 'they'? You can spare thesuspense...."

  And then there was no more words. The pictures formed in his mind asbefore, only stronger, now, and there were no details left out.

  The weapons of war had been built, not by the out-System men, but bytheir hosts. The plans had not proven too difficult to follow....

  The new knowledge was not hoarded, was not held under jealous guard bythose who had given it, but by those to whom it had been given. One manfrom another; one group of men from another. States and nations fromeach other.

  Until there was no trust left on all the planet.

  There were the wars, then.

  And when they were over, the new masters had established their firstbeachhead in the new System.

  "But, it was only a beachhead, and had been only intended as such--" Thepictures broke off; the unspoken words resumed. "Your planet was theultimate target, but at first, your civilization was not adequatelyadvanced to fall prey to their technique. Their weapon is knowledge, butthe potentialities of that knowledge must be understood by a peoplebefore it can be effectively used to destroy them.

  "The rest must be self-evident. After we destroyed ourselves, they sanktheir infectious, hollow roots into our planet. And from then,investigated your Earth from time to time ... and waited....
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br />   "Waited, because they knew you would be coming. And they knew what kindof men you would be. Strong men, with the light of the stars in youreyes. Yet confused, weak men, with the darkness of suspicion andjealousy still in your souls. Such are humans, after all....

  "That is why we stopped you, Johnny Love. Once your blast-off ogee hadcarried you beyond the curvature of their horizon and brought you overus, our psibeam was effective and theirs were not. We are sorry aboutyour ship. Once they realize that you were under our influence, and werereturning rather than taking their precious data to your people, theyzeroed-in with those damnable guided juggernauts--"

  "It wasn't you, then. You mean they--"

  "There is little that they cannot do. Destruction is their forte. Theycould not keep us from preventing your taking their 'gift' to yourpeople, but they could keep that 'gift' from