Part 3

The woman blindfolded one of the youngsters, a square-shouldered, blond little fellow. The she tossed a ball to one of the other boys, and gave a short command in her own language.

The children scattered about the large room. The boy with the ball ran and stood against the window, which was blurred from the driving rain.

After chanting what appeared to be a number count, the blindfolded boy began to move around the room. As he approached one child after another, he would hesitate while still three or four steps away, shake his head and move on to someone else.

Finally, when still some ten feet from the window, he swerved abruptly toward the boy holding the ball. He ran directly to him, grabbed him by the arm, then fumbled for the ball and clutched it triumphantly.

The other children broke into an excited babble, and everyone seemed to be clamoring for the next chance to be blindfolded. The woman looked disconsolately at the rain-streaked window, and began to blindfold another child.

Lucifer eased the door shut. He moved on down the corridor, past room after room that seemed deserted. A tentative testing of several doors proved they were locked.

Near the end of the corridor, where it turned at right angles and headed down an equally long wing of the building, Lucifer found another room that sounded occupied.

Again he inched the door open.

This room was occupied by smaller children, mostly of prenursery school age. They were playing a version of a game Lucifer recognized from his own childhood: Tail on the donkey. Only this donkey was a sinister looking creature with tiny ears and formidable jaws.

One by one the children toddled up to pin a stubby tail on his derriere. Three of them hit the target with biological exactitude. The fourth missed badly. It was a little girl. When the others laughed, she tore off her blindfold, stamped her tiny foot.

A bench sailed across the room, thudded flatly against the opposite wall.

The children's derisive laugh changed to one of excitement, and the girl felt encouraged to expand her tantrum. The bench caromed from wall to wall to ceiling and off, with a crash, into a corner. The woman attendant picked up the child by the shoulders and shook her.

For an instant, wild defiance flared on the childish features. Then the girl pouted, and two tears trickled down her soft cheeks.

Lucifer didn't try to analyze his impressions. There would be time for that later. Now it was important only to gather as many facts as possible before he was detected.

The second corridor contained many rooms. From the sound of the voices coming through the doors, and from spot-checking several rooms, Lucifer judged they were all occupied by children engaged in some form of play activity that required psionic ability.

At the end of the corridor, Lucifer opened a door and found himself staring out into the rain.

Urged on by a growing eagerness to learn as much as he could before he was stopped, he ducked outside and ran across a mossy stretch of courtyard toward a second building.

Rain plastered his hair, and trickled down his neck, but his tunic and leggings seemed waterproof.

The rain was hot and stinging, and the wind surged out of the forest with lashing force. Half-blinded, Lucifer stumbled over some unseen object. He sprawled to his knees. He got up, slipped again, and skidded into the partial shelter of a doorway.

The door couldn't be moved. Lucifer moved out into the rain again, and groped his way along the side of the building.

He stumbled over something else, fell heavily.

A hoarse outcry, lifting above the wind and the rain, brought him to his knees. Shielding his eyes, he saw that he had stumbled over a figure huddled in a corner of the building. The figure straightened above him. Its movements were jerky, like a carpenter's rule unfolding.

It was one of the grotesque, misshapen creatures Lucifer had glimpsed on first approaching Center. Through the slanting rain, Lucifer could make out a gigantic head that bulged sickeningly and was utterly devoid of hair. The head sagged forward, flopped back again until it struck the wall of the building, then snapped forward. It had two blank eyes, a flattened horror of a nose, a mouth that sagged and twitched.

The mouth was trying to say something, but the words dissolved in a bubble of red saliva and a merciful wash of rain.

The head flopped back and forth. The figure jerked toward Lucifer, lunged and fell on top of him.

For the first time in his adult life, Lucifer lost control of himself.

He screamed, and screamed again.

* * * * *

Hands clawed him down, smashed his face into a choking puddle of water and wet moss. The hands and arms beat against his back and ribs. Each blow was a flailing, uncoordinated effort, but the impact was crushing.

Water bubbled into Lucifer's mouth and nostrils. He raised his head to breath, and a random blow smashed it back down. He gulped air and water together. He choked, strangled.

And then the weight was gone from his back. The hands and arms stopped smashing against his flesh and bones. Lucifer raised himself on his elbows, retched chokingly.

A powerful pair of hands picked him up and half carried him out of the rain. Someone brushed back his hair, wiped his eyes. He opened them. A tall attendant held him up. Nina dried a trickle of water from his cheek. Her dark features showed shock and concern. Huth watched him sardonically.

"It was fortunate your wife sensed your danger and helped us find you," Huth said. "Your zeal for orientation is commendable, Dr. Brill, but I suggest you proceed less rigorously."

Lucifer took the handkerchief from Nina, wiped his mouth. It tasted salty. He attempted to stand with some measure of dignity.

"Who or what was that creature?" he demanded.

"I think you have had quite enough orientation for the time being," Huth replied.

The strange conveyance whisked them back to their bungalow. Lucifer soaked himself in a hot bath, and it was a long time before his trembling muscles relaxed. Dinner, via the tubicular, consisted of a meat dish, more strongly flavored than venison, two rather salty green vegetables and a flagon of warm, spicy amber liquid. They ate in silence.

Soon after dinner, Huth appeared on the visagraph screen, for what he called their second orientation session. This was largely a development of the first, and so were those that followed on succeeding days. Each left Lucifer feeling more unsure of himself, tense, mentally adrift. The distance between Melus and his safe, secure little laboratory at Western University was becoming greater than could be measured in light years.

