Part 2

"It will be very interesting to find out how you managed to get here in spite of our Mind Control," said the second elf. "Your arrival without the necessity of swaddling yourself in awkward garments indicated a certain amount of ability along mental lines, but I sense no more of it in you than several others of your kind have managed to muster. The others all brought premium prices on the market, despite conveyances and garments."

"I gather you don't think much of mechanical contrivances," I said lightly.

* * * * *

Alien the First shrugged. "They make interesting toys," he said. "But, of course, they are useless crutches in building a civilization. They bring good prices when peddled for the amusement of our children and the shallower-minded adults."

"Listening to your remarks about our spaceships," I continued, "I presume all of you teleported here. We Earthmen may not be very good at Mind Control, but I think we have a good grasp of the principles, and I don't see how you could teleport without some sort of terminal device. Didn't you have to send that here by machine?"

There was a brief silence, and then Alien the Second answered. "I suppose it doesn't matter if we tell you. After all, we have you in our possession. As you suggest, we do need a terminal device. But we didn't use machinery; we used minds--the minds of you Earthmen. When the first of you landed on this uninhabited planet, we discovered that your undirected capacities were sufficient to serve as the terminal of a teleport system.

"We couldn't go directly to any of your more populous planets, because the vast numbers of your untrained minds cause so much static that the noise level is too high to permit a sharp enough focus for teleporting.

"Of course, now that we're here, where you've set up a teleport terminal that connects into your foolish mechanical network and ties into all of your thousands of planets, we'll have no trouble going anywhere among your worlds that we want to. And as soon as we have built up enough consumer demand for you creatures as house pets, we'll move in for the harvest."

"It might not be too bad at that," I said. "I've got a cat back home on Earth and she runs my household pretty much to suit her fancy. But I'm afraid it's not the same thing for Earthmen to be house pets."

"The ones we've got are doing a very good job at it," said Number Two. "And, as we indicated, you won't get the chance to be a pet."

"You seem very sure that you have me under your control."

"Very sure," said Number One. "In this confined space, with our training, the two of us could overcome all but one in a thousand of our own kind--so do you think you have a chance?"

I decided that a simple expletive would suffice as an answer. I didn't know enough about them to be sure it was biologically possible for them to carry out my suggestion, but it wasn't important. They ignored me.

* * * * *

At least they didn't answer me. Instead, a cage suddenly appeared around me, leaving me scarcely room to move around. I reached out and tapped one of the bars. It seemed very strong. I didn't think I was even close to panicking, but the implanted device in my body fed some more of the drug into my veins. I may have felt a little more tense than I realized.

At any rate, the time for action seemed to have arrived, and it was not on the mental level. I spun toward an apparently empty portion of the room and emptied Obadiah's pistol. The sound of the explosive pellets was very loud in the room.

The bars writhed, wavered and disappeared, as did the elflike creatures. The atmosphere of the room turned momentarily opaque, and when it cleared, what I could see was once again a clumsy prefab. Two of the Aliens were still standing in a corner. The remains of the other two were splashed pretty generally throughout the room. It was quite a mess.

"Well," I said, "thanks for the party. You'll excuse me for running."

There was no answer. The two surviving Aliens hadn't learned much about Earthmen. I walked over and lifted one of them. He weighed about three hundred pounds, I judged. That would be a couple of hundred on Earth. Hefty creatures. I figured that one was about all I could handle. I looked around at the articles in the room and then decided not to use any of them. I was sure that everything I saw was actually there, but it didn't seem wise to take chances.

I took off Obadiah's purple kilt and tore it into strips without regret. Then I used the strips to fasten one of the Aliens securely, so he couldn't use his arms or his legs. I didn't know if he could do anything, loose, but I didn't want him to try. The other Alien I heaved up onto my shoulders. Then I walked out of the room.

There were a few of the ice trees scattered around, but the countryside looked barren. I couldn't visually identify any landmarks, but I started off without hesitation, and in about three hours I was back at the marker. From there on I used my eyes to follow the path back to the airlock. I had no trouble.

This time Mr. Jones gave me a checked kilt. I know you won't believe me, but it was even more hideous than the purple one. The red and yellow squares were at least three inches across. Luckily, I didn't have to look at it--just wear it.

