The Mind from Outer Space Page 12

  “You forgot one thing,” said Barton disgustedly. “How can you read or hear the answer, if Brains gives it, from some 23,500 miles high plus 7,500 miles northwest?”

  For the answer, Hillory adjusted his clairvoyant goggles. The tektite crystal in his hands glowed brighter than ever before, as he siphoned down immense psi-energy. He strained to see and then let out a triumphant yelp.

  “I see the screen. It reads—PROBLEM ACCEPTED. SOLVING TIME, 57 SECONDS. A mere brain-teaser to it. All of the ancient maps indicated a shift in polar positions. Some put the former north pole in Asia, others in Africa, and certain other areas on earth. They also marked in estimated temperatures for each region in the world at that time. Brains is apparently confident he can sort out various clues and come to the real solution.”

  Hillory sent another telepathic command to the computer to give the read-out in lighted words on the screen. A minute later he clairvoyantly read the wording.

  AXIS WAS INCLINED 43 DEGREES IN 35,000 B.C. NORTH POLE WAS LOCATED AT WHAT IS NOW SPAIN. SOUTH POLE WAS LOCATED AT NEW ZEALAND. THE EQUATOR THEN RAN THROUGH THE WESTERN UNITED STATES, SOUTHERN TIP OF SOUTH AMERICA, CLOSE TO ANTARCTICA, UP THROUGH THE SOUTH ATLANTIC AND INDIAN OCEANS, AND ACROSS INDIA, CHINA, AND SIBERIA.

  Hillory looked confused. “We need a map of the world.”

  “Right here,” said Merry cheerfully, digging it out of their supplies. She spread it, and Hillory drew a penciled line where the old-time equator was.

  “But if the equator ran that way,” said Barton, baffled, “where is the highest peak in the largest land mass?”

  “Simple,” said Hillory, but in amazement. “The largest land mass then was Asia as it is now. And the tallest peak was—Everest.”

  “Everest? That doesn’t seem right. Why would the aliens pick the same marker twice?”

  “Why not? Mount Everest was unmistakable as the tallest point on earth. They placed one part of the treasure just above the peak, held by a gravity anchor. And they placed another one 23,500 miles higher in a 24-hour orbit, fixed eternally above Everest. And remember, the two treasures are 23,500 miles apart, which is farther apart than any two spots on earth itself. So they aren’t ‘near’ each other by a long shot.”

  “It all makes sense,” agreed Merry. “In fact, it was rather clever of the aliens to hide one treasure at the peak and another in orbit above that same peak. Finding one would give a clue to the other—if you returned in 35,000 B.C. before the equator had changed.”

  “A clairvoyant search above Mount Everest ought to reveal whether the alien treasure satellite is really there.” Hillory was already guiding the psi-bubble away from Africa to the northeast, at a supersonic clip. In a short time they sighted the Himalayas below in which Mount Everest reared grandly.

  Barton used the Pathfinder to position them precisely 23,500 miles above the peak. “Now,” he said, “suppose we make a spiral sweep around this point. Somewhere we should come across the treasure satellite.”

  Merry was looking down, wonderingly. “Just to think that 35,000 years ago this was the equator below. All the Himalayas were surrounded by dense tropical jungles. While Spain was the north pole with all of Europe a snowbound arctic land. And New Zealand as the south pole would also make Australia a frozen land.”

  “America, in turn,” added Hillory, “was all part of the equatorial tropics.”

  “Hey, will you two quit gabbing about the past and look for the alien satellite?” Barton sounded almost annoyed. As if to explain his sharp words he added: “Remember this is No. 4, which will complete the split-up treasure tape. With this one in our hands, we’re within reach of solving the whole riddle.”

  Three pairs of eyes wearing clairvoyant goggles scanned the skies as the psi-bubble made successive sweeps over Mount Everest, in a spiral pattern.

  “There she blows,” yelled Barton finally, pointing.

  A tiny crystal globe hung there in space, glinting in the piercing sunshine. Hillory maneuvered toward it carefully.

  “Hold your breaths,” he advised. “Or rather, you’ll find you lost your breath for a moment.”

