Part 9

Not that the contact with the race mind nullified the pain or made it any less real. Fire was still fire and torture was still the same. But neither were very important.

Other things were.

Zen tried to concentrate his attention on the other things. The room, the shouting Cuso, the two Asians who were holding him down while the third thrust the matches under his nails, the shivering Cal, the lieutenant who was over-eager to obey his leader's orders, all these seemed to become misty and vague. These things were real; there was no question about that. But his mind was contacting another reality which made these things different. Time began to lose its meaning.

He wondered if he was fainting. Another question came across his thoughts, heeled over like a sailing ship moving across the wind. Was he dying?

There was no shock with the thought. If that was the way it was, then he was more than ready.

"You are not fainting and you are not dying," the race mind whispered to him. "Come closer to me."

"How do I come closer to you?"

"Let go." The voice of the race mind was like a whisper from the other side of infinity. "Let go and come to me."

Dimly, he wondered how one let go. The answer came with the question. The words meant exactly what they said, the meaning was literal--_let go_.

As he performed the action that went with the words, the big gallery, Cuso, the lieutenant, and the torturers faded away and became a part of a misty world that seemed to have no real existence. Even the pain vanished.

"Come to me," the race mind whispered, again and again, a luring voice that drew him irresistibly.

Abruptly, he was back in the gallery. He did not know how long he had been gone but he realized that some time must have passed, enough to allow them to set up a portable radio transmitter in the gallery. The set looked to be very powerful. A yellow-skinned operator was huddling over the controls.

"In contact with Asian headquarters," Zen thought. He knew his thinking was correct.

Off somewhere in the distance outside the mountain the night shuddered. He knew the meaning of the sound. A rocket ship was either landing or blasting off, probably the latter. A long line of burdened Asians was moving through the gallery.

At the sight of their loads Zen knew what had gone into the hold of that ship. The equipment of the hidden center here. He saw parts of the super radar go past on the backs of sweating Asian soldiers, and he knew where this was going.

At this knowledge, anguish came up in him. With West's super radar in their possession, no American secret was safe from prying Asian eyes, unless some way could be found to shield the frequencies employed.

Such shielding might work for laboratories, but there was no way to shield troop movements and take-offs and landings. These would be as public as an advertisement.

His face was wet. He could not understand this until another bucket of water hit him. An Asian bent over him, saw that his eyes were open, and grunted with satisfaction. They started again on his fingers.

The radio operator called to Cuso, giving him a message. Zen could not understand the language but the Asian leader was both startled and elated. He shouted at the men carrying loads to work faster.

"Not much time left. Big bomb coming."

"What bomb?" Zen thought. With the question came the answer. Warned by Cuso that their preparations were probably known, the Asians had decided to launch their super bomb immediately. Turmoil came up inside Zen at this knowledge.

Real pain came from his finger tips as the torturers began operations again.

"Do you want to die?" the race mind whispered in his thoughts.

Although he couldn't contact it, the race field could reach him. "You have suffered all that is required. You have met the law. You may join me, if you wish."

"I--" Zen shut off his thinking. This was fantasy, the product of torture and nearing dissolution. His own imagination was tricking him, he thought.

"This is not your imagination," the answer came. "This is what you call the race mind."

"But--"

"How do you know? You don't. At this point, you have to accept me on faith." The thinking flowing smoothly into his mind went into silence, then came again, stronger than before. "Do you want to die? You have earned the right."

"No," Zen answered. He screamed the words again. "No. No!"

"The path before you will be difficult."

"I don't care how difficult it is. There's work to be done!" Again he shouted the words.

"Very well. It is your choice. You may remain among the living for as long as your strength may last." The voice whispering in his mind went into silence.

Kurt continued screaming. Pain raced through his consciousness again. As he came awake he realized that he was screaming at the torturer to stop.

He also realized that the Asian had stopped. There was a sound in the gallery. Filling the air, it seemed to emerge from the very walls of the mountain itself.

