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Child of the Gods

1

The ivory gleam of the Jadel Tower, one of the great inner city hotels, appeared ahead and to the left beneath the flow of the traffic lanes. The urge became now to turn out of the lane and go to the Jadel Tower; and there was a momentary impression that on arriving there she would be directed to set the car down on a terrace of the tall structure. Telzey tensed slowly. If she could hold out against any one specific command, she might be able to loosen the entire set of controls. She kept the car on lane course.

The urge simply grew stronger. The psi hold on her was crude and incomplete, but whoever had obtained it knew what he was doing and had force to spare. In seconds, her muscles began to tremble, and sweat started out on her face. She gave in abruptly. The Cloudsplitter dropped out of traffic, went slanting down. She settled back in the seat, sighing. Let him get the impression she'd resigned herself to what was happening. She knew he hadn't invaded enough of her mind so far to be able to read her thoughts.

Moments later, the car moved clear of the main traffic—and now she should act at once before he realized she was about to attempt escape by a different route! She pushed the door open suddenly, tried to thrust herself out of the car.

Tried to. She felt a start of surprise on his side, then an instant painful clenching of her muscles, which held her frozen in position on the seat. After a moment, her arm flexed slowly, drew the door shut, locked it.

A flick of sardonic approval came from him. He'd guessed what she intended, checked her just in time . . . and, for the moment, she'd run out of tricks and would have to patiently wait for a new opportunity to come along.

She let herself relax physically. Mentally, tension remained. Not only to keep the other psi from increasing the advantage he held—if he gave her any kind of opening, she might still be able to jar him enough to shake him off. So far he'd been careful. In the two hours since she first encountered him, she'd gained hardly any impression of his personality, none at all of his purpose. She'd been at ease, doing a casual telepathic scan of whatever happened to touch her attention as she rested, half napping, when she sensed an unfamiliar pattern, a light, drifting, gentle awareness. Wondering what manner of creature was producing it—something small and fluffy and friendly seemed to fit—Telzey reached out toward the gentleness. But that appeared to cause alarm; it faded to a trace, almost vanished. So it had psi sense, too! Intrigued, she approached again, gradually and reassuringly. This time, whatever it was didn't withdraw; after a moment, it seemed to be responding to her.

Then, in a flash, she knew that this was no natural impression but a trick, that while her defenses were relaxed, her attention distracted, a stealthy intrusion of her mind had begun. Instantly, she threw in every block she could to check the invader—nothing small and fluffy and friendly, but a human psi, a dangerously accomplished one. Her reaction kept him from taking complete control of her then and there, as he otherwise should have done. But she couldn't do much else, however furiously she fought to break the holds he'd secured, or to reach his mind in turn. He'd already established control enough to leave her effectively helpless; and when she realized it, she stopped struggling, though she continued to watch for any momentary weakening of the control pattern or any move on his part to extend it.

There were no indications of either. She discovered next that she couldn't get outside help. She was unable to inform anyone of her predicament; it was simply impossible. She had to act as if nothing had happened. For a while, there was no significant change in that situation. Then came an impulse to get out her car and start toward the center of Orado City, and she couldn't prevent herself from following the impulse. She knew he was making her come to him, and presently that he waited somewhere in the Jadel Tower. But after he canceled her attempt to jump out of the car and let the dropcatch system immobilize her, there was no way she could keep from going there.

Unless he slipped up at the last moment . . .

He didn't slip up. The Jadel Tower drifted closer; his controls remained locked on her mind, incomplete but adequate, and if it was causing him any stress to hold them, there was nothing to show it. She turned the Cloudsplitter toward a parking terrace at around the fiftieth level. A dozen private cars stood on it; a few people were moving about them. She set her car down in an empty slot, left the engine idling, unlocked the door on the driver's side, and shifted over to the adjoining seat.

A few seconds later, the car door opened. A man settled himself in the driver's seat and closed the door. Telzey looked over at him as the Cloudsplitter lifted back into the air.

His face was a featureless blur to her—he was covering up. Otherwise, she saw him clearly. He appeared to be fairly young, was of medium size, athletically built. And no one she knew.

The blurred face turned toward her suddenly. Telzey sensed no specific order but only the impulse to shift sideways on the car seat and put her hands behind her back. She felt him fasten her wrists together with light cuffs. Then she was free to resume her previous position and discovered that meanwhile the view outside the car also had blurred for her, as had the instrument console.

It reassured her somewhat. If he didn't want her to know what he looked like, or where she was being taken, he must expect that she'd be alive and able to talk after this business was over. She settled back in the seat and waited.

Perhaps half an hour went by. Telzey remained wary, but while the mental hold the strange psi had on her didn't relax in the least, he didn't try to develop it. At last, he set the car down, shut off the engine and opened the door on his side. Suddenly, she could see her surroundings again, though what she saw wasn't very revealing. They were in a carport; beyond it spread a garden with trees, a small lawn, some flowering shrubbery. Patches of white-clouded sky showed above the trees; nothing else.

The man, face still a blur, walked around the car and opened the door on her side.

"Get out, please!" The voice was quiet, not at all menacing. He helped her climb out of the car, then took her by the elbow and guided her to a door in the back of the carport. He unlocked it, motioned her into a passage and locked the door behind them. "This way—"

She sensed a psi-block around them which might enclose the entire building. The appearance of the passage suggested it was a private residence. Probably the home of her kidnapper.

The blurred face said from behind her, "You did intend to jump from your car back there, didn't you?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Aerial littering!" He sounded amused. "If you'd alerted the dropcatch system and been picked up by a sprintcar or barrier, you'd have found yourself in rather serious trouble! Rehabilitation's almost the automatic sentence for a city jumper."

Telzey said impatiently, "I could have got out of that. But I'd have been kept under investigation for three or four days, with no way to get to you, whatever I tried. I don't think you could have held on to me for three or four days."

"Not even for one!" he agreed. "It was a good move—but it didn't work."

"Am I going to be told why I'm here?"

"You'll be told very quickly," he assured her, stopping to open another door. The room beyond was sizable and windowless, gymnastic equipment set up in it. The man followed Telzey inside. "We haven't been acquainted long," he remarked, "but I've already discovered it's best not to take chances with you! Let's get you physically immobilized before we start talking."

A few minutes later, she stood between two uprights near the center of the room. There were cuffs on her wrists again, but now her arms were stretched straight out to either side, held by straps attached to the cuffs and fastened at the other end to the uprights. It was a strained position which might soon become painful.

"This is a psi-blocked house, as you probably know," his voice said from behind her. "And it's mine. We won't be disturbed here."

Telzey nodded. "All right. We won't be disturbed. So now, who are you and what do you want?"

"I haven't decided yet to tell you who I am. You see, I need the help of another psi. A telepath."

"I'm to help you with what?"

"That's something else I may tell you later. I'll have to make sure first that I can use you. Not every telepath would do, by any means."

"You think I might?" Telzey said.

"If I weren't almost sure of it, I wouldn't have hung on to you," he told her dryly. "You gave me a rather bad time, you know! If I'd realized how much trouble you were going to be, I doubt I'd have tackled you in the first place. But that's precisely why you should turn out to be the kind of dependable assistant I want. However, I can't say definitely until you let me take over all the way."

"Would you do that, in my place?" Telzey asked.

"Yes—if I were aware of the alternatives."

She kept her voice even. "What are they?"

"Why, there're several possibilities. Drugs, for example. But I suspect they'd have to depress your psi function to the point where I couldn't operate on it. So we'll pass up drugs. Then I might be able to break your remaining blocks by sheer force—after all, I did manage to clamp a solid starting hold on you. But force could do you serious mental harm, and since you'd be of no use to me then, I'd try it only as a last resort. There's a simple approach I can follow which should be effective enough. See if you can use your pain shutoffs."

Telzey said after a moment, "I . . . well, I seem to have forgotten how to do it."

"I know," his voice said. "I was able to block that from your awareness before you noticed what was happening. So you don't have that defense at present—and now I'll let you feel pain."

There was a sudden intolerable cramping sensation in her left arm. She jerked violently. The feeling faded again.

"That was a low-intensity touch," he said. "I suppose you've heard of such devices. As long as their use is confined to arms and legs, they can't kill or do significant damage, but the effect can be excruciating. I know somebody I could bring to the house in a few minutes who'd be eager to help me out in this because he likes to hurt people. If you were being jolted constantly as I jolted you just now, I doubt you could spare enough concentration to hold up your blocks against me. Because there'd be nothing to distract me, you see! I could give full attention to catching any momentary weakening of your defenses, and I'd say it would be at most an hour then before I had complete control. But meanwhile you would have had an acutely uncomfortable experience for no purpose at all. Don't you agree?"

Unfortunately, she did. She said, "Let me think about it."

"Fair enough," he told her. "I happen to be in something of a hurry, but I'd much sooner settle this without any unpleasantness."

"How long would it take to help you in whatever it is you want to do?" Telzey asked.

"Perhaps four or five days. A week at most."

"You'll let me go when it's finished?"

"Of course," he said reassuringly. "I'd have no reason to keep you under control any longer."

That might be a lie. But a good deal could happen in four or five days, and if he were to make use of her as a psi, he'd have to leave her some freedom of action. "All right," she said. "I'll give up the blocks."

"How do you feel?" his voice asked presently.

"My arms are beginning to hurt." He hadn't released her from the uprights and he was still somewhere in the room behind her where she couldn't see him.

