Chapter VI

Sitting there alone, waiting for something to happen, Lynne for the first time since becoming aware of her telepathic powers began to get a sense of direction along with the thoughts that came to her from outside. Heretofore she had only been conscious of the thoughts themselves, varying in power according to the strength of the thinker.

Perhaps because of the altitude of the tower-room, perhaps because her own power was increasing with practise, perhaps because telepathy was easier in the thinner Martian atmosphere than on Earth--perhaps through a combination of all these factors, Lynne was aware of tremendous mental strength.

Her on-duty periods consisted of two daily shifts, each of about two Earth-hours. In case of an emergency message reaching her during any other time, she was to report at once to her tower-post and remain on duty for the duration. And this was her first shift.

She wondered how long it would take the Martians that had possessed Revere to seek her out and test her defenses. Apparently these invisible creatures operated upon a time-scale of their own, making themselves felt without semblance of rhythm or regular schedule.

Shutting out the meaningless scramble of thoughts that reached her from the Earth-village below, Lynne considered Revere and the odd constraint that had prevailed between them during their brief single meeting. Somewhere beyond the gaunt reddish Martian hills to the southeast, the planet-ship was carrying him swiftly toward New Samarkand--and, she hoped, toward rehabilitation.

Revere had had a rough deal on this outpost world. Although he seemed not to resent it Lynne found herself trembling with indignation at thought of the needless torture he had undergone--merely to give Lynne the induced headaches that had undermined her Earth-conditioning. She thought of Rolf and his thousand-and-two women.

And from somewhere, half a planet away, came a quick mocking thought from the Svengali who had led her to a planet she had never had the slightest desire to visit. It said, _Don't bother me now, Lynne--can't you see I'm busier than_ farb?

So thrilling was the experience, so magnificent the surge of power which swept through her, that Lynne actually forgot to be angry at receiving such a quick brush-off. Even a half-world away, she thought, she could key in on Rolf, learn what he was doing.

A thousand-and-one other women? She sipped sparingly at her oxyrespirator, felt reinforced exhilaration. With her new-found ability she was going to be able to check up on his alleged love-life. She actually gloated as she sat there alone amid the spare Martian landscape.

Then, feeling somewhat ashamed, she thought of her twin again. Evidently he was keeping his mind closed for she could not reach him. She wondered what he was really like, what--say--Lao Mei-O'Connell felt about him. And all at once she knew, for the Eurasian woman's mind was an open book.

The Barkutburg leader was almost physically sick at Revere's departure. Her thoughts of love, of desolation, were so strong that Lynne found herself sharing them, even though she had seen her twin but a scant few minutes since attaining an age of reason.

Yet there were strength and determination and a strong sense of duty holding Lao Mei-O'Connell to her important tasks of seeing that her share of reclaiming a planet continued. The frail-looking Martian woman was, Lynne realised, a person of vast character.

She thought of her having deliberately to torture the man she loved, through drugs that opened his already sick mind to the invaders, and wondered if she herself would be capable of such behavior no matter how urgent the circumstance, to--say--Rolf Marcein.

It was then that her first message came through--so unused was she to receiving telepathically impersonal thoughts that she all but missed her code signal. The Zuleika operator had to repeat it three times before Lynne came to with a start and keyed her own thoughts properly--_Ess-two, Barkutburg. Ess-two, Barkutburg. Come in._

The message itself concerned a supply of chemilamps, which had arrived at Zuleika from Cathayville and was ready for transhipment, if they were needed at Barkutburg. Lynne repeated the message, pressed the hand-buzzer for ground-communication, relayed the news to Lao Mei-O'Connell in her office below. She was told to notify Zuleika to send the chemilamps on at once, as they were sorely needed.

Lynne got the message through, after which the Zuleika telepath flashed, _You're new on the job. How is Fenlay?_

_This is Fenlay here_, she replied. _Revere's twin, Lynne. He's been sent to New Samarkand for treatment._

_Welcome, Lynne Fenlay--and good luck_, came the answer. _Met any of our unseen friends yet?_

_Not yet_, thought Lynne, _when are they apt to hit me?_

_There's no telling._ Lynne received a definite impression of a shrug. The Zuleika operator gave his name, which was Zachary Ramirez, then signed off for the time being. Thanks to this brief personal conversation Lynne no longer felt so alone. At least, when the invaders attacked her, she'd have someone to reach for--or would she?

There was a message from New Walla Walla direct, about an hour later, concerning some point of bookkeeping. Lynne handled it, then sat out the rest of her first tour of duty alone. The Martian sun was high in the sky when at last she took the downlift to the ground.