The note of a violin!

High and sweet and compelling, the sound came from nowhere. Every atom in the solid stone walls seemed to pick it up and to rebroadcast it. The molecules of the air seemed to dance in resonance with it.

Simultaneously, about ten feet above the floor, the face appeared again.

The lieutenant's rifle blasted at it. He fired shot after shot at point blank range. Red-hot slugs howled from the walls of the big gallery in a cacophony of death.

The face smiled at the lieutenant. The lips moved. "Keep shooting, old fellow," the lips seemed to say.

The officer emptied his gun. In a desperate burst of fear, he threw it at the mocking face.

The weapon passed through the face without harming it.

"You fool! That's a projection, not a real person!" Cuso shouted. He grabbed the officer by the shoulder and spun him backward to the floor. "Who are you?" he demanded of the face.

It smiled at him.

Zen repressed the impulse to shout. He knew what was going to happen next.

"I said, _Who are you?_" Cuso shouted again.

The crash of something in the gallery jerked his attention away. Twisting his head around, he saw that one of the soldiers engaged in carrying the loot of this cavern out to the plane waiting to hurry it to Asia, had collapsed on the floor.

Under ordinary circumstances, Cuso would have had the man summarily executed. But with that face smiling at him out of nothing, these circumstances were not ordinary.

Zen, knowing what was going to happen, forgot the pain of his burned fingers and toes. He could feel it creeping over him in waves. This time he did not resist it: He let his eyes close.

When he opened them, the torturer was snoring beside him. Every Asian in the big gallery was sound asleep.

People were crowding around him. The new people. In a sweeping glance, he recognized every person he had met here, except Nedra, and he did not see her at first because she was busy bandaging his hands. West was smiling down at him with an expression that was somehow grandfatherly. But back of West's smile was perturbation.

Zen started to get to his feet and discovered they had not as yet removed the ropes from his legs. As one did this, Nedra clucked reprovingly at him and tried to tell him that he was wounded. He said this did not matter. Faces were here that he did not recognize. This did not matter either.

"You did this?" he said to West.

"Yes. I designed and built the equipment. Others were operating it in this instance." West had something else on his mind.

"Thanks," Zen said. "Why didn't you take me with you when you went--wherever it was you went?"

"We couldn't," West answered. "You haven't had the training."

"Why did you come back?"

"To rescue you. Kurt--" West had something that he wanted to say.

"Nedra, will you stop fussing with me? I'm all right."

"But your poor hands and feet."

"I don't even feel them. I won't have them to feel at all unless action is taken. Don't you understand. Somewhere in Asia they're getting ready to launch a super bomb. Or maybe it's already on its way."

"I didn't know," the girl said. "The big one?"

"Yes."

A flicker of pain crossed her face and she shook her head. "I always wondered what it would be like to live on a mud flat. I wonder if we will be oysters, or eels. Or maybe crabs."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Zen demanded.

"After the bomb goes off," the girl said.

"What then?"

"The race mind will have to start over again," she explained. Her manner indicated that she was explaining something that she clearly understood. She seemed to wonder why he did not understand it. "Maybe we will be turtles? That will be funny! A turtle that can remember when it was a man! That's the way it will be. Except--"

"I know all about that."

"Except that the turtle won't be able to do anything about its memories," the girl continued as if she had not heard him. "It will have flippers and a beak but what it will need will be hands. It won't have them until it grows them itself. A turtle with the memories that it was once a man, knowing that if it had hands, it could rebuild human culture!" A bemused expression appeared on her face. "I wonder how the race mind will solve that problem." Again she seemed to muse. "It would be worse to be crabs. Or would it?"

"Shut up!" Zen snarled. "We're not turtles yet. Or crabs. And we're not back on the mud flats."

"But we're on the edge of them," the girl insisted. "One more teeter and we will go totter."

Zen turned to West. "What the hell has happened to Nedra?"