"I didn't mean that," he told her. "You're aware of the changes in you?"

Telzey sighed. "Oh, yes. I know how I felt before you started."

"And now?"

She reflected. "Well . . . I'll do anything you tell me to do, of course, or try to. If you haven't given me specific instructions, I'll do whatever is to your advantage. That's more important now than anything else."

"More important than your life?"

"Yes," she said. "I know it's not at all sensible, but it is more important than my life."

"Not a bad start!" There was satisfaction in his voice. "You're aware of the manner in which you're controlled?"

She shook her head. "If I were, I might know how to break the controls. That wouldn't be to your advantage. So I can't be aware of it."

"How do you feel about the situation?"

Telzey considered again. "I don't seem to have much feeling about it. It's the situation, that's all."

"And that's also as it should be," his voice said. "I noticed you have connections with the Psychology Service, but if you keep your shield tight—as you will—that won't be a problem. So aside from a few additional modifications, which I'll take care of presently, we'll consider the job done. Let's get you out of those cuffs."

She was freed a moment later and turned to look at him, rubbing her, arms. He was smiling down at her, face no longer a blur. It was an intelligent and rather handsome face but not one to which she'd feel drawn under ordinary circumstances. Of course, that didn't matter now.

"I make it a rule," he remarked, "to use psi only when necessary. It lessens the chance of attracting undesirable attention. We'll observe that rule between us. For example, we don't talk on the thought level when verbal communication is possible. Understood?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Fine. Let's have some refreshments, and I'll explain why I want your help. My name is Alicar Troneff, by the way."

"Should you be telling me your name?" Telzey asked. "That is, if it's your real one."

He smiled. "It's my real name. Why not? Federation law doesn't recognize human psi ability, so this is hardly a matter on which you could take me to court. And the Psychology Service makes it a rule to let independent psis settle their own differences. Your friends there might interfere if they knew what was happening, but they'll take no steps later on."

"I might tell them Alicar Troneff is a psi, though," Telzey remarked.

He grimaced. "Unfortunately, they already have me on record as one! It's made some of my operations more difficult, but I have ways of getting around that obstacle."

Over plates of small cakes and a light tart drink in a room overlooking the garden, Alicar came up at last with some limited information. "You know what serine crystals are?" he inquired.

Telzey nodded.

"A fossil deposit," she said. "Mined on Mannafra, I think. The cosmetic industry uses it."

"Correct on all counts! I located a serine bed last year, acquired rights to the area and brought mining equipment in to Mannafra to extract the crystals. It isn't a large mine, but it could easily produce enough to meet all my financial requirements for the next dozen years. I went back to Mannafra two days ago after an absence of several months and discovered I had a problem at the mine. I need a telepath with high probe sensitivity to investigate it further for me. You should be perfect in that role."

She looked at him. "A psi problem?"

"Psi seems to be involved. I won't tell you what I noticed, or think I noticed, because I want your unbiased opinion."

"And you think an investigation might be dangerous," Telzey added. "Or you'd do it yourself."

Alicar smiled. "That's possible. I've told you as much as you need to know at this stage. You're to think of some good reason now for being absent from Orado for about a week, and, of course, you'll avoid arousing anybody's curiosity. We'll leave in my private cruiser whenever you're ready. How long will it take you to make the arrangements?"

She shrugged. "A few hours. We can start this afternoon if you like. Anything special I should take along?"

"The kind of clothing you'd want in a desert climate with a wide range of temperature," Alicar said. "We might be going outdoors—at least, you might be. I'll take care of everything else."

He added, "One other thing before you go. While I was setting up my controls, I checked over a few of your past experiences and realized belatedly that I'd taken more of a chance in trapping you than I'd thought. It seems that if I'd made any mistake in that initial encounter, I might have been fortunate to get away with my life!"

Telzey nodded. "Perhaps. If I could have reached you, I'd have slammed you with everything I had."

"Yes." He cleared his throat. "Well, I'm going to install a prohibition against your use of psi bolts, and another one against your techniques for controlling others as I control you at present."

"But why?" she said, startled. "I might need all I know if I'm to handle a psi problem, and particularly a dangerous one, for you. I wouldn't use anything against you now. I couldn't!"

Alicar's handsome face hardened, and became thereby rather ugly.

"Probably not," he said. "But I had to leave considerable flexibility in the control patterns to let you function satisfactorily, and there might be moments when my overall hold on you will become a little lax. I'm making sure there'll be no disagreeable surprises at such moments! If a situation calls for it, I can always rearm you—but I'll be the judge of that. You'll go blank now on what happens during the next few minutes."

2

Alicar Troneff had approached Mannafra on the night side and activated a psi-block in his spacecruiser's hull while they were still high above the surface. Nine-tenths a desert world from pole to pole, Mannafra looked almost featureless under the starblaze. Mining complexes and an occasional government post dotted some areas; between them, the sand dunes rolled from horizon to horizon, broken here and there by dark mountain ranges. Perhaps an hour after they'd entered atmosphere, Alicar's cruiser dropped down behind such a range, moved through winding passes, and presently came to rest on a wide rock shelf high above the desert floor.

"We're now about fifteen miles from the mine," Alicar said, shifting the engines to idling, "and that's as close as I intend to get to it until you've done some preliminary scouting."

"I'm to scout the mine from the car?" Telzey asked. There was a small aircar stored in the rear of the cruiser near the lock.

Alicar handed her a respirator.

"Fit that over your face," he said. "We may use the car later, but at present you're simply going outside. You wouldn't actually need a respirator, but it'll be more comfortable, and it has a mike. Put on a long coat. You'll find it chilly."

"You're staying in the cruiser?"

He smiled. "Definitely! Behind its psi-block. The scouting job is all yours."

She got out her warmest coat, put it on, and fastened the respirator into place. They checked the speaking attachment.

"What am I to do when I'm outside?" Telzey said.

An image appeared in her mind. "Take a look at that man," Alicar told her. "It's Hille, the mine's manager and chief engineer. I want you to identify him at the mental level. Think you can do it?"

"At fifteen miles? I might. How many other people are around?"

"Twelve in all at the mine. It's run by a Romango computer. There isn't another installation within nine hundred miles."

"That'll make it easier," Telzey acknowledged. "Anything else?"

Hille's image vanished; that of another man appeared. "Ceveldt, the geologist," said Alicar. "Try him if you can't locate Hille. If you can't find either, any of the minds down there should do for now. But I'd prefer you to contact one of those two."

She nodded. "No special difficulties? Any probe-immunes among them?"

Alicar shrugged. "Would I have a probe-immune working for me?"

"No, I guess you wouldn't," Telzey said. "All right. Is there something specific I'm to scan for?"

"No. Just see what general impressions you pick up. Above all, probe cautiously!" He cleared his throat. "It's possible that there's a telepathic mind at or near the mine. If you get any indication of that, withdraw your probe at once. We'll consider then what to do next."

She reflected a moment, not greatly surprised. "Could the telepath be expecting a probe?"

"I don't know," Alicar said. "So be careful about what you do. You'll have plenty of time. I want as much information as I can get before daybreak, but it'll be another two hours before it begins to lighten up around here."

Even in her coat, it was cold on the shelf of rock where Alicar had set down the cruiser. But the shelf extended for about fifty feet ahead of her before the mountain sloped steeply down. To right and left, it wound away into night dimness. She could move around; and that helped.

So now to find out what was going on at the serine crystal mine! The crystals were skeletal remains of a creature belonging to an early geological period when there still had been water on Mannafra. Sizable deposits had been found here and there at what presumably were former lake sites. Their commercial value was high because of a constant demand for the processed product; and no doubt there were outfits around that'd be interested in pirating a working serine mine.

Nevertheless, Telzey felt sure Alicar was holding back information. He'd said the mine wasn't a large one, and competent psis had no reason to involve themselves in criminal operations at a relatively minor level. When they had larcenous inclinations, it still simply was too easy for them to come by as much money as they wanted without breaking obvious laws. If psis were creating a problem at Alicar's mine, the cause wasn't serine crystals; and he probably knew what it was. At a guess, she thought, some enemies had trailed him to this point on Mannafra and were waiting for him to return. It wasn't at all difficult to imagine Alicar Troneff making enemies for himself among other psis.

Well, she'd see what she could do for him . . .

She opened her mental screens, sent light search thoughts drifting through the starlit night. The desert world wasn't dead; whisperings of life began to come into her awareness. But for a while, there was nothing to indicate human life or thought, nor any guarded and waiting telepathic mind. Alicar, watching her in the cruiser's screens, remained silent.

Perhaps half an hour later, Telzey opened the respirator's mike switch, said, "Getting touches of human mind stuff now! I'll let it develop. Not a psi, whoever he is."

"Good," said Alicar's voice. "Take your time."

A few minutes passed. Then Telzey went on. "Someone called Ponogan—"

"Yes," Alicar said. "One of the mining technicians. You're there! Specific impressions?"

"Nothing useful. Imagery. He's probably asleep and dreaming. It could be a drug fantasy. Something like a big round drop of water rolling across the desert toward him . . . Traces of another mind now."

"Yes?"

"Haven't made out much about it so far. Shall I work on that, or probe directly for Hille?"

Alicar said after a moment, "Try Hille first."