She found herself ravenously hungry. Either through some effect of the alien atmosphere and climate or the knowledge the food she would get was real rather than fabricated, Lynne found herself thinking about dining in an almost animal fashion.

Nor was the mess disappointing. All residents of Barkutburg shared a single dining hall, since such a method represented great economy of time, labor and food supplies. It was, to Lynne, rather like a greatly enlarged and much more volatile Mother Weedon's. The other residents of the settlement wore the uniform ruddiness of unmistakable good health. To Lynne, accustomed to the more pallid countenances of Earth, they seemed almost vulgar.

Yet the good humor, the camaraderie, were unmistakable--as were the animal spirits. Lynne, as a pretty girl and new arrival, got more masculine attention than ever before in her life. She was plied with offers to see the Martian ruins, to visit the nearby mountaintops, to take long excursions through the vast dry canal-beds.

To her relief the other girls and women, unless their thoughts lied, showed very little resentment at her presence. In fact most of them were as eager as the men to question her about the home planet--though their questions were cast in more feminine mould. Yet Lynne played her welcome cautiously, accepting no dates for the present on the plea that mastery of her new job demanded all her time and strength.

A few days later Lao Mei-O'Connell suggested the two of them go for a walk. When they were well out of earshot of the others she said, "You're handling yourself very well, Lynne. So far so good."

Lynne eyed her, carefully avoiding a probe of her mind--she had no wish to make an enemy of this woman and the basic situation was emotionally delicate to begin with. She said, "Then you anticipate trouble, Miss O'Connell?"

"Lao, please," she said. "There's scant room for social formality in a settlement like Barkutburg. You'll have some trouble, of course--you're bound to on an alien planet. I hate to think of what I'd have to go through to adjust to Earth."

"Fair enough," Lynne said gratefully. She wanted to ask Lao about Revere, what sort of man he was, some of his little habits. She also began to understand better why Earth-Mars twins were kept so rigorously apart as a rule. The relationship was a complex and deep one and she found herself almost as homesick for her twin as was Lao.

"Life is hard here," Lao said, "but not unhappy. It isn't even particularly earnest, save for necessary jobs. Work hard, play hard, rest hard--that's the rule of Mars."

"It sounds good," said Lynne sincerely. "Tell me, Lao, just what _is_ the status of electricity on Mars? I was a little worried when you wanted the chemilamps so urgently. But we have the communicator phones and electric cooking...."

"It's a strange problem," said the other woman. "Everything works as long as we can use a closed circuit on this planet. But the minute we open one up--for lateral broadcasting, say--it is dissipated--like _that_!" She snapped thin fingers sharply.

Then she added, "But nature seemed to have compensated in our favor when we were able to develop telepaths." She eyed Lynne speculatively, added, "You must have tremendous powers. No other Earth-person has ever been able to make the grade. From what Rolf Marcein told me you were outstanding the moment Revere reached you."

"I don't pretend to understand it," said Lynne. "As far as my first few sessions on duty, it seemed to be all right."

"You weren't bothered?" The question was softly urgent.

"No." Lynne shook her head. "But I'm expecting to be."

"You will be, I'm afraid. Every telepath on Mars has been at least once. Revere had the bad luck to be the first--before the presence of these beings was even suspected. Hence he was surprised and his resistance was unprepared. Once they've gained possession it becomes progressively more difficult to keep them out."

"I suppose," said Lynne, "they pick on telepaths because they can only enter minds opened for message-reception."

"Probably," Lao informed her. "We can't be certain of anything until we know more about them and their motives. But you can see what a threat it has become. Thanks to the paralysis of lateral electronic communication, the survival of humanity on Mars depends almost entirely on telepaths. When these zombies or whatever they are take possession no telepath is worth a damn. Nor can any of them receive messages while the aliens are threatening them. If they do...."

Lao's silence was eloquent. Lynne took a sip of oxygen as her breathing became difficult. They were approaching one of the semi-ruined structures, a vast edifice, squatter and broader than the slim pinnacle which contained the broadcasting room, whose lower facade was a mass of friezes in high-relief.

Lynne, as part of her cultural training on Earth, had been taken on tours of the vast temples of India, Pakistan and Malaya--including Ankhor Vat. Yet not even the incredible and bizarre reliefs of those fabulous temples, with all of their grotesqueries and solemnly religious obscenities, prepared her for what she now saw.

The pantheocratic creatures of ancient Mars were far more diverse than their counterparts on Earth--and of course utterly exotic. Here were creatures with two, three and four heads, with innumerable appendages, with reproductive organs so weird as to defy comment or moral reaction.

* * * * *

One feature Lynne noted at once. Like their Asiatic counterparts on Earth, they seemed to belong to a theocratic rather than a scientific culture--yet the buildings themselves were utterly beyond the creative techniques of even an interplanetary human culture.