"Nothing," the craggy man answered. "She has some degree of clairvoyance and it is coming to consciousness. Unfortunately, she has not yet had time to develop her talents in that direction."

"Maybe the turtle wouldn't want to rebuild human culture," the girl interrupted. "Maybe it wouldn't want to go back down that blind alley again. Perhaps it would decide to go into another channel, to develop into something totally different. In that case, it might not need hands."

Zen deliberately ignored her. He turned to West. "A bomb will be going off," he said.

"That is what I've been trying to talk to you about," the craggy man answered. "This is another reason why we came back for you--so we could talk to you about that bomb."

"To me?" Zen said startled.

"Yes, to you."

"Why?"

"Because you are a colonel of intelligence and have experience in such matters. Also because you are something that none of us are--a fighting man."

"I--I don't understand you," Zen answered.

"I can get you there. But once there, my knowledge fails. I, to my regret, know nothing of fighting." West spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

"Get me where?" Zen asked.

"To Asia. To the underground cavern where they are getting ready to launch that bomb," West explained. The tone of his voice said this was easy. The hard part came in knowing what to do, and being able to do it, after they were there.

"To Asia?" Zen parroted the words. He had the dazed impression that this whole scene was unreal, that the snoring Asians on the floor, Cal huddled by the wall, and the new people crowding into the room, would shortly all vanish in puffs of green smoke. "How in the hell will you get us to Asia?"

"How did we get out of this gallery?" West responded. "How did we vanish? How did the men in the reports you read get into the planes that were about to crash? Who landed Colonel Grant's space satellite? Who steered it? Who provided the power to energize the motion? Who--"

"Did you know I knew about Grant?"

"It was obvious that you must know."

"And you can get me to Asia?"

"You and as many others as you choose to take with you!"

Walking over to the sleeping lieutenant, he picked up the man's rifle, then turned to the group.

"Who will go with me to Asia?" he asked.

The group stepped forward as one man.

A knot formed in Kurt Zen's throat at the sight and he gulped to force it down. He knew how much this decision meant to them. They had been trained in the ways of peace, they were searching for the road to the future. Fighting meant turning backward on the path that led to growth, it was the last thing they wanted to do. Yet do it they would, if it was necessary. In an instant they were scrambling for weapons from the sleeping Asians, then they were trying to salute and tell him their names and say they would follow him at the same time.

One man saluted well. "Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman," he said. Pride was in the man's voice.

Zen caught the man's arm. "Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman? But I know you."

"Maybe you do, suh." Thurman spoke with the soft drawl of the old south.

"One of the new people appeared in your plane and saved your life!" Zen burst out.

"Yes, suh. That's right, suh."

"But you deserted!"

"Put it another way, suh, let's say I joined the right side."

"How did you find this place?"

"I just kept thinking and kept trying. Eventually we found each other. The psychos tried to make me believe I was nuts. But I knew better. I knew what had happened. And I knew there had to be a reason for it. I kept hunting until I found that reason. The big part of the battle, where I had an advantage over most everybody else, was that I knew from experience that something was going on. Knowing this much, all I had to do was keep looking." The man's voice drawled the explanation. His eyes smiled. "At your service, suh."

"Do you know that going with me may mean death?"

"What's death, suh?" Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman grinned. "I died over the North Pole, suh."

"Spike Larson," another man said.

"You were in a sub," Zen challenged. A glow was coming up inside of him like nothing he had ever experienced before. He was getting fighting men to stand beside him.

"Yes," Larson answered. "And I will consider it a privilege to stand beside you."

Like soldiers, they passed in review before him, the fat boy, the tall, lean, brown-skinned youths. Somehow he thought there ought to be another one. He looked around for him. Grant was talking to West.

Grant was the man whose face had looked out of thin air in the middle of the room.

Seeing that Zen was staring at him, he left off his talk with the craggy man and came over and saluted.

"How was it up in that satellite?" Zen asked.