She projected Hille's name and appearance lightly among the mental impressions she was touching, sensed, seconds later, a faint subconscious response. "Hille, I think," she said. And after a pause: "Yes, it is. Self-awareness. He's awake . . . Calculating something . . . Alone . . ."

"Don't try probing in depth!" Alicar said quickly. "Simply retain light contact and see what impressions you get."

She said, with a touch of irritation, "That's what I'm doing." Couldn't he trust her to handle this? Another minute or two went by. She murmured, "Picking up that other mind again. No, wait!" She shifted to Ponogan, strengthened her contact with him.

"Now here's something odd!" she said suddenly. "Both Hille and Ponogan—" She hesitated.

"Yes?" There was alert interest in Alicar's voice.

"I'm not sure what it means," Telzey said. "But each of them seems to have a kind of psi structure attached to him. Quite complicated structures! They seem almost part of their minds, but they're independent—sort of pseudominds." She hesitated again. "And I think—" She stiffened. "Djeel oil!"

"What?"

"Djeel oil! Hille's thinking about it. Alicar, they're processing djeel at your mine."

There was silence for a moment. Then Alicar's voice said: "Come back inside."

He looked around from the console as Telzey came into the cruiser's control section. But the face wasn't Alicar's, didn't resemble it in the least. She checked, startled.

The face smiled. "Life mask, of course," Alicar's voice said. "Nobody at the mine knows what I really look like. No need to explain why now, is there?"

She sat down. "You're mining and processing djeel ore here?"

"I am," Alicar said dryly.

She stared at him. "I didn't know there was any on Mannafra!"

He shrugged. "No way you could know. I'm reasonably sure I'm the only one to have come across it here, and I haven't advertised it."

Telzey shook her head. Djeel was a substance in a class by itself, located so far on only a handful of worlds. The processed ore yielded djeel oil—and djeel oil was believed to have unidentified properties which had scooped a hundred-mile semiglobular section out of a planetary surface, producing cataclysmic secondary effects. Any djeel detected since then had been confiscated by the Federation for removal and disposal in space. She said, "Aren't you likely to work yourself into the worst kind of trouble? If you get caught importing djeel anywhere in the Hub, they'll hang medals on whoever shoots you!"

"I haven't imported it anywhere in the Hub," said Alicar. "The oil processed by the mine in its first three months of operation is at present stored away on an asteroid chunk only I can identify. The reason I came back three days ago was to pick up a new load. Let's drop that subject for the moment. Just before Hille started thinking about djeel, you seemed to have an idea about those psi structures associated with him and Ponogan. What was it?"

"Well, that," Telzey said. "I'd have to check a lot more closely to be sure. But I think they're automatic control mechanisms—something that lets the men seem to function normally but cuts in if they're about to think, or do, something that isn't wanted. Was that what you noticed three days ago?"

"Yes," Alicar said. "But I didn't stay around long enough to analyze it. Apparently everyone at the mine has been equipped with such a mechanism—we can check on that presently. The immediate question is why it was done."

Telzey nodded. "Do you have any ideas?"

"Nothing definite," he said. "Look, let me give you the background on this—I want your opinions. I was scouting around last year, looking for good investment possibilities. Most of Mannafra's mining is concentrated in sections where rich strikes have been made. This whole general area has been almost completely neglected. But something about the formations down there looked interesting to me. It was mainly a hunch, but I came down, and inside an hour I knew I'd found a quite respectable deposit of serine crystals."

"If I hadn't been doing my own analysis, that's as far as it would have gone. There were djeel traces in the samples I'd taken." Alicar smiled. "Those, naturally, weren't the samples submitted with my application for mining rights, and I got the rights under an identity which goes with this appearance." He tapped the life mask's cheek.

"Well, now wait!" Telzey said. "Why did you want djeel oil in the first place? If they're right about what happened on Tosheer, it's horribly dangerous. And I've never heard that it was supposed to be good for anything. Though—" She paused abruptly.

"So now it's occurred to you!" Alicar nodded. "Something capable of releasing energies of that magnitude isn't going to be simply ignored. You can be sure the djeel ore the Overgovernment obligingly hauls off wherever it's found isn't being dumped into some solar furnace, though that's the story."

"You know that?"

"I know it. A good many other people suspect it." Alicar chewed his lip. "I spent a large part of the past year trying to find out just what is being done with it, but that's one of the best-guarded operations around. I couldn't even establish what government branch is involved. Incidentally after we've cleaned up the problem here, continuing that investigation may be your next assignment."

Telzey said after a moment, "I didn't think you really intended to let me go again."

He laughed. "No, not for a while! You're too useful. I have several jobs lined up for you. You can see that a supply of djeel oil would have a fabulous value if the right people can be contacted safely."

"You want to sell it?"

"I might. I'd prefer to set up a research project designed to harness djeel, but I may decide it's too risky. Because that's where djeel oil becomes dangerous—the experimental stage! It's not general knowledge, but it's been processed and stored without incident in much greater quantities than this mine, for example, would produce in years. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know what kind of experiments that industrial outfit on Tosheer was conducting with djeel when the planet's mantle erupted."

"Now to get back to the present situation. The mine went into operation roughly seven months ago. It took careful preparation, and the personnel had to be handpicked. Of the twelve men down there, nine knew only that we'd be producing serine crystals—which, aside from serving as our cover, has turned out to be sufficiently profitable in itself. The three involved in the processing of djeel oil are Hille, Ceveldt and Gulhas, who is the Romango computer technician."

Telzey said, "You were controlling those three?"

"No. As I've told you, I use psi only when it's necessary. I did check their personalities carefully, of course, and knew they'd go along with me dependably in the matter of the djeel. During the first month, we worked only serine. Then the secret djeel operation began. As soon as it was underway, I left Mannafra."

"Why?"

"Because I intend to stay in the clear in this, Telzey! The chance of discovery seemed remote. But if it happened, all Hille and his colleagues could point government investigators to is this substitute identity of mine. It was created to give me cover in other activities which might have brought me into conflict with various authorities. I can drop it at any time."

Telzey said, "If you still are in the clear, wouldn't this be a good moment to back out of the djeel project and discard your cover identity for good? You'd be safe then."

Alicar smiled. "No doubt. But I'm not going to give up that easily!"

"We don't know at all what's happened here," she pointed out. "Supposing we go on with the investigation and I get caught."

"That would be unfortunate," Alicar told her. "I wouldn't like to lose you."

"I suppose it was a stupid question," Telzey said after a moment. "You'd simply kill me before I could give you away—"

"I'd have to, wouldn't I?" Alicar said. "But we'll take every reasonable precaution to keep you from getting caught. You know as much as I can tell you now, so let's get on with this. You say we don't know what's happened here. But we do know one thing, don't we? A psi's been operating on Hille and Ponogan, and probably on all the mine personnel. In other words, they're now controlled."

"That's what it looks like," Telzey agreed. "But so far, the picture doesn't make sense."

"Why not?" said Alicar, watching her.

"Well—somebody outside realizes djeel is being processed at the mine. If that somebody is government, they'd want to catch the absent owner—"

"Mr. Ralke," supplied Alicar. "It's the Ralke Mine."

"All right—Mr. Ralke. They can't locate him elsewhere in the Hub because he becomes nonexistent there. So, knowing he's come back once to pick up the processed djeel oil, they stake out the mine. In your other activities, have you given anyone reason to suspect Mr. Ralke might be a psi?"

He shook his head. "I doubt it very much."

"But it's possible?"

Alicar shrugged. "Let's say it's possible."

"If that were discovered," Telzey said, "it would bring in government psis—the Psychology Service. But then why control the mine people with mechanisms that would make any probing telepath suspicious? They have to assume that Mr. Ralke, psi, does probe his employees before showing himself at the mine."

Alicar scratched his chin. "It really doesn't make very much sense, does it?"

"None at all," Telzey said. "If it were the Service and they thought Ralke might be a psi, everything at the mine would look completely normal now. In fact, it would be normal—except that there'd be a strike group sitting up here in the mountains somewhere, one of them a third-string Service telepath. And he'd be in watch-contact with someone at the mine, probably Hille, and as soon as you came back, he'd know."

Alicar pursed his mouth, frowning. "Well, let's say it's not the Service then. How does an independent psi operator like myself look to you?"

"Not much better," Telzey said. "Unless it's someone you know."

"Huh? Why that?"

"Somebody who doesn't like you," she explained. "It probably would be a hot-shot psi, because if those mechanisms are as complicated as they seemed to me, I don't think either you or I would be able to construct something like them."

The expression on Alicar's life mask indicated he didn't enjoy the suggestion. "There might be someone like that," he said slowly. "What would be his purpose?"

Telzey said, "He needn't be interested in djeel as such. But he knows you own the mine and will come back to it. So he sets up a psi phenomenon you're bound to detect and which you'll have to investigate before you risk setting foot in the mine." She grimaced briefly. "In that case, something very unpleasant—I don't know what—is supposed to happen to you while you're probing the phenomenon. What he couldn't know, of course, is that you'd do your probing by proxy."

Alicar's eyebrows had lifted. "An interesting theory!"

Telzey went on. "It isn't some psi who doesn't know you and simply wants to take over the djeel project. Because, while he might have some reason for constructing those mechanisms, he'd certainly slap shields on Hille and the others besides, so nobody else could catch them leaking thoughts about djeel."

"Yes, that omission's a curious aspect," Alicar said. He regarded her a moment. "Any more theories?"

"Only one—that's completely wild."