  He briefly opened a flap in the psi-bubble and reached out to yank in the miniature satellite. All the air had whooshed out of the bubble in the meantime, but Barton was already valving fresh oxygen from a tank which quickly filled the interior again. They all took deep breaths.

  Then Hillory held up the many-hued crystal globe, which was warm from being in sunlight, rather than cold. “Same contents. The mysterious tape, if it’s that.”

  “Let’s hope Dr. Cheng succeeded in opening the others,” murmured Merry. She glanced around apprehensively. “And I can bet that Jorzz will be after us again now that he knows we got the fourth treasure globe.”

  Wasting no time, Hillory sent the psi-bubble scudding to America. He decided to stay high in space where it was unlikely that Jorzz could animate another meteor, leaving him nothing else to play around with.

  Finally, over the eastern shoreline of America, Hillory sent the bubble downward. As they descended to 500 miles, they began to see brief streaks of light flashing below them.

  “The zone of earth satellites,” said Barton. “Over 300 are in orbit today, plus about 2,000 pieces of debris such as burned-out rocket stages and whatnot. Jorzz might try something with those.”

  Hillory was holding his tektite crystal and concentrating, with a strange trance-like look on his face. Suddenly he said, “Hold on. I’m going to veer sharply past that satellite below.”

  The bubble would have gone close to the satellite, but now it swung wrenchingly away. A moment later the torpedo-shaped satellite exploded violently, hurling jagged pieces of metal in all directions. The psi-bubble was far enough away to avoid the bomb-burst.

  “A Jorzz space-trap,” said Hillory, easing back. “When he noticed that that old satellite still had a reserve fuel supply, used for slight orbit changes, he touched off the explosion. It was timed to get us if I hadn’t turned the psi-bubble aside.”

  Barton stared blankly. “But how did you know Jorzz planned to convert us into mincemeat?”

  “Precognition,” grinned Hillory. “One of the rarer forms of ESP in which you get a glimpse into the future. I saw one minute into the future and knew the satellite was a booby trap waiting for us.”

  “Seeing into the future,” muttered Barton, shaking his head. Suddenly he grabbed Hillory’s arm. “Listen, why not work your precognition to see ahead and find out what the tapes are, after the globes are opened. That would save us all of the agony of waiting….”

  “Whoa,” said Hillory. “It’s not that easy. Precognition is one of the hardest and most elusive of psi-phenomena. I really can’t control it except for brief moments, like before. Most of the time it won’t work as if some sort of ‘psi-static’ is at work. To choose an exact time in the future, hours or days from now, and to pinpoint what goes on in a certain lab—well, it’s simply impossible. I don’t have the know-how for that kind of psi-manipulation.”

  “Oh,” said Barton, looking deflated. “Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way. Let’s hurry back to Serendipity Labs and get cracking.”

  Chapter 17

  “Yes, the young lady’s brilliant idea worked,” said Dr. Cheng, pointing at Merry Vedec, who blushed. “By using a wind-tunnel blast of air to hurl one globe against another, they both cracked. The broken pieces showed me that the material wasn’t just interlocked atoms but interlocked protons.”

  He turned and pointed at a robot standing motionlessly in the corner. “With that clue, I was able to use a proton-ray and coat steel, creating the indestructible robot!”

  “Why did you make a robot indestructible?” asked Hillory curiously.

  “As a scientific demonstration piece,” said Cheng, “with dramatics. In front of scientists I’ll have the robot survive explosions, lasers, fires, cannon shot—everything. That will prove conclusively that Serendipity Labs has produced another science marvel—indestru
ctible matter. It will be parceled out to the world for worthwhile uses only, and not for….”

  Hillory was sorry he had asked the question. He cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, Dr. Cheng. But now the treasure tapes. Let’s see them.”

  The dwarfed scientist handed him a box in which lay the coiled-up contents of the three previous crystal globes. “Meanwhile, I’ll crack open the fourth globe. Don’t worry. I saved a big piece of a broken globe to smash this one open.”