"Lonely, as hell, colonel," Grant answered.

"Do you want to go with me to Asia?"

"There's no place on Earth I'd rather go. And, the way things stand now I don't have much choice. If they get that bomb into the air--" He left the sentence unfinished.

Then Nedra was standing in front of Zen. At the sight of her, it seemed to him that the world stood still. He shook his head.

"Why?" she challenged.

"Because I love you," he answered.

"Then that is the real reason why you should take me with you," she answered.

"I don't follow," he said.

"If you fail, there will be no tomorrow," she answered. To her, the statement had no answer. "Besides, I am a nurse," she continued. "If there are wounded, I can help with them."

"But--"

"The fact that you love me does not enter into this situation. It is a thing apart. It is a very wonderful thing," she added hastily, the star light shining in her eyes. "And I wish we could bring it to fruit the ways it used to be. But those days are gone. And I am going to Asia with you."

Watching, West smiled. Zen spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. He turned to the craggy man. "This sleep thing: I don't know how you do it and don't much care, but you obviously have a portable generator of some kind that you used to put the lieutenant out in the ghost town."

"Yes," West agreed.

"I'd like to borrow the unit," Zen said.

"Gladly, colonel. I wish we had other weapons."

"We'll make do with what we have," Zen answered.

XIV

"Zero minus one hour," the loudspeaker droned, in a Chinese dialect.

In a deep cavern in the hinterlands of Asia, men responded to the command coming over the speaker system. Already driven to the point of exhaustion, they were working harder than they had ever worked before. The moment of victory, for which all true Asians had lived, was near at hand. The launching of this bomb would make the Asian Union master of the world. Orders had come through to launch this bomb immediately.

"Zero minus forty-five minutes," the speaker said. The drone had gone from the voice of the officer watching the time. A rising excitement appeared in the tones as if he, too, had caught the scent of fear rising in the vast underground depot.

So much was left to be done. The atomic warhead was already in place, waiting for the day of launching, otherwise the task would have been impossible. The driving engines were complete, but had to be fueled. The steering equipment was almost ready, only the installation of the left gyroscope was necessary. This was at hand waiting to be installed. Five technicians constantly got in each other's way as they tried to slip the delicate instrument into place.

"Zero minus thirty minutes!"

The gyroscope was eased into place and tested. It was found to be in perfect working order.

In the course plotting room, the final calculations were being made. Wind direction and velocity aloft had been noted across half the planet. This had some importance on the launching and landing end but had no significance when the bomb itself was out of the atmosphere.

The target had been figured and refigured. Actually, the target was anywhere on the continent of North America. If this bomb struck anywhere in the Mississippi valley, the whole watershed below the striking point would be scoured clean of all life. Water carrying radiation downstream would account for that.

"Zero minus fifteen minutes!"

On the outside of the mountain, in a special observatory constructed for this precise purpose, radar scopes for tracking the rocket were ready. Instruments in the laboratory there were for the purpose of changing the course of the super bomb, if it veered too far from its destination. The technicians there were on their toes. They had no guards to encourage them but they needed none. They knew what would happen if this bomb failed to land and the fault was traced to their door.

What would happen when the bomb landed?

Hell would happen!

Probably the crust of the Earth would open up in a hole miles in depth. Meteor Crater, in Arizona, would be the work of a child compared to the result of this explosion. What had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be nothing in comparison.

The possibility existed that the molten magma of the core of the planet would gush forth. No one knew for sure whether or not this would happen. If it did take place, the result might be the sudden appearance of a lake of over-flowing lava.

The shock waves from the bomb would probably be strong enough to pull down every skyscraper that still remained standing in America.

The effect on the watershed where the bomb landed would be almost complete catastrophe. If it struck on any of the rivers or streams flowing into the Mississippi, the water supply of all cities downstream to New Orleans would be contaminated.