He smiled. "You've been doing well so far! Let's hear the wild one."

"I was wondering whether it might be the djeel that created those psi mechanisms."

"The djeel?" Alicar repeated.

"It's supposed to be a unique form of matter, isn't it?" Telzey said. "Mystery stuff?"

"Yes, it's that. But still—" Alicar shook his head. "Well, we're speculating! And we seem to have speculated sufficiently. In the light of what's actually established, what do you suggest as our next step?"

"Our next step? That's obvious. Let's get out of here!"

He laughed. "No. You might be surprised at how quickly I could get out of here if I had to. But I don't intend to do that unless we come across a very definite reason for it."

She sighed. "Then I'll have to go on probing. And if I go outside again and do it from here, there's too much chance of diffusion. A telepath might pick me up."

"I can work you in a good deal closer," Alicar said.

"How much closer? I suppose your Romango computer has defensive armament?"

"Of course. That's standard in a region like this. There's an automatic defense zone with a three-mile radius. Normal sensor range is three times that, and can be extended."

"Nine miles," said Telzey. "That's still hardly an ideal condition."

"One and a half miles," Alicar said. "We'll use the aircar and the arrangement will be the same. You'll be outside, and I'll be in the car and behind a psi-block. The car's gun, incidentally, will be pointing at you in case something goes wrong. So try to make sure nothing does."

"How are we going to get within one and a half miles of the mine?"

He grinned. "There're blind spots in the defense system because of the surrounding dunes. I checked them out when we first set up the installation. A car that's hugging the ground can avoid the sensors. I'll take you there. The rest will be up to you."

3

To Telzey's right, the section of sky beyond the gray-black mountain range where Alicar had left his spacecruiser was beginning to lighten. Morning wasn't far away. The top of the sloping hill of sand which hid the Ralke Mine from her, as it hid her from the mine computer's sensors, was thirty feet above her head. She sat, shivering, knees drawn up under her coat, arms wrapped around them, looking back down the slope at the small aircar which had brought them here. It hovered eight feet above a straggly patch of dune vegetation, shifting back and forth in occasional surges of wind. Concentrated on what she was doing, she wasn't aware of it.

Then Alicar's voice came suddenly from the speaker in her respirator. She gave a slight start.

"Anything new?" There was an edge of impatience in his voice.

She cleared her throat. "Nothing that seems important. Gulhas is in the computer control room now. He was thinking about you a minute or two ago."

"In what connection?"

"That blip the Romango picked up and identified as an aircar before you ducked behind the dunes. Gulhas thought of it and wondered then when you'd be coming back to Mannafra. That's all. It slipped from his mind again immediately."

There was a moment of dissatisfied silence before Alicar said, "You're sure you didn't miss anything? There should have been further reflections associated with that."

"There should have been," Telzey agreed. "But there weren't. I wouldn't have missed them. You're apparently one of the subjects they don't have reflections about there now! Gulhas simply has his mind on what he's doing. Routine start-of-day checks. Nothing else."

"What about the rest?"

"No change. Ceveldt and his assistant are at their operational stations. They don't think about what's being brought up, so it's probably djeel ore. Hille's fast asleep now, and the remaining three are still sleeping. When they dream, the dreams have nothing to do with the Ralke Mine. And there's still no mind or life trace of the other five people who should be there. Unless they're behind the psi-block around your office area—"

Alicar interrupted. "I told you it's out of the question that anyone could be in there! To open the office in my absence would take something like a blast almost heavy enough to flatten the mine."

"Well, in that case," Telzey said, "those five are either dead; or they're gone. And whichever it is, nobody thinks about them either."

Alicar swore in exasperation. Telzey shrugged.

"That's the way it is," she said. "The controls have been extended since I did the first probe from the mountain. The men are more limited in their thoughts, apparently including even their dreaming thoughts. Whether that's a temporary precaution, connected with the fact that the Romango recorded a passing aircar, I can't tell. It might be a reaction to my earlier scanning—say, a prearranged defense pattern against a telepathic encounter. The men think of nothing, remember nothing, that has to do either with djeel or with anything abnormal in the situation at the mine. That goes on down through the unconscious levels. The mechanisms block out the prohibited material."

"A reaction like that could be an automatic one," Alicar remarked.

"It could be. But at a guess, there's a psi around, and he's on guard."

"If there is one around, he couldn't be physically at the mine?"

"No, definitely not. With established controls, he wouldn't have to be there, of course. I should have picked up some trace of him by now if he were even within ordinary scanning range."

There was a pause until Alicar said, "Could you take one of those control mechanisms apart?"

"Taking them apart shouldn't be difficult in itself," Telzey told him. "They're only mechanisms, after all, and they don't hold much energy. But I'm rather sure we'd get a drastic reaction if I started doing it. There must be a kind of shared sentience between them to explain what's going on. So it would be noticed."

"What if you and your subject were behind a psi-block?"

"Then it wouldn't be noticed," Telzey said. "What psi-block?"

"My offices at the mine. I'm beginning to believe I can get us inside without undue risk."

"Well," Telzey said after a moment, "I suppose they might let us in. And, frankly, I wouldn't mind getting out of the cold. But I think you'd be stepping into a trap."

"No, it should be the other way around. When I first got the Romango, I arranged to have it accept voice override from me against any other instructions given it. Once we're there, I can take over the internal and external defense system at any time. Nobody at the mine knows about that. I'll have you work the psi controls off one or two of the men in the office area, and we should soon know exactly what the situation is and what we can do about it."

Alicar added, "You'll have to put up with the cold a little longer. I still intend to reduce the risks as much as I can, so we won't leave this place until shortly before daybreak. You're to remain alert for any changes in the situation at the mine—and in particular, of course, for any indications of activity on the part of a psi."

The starblaze was fading by the time Telzey finally climbed back into the car. She'd had nothing of significance to report in the interval; and as the door closed behind her, her residual contacts with the mentalities at the mine were shut off abruptly by the car's psi-block. She took off her coat, grateful for the warmth, sat down, pulled off the respirator and massaged her chilled face.

Neither of them spoke while Alicar maneuvered the car back along the low ground between the dunes until they were well beyond the range of the Romango computer's sensors. Then they lifted into the air and headed west, away from the mountains.

"Nothing showing in the screens," Alicar observed presently.

Telzey glanced at him. "Did you think somebody would follow us?"

"Somebody might—if they suspected I was around."

"What would you do if we did get trailed?"

"Lead them toward the Federation's Mannafra Station. If that didn't discourage them, I'd feel we were dealing with the Psychology Service, after all, and I can't afford to play around with that outfit! I'd cut back to the cruiser in that case, and get out."

"Supposing we're overtaken?"

He grunted. "This is a modified racing car. There's not likely to be anything on Mannafra that could overtake it, but for emergencies it has a very powerful little gun. Besides"—he indicated a distant brown-tinted cloudbank—"you never have to look far here to find some sizable dust storm to lose yourself in. Enough of the dust's metallic to blind sensors. Don't worry about that part of it. Now let's get that mind shield of yours open and make sure you're still the completely dependable little helper you're supposed to be . . ."

He remained silent for the next few minutes, blinking in concentration now and then. Telzey couldn't sense the scan, so that specific awareness had been sealed away, too. Presently her shield locked again.

"Well, you've done your best to carry out your assignment so far, and the opinions you've given me were honest ones," Alicar acknowledged. "I think I have you safe enough!"

There didn't seem to be much question about it. Telzey said after a while, "It wouldn't really explain anything, but those five men who've disappeared from the Ralke Mine—you said they didn't have anything to do with the djeel operation."

Alicar nodded. "They didn't. At the time I left, at any rate, it was still simply a serine crystal mine as far as they were concerned."

"Supposing," Telzey said, "they found out about the djeel and decided they didn't want to be involved in something like that? Couldn't they have gone to the authorities?"

"Meaning that's why the mine is staked out now?" Alicar shook his head. "No. Aside from the fact that it doesn't, as you say, explain the present situation, it's unlikely in itself. The system we developed was automatic and foolproof. The only way those five could have got information about the djeel would be accidentally through one of the three men in the know." He added, "And if that had happened, they wouldn't have gone bearing tales to the authorities! Hille and Gulhas control the computer, and you can be sure Hille would have rigged up some plausible mining accident. I was careful to choose the right kind of man to be manager here."

The screen scanners picked up several dozen air vehicles in the next few hours, but none were moving in the same direction, none came near them, and certainly none seemed interested in following their car. Alicar appeared to be going out of his way to advertise their presence. They flew past a number of installations, coming close enough to one to alert its defense zone and draw a standardized communicator warning from the guard computer, followed by discourtesies from the computer's operator. The car's cooling system had switched on shortly after Mannafra's yellow-white sun lifted above the horizon—the days evidently were as hot in this region of the planet as the night had been cold. Alicar said finally, "Close to noon! We've given any interested parties plenty of time to take action, and they haven't. So now we'll tackle the Ralke Mine! If there's no hitch on the approach, we'll go in, and once we're inside, we'll move fast. I'll take over the Romango at once from my offices, in case we run into difficulties."

Telzey said nothing. She felt uneasy about the prospect; but from Alicar's point of view, regaining control of the djeel oil operation was worth taking some personal risks. There was nothing she could do about it. Something less than two hours later, the car began to slant down toward the Ralke installation. The pink glow of a semiglobular force field appeared abruptly in the forward viewscreen, centered above the mine structures. The communicator went on simultaneously.