  Hillory fingered the tape, wonderingly. It uncoiled easily. It looked and felt like common video tape, but on peering closely he saw an intricate pattern of tiny dots all over. Of all different colors, they covered the tapes by the millions or perhaps billions. It was they, sparkling brightly, that had given the crystal globe containers their rainbow hues.

  When Cheng had cracked open the fourth crystal globe and handed over the last tape, Hillory strode out with them to Barton’s lab.

  “Try these on Brains. See if he can make out just what the ‘playback’ of this tape will represent.”

  Barton put one end of a tape under the computer’s scanning device with instructions to make a general analysis. The solving time was flashed—98 MINUTES.

  Others began to slip into the lab to watch. The word had gone around that the final solution to the alien treasure was close at hand. Practically the whole staff was there, plus Dr. Clyde.

  During the 98-minute wait, Hillory was careful to check that everyone had his psi-pistol along, those that had been copied after the one devised for Dr. Torreo’s protection. That would ensure that the mind-alien could not pull some psi-animation trick to seize the tapes.

  Tension mounted in the room as the time for the computer’s answer neared. Merry bit her lips. Barton fiddled with his mustache. Clyde cracked his knuckles. Most everyone else was coughing nervously or brushing invisible lint off his clothes.

  Hillory himself felt a strange calm—or was it the calm before a storm? He had a nagging psi-feeling of crisis ahead. Yet he did not know what form it would take. He jerked his body erect when Barton said “time’s up” and punched the computer’s read-out button for voice.

  “The alien tape is not simply to reproduce a voice or a motion picture,” said Brains in his usual flat tones. “It is tape of a far greater magnitude that will playback matter.”

  Everyone stiffened in sheer shock. Hillory looked stunned.

  “Clarify that,” barked Barton.

  “The tape would have to be ‘played’ on a special device that is not known on earth. This device would have access to limitless psi-energy and would follow the code of the tape to convert that energy into solid matter.”

  Hillory whistled. That was something new to him. Tremendously new.

  “What kind of solid matter?” Barton queried of Brains.

  “Matter composing a world.”

  “A world? A whole planet?”

  “Yes, but a precise one that once existed but is now only the coding of this matter-tape. Even the living people of that world and their entire civilization would be reproduced.”

  A concerted gasp arose in the room. Barton almost gagged, so many questions were on his tongue.

  “Wait, let’s go over this slowly, Brains. That former world no longer exists? What happened to it?”

  “I do not know. I can only surmise that it was somehow taken apart or converted into subatomic particles at a certain rate, like a slow explosion. A scanning ray of immense scope then recorded the pattern of that world on tape.”

  It was mind-staggering, to say the least. In a sense, it was like a video tape transmitting an object line-by-line in swift but perfect detail. But that was only an image broken up into lines and then reassembled as a whole on a screen.

  This matter-tape somehow did the incredible and “recorded” the object itself in its physical detail, down to the last atom and meson. And the playback would produce not just an image but the actual world.

  Barton had digested the brain-bursting concept and recovered, in a dizzy sort of way. “What is the name of that world?”

  “I do not know.”

  “But I do. Its name was Kaljj!” A new voice, rumbling and scratchy, had answered.

  They all whirled as a metallic form marched into the door.

  “My robot,” exclaimed Dr. Cheng, startled. “How did that iron thing come here…?”

  He stopped, and a deathly silence filled the room. Faces paled. They all knew the dread answer.

  “Yes,” spoke the robot as if reading their minds. “I am Jorzz within this machine. I am here to take away the Tape of Kaljj.”

  Hillory broke from a frozen trance. “Your psi-pistols,” he yelled. “Fire at the robot. It will crumble and force the free-mind of Jorzz to leave.”

  More than a dozen psi-pistols hissed. They shot at point-blank range. The robot stood with folded arms, mockingly. “You forget that I am Dr. Cheng’s indestructible robot.”

  Hillory groaned. Even powerful psi-energy—at least as much as the pistols could handle—could not destroy interlocked protonic matter such as the treasure globes had been made of. It was like trying to blow up the sun with a hydrogen bomb. Everyone shrank back helplessly as the robot strode forward and took all the tapes, stuffing them into a chest cavity that he opened.