She said, "Are the other towers of Mars like this?"

"In general," replied the Eurasian girl. "The aborigines seem to have been mostly a philosophic sort. Perhaps they became so when their planet began to die. All that have survived are such low life-orders as the _czanworm_ and sand-_lurtonk_. Unless, of course, the invisible ones are natives. I for one am inclined to believe they are."

"So does Rolf Marcein," said Lynne.

"You love him, don't you?" Lao asked matter-of-factly.

"I'm beginning to be afraid so," said Lynne as frankly.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," replied the other. "I love Revere, you know--and I don't expect to see him ever again."

"I know," said Lynne, feeling her companion's unhappiness like a knife. She pulled the parka over her head although it was not the cool Martian afternoon breeze that was making her cold. She said, "It must have been very difficult for you--what you had to do to help get me here. I don't wonder if you hate me."

"I don't hate you, Lynne," said Lao. "But if you fail on this job I shall. I should not enjoy sacrificing Revere for nothing."

"I won't fail," Lynne told her with more assurance than she felt. "After all, I have Revere to think of--and you--_and_ Rolf."

"I encourage myself with similar thoughts," said Lao. "Come--let us go on inside."

It was like entering a pagan cathedral. The tower in which Lynne's post was bore heavy over-marks of human habitation. Probably, she thought, it had long since been stripped by the archeologists of any objects of historical or cultural value. Save for its crystaline flying buttresses it might almost have been an Earth skyscraper.

But, outside of a few pieces of scaffolding, where restoration work or study was evidently in progress, this immense building had been left untouched by the new inhabitants of the red planet. Thanks probably to the thinness and dryness of the atmosphere, brilliant murals had retained their coloring intact. Yet in numerous patches the colors seemed to fade into neutral tints at variance with the brightness of the rest.

"Here." Lao took from a table, on which tools and other instruments had been laid, an odd-looking stereoptical device, handed it to Lynne, adding, "Adjust it and you'll get the full effect. A lot of their work was done below the human color-scale, in the infra-red."

Lynne gasped when she studied the hitherto drab patches in the murals through the double-eye-piece of the viewer. She saw strange beings, hauntingly near-human, engaged in fantastic gambols. Multi-faceted eyes leered out at her from the Capuchin heads of twin-bodied smaller creatures of a boldness that almost made her flinch. And there were endlessly varied poses of both sorts of beings....

"Rather disturbing, isn't it?" said Lao. "I didn't bring you out here just to see the sights, Lynne. From what little your brother was able to tell me, the odd little games those creatures are playing are very like those his invaders hinted at."

"You mean," said Lynne with a shudder, "that the zombies or whatever they are looked like that before they lost their bodies?"

"Or before they became invisible," said Lao quietly. "The near-humans seem to have been the dominant species. These others--the twin-bodied monkeylike things--seem to have been their pets."

"What disgusting games they played!" said Lynne. "They sound a lot like...." She hesitated, realising she was about to repeat Lao's remark.

"Exactly," said Lao.

They walked back to the settlement in silence. Both girls had a great deal to ponder over. When they got there Lynne settled down to listen to some musicrolls in the recreation building and Lao left to tend to her various executive functions.

Lynne's new life on Mars passed without notable incident for another week, Earth-time. She was beginning to adjust to days and nights almost twice as long as those of her home planet, to the small cool sun, to the use of her oxyrespirator whenever her lungs felt empty.

She was even beginning to enjoy the give-and-take of the neo-pioneer society of Barkutburg. Yet loneliness continued to gnaw at her, loneliness for the twin she had known such a short time, loneliness for Rolf, at whose activities she could only guess. And some of her guesses were in lurid vidarcolor.

Late one afternoon, in the recreation building, the musicroll was playing a fine concerto for theraharp by Liston-Lutz, the most important human composer yet to emerge on Mars. Back on Earth his music had seemed to Lynne to be both glaringly dissonant and a trifle decadent. Here on Mars she understood it. He was writing of the red planet itself, of a world that had all but died and was now having its life renewed through lusty Earth-pioneers.

"Like it?" one of the engineers enjoying an off-shift rest asked Lynne over a colafizz globe.

"Very much. It--fits," said Lynne. She was still smiling at him when the headache came back--with a sharpness and depth of discomfort she had never felt on Earth. For a full minute or two she thought she was going to be physically sick from the pain.

She managed to get up and move toward her quarters before anyone noticed she was feeling badly. It would never do to have them worried about _her_--after all, they had enough to worry about. Besides, she knew what was the matter. Revere was in New Samarkand and they were doing something to him, something that might easily either kill him or drive him permanently insane.