An uninflected voice said, "Warning! You are approaching the defense zone of the Ralke Mine, which is visible at present in your screens. You are required by law to provide verbal or code identification, or to change your course and bypass the zone. Failure to comply promptly will result in the destruction of your vehicle."

Alicar tapped out a signal on the communicator. The pink glow vanished, and the voice resumed. "Your identification is acknowledged. The defense zone has been neutralized. Your approach to the vehicle storage section is clear."

The communicator shut off. Alicar said in a taut voice, "That part of it is normal anyway! Let's waste no time . . ."

The car swept down, skimming the tops of surrounding dunes, toward the central building of the Ralke Mine. A circular door opened at the building's base—a door easily large enough to have let Alicar's spacecruiser pass through. He snapped over a switch, said to Telzey, "Psi-block's off! Start checking!" and she felt the block fade about her.

She'd been waiting for it; and her mind reached out instantly toward the minds she'd previously contacted here, picking them up one by one, aware that Alicar's mental screens had tightened into a dense shield. The car slid into the vehicle section. Telzey was opening the door on her side as it stopped. She slipped out, glancing around. A big loading crane stood in one corner; otherwise the section was empty. Alicar was beckoning to her from the other side of the car; she joined him and trotted along beside him as he walked rapidly toward a door in the back wall. It opened as they came up. Simultaneously, the entry door snapped shut.

They went through into a passage. A man was coming along it toward them, moving with a quick, purposeful stride. Ceveldt, Telzey told herself, the mine's geologist, one of the three involved with Alicar in the original djeel conspiracy.

"Mr. Ralke!" Ceveldt said, smiling. "We'd been wondering when you'd return." He looked questioningly at Telzey. "This young lady—"

"Nessine, my assistant." Alicar's right hand was in his pocket, and Telzey knew the hand rested on a gun. He went on. "She's part of our private operation. Everything still going smoothly there?"

Ceveldt's smile widened. "It couldn't be going better!"

Alicar nodded. "There've been some highly promising developments outside in the meantime. I want to see you and Hille in my office in about five minutes."

"I'll inform Hille," Ceveldt said.

He went toward a door leading off the passage. Alicar glanced briefly at Telzey. "Come along, Nessine!"

They didn't speak on the way to his offices. It took Alicar some seconds to open the massive door, which evidently was designed to respond to the keys he produced only after it had registered his body pattern. As it swung shut behind them, the psi-block installed about the area closed and cut off Telzey's contacts with the mine group again. They passed through an outer office into a larger inner one. There Alicar motioned to Telzey to remain silent, then spoke aloud.

"Code Alicar!" he said.

The Romango computer's voice responded promptly from a concealed speaker. "Code Alicar in effect. Verbal override acknowledged. Instructions?"

"Scan my companion for future reference," Alicar said.

"The companion has been scanned."

"Her name is Nessine. You'll recognize her?"

"I will."

"No further instructions at present," said Alicar. "I'll repeat the code before giving you new ones." He drew in a breath, looked at Telzey. "Well, that's in order!" he remarked. "I control the Romango. Now, what's happened here since this morning? Ceveldt acted as if nothing had changed after I left."

Telzey nodded. "And that's how it seems to him now! The mechanisms have modified their control patterns again. Not just for Ceveldt—as far as I could make out, the same thing seems to have happened to everyone else here. Of course, they all still have the impression that everything is normal at the Ralke Mine. But the three who should know about djeel now know about it; the others have no suspicion it's being hauled up and processed. I believe the shift was made as soon as you identified yourself from the aircar."

"To give me the initial impression that everything was normal here," Alicar said. "That much could be preplanned and automatically activated by my arrival. But, obviously, I wouldn't retain the impression very long. For one thing, I'd soon be asking what happened to the five missing members of the staff. So this setup is intended simply to gain a little time! For someone who isn't at present at the Ralke Mine."

"Enough time for the next move," Telzey said.

"A move," said Alicar, "which I should have already forestalled by shifting ultimate control of the computer to myself . . ."

A bell sounded as he spoke. He turned to a desk, switched on a small viewscreen. It showed the passage outside the offices, Ceveldt and another man standing before the door. "Ceveldt and Hille." Alicar switched off the screen. "We'll soon know now!" He pressed a button, releasing the outer door.

"Gentlemen, come in—be seated!" he said as Hille and Ceveldt appeared in the door of the inner office. "Nessine, get the files I indicated."

He hadn't indicated any, but she went back into the outer office, stood there waiting. After some seconds, Alicar called, "All right, you can come back in!"

Hille and Ceveldt were slumped in chairs when she rejoined him. Alicar had placed a facemask and a short plastic rod on the table beside him. "They both got a good whiff of the vapor and should be fairly limp for a while," he told her. "If necessary, I'll repeat the process. Now get them unhooked from those mechanisms enough so they can tell me what's been going on."

Telzey said, "I could do it easier and faster, and perhaps safer, if you'd knock a few of your controls off me! At least, until I finish with these two."

He grinned, shook his head. "Not a chance! I like you better on a short leash. You're doing fine as you are. Get to work!"

She sat down in another chair, went to work. Alicar remained standing, gaze shifting alertly between her and the men. Two or three minutes went by.

Telzey closed her eyes, carefully wiped sweat from her face.

"Getting results?" she heard Alicar inquire.

She opened her eyes, looked at him.

"Yes!" she whispered.

"Well?"

She shook her head.

"I can tell you one thing right now," she said. "We should get away from here as fast as we can!"

"I'd need to hear a very good reason for that," Alicar said.

"Ask them!" she said. "They can talk to you now. Perhaps they'll convince you."

Alicar stared at her an instant, swung to Hille. "Hille?"

Hille sighed. "Yes, Mr. Ralke?"

"What's happened here since I went away?"

Hille said, "Soad came and made us see what we'd been doing."

"Soad?" Alicar repeated.

Ceveldt nodded, smiling. "The Child of the Gods. You see, djeel oil is god matter, Mr. Ralke! It wasn't intended for men. Only the Children of the Gods may use it. Soad wants djeel oil, so we've been processing it for him. He's forgiven us for taking it for ourselves."

Alicar looked exasperated. "Telzey, get them out of this trance or whatever they're in!"

"They're in no trance," she told him. "I've neutralized the control mechanisms enough to let them say what they really think. The Child of the Gods converted them, don't you see? They believe him. The only djeel oil stored at the mine at this moment is what's been processed during the past week. He comes by regularly to collect what they have on hand for him."

"Who is that Child of the Gods?"

She giggled helplessly. "A great big drop of liquid rolling like mercury across the desert at night! Ponogan was dreaming about it when I checked the mine from the mountain. I mentioned it, remember? That's Soad. And, believe me, he is big!"

Alicar stared at her. "There's no creature like that on Mannafra!"

Ceveldt said, "Soad came from far away. He needs djeel oil to return, and it's been our privilege to provide him with what we could. But it isn't enough."

Hille added, "Mr. Ralke, he wants the djeel you took away from Mannafra. That was terribly wrong of you, but you didn't know it. Soad's forgiven you and has been waiting for you to return. He'll come tonight, and you'll understand then why you must go with one of his servants to bring back his djeel."

" 'Servant' meaning one of those control mechanisms," Telzey put in.

Alicar looked startled. "I doubt he could do that to a shielded psi mind!"

She giggled again. "Couldn't he? Remember how you stumbled across the djeel ore in the first place? You said you were flying by overhead and turned down on a hunch to take mineral samples—possibly at the one point on Mannafra where djeel can be found. On a hunch! Doesn't it look like Soad was waiting for someone to come within psi range who could dig up and process the stuff for him? He slipped up then in letting you get away with the product of the first three months of operation. He'd like it back, of course. And he put full controls on the people who remained at the mine after you'd left, to make sure nothing like that could happen again."

She added, "Whatever he is, he has a use for a ready supply of protoplasm, too! He's collected the five missing members of your mine personnel along with his djeel."

"Well," Ceveldt said mildly, "it was required. The desert offers insufficient nourishment for Soad. Naturally, we're no longer interested in mining serine crystals, and those men weren't needed in the full production of the oil. It was an honor for them to serve him in another way."

4

Alicar shook his head, drew a deep breath. "Code Alicar!" he said sharply.

The Romango computer's flat voice came into the office. "Instructions?"

"Close and seal every section of the installation to make sure the personnel stay where they are. Free passage at will is permitted only for myself and Nessine!"

"Complying," said the computer.

"Unlock the vehicle section and open its exit."

"Complying."

"Accept no further orders until I address you again."

"Understood."

"End of instructions." Alicar jerked his head at Telzey, started for the door to the outer office. "Come along!"

Hille and Ceveldt began to push themselves up from their chairs, the vapor-induced weakness still evident in clumsy motions.

"Mr. Ralke," said Hille, "you mustn't attempt to leave! That's against Soad's wishes!"

Alicar swung around to them, and now his gun was in his hand.

"Shut up!" he said savagely. "Stay in those chairs! If you try to follow, you're dead men . . . Come on, Telzey!"

They left Hille and Ceveldt staring after them, hurried through the outer office, along the passage.

"Soad's more than I counted on!" Alicar's voice was unsteady. "We're leaving, of course!"

"Hille was thinking the computer wouldn't obey you," Telzey told him.

