Chapter VIII

This time they actually knocked Lynne to the floor of the tower-room. It was greater torment than she had ever endured in her life. Somehow she could sense the pattern behind its intensity, even while she was in the grip of a mental confusion that seemed to be burning out the very fibers of her brain.

This was the showdown, the decisive battle. Her being imported to Mars had been a step in the duel between the invisible aliens and the Communications Integration of the red planet, headed by Rolf Marcein and his telepaths and other department workers.

Unless the aliens were stopped and stopped now there would be no holding them. Earthfolk on Mars were becoming increasingly telepathic and telepaths were the prey of the invisible foes. Lynne _knew_ somehow, from the thoughts of the aliens, that they had been growing steadily in strength since the arrival of the Earthmen on their planet, that after a creepingly slow revival for decades they had finally snow-balled to sufficient power to make open attacks upon human brains laid bare for telepathic communication. They longed to renew the lost pleasures of the flesh through possession of human bodies.

Rolf and the scientists had learned something that afternoon from Lynne's twin, something about the nature and life-form of the attackers that had hitherto been concealed from them. They were moving to the attack themselves--and it was of vital import to them that Lynne should now get through with the message that would reveal this true nature.

She tried desperately to reach Rolf--and when this effort failed to think of Mother Weedon or even plump Tony Willis engaged in amorous sports--but the keynote of the alien attack had been altered from suggestion of sensation to outright mental attack. Instead of bribery or blackmail through pain, she was being given sledgehammer treatment.

But she _had_ to get her message through. Without her knowledge of the nature of the aliens Rolf would use faulty weapons against them, would lose precious time, time that might prove decisive for the survival of Earthmen on Mars.

Despairing, knowing she could not hold out much longer against the attack with her mind open, Lynne summoned reserve powers she did not know she possessed and swept the planet's surface with her thoughts, seeking Rolf. Her love for him, her fear for Revere's ultimate fate, her affection for her new comrades--all combined to help her make a final superhuman effort.

Yet for awhile it seemed that even this despairing try was destined to defeat. The floor was beginning to swim before her eyes when at last she reached Rolf, got him, lost him, got him again. With darkness closing about her she poured out her information, her theory, her surmises.

Faintly at last she felt Rolf's Crehut! _The multiple bodies on the visual screen we thought were ghosts--of course they're the survivors, rather than the near-humans! Thanks million, honey, we'll know what to do now. Hold on out there--help is on its way._

But Lynne could hold out no longer. She felt the invisible attackers come pouring through her weakened mental barriers--her last remembered vision was of the floor rising rapidly to strike her. She turned her face away just before it hit.

Lynne became aware of a lifting from her brain, of a cessation of pain that she had never actually felt. She opened her eyes, discovered she was still lying on the floor of the tower-room. But she was no longer surrounded by terror.

The patched portion of the wall had been smashed through and beyond it hovered the well-lighted outlines of a small aircraft. With her in the room was Rolf Marcein--and he was sweeping the apparently empty air about him with an odd-looking weapon. No flash or beam came from its squat muzzle but briefly, all around her, Lynne was aware of alien anguish, alien drainage, alien flight.

"That should do it for awhile, honey," he told her, helping her to her unsteady feet. "_Crehut!_ What a show those blasted _marlets_ put on this time. They tried to knock out the whole system simultaneously. Check the other stations, will you, honey?"

Automatically she did it. Cathayville came in clearly, as did New Walla Walla and Zuleika. Save for a few stations on the other side of the planet the communications network was clear once again. Lynne informed Rolf of the fact.

"Good," he said, pulling a skinless cigarette from his pocket and letting it ignite itself. "I guess we're solid now. The _purt_ of it is they almost got us, before you could find out enough about them to knock them out for awhile."

"What sort of gun is that?" Lynne asked him. He had called her honey, he had saved her life, but so casually had he done it that she still felt definite constraint between them.

"We had to put it together in a hurry, once we got your message," he told her, patting it fondly. He held it up so that she could examine it better, added, "It isn't really a gun at all. We've been using the damned things for space and planet-ship external repairs for years now--you know how their outer skins pile up positive electricity...."

"I don't," she said. "Tell me." He shook his head, put an arm around her, scowled at her fiercely. "How come I managed to acquire such an ignoramus?" he asked rhetorically. "I'm not going to explain it all now but space-ships _do_ pick up positive charges on their outer hulls and this thing is an anion gun that attracts and discharges negative juice.