Jones was a little confused as to why I had brought back one of the Aliens. He didn't even recognize it as an Alien at first, of course. He'd never seen one of them before--just the elfin form they'd wanted him to see.

I'd had no more hallucinations and the other Earthmen seemed to be seeing normally too. Apparently there had been only the two trained beings among the Aliens on Sunder's Pride--and only the four of them in all.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, I was in a hurry. I sent out an urgent call for one of the most skilled Mental Controllers in Interstellar Insurance. I'll admit that there are times when they can be put to use.

Jones and I went down to the clearing that was the teleport terminal to welcome him.

The company chose to send that young self-styled genius Ralph Carter. He's supercilious and conceited and altogether obnoxious--I don't know why you hire such people--but no question of it, he's a real expert in his field. He was dressed in a dark green kilt in the latest style, and he smirked when he saw the thing I had on. I ignored his attitude, as befitted a gentleman.

I figured that it was time to move fast. While I showed Carter the way to the headquarters, I explained why I had called for him. I wanted him to get into communication with the Alien and find out the location of his home worlds.

"But how can I do that?" Carter asked. "I don't know anything at all about these Aliens."

"Can't you use your mental training to help you learn to talk mind to mind?"

"I suppose so. That shouldn't take more than a few days. The techniques are well established with other new races we've encountered. But learning his language won't make him answer."

I looked at him with my most superior manner. "While you're learning his language, I suggest you learn some of his psychology. Then you can get some of our engineers to design you a machine that will function the way a polygraph does with humans--act as a lie detector. With the proper choice of questions, you should find out anything you want to know."

He shuddered delicately at the mention of that naughty word "machine." Mentalists sometimes become purists and make fools of themselves by trying to do without machinery--something like the attitude of the Aliens.

When I had given Carter his instructions, I turned to the rest of the expedition. "I want all of your weapons," I said. "And don't try holding out on me. That's to include knives and scissors, too. We'll lock them up in Jones' vault."

"Now see here," said Jones. "Some more of those Aliens may show up any time. We can't afford to go out without our guns."

"That's just the reason you've got to get rid of them. I don't want you to start shooting each other--and me. Now, send out a party as fast as you can to bring back a sample of the building material that blocks out their minds. We'll ship it back to Earth and see if they can put it into mass production. Have the party bring back that second Alien, too. If we happen to spoil the one we've got making him talk, it would be nice to have a spare."

* * * * *

While the small group was away, I had Obadiah improvise some leg irons out of light chain and padlocks, and used them to hobble all of the Earthmen who remained in camp. Jones screamed like a holta whose mate has estivated, but it didn't do him any good. I had the authority.

He got even madder when I put the irons on him and at the same time turned him down again when he wanted to call in the military. The idea of a space fleet around while the Aliens were still free to use their mind powers gave me cold chills.

When the group returned from the Aliens' camp, they did so without the Alien. They brought back the still tied strips of the purple kilt. It looked as if he'd teleported right out of them. But at least they did have a piece of the prefab hut with them. I had it sent back to Earth, but not until after I'd attached chains to the party's legs, so that they had to creep along with six-inch steps like the others.

As the days passed without any apparent action from the Aliens, dissatisfaction and grumbling grew. My precautionary action with the chains was very unpopular. At the end of the first week after my arrival on Sunder's Pride, Jones tried to invoke the Policy he'd signed with the company to call in the military, on the grounds that the situation hadn't been resolved in the prescribed time, and that the use of chains proved that the colony was in even greater danger than before I had arrived.

I invoked the "substantial progress" clause, of course, but the fact that I'd changed the combination to the vault and had the only gun in the entire camp outside of it probably was more convincing to him.

Carter called in a top-flight Engineer and made real progress in developing lie-detector techniques against the Alien. The Aliens were basically a guileless lot. I almost felt sorry for them.

Things eased up a little when Earth sent us a stack of sheets they claimed would be just as good in blocking out thoughts as the sample we had sent them. The Alien captive told us, after Carter persuaded him a little, that the blocking power was impressed on their building materials by a mental process. We used electronic techniques, and our Engineers said they could have done it years before, if Mentalists and they could have gotten together on the work.

By testing, we found that the stuff we had blocked out anything Carter could transmit, so I let the rest of our people take off their chains as long as they were inside camp--as soon that is, as we had it fully protected. They worked faster on that job than they ever had worked in their lives before.