"Well, he's wrong! He didn't know about the code override. You heard it acknowledge my instructions. The Romango's one thing their monster can't control. But hurry it up! I won't feel safe until I'm off the planet."

They ran back the way they'd come. There were blurred impressions of various minds in the surrounding structures, but Telzey tightened her shield and ignored them. For once, she agreed with Alicar—getting completely out of this area seemed the best immediate thing they could do. If possible.

They came to the passage leading to the vehicle section, to the door at its end. Alicar grasped the door handle, pulled at it, then strained, putting in all his strength. He swore furiously.

"Still locked! What—"

"Can you check with the computer?" Telzey asked.

"Not here! No voice pickup around!" Alicar chewed his lip, added, "Stand back!" and stepped away from the door, leveling his gun. Long darts of scarlet flame hissed around the lock. Metal flowed under the flame, hardened lumpily again. The air in the passage grew hot.

Alicar switched off the gun. He stepped forward, rammed the sole of his boot against the surface of the door. The door flew open.

"Come on!" he gasped. "We can open the exit manually!"

They started through into the vehicle section, came to a stop together.

The big work crane which had been standing in a corner when they arrived at the mine hadn't stayed there. It was near the center of the compartment, swinging around toward the door on its treads as they caught sight of it. Crushed parts of their aircar lay scattered about. The crane started rolling toward them then. They backed hastily out into the passage.

"Now what?" Telzey felt short of breath. "Your override system's a fake—a trick! Hille was right. Somebody spotted it while you were gone!"

Alicar stared at her, mouth twisting.

"Gulhas," he said. "The technician! Where is he?"

"In the computer room, I think. I'll check."

"Do it while we're on our way there. Get into full contact with him at once! Come on!"

"Alicar," she said, running along behind him. "You'd better let me—"

"I'll have you put Gulhas under control when we reach the computer room. Don't bother me now. We might have other problems."

Telzey didn't reply. She caught an impression of Gulhas, lost it again. Contact wasn't easy. She had to give attention to keeping up with Alicar, and there was another distraction. Something was going on; she wasn't yet sure what. But—

"Alicar!"

"Come on!" He didn't glance back.

"Wait! Hille—"

Telzey broke off. They were passing through the mine's storage area; and now two men had appeared suddenly in the aisle ahead, stepping out from behind packing cases. Hille and Ceveldt. Guns in their hands, pointed at Alicar. And Alicar, hand hovering above the pocket that held his gun, came to an abrupt halt. She'd stopped twenty feet behind him.

"Mr. Ralke, don't move!" Hille said quietly, walking forward. He might still be unsteady on his legs, but his face was hard and determined, and the gun didn't waver. He went on. "The situation has changed! Your actions indicate to Soad that it might be too dangerous to send you back to get the djeel oil you stole. Therefore—"

The gun in his hand went off as Alicar threw himself to the floor and rolled sideways. It went off again, and so did Ceveldt's, and Telzey saw one of the scarlet darts of Alicar's gun flash into Hille's chest. Ceveldt fired again, and Alicar jerked violently around, the gun flying from his hand and skidding down the aisle toward Telzey. She scooped it up, darted behind a piece of machinery on her left, and crouched down, heart pounding.

There was stillness for a moment. She worked herself in farther between the machines and the wall. From there, she could see a section of the floor, Hille lying on his back. She tried to reach his mind, found it disintegrating in death. Alicar—no, Alicar wasn't dying, not yet! But he was badly hurt and unconscious.

Slow, cautious footsteps. Ceveldt. She shifted contact to his mind. Ceveldt was uninjured and coming watchfully toward the array of machines behind which she crouched, not knowing exactly where she was. She couldn't see him and didn't need to. She knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

"Soad can't permit you to live either, Nessine or whoever you are," his voice told her. "He knows what you've done, and it seems you might cause a great deal of trouble here before he made you understand it was wrong. You can't get away—the doors are locked now. So come on out!" He added, "It will be painless and quick."

Did he know she had Alicar's gun? No, he didn't; he'd seen it spinning away from Alicar's hand, but his attention had been on the man, not the weapon. He'd seen her dart out of sight behind the machines, and he wanted to make sure of her before he went back to finish off Alicar, if that was required.

She felt him reach a decision, and crouched lower. Overhead and to her right, something thudded against the wall; heat washed briefly over her, and when she glanced up, she saw a small section of the wall glowing where the bolt had struck. She crept over to a point directly beneath it. He was less likely to fire at that exact spot again in trying to flush her into sight.

There were a dozen more shots, some crashing into metal, some against the wall. Then Ceveldt, not knowing whether he had reached her or not, was coming around the end of the array of machines where he had seen her disappear.

She rested Alicar's gun on a piece of steel and held it there unsteadily, thumb against the firing stud. She nearly wasn't quick enough then. Most of Ceveldt's strength had returned to him in the interval; he was suddenly in view, standing beside the wall, seeing her. He shot. She fired into a blaze of light, felt a succession of shocks jolt through Ceveldt, felt intense heat above her and a spray of fire pain across her back. She dropped flat and rolled over to crush out the sparks on her shirt.

That took only moments. She turned again and crept forward until she was past the impact area of the last shot, then got to her feet. Ceveldt was down, and Ceveldt was dead. She stepped around him and came out from behind the machines.

Alicar's left thigh was an ugly, seared mess, and Hille's gun had punched a hole through his right shoulder. That wound was bleeding heavily. She could stop the bleeding and would—if she had time left for it. The control mechanisms attached to Hille and Ceveldt might not understand death, but she sensed them reacting to the fact that their charges weren't performing as they were supposed to perform. That reaction was being picked up by the other mechanisms here—and, no doubt, being communicated to Soad.

She started to kneel down beside Alicar, then hesitated. A sound behind her? She turned quickly, bringing the gun around. For a moment, she stood frozen.

Hille's body had turned on its side. His hand was groping with slow, fumbling awkwardness toward the gun he had dropped. He hadn't come back to life—Soad's mechanism was forcing the corpse into a semblance of action. The fingers stretched and curled, reaching. The boots scratched against the floor.

Unnerved, Telzey hurried toward the contorting thing, snatched up the gun, then ran to check on Ceveldt. And dead Ceveldt, too, was being driven to attempt to regain the weapon he'd lost.

She had both weapons now; but there was a furious thudding on a distant door as she ran back to Alicar, and a feeling of despair came to her. Ceveldt and Hille had secured the doors to the storage area from within; and if that lock system had been under the Romango computer's control, the doors would have reopened by now. So it wasn't. But it could be only minutes before Soad's other slaves forced their way in by one means or another; they'd come armed, and that would be the end. Given more time, she might have pried them away from their psi mechanisms in turn. Given the capabilities of which Alicar had so carefully deprived her—

Realization blazed through Telzey.

She thought: "But of course!"

She stood staring down at Alicar then in such utter concentration that the racket of the assault on the door receded completely from her awareness. Seconds went racing by. Here was where he'd blocked her—and here! And here! The controls dissolved as she came to them. Abruptly, she knew she was free.

She drew a deep breath, reached confidently for one of the minds she'd touched before, restored contact. Psi flashed over the line of contact, struck with calculated violence. That mind went blank.

Barely a minute later, there was only one human mind besides her own still functioning consciously at the Ralke Mine. It was that of Gulhas, computer technician.

Gulhas was as much a convert to the Child of the Gods as Hille and Ceveldt had been, but he became Telzey's property before he knew what was happening. She detached Soad's mechanism from him, disintegrating it carefully in the process, and had him come with a float carrier and medical kit to the storeroom where he helped her do what could be done immediately for Alicar. Then they placed Alicar on the carrier and went to the Romango's control room with him.

As they arrived there, Soad found Telzey. There was a cold surging of psi, and the palms of her hands were suddenly wet. For a long moment then, Soad was looking at her as a man might look at a domestic animal which has turned unexpectedly intractable. She was prepared for an immediate attack, but none came. Gradually, the awareness of Soad withdrew, though not entirely.

Telzey let her breath out in a sigh. Her mind shield was tight; and whatever the Child of the Gods might be, it was unlikely that he could accomplish much in a direct assault on that shield. The danger should take other forms.

She said to Gulhas, "Give me verbal override on the computer," and to make sure there'd be no slips, she kept most of her attention on him as he went through the brief process, though he was no more able to go against her wishes now than she'd been able to go against those of Alicar. Some attention, however, she kept on the lingering shadowy presence of Soad, not knowing what that entity might be up to—and, particularly, not knowing where it was at the moment. It hadn't been in the vicinity of the Ralke Mine when she'd been scanning the area; she should have picked up some indication of the alien mentality otherwise. But the situation might have changed by now.

The Romango acknowledged her identity and control and asked for instructions.

"Activate the Ralke Mine's defense zone," she said.

"Activated."

She felt a little better. "You've been given the identification of a being called Soad, or the Child of the Gods?"

"I have. This is the recorded image."

A panel before Telzey became a viewscreen, and in the screen appeared a picture much like the one she'd seen in Ponogan's mind as he dreamed: a great liquid-seeming globe rolling along the side of a desert dune under the starblaze.

She said, "Is Soad at present in your sensor range?"

"No."

Her tensions lessened again, but she remembered how far Alicar had been able to maneuver them in toward the mine. She said, "If you do sense it, inform us immediately."

"Complying."

She went on. "And if Soad appears within the defense zone, attack it with every weapon you have until it's destroyed."