Nobody knew what the effect of the fall-out from this bomb would be. High air currents might carry radioactive particles for thousands of miles from the explosion point, where they would fall as a gentle but very deadly rain upon the Earth below.

"_Zero minus ten minutes!_"

The high, thin note of a violin appeared in the vast underground cavern. Amid the scurrying of feet, the shouts of the foremen bossing the work gangs, and the occasional cracking of the rifles of the guard, the sound was unheard by the ears. But deeper centers heard it.

The first man to go was a fat engineer. Sighing, he stumbled and fell. When he did not rise a guard approached him. As the guard determined that the man was snoring, he lifted his rifle.

The engineer died without awakening.

Another shot rang out as another man went to sleep, then continued on to join his fathers.

The technician busy filling the fuel tanks of the rocket was the third man to go. He managed to finish closing the filler cap and to lay down his flexible line before the urge to sleep overcame him.

By this time the guards knew that something was wrong.

Silence came over the cavern. In the stillness, the note of the violin flickering up and down the scale could be heard. Men looked at each other in growing apprehension. Looking, some of them lay down and went to sleep.

"Sleep gas!" an officer bawled. "Shoot all foreigners on sight!"

The officer suspected that some spy had slipped into the underground cavern and had released gas there. His command was intended to enable his men to find and eliminate this alien. As such, from a military standpoint, it was a good command. It had this deficiency: when his men did not find any aliens, but their own people continued going to sleep on them, they began imagining foreigners. The guards began to shoot their own technicians and engineers.

As panic swept through the cavern, guards began to shoot other guards. Soon the people in this huge underground chamber were tearing and destroying each other. And one other thing: they were also going to sleep.

The panic grew to hurricane proportions.

When Kurt Zen appeared inside the cavern the whole vast place was as still as a tomb. Smoke from the rifles hung in the air, the cavern stank of death and fear. But the bomb still rested in its launching cradle.

Zen took one long look at that bomb. He felt his sigh of relief clear down to the ends of his toes. At the sight, the last remnant of pain vanished from his toes and fingers. Not that the damage done by the matches did not still exist. It did. But in the surge of elation that swept through him, he completely forgot the pain.

"We just got here in time," a man said, appearing beside him. It was Spike Larson who had spoken. Awe on his face, Larson glanced around the cavern. "They started killing each other. They must have gone nuts."

"I don't blame them," Zen said. "I damned near did, on the way here."

"That trip through nothing is sure a stinker, isn't it," Larson answered, grinning and shaking his head.

Zen agreed with him whole-heartedly. After tuning his body to an instrument in the cavern, hidden so well that Cuso's men had not had time to find it, West had punched a button. The machine had vanished. West had vanished. A horrible moment had come when it had seemed that his feet were standing on nothing more substantial than air. What he had felt under his feet had, in fact, been far less substantial than air, which had body. It had been even less solid than space. It had been _nothing_.

Swishing, colonel Grant came into existence on the other side of Zen. Grant looked fussed, but he gripped the rifle he had taken from one of Cuso's men with determination.

"Just between you and me, I'd rather fly a space satellite to Mars any day in preference to facing this jump."

"I know what you mean," Zen said.

As he spoke, another figure came into existence to his left. Nedra! She came spinning into reality with a smile on her face. Zen wasted a moment wondering what kind of cast-iron nerves this girl had.

"It looks as if all we have to do is to tie them up," Spike Larson said. "This is almost too good to be true."

"It is too good to be true," Zen said. Turmoil was--somewhere. He did not know where but it seemed to him that a vast uneasiness had suddenly come into existence. It had to do, somehow, with the future, with a something that was about to happen.

"Halt!" Grant's voice rang out.

Zen swung his gaze around just in time to see an Asian lift himself to his feet near a control board that stood beside the rocket.

"He's walking in his sleep," Larson exclaimed.

"_Zero minus one minute_," the loudspeaker announced.

"Where in the hell is that man on the speaker?" Grant demanded. "The sleep frequency didn't get to him!"