* * * * *

A few hours later, I was strolling down toward Telepath Clearing with a courier to send a report back to Earth when the Aliens returned. The first warning we had was a sudden wave of hate that struck like a physical blow. It brought the courier to his knees, momentarily helpless. Even with an automatic and instantaneous shot of the drug, it had me grinding my teeth.

Whether it was the rapidity of my recovery and my quickness of thought, or whether it was just the effect of the hate spasm, I didn't know--at any rate, I did the right thing. Before the courier could get up off his knees and try to kill me, as I was sure he would do, I slugged him alongside the ear with the butt of my pistol.

The hatred sensation seemed to be channeled and directed. It made us want to destroy Aliens--not each other--and that was unexpected to me. And because the courier was on his way back to Earth, I'd left the chains off him. In another few seconds, I figured, he'd have tried to kill me--or, at least, that was my initial thought, until I realized that, since I am a human, he wouldn't have felt hate for me. By that time, and quite properly, I had laid him out cold.

I reached down and picked up the courier, intending to toss him lightly across my shoulder and start back to the camp. I found that I had a problem--I couldn't figure which one of my three stumpy legs to start walking with. I extended all my eyes and examined myself. I looked like an Alien wearing a checked kilt.

Unhappily, I tried to lick my labial fringes with my tongue--and suddenly realized that I had no tongue! It was an unnerving realization, even to me. But then I knew why the Aliens were transmitting hatred of themselves; any Earthman who knew what an Alien looked like would attack me on sight.

I closed all of my eyes and concentrated, but I couldn't seem to be able to figure out which of my three hands held the gun, for I could no longer see it. I decided it was time for me to get back inside the barrier.

That was a devil of a lot easier to decide than it was to do. I could see three legs and I could feel three legs, but I didn't know how to operate three legs. I was slowed down to a sort of hobble. It wasn't as slow as the sluggish amble of the real Aliens, but it wasn't any faster than the other Earthmen could move, hobbled by chains.

I couldn't afford to delay very long, though. Some of the unchained men inside of the shack might take it into their heads to step outside without remembering to hobble themselves, considering that I was not there to remind them, and I didn't feel up to trying to handle anything like that.

* * * * *

I sneaked up as close as I could get to the lock without being seen. There were six men gathered in front of it, waiting for me. I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I just lit out for the airlock, shuffling along as fast as I could go. The men swarmed around me. I threw the courier at the first group to arrive--he was still out--and gained a few seconds. But then they hung on me, they pummeled me, they bit and they clawed.

I just kept struggling bravely forward; I couldn't think of anything else to do. At the last minute, just as I thought I was going down under the mass of feet and fists, two of the men somehow got tangled in each other's chains, and I managed to break loose long enough to pull myself into the lock.

As the outer door swung closed, I found myself with two arms, two legs and, praise be, a tongue. Obadiah's kilt was missing and I'm happy to say that I never saw it again. The gun was visible once more, still firmly clutched in my right hand. It was empty; my fingers were squeezing tightly on the trigger. Much good it had done me!

I passed quickly into the headquarters building, bringing with me a breath of poisonous outer air that set the men inside, except for Carter, to gasping and choking. Not even pausing to say hello, or to apologize for bringing in some of the outer atmosphere with me, I hurried over to the control panel and switched on the visual receptors that showed the outside of the lock. The men out there were fighting each other to get inside the building and kill me. As they managed to battle their way in through the lock, they looked bewildered for a moment, and then all of them, released from the frenzy of hate, collapsed into unconsciousness.

We were a bloody mess, every one of us, but not one of us was seriously hurt. The Aliens had outsmarted themselves. While I had looked like one of them, those parts of me--like my eye stalks--that had seemed to be most vulnerable, so that the Earthmen had gone after them, had turned out to be things like ears and noses. They hurt, but they didn't put me out of action when they were battered. That's all that had saved me from being killed. I didn't figure that out till later, I must admit.

I counted us. We were all safe inside. Then I used an amplifier, connected up to a loudspeaker outside, to call the Aliens. I called for several minutes, without receiving any response, before I realized that they spoke with their minds exclusively and couldn't penetrate into the headquarters where we were with their pseudo-voices.

I sighed and started to go outside, but Jones hauled me back and made me put on a protective suit. He said he couldn't stand another whiff of that atmosphere.