"Our unseen visitors with the gone bodies are mostly positive electricity in their present form, honey," he went on. "This blaster of ours gives them a negative charge that wipes them right out." Rolf put an arm about her, led her unprotesting to the hovering vehicle outside. "I imagine they're beginning to wonder what in _purt's_ been going on, down below."

But before he pressed the buttons that lowered the hovering pinnace to the planet's surface he drew her into the circle of his arms, kissed her, then said, "If you hadn't given us the clue to what these horrors were we'd never have had sense enough to know what to do. We couldn't conceive of the dominant species turning into this kind of force. But their pets, with the multiple bodies...."

Lynne and Lao Mei-O'Connell and most of the rest of the citizens of Barkutburg listened attentively while Rolf told them the full story. The trouble, it seemed, was caused by the fact that the Earthmen had brought electricity back to Mars.

"These creatures were forced to discard their corporeal bodies to survive on a planet as dead as this one," he went on. "Their food is electricity and they'd been existing on a starvation diet for thousands of years, until _we_ got here."

"It's strange they never tried space-travel," said Lynne.

"I don't believe their philosophy admitted to such a materialistic solution," Rolf replied. "They must have progressed like _farb_ in the spiritual direction to be able to discard their bodies at all. Probably couldn't manage it both ways."

"That makes sense, Rolf." Lao nodded, looked at Rolf with an appeal she could not put into words.

He understood, told her, "Your Revere is going to be right as _purt_. I know what you must have thought when Lynne gave you the message she got about what we were doing to him. I tried to conceal it for that reason but this young lady is too _farbly_ strong telepathically to shut her out. I'm sorry I had to make him suffer but he understood. And I wasn't going to damage him permanently.

"We--that is, some of Tony Willis' bright young men, have managed to improve the necro-recorder so that it is no longer destructive of the mind of the usee. They'd been working on it against time--and against just such a situation as arose recently, when we were finally able to get Revere off duty for a bit."

"Thanks." Lao Mei-O'Connell said the word gratefully.

"It's been rough on you," Rolf told her, "but nothing like as rough as if our little friends got control of all the telepaths."

"What did they feed on that made them strong?" Lynne asked.

"Electricity," said Rolf. "Just because we couldn't make it work in open circuits doesn't mean we haven't tried. They got enough from our efforts partly to restore themselves--from such efforts and the leakage of our closed circuits. They were always sopping it up.

"But we didn't even know what they looked like, though we had our suspicions. They figured to be survivors of the dominant species on the planet before it dried up--but Revere's test this afternoon gave us our first doubts. We were still up a tree when Lynne got her message through. That _did_ it!

"But it was touch and go. I grabbed a space-ship to get to Lynne, then took a pinnace. If we hadn't managed to get the anion guns ready tonight I think we'd have been licked for all our knowledge. Now we've got _them_ licked. They can still raid our electricity once in awhile, but it's going to cost them."

That was about it. Lynne got up and went outside in the chill Martian night to smoke a skinless cigarette. A little while later Rolf came out and joined her. He slipped an arm around her again, hugged her, said, "_Purt_, isn't it?"

"I guess so." The constraint she felt in his presence was strong upon her. And she had been through a little too much too quickly. She said, "What about Revere?"

"He'll be back on the job in a little while," he said. "From what he told me before he went under this afternoon he wants to mate up with Lao Mei-O'Connell."

"That'll be fine," said Lynne, feeling suddenly very lonely. "But what happens to me?"

"One _zwirchy_ guess!" he said, bringing his other arm into play.

"But if you drive off the aliens, why are you going to need telepaths?" She felt robbed of a fascinating new career before it was even begun.

"Don't you believe it," he told her. "Telepathy is going to be the keystone of the entire Martian culture. Now that we shan't have to confine people like you and Revere and me to communications we can use them a thousand other ways. Think of what telepathy will mean in education, in therapy, in sheer honesty and understanding!

"Besides...." He looked thoughtfully at the star-studded sky. "Man isn't always going to be limited to two puny planets. We've still to get a settlement working on Venus. And out there somewhere are the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Think of how easy it will make the task if we have telepaths ready-made!"

He paused, forced her to look at him, said, "How about it, honey?"

She said, "You must be in love with your own voice--you didn't really have to _say_ any of that. But watch what you think!"