There was the shortest of pauses. Then the computer said, "The instruction is not comprehensible."

Startled, Telzey glanced at Gulhas. He said, "That's correct. Soad told us to see to it that the mine's armament couldn't be turned against him, and the Romango was programmed accordingly. Your override doesn't affect that because the computer doesn't know it's been programmed. An order to attack Soad simply has no meaning for it."

"Then get it unprogrammed fast!" Telzey said. "But first have it put me in communicator contact with the Mannafra Federation Station." She hesitated, seeing the response in Gulhas's mind. "So it's been programmed against that, too!"

The Romango had, in fact, been programmed against letting a communication of any kind go out from the Ralke Mine. The Child of the Gods hadn't relied entirely on conversion and psi mechanisms to maintain its hold on the humans. Telzey asked a few more questions, saw how complete their isolation had been. Except for the automatic contacts with vehicles approaching the defense zone, the computer's external communication system was shut off. There was no other communicator at the mine, and the only air truck and two groundcars had been destroyed.

Nor would it be at all easy now to turn the Romango into a weapon against the Child of the Gods, or to restore the use of the communicator. Gulhas hadn't been involved in installing the prohibiting programs. Hille had let the machine calculate for him how it should be done, and how the programs then could be deleted from record and made inaccessible to its locators, leaving it unable to act on later instructions to erase something which for it had no existence.

Telzey then had Gulhas set the situation up as a theoretical problem. Could a method be developed to track down and eliminate such lost programs? The computer said it was possible, but warned that a number of the procedures involved might reduce it to uselessness before the task was accomplished.

Since it was effectively useless as it was, Telzey told Gulhas to go ahead. His pessimistic estimate was that if the job could be done, it should take several hours to carry it out. But that couldn't be helped.

She had time now to give attention again to other matters. Alicar was deeply sedated; unless and until they got him to a hospital, there was no more to be done for him. She'd scanned the remaining personnel occasionally, half expecting to find Soad's mechanisms attempting to make the same kind of awkward use of the unconscious bodies as they had of Ceveldt and Hille, but all was quiet in that area. It couldn't have made much difference in any case. The approaches to the computer room were sealed, and throughout the mine's structures every security lock controlled by the Romango had slammed shut. Even if the men had been awake, they wouldn't have been able to interfere with her here.

She turned to Soad's presence at the fringes of consciousness. Gradually and very cautiously—since she didn't know what he might do if he chose—she began to develop her awareness of him.

5

"Gulhas," she said presently.

The technician started, looked around at her. "Yes?"

"Will talking distract the computer?"

Gulhas shook his head glumly. "It's out of communication. There's nothing to indicate whether that's a malfunction or a necessary part of the tracing process. But it won't respond to any type of signal, and couldn't register our voices."

"It is still trying to trace out Hille's programs?"

"It's still doing something," Gulhas said. "I don't know what. Our problem set sections of it working against other sections. It may have destroyed itself in part and gone insane in its fashion. That was the risk we took."

"I know." Telzey reflected. "You can get a screen view of what it looks like outside, of the area around the mine?"

"Yes. A three hundred and sixty degree view. That screen on your left!" Gulhas pressed a button. The indicated screen lit up. He said, "You think Soad may be out there somewhere?"

"Not yet." Telzey's glance slipped over the screen, held on Mannafra's pale hot sun hanging low above the dunes. "How long before sunset?" she asked.

Gulhas looked at a console chronometer. "Perhaps half an hour."

"Does it get dark quickly after that?"

"Quite quickly in these latitudes. It will be night in approximately another half hour."

"I see." Telzey was silent a moment. Gulhas, watching her, said abruptly, "You're a mentalist, aren't you?"

She glanced at him. "A telepath, a psi, yes."

"I thought you must be," Gulhas said. "It seemed the only explanation for what's happened." He cleared his throat. "I want to thank you. I still feel something like loyalty toward Soad, but I realize now that loyalty was forced on us. We never would have served such a creature of our own will."

"No, you hardly would," Telzey agreed.

"He seems to know what's been going on since you and Mr. Ralke arrived."

"Unfortunately, he does," she said.

"Then why hasn't he appeared?" Gulhas asked her. "You'd think he'd act immediately to restore the situation he created here."

Telzey said, "He can't move now. Sunlight would kill him. Even the starblaze produces more radiation than he likes, but he can stand that. He'll come when it's night. He's waiting."

"So we have till then!" Gulhas blinked at her. "That's why he always came at night for the oil—we thought it was simply that he was trying to reduce the chance of being seen from the air. You're certain he'll come?"

"Quite certain. He's changed his plans."

"In what way?"

Should she tell him? Telzey decided it could do no harm to weaken further his enforced subservience to Soad. She said, "He's given up on getting back the djeel oil Mr. Ralke took from the mine. He'd be safer having it, but he's been experimenting with what he's collected and thinks he already has as much as he really needs—especially if he adds to it what's been processed here during the past days. So he'll come for that."

"Then he'll leave?" Gulhas asked, staring at her.

"That's what he intends. We gave him a surprise he didn't like today. He hadn't expected to have any trouble with humans."

"In that case, why not let him know he's welcome to the djeel oil?" Gulhas suggested. "Perhaps—"

Telzey shook her head.

"If we did, he wouldn't just pick it up and go," she said. "Everybody at the mine, dead or alive, would be going with him. He isn't leaving anybody behind to talk about the Children of the Gods—or about what they use djeel oil for either."

"No," Gulhas said after a moment. "You're right. He wouldn't want that." He reflected. "Can't you use telepathy to have someone outside send over a few aircars to pull us out of here?"

"It's not too likely," she told him. "I've been trying, but that kind of thing generally doesn't work when you most want it to."

"I see." Gulhas sighed heavily. "I'm not really myself yet," he remarked. "I know I should be horrified by this situation, but somehow I'm not extremely alarmed. It's as if someone else were sitting here . . ." He shrugged. "Well, I'll keep watching the Romango. If it gives me an opening, I'll cut in and let you know. Then we might be able to do something. But our prospects don't look good there either."

He swung about in the chair and settled himself again before the console. Telzey said nothing. There was no reason to tell Gulhas that she hadn't been letting him feel frightened. He knew enough now to make sure there'd be no lingering subjective hesitation to help her act against the Child of the Gods if the opportunity came. She'd equipped him with a provisional psi screen, which should reduce Soad's awareness of what went on in the technician's mind. But it couldn't be completely effective. The less Gulhas was told of what really counted here, the better.

She returned her attention fully to Soad. She'd found out a great deal about that entity. Soad didn't seem to have the equivalent of a human psi's shield; and apparently it was a while before he began to suspect that she might be gathering information through the contact between them. Then he'd suddenly interposed a confusion of meaningless psi impressions, which she wasn't trying to penetrate at present.

Soad was in a machine in the desert west of the Ralke Mine. Telzey wasn't sure of the distance, but it might be something like forty miles. The machine was almost completely buried in sand drifts and screened against metal-locating devices. She'd thought at first it was a spaceship; but it wasn't that, though it could serve as one. It was more like Soad's permanent home and base of operations, and in time of need apparently also his fortress—a single massive block threaded by a maze of chambers and narrow tunnels, through which his protean, semi-metallic body flowed with liquid smoothness. He'd been stranded on Mannafra with the machine for a long time.

He needed djeel oil to get away. He might have enough now, but his tests indicated it would be enough by a narrow margin at best. That made it essential to add the oil on hand at the Ralke Mine to his stores. If Telzey hadn't made an unanticipated nuisance of herself, there would have been no problem about it.

It seemed likely that his kind hadn't developed the ability to shape psi energy into killing bolts, as she and other human psis had done. Otherwise, he should have attacked as soon as he saw that she was threatening to interfere, at least temporarily, with his plans. So far, she'd made only a restrained use of the weapon herself, in knocking out the mine personnel.

Used to its full extent, she thought it might stop Soad. But that was a possibility to hold in reserve. There was no doubt that the Children of the Gods were savagely formidable beings. They preyed on other species and warred regularly among themselves; and minds like that must be dangerously equipped, in ways still unknown to her. Any serious mistake she made about Soad now was likely to be a fatal one.

So she attempted no immediate new moves. She maintained light contact with the meaningless-seeming flow of psi impressions which veiled Soad's mentality, and probed cautiously at the mentality itself whenever she could, trying to outline further its alien strengths and weaknesses. She thought Soad might be doing much the same thing.

More distantly, Telzey probed also for the touch of any human mind she might use to inform the Federation Station of Soad's presence on Mannafra, and of the plight of the survivors at the Ralke Mine. She'd need luck there, particularly since she could afford to give only partial attention to it; and as the minutes passed, it seemed luck wasn't going to be with her. In the viewscreen, the dune shadows lengthened while the sun dropped toward the horizon. Then the sun was gone and the desert lay in shadow everywhere. Above it, the starblaze was brightening.

And, finally, there was a development.

Telzey wasn't immediately sure what it was. There was psi charge building up, and building up here, at the mine. She waited. Something took shape, was formed swiftly. And now she knew. Soad, having studied her, was constructing a slave mechanism specifically designed for her, an involved and heavily charged one. She didn't think it could affect her seriously through her shield, but she didn't care to take chances with the alien device. Her psi knives slashed through it, shredded and tore it apart, then took care of two designs she found beginning to attach themselves to Gulhas and Alicar.