* * * * *

Once outside, I had no trouble communicating with the Aliens. They were very anxious to talk. Apparently they were convinced that, since they believed my mental powers were at least as strong as theirs, there were probably many more Earthmen like me that they wouldn't be able to tackle. I had no trouble at all making a lucrative trading deal with them for Jones' company, once I convinced them that I knew the location of their planets, and that it would be an easy matter to blast them from the face of the universe with primitive, uncivilized fusion bombs. They even promised to send back the men they had taken as pets.

After that, I staggered back inside the camp and slept the clock around.

When I woke, I found that all of the men were very anxious to know the secret of my success, especially Carter, who knew very well that I had no skill at Mental Control.

I was glad to oblige them, as a reward for Carter's courtesy in giving me his stylish green kilt, which fitted me very well. Obadiah gave Carter another of his horrors--and it was the worst we had seen to date, as I let that young worthy know with a simple cock of an eyebrow.

It was all very simple, as I explained to my admiring audience. The reports we'd had back at the headquarters of the Interstellar Insurance Company indicated that it was useless to try to compete with the Aliens on the mental level, where they were strongest. This was the mistake that Jones and his so-called experts had made.

I decided, when I was given the assignment to straighten things out, that the best way to compete was where we Earthmen are strongest: with mechanical "gadgets." So I had our scientists implant a power source in my body. It made use of short half-life radioactive isotopes for the energy source--not too well shielded, but what the hell, I've already fathered my family--and gave me more power than I could ever need.

In order to be able to use that power, I'd had the scientists set up a closed-cycle system in my body. The combustion products created by the "burning" of food by my body cells, as in all humans, were carbon dioxide and water. These were broken down, in another gadget implanted in my body, into oxygen, carbon and hydrogen.

The oxygen I used directly; another compact machine synthesized carbohydrates to complete the closed-loop cycle. I neither breathed nor ate during the entire time I was on Sunder's Pride, except for the purpose of talking, and that breathing never went past the larynx.

* * * * *

It was lucky I didn't need to breathe, too. Otherwise I'd have drowned in imaginary water while wading in that river the Aliens had created in my mind.

"Also," I explained, "I had a sort of supersonic sonar device set into me, with the transponder in my chest. That's why I had to avoid wearing a protective suit; unless my chest was bare, I squelched the signals. I used this sonar to judge what was going on around me, no matter what I seemed to see."

"Now don't feed us that," said Jones belligerently. "We aren't that dumb. Don't you think we tried using sonar and radar to fool the Aliens? They worked on all our senses. What we saw on a radar or sonar screen matched perfectly the false picture we thought we were seeing with our eyes. It was the same when we used aural reception. What came in through our ears matched what we thought we saw. So now stop kidding around and tell us the truth."

I smiled condescendingly. "I am telling you the absolute truth, Obadiah. You didn't use your head. Of course the sound signals I received from the sonar matched what I thought I saw. I didn't underestimate the Aliens. It's just that sound to my ears wasn't the only read-out method I used. In addition to connecting to the nerves of my ears, which the Aliens expected, the sonar output also connected to the nerves of my tongue. Anything ahead of me tasted sweet, and anything behind me tasted salt. To my left was bitter, to my right acid.

"The Aliens didn't expect me to _taste_ what was to be seen around me, and what they didn't know about, they couldn't counter. No matter what I saw or heard, I just followed my tongue.

"I had a few bad moments one time, when by accident, more or less, the actions of the Aliens almost made me imagine that my tongue was being destroyed, but I managed to work my way out of that by keeping my mouth closed. Just the other day, though, I had some more rough minutes when I found that, along with thinking I had the body of an Alien, I also thought I had no tongue, like them.

"You see, I used what the Aliens consider to be primitive mechanical toys. Oh, and one more thing, not quite so primitive: my brains. You might all profit by trying that once in a while."

"Well," said Jones at last, "I've got to give you credit. You knew what you were doing."

"That's all right," I said magnanimously. "I had the choice of trying to combat them with Mental Control, where the Aliens are stronger, or with mechanical science, where humans are stronger. Which I chose to use." I punned, "was just a matter of taste."

End of report. I'm going on a long vacation with my bonus money.

And what I do while I'm away is none of your business. Don't send me any of your preaching letters this time. How I have my fun is also a matter of taste.