  The next thought was like a bomb in Hillory’s mind. Jorzz had won. Nothing could stop him now from using the confiscated tapes and recreating his home world. Yes, and then what…?

  Hillory waved the others back and stepped forward, facing the robot “What are your plans in all this?”

  The robot seemed to sneer. “I don’t have to answer, of course, earthling. But I want you to be tormented by knowing what will happen—including the conquest of earth itself.”

  Hillory turned pale. “Go on,” he said doggedly.

  The robot faced them all as if giving a lecture. “Let me tell you the full history of my world, Kaljj. It was a living world more than 35,000 of your earth years ago. I was Jorzz, the Star King. My world reached an acme of technological might and swept out conquering worlds to form a star empire of my own. What great forces and weapons we used I will not attempt to describe.”

  Hillory shuddered. He did not want to know.

  The words rang on, lifting a corner of the curtain that hid galactic history from earth’s unknowing eyes. “The Galactic Union did not like my doings. They had ruled the galaxy for a million years, as a union of free planets. They had outlawed campaigns of conquest and empire building. Their spaceships patrolled the galaxy to keep law and order, as they called it. I knew they would attack me and I was prepared—I thought.”

  Jorzz paused as if tasting the bitterness of defeat again. Then his robot voice resumed. “What I did not know was that they had devised a secret weapon more powerful than any known before—the space shaker. It was some amazing force that could shake space. I cannot describe it any more clearly to your limited earth minds. The result was that my invincible space armada was no longer invincible. My ships were literally shaken to pieces as the space around them vibrated powerfully.”

  Subtle agony seemed to come through the automaton’s voice, as it went on.

  “The GU patrol ships then surrounded my planet and condemned our whole world to the maximum penalty of non-death. I will have to explain. The death penalty for any crime, by individuals or worlds, had been abolished. Yet the guilty one could be ‘destroyed’ without being destroyed. Briefly, a modification of the space-shaker ray shook my world to bits in an orderly pattern and the matter-tape recorder coded it all down meticulously—buildings, people, animals, the ground, the entire planet. It was painless and swift with a scanning rate that finished the job in a trifle under one second.”

  Hillory’s mind reeled, trying to take in these concepts a macro-magnitude beyond earthly science. But then, it was just an extension of the super-speed scanning utilized in TV to hurl images to the receiver at the speed of light.

  “And so Kaljj was destroyed and re
corded on tape,” said the robot. “But at any time the tape could be used to reproduce my world again, down to the last atom. The people would live again with their former memories, just as real as they were before. They would simply be made of new matter.”

  It was awesome, fantastic, incomprehensible. But that was only to the human mind, Hillory knew, not the galactic mind with a background of a million years of super-science.

  Jorzz went on, via the robot’s mechanical voice.

  “The GU’s plan was to store the tapes for a specified sentence of what would be approximately 1,000 earth years. At that time, it would replay the tape and recreate our world to live again. But in that time my former empire would have been broken up, rehabilitated, and armed to resist any further attack from me. And Kaljj would be allowed to enter the GU councils with only a half vote for another thousand years, until they had proved they could take their place as a civilized, law-abiding world.”

  Hillory was still puzzled. “How do you fit into all this? Why are you not part of that tape?”

  The robot eyed him. “As the Star King, leader of conquest for a star empire, my sentence was to be taped for five thousand years, by myself, so that when I returned even my people wouldn’t know me. They would have a different government entirely.”

  Very effective, thought Hillory, admiringly. The Galactic Union leaders sagaciously dealt in sweeping cosmic terms and knew how to be stern and merciful at the same time.

  “But I escaped,” boomed the robot proudly. “My scientists had been dabbling with psi-phenomena, and they had made ready a device for separating the psyche from the body or the mind from the brain. It was untried, admittedly dangerous, and might not work. It was a gamble I had to take. Just before my world was disintegrated and taped, I stepped in the device, a super centrifuge. The theory was that if my body were whirled at an almost inconceivable speed, it would hurl out my free mind. You of course know how centrifuges separate things of different density. The mind, being of comparatively low density, was flung out of my dense body…it had worked.”