Now she and Soad again had learned something about the other's capabilities; but Soad had learned more than she. That couldn't have been avoided; and since she was no longer giving anything away, she destroyed the other control mechanisms still functioning at the mine in quick sequence in the same manner. Frustrated anger washed about her as she did it—so he had intended to use those constructions in some way when he came.

Minutes later, she realized suddenly that he already was on the move.

"Gulhas," she said, "any change?"

He shook his head without looking around.

"None whatever!"

Telzey reached through the defensive screen she'd closed about his mind, and took full control of him.

She was sitting in the Romango's operator chair soon afterwards, while Gulhas lay stretched out on the floor beside Alicar's carrier. Both men were in an unconscious paralysis from which nothing, specifically new mechanisms employed by Soad, was likely to arouse them during the next few hours. So was everybody else at the mine. At least, Soad wouldn't be able to turn enslaved minds against her again in some still unpredictable way.

The Romango type of computer was unfamiliar, but that didn't make much difference now. If the machine resolved the blocks they'd set it to work against, a panel on the console before Telzey would turn green, informing her that the communication systems had been released. She'd be able to take the Romango under voice control then, assuming it was still functional. Her eyes moved between the panel and the screen which showed the surrounding desert, scanners defining every detail of the landscape as clearly as in bright daylight. Somewhere on the dunes, Soad would presently appear.

She knew the moment wasn't far away; and if the computer remained out of commission, the Ralke Mine's mechanical barriers would be no obstacle to Soad. His strange body could form its substance into heavy battering rams; he'd break through, flow inside, and when he came to her at last, she'd be destroyed. If that wasn't to happen, she must prevent it herself. Her psi weapons were ready, but she wouldn't begin to use them until she caught sight of the swiftly moving great shape in the screens. There was a personal limit to the sheer quantity of destructive energy she could channel into a single bolt, a personal limit also to the number of such bolts she could handle within a given time period. Having tested herself to the danger point, she knew rather closely what the limits were. At peak effort, she might last a little more than four minutes. If Soad could absorb such an assault and keep coming, she couldn't stop him. Nor would she know she'd failed. She'd be unconscious, probably close to death.

So she waited. Then it was Soad who struck first.

Telzey didn't realize at once that it was an attack. There'd been a gradual increase in the vividness of the random psi impressions Soad was pouring out as if he were trying to shroud himself more completely during his approach. The impressions were distracting enough; she had to give conscious effort now to maintain awareness of him. Then something like lines of fire flickered behind her eyes, blurring her physical vision, and a psi storm burst about her like shrieking sound, an impossibly swift swirling of hallucinations at every sensory level.

She knew then what was happening. Soad wasn't able to reach her mind directly through its shield. But he could let her face chaos. None of it was real, but she couldn't ignore what seemed to hammer at all her senses simultaneously. Her attention was torn this way and that.

It was sweeping to her through her psi contact with Soad. She could stop it in an instant by breaking the contact.

And that, of course, was what Soad intended. If he put her out of effective action during the critical period, the mine would have no defense against him. Telzey thought that if she waited any longer, he'd succeed. She either would lose contact with him and find herself unable to regain it in the short time left, or get bludgeoned into temporary insanity.

She lashed out with the heaviest bolt she could muster, sensed shock pass through Soad. The storm of illusion faltered. She struck again at once, and illusion was gone, replaced by reactions of agonized violence.

Soad had expected nothing like this. His kind never had encountered such a weapon. Telzey, committed now, slamming in bolt after bolt, searching for vital centers in the alien mind, felt him slow to a wavering halt, knew then that he'd already almost reached the perimeter of the mine's defense zone.

Stop him there—paralyze him . . .

His desperation and fury howled at her. Troublesome as she'd been, Soad had looked on the human psi as an essentially insignificant opponent. Belatedly now, he drove himself into the full destructive action he would have taken in an encounter with one of his own grim species. Chaos crashed at Telzey again, intensified, and her mind seemed to flow apart. She clung to shreds of awareness of Soad, of herself, slashed blindly into something horribly damaged but unyielding, was whirled through an exploding universe and knew abruptly that she was no longer reaching Soad, while the tumult still seemed to increase. Vast thunders shook her then, and blackness folded in about her.

"No, I didn't do it," Telzey said. "That Child of the Gods was simply too much for me! I was finished. I did hurt him rather badly and slowed him down, but even so he'd come halfway through the defense zone when the computer finally got itself unblocked."

"And you ordered it to attack the creature?" asked Alicar Troneff. He was lying in a narrow hospital vat half filled with something that looked like green mud and smelled like vinegar, in the process of getting his beam-mangled left leg restructured.

Telzey shook her head.

"No. I was completely out of it by then. But I didn't have to give the order. I'd told the Romango earlier to cut loose on Soad if he showed up in the defense zone, and the instruction was recorded. So that's the first thing it did. The radiation guns finished him at once then, of course. He couldn't even stand sunlight. That was an awfully close call, Alicar!"

"Yes, it was," he agreed. He regarded her a moment. "And it seems I'm no longer in control of you—"

She smiled. "No."

"I never did trust you!" Alicar remarked dourly. "But how did it happen? You shouldn't have been able even to try to identify my controls, let alone tamper with them."

Telzey said, "If you'd left it at the specific controls, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. At least, not in time. But you put me under a binding general injunction besides, remember? Whatever I did had to be what was best for you—in your interest. That overrode everything else. After you'd been shot, I realized it would be very much in your interests if I got back every scrap of ability I'd had, fast." She laughed. "And that broke the whole spell, Alicar! Including the injunction itself, since considering what might, or might not, be to your advantage from moment to moment in that situation certainly would have handicapped me in dealing with something like Soad."

He grunted, scratched his chin with his left hand. "Mind telling me where I am at present then?"

"Well, you're not going to like that part of it," Telzey said. "You're on a hospital ship of the Psychology Service."

He swore softly and bitterly. "I suspected something of the sort! I noticed the area is psi-blocked."

"Yes, it is," Telzey said. "But don't take it too hard. If I'd been looking out only for you, this still is exactly where you'd have wound up."

"What do you mean?"

"Soad wasn't the only problem we had there."

"Huh?"

"His supply of djeel," she said. "After we got to the mine and he decided it might be too risky to send you back for the oil you'd taken away, he began experimenting with what he'd collected to find out how close he was to the minimum he'd need. He miscalculated finally and started a reaction—the same kind of reaction that tore up Tosheer. That's why he was desperate to get what was at the mine. He needed it at once to balance out the reaction."

Alicar had paled. "And did—"

"No, it didn't," said Telzey. "But I'd picked that up from him at the end, and as far as I knew, it was going to happen. So as soon as I started thinking again, I had the Romango connect me with the Federation Station. When I mentioned psi was involved, the Service moved in, and everyone on Mannafra was evacuated in an awful hurry."

"But the djeel didn't go off then, after all?"

"Oh, it went off, all right," she said. "Four hours later. All it did though was to leave a hole in the desert about five hundred yards across where Soad's machine had been. It seems there simply hadn't been enough djeel affected by the reaction to do more than that."

Alicar said after a moment, "Not that the information is likely to be of much use to me, but exactly what does djeel oil do?"

"I don't know exactly what it does," Telzey said. "And I'm not going to try to find out. In general though, processed djeel oil interacts with psi energy. The Service already knew that, though they haven't talked about it. As to what it does when it works as it's intended to, the Children of the Gods use it in connection with psi as their main form of transportation. They still have accidents with it, at least planned ones. Soad seems to have been in a fight with some of the others, and they started an uncontrolled psi reaction in the djeel of his machine that whipped him and the machine across intergalactic space—"

"Intergalactic space?" Alicar repeated.

Telzey said, "That's not really the way to put it. He was simply somewhere else, and then he was here in the Hub. But that somewhere else doesn't seem to have been even one of our neighbor galaxies! Still, he could have made it back to his starting point with a fresh supply of djeel oil. The reaction had almost exhausted what he had, and the nearest ore bed his machine could detect was on Mannafra. Soad barely made it there. But he had no way of processing the ore, so he had to wait then for something with enough intelligence to do it for him to come along. He waited a long time. Finally, you came."

Alicar nodded. "And, of course, that clears me! If I was under that monster's influence, I can't be held responsible for what's happened."

Telzey looked at him a moment.

"Well, Alicar," she said, "If you think you'll get the Service to believe that, give it a try! Since they've been checking around in your mind while you were out, I doubt you'll have much luck. And, frankly, I don't feel you should get away with it. Seven men died at your djeel mine; and the way you made use of me was cold-blooded, to say the least. Besides, I think—though that's not my business now—that I had several predecessors who didn't last very long as your controlled psi proxies. You've been letting others take chances for you for quite a while."

She added, "All things considered, I understand they're letting you off rather lightly. You were thinking of experimenting with djeel oil, and you'll get the chance, in one of the Service's high-risk space projects. You know too much about it to be turned loose anyway."

Alicar glowered at her.

"What about yourself?" he demanded. "You know at least as much as I do!"

Telzey stood up. "True," she said. "But the Service found out a while ago that I'm good at keeping secrets. I'll be starting back to Orado in a few minutes. I just stopped in to say good-bye."

He didn't reply. She went to the door, looked back at him.

"Cheer up, Alicar!" she told him. "It's still better than working for Soad until he decided to make a meal of you—which is what you would have been doing if things had turned out just a little differently!"

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