Ranging from geology to biochemistry, from physio-psychical sources of neurosis to what he called the "molecular site of understanding", Huth hammered incessantly with semantics and logic against the carefully mortared bricks of Lucifer's own scientific cubicle. Sometimes he spoke with almost mystical fervor of a frontier beyond a frontier, a science beyond a science. One evening, during a visagraph session, Nina suddenly interrupted:

"Your words speak about the infinite," she murmured, "but your mind does not sing with the music of infinity."

Now, for the first time, Lucifer saw uncertainty on Huth's face.

Uncertainty, and a look of indescribable sadness.

Then the visagraphs screen went dark.

Nina was on the couch beside Lucifer. Her eyes were half-closed; her strong fingers were clasped around her knees and she rocked back and forth gently.

"What a strange man," she said. "What a strange and strong and lonely man. For a moment, I saw all the loneliness of the universe in his eyes...."

Lucifer regarded her uneasily. "You see many things, Miss Poteil."

"No, Lucifer, I see so very little. But what little I do see makes me feel like a blind person the rest of the time. Isn't it terrible to look at shadows?"

"Really, Miss Poteil--"

"Hush!"

She put her finger to his lips.

He started.

"Wha--?"

"Please, Lucifer--Oh, be quiet--Please!"

Her breasts rose and fell sharply beneath the thin tunic. He saw the tendons stand out in her throat. Finally she whispered: "I think someone is coming to see us! Tonight. I'm not sure.... Oh, this damned blindness!"

She beat her fists furiously on her knees.

Lucifer tried to speak casually: "If someone comes, we'll know about it soon enough. Meanwhile, I suggest we try to get some sleep."

There was a strange weariness in her as she got up from the couch and started toward the bedroom, which Lucifer had sternly assigned to her after the first morning of awakening. But after a few steps, she stopped and turned back to him.

"Lucifer, they say you are the father of my baby. If that is so, I am grateful."

It was the first time they had mentioned the child. Lucifer felt shocked, and very humble. This was another new feeling. He decided it would be wisest not to speak.

"You are a man, Lucifer," she went on, in her husky voice. "I knew it when you tried to take that test, knowing you would fail."

She brushed her lips across his forehead.

"Goodnight, Lucifer. I have known many males, but very few men. There is a great difference...."

He lay awake on the couch for a long time, his body aching for sleep, his mind spinning with strange thoughts, stranger concepts. He was just beginning to slip into the twilight zone between wakefulness and troubled sleep when a foreign sound in the room jarred him awake.

Forcing himself to lie completely still, to continue his even breathing, he strained to catch a repetition of the sound; his eyes turned toward the rear window. The latest rain squall had swept by, and the window was now a luminous rectangle against a brilliant, star-filled sky.

As his vision cleared and focused, he saw that the casement window was partly open. A fresh breeze, warm and fragrant with the odors of the rain forest, swept across the couch.

Lucifer heard a definite, sharp click from the visagraph. It was as though a switch had been snapped. But there was no shadow of a physical presence in the room.

The bedroom door opened suddenly. Nina stood there for an instant, silhouetted in her short, white nightgown. Then she moved quickly across the room, knelt beside his couch. Her lips, warm and dry, pressed close to his ear; her long hair tumbled over his cheek and throat. She whispered:

"Can I stay here a little while?"

He nodded, and felt her body crowd against him on the narrow couch.

They lay there together, breathing quietly, watching the open window.

And then there was a shadow there, a darker something against the darkness. Nina's body stiffened. With an unconscious gesture older than remembered time, Lucifer put his arm over her.

A voice spoke out quietly from the window.

"It's O.K. now, Dr. Brill."

* * * * *

A figure stepped through the window, stumbled over the hassock and sat on the edge of it.

"You both there?" a man's voice asked, then, without waiting for an answer, continued: "... Good!.... Fetzer's my name. Albert Fetzer. Remember me, Dr. Brill?"

"I regret to say--"

"That's O.K. It was a long time ago--when I was GI-ing my way through electrical engineering at Western. You gave me a lot of card tests. I did pretty well, too--damm-it!"

"I'm sorry."

"None of us blames you anymore. We were kind of bitter at first--now we're glad you're here."

"Glad?"

"Sure. We've got a lot of things figured out, but there's still a lot more we don't get. You could be a big help to us."

"I sincerely hope so, but--"

"But, nothing, Doc. It looks like they're really giving you the orientation business--like they need you and are going all the way this time!"

Lucifer's tongue felt dry, and difficult to maneuver. He was grateful that Fetzer didn't seem to expect an answer.

"They've been cozy with some of us before, but always cooled off. You just play it smart, learn all you can! But be careful, or you'll end up with the _Goolies_."

Fetzer listened intently, then chuckled.

"I guess they're still kind of fouled up! We had to warp the force field behind your place--shorted their magnetic track, too! But before they get here there's something else I've got to warn you about--'specially you, Mrs. Brill."

He hesitated.

"What is it?" Nina prompted.

"Well, when you think you get a message from us don't bust out with it like you did a while ago. They pick up everything you say on that damn visagraph--I had to short the magnetic track in order to get at the control wire to block it off--"

"Just a moment, Albert," Lucifer interrupted. "How did you know what was said in this room?"

Fetzer sounded embarrassed:

"Well, it's a funny thing, Doc, but back on Earth we were all kind of ashamed of this psi thing. We tried to keep it hid from other people. Here, it's different. We're all the same way, more or less. So we try to use psi instead of hide it. Doesn't work on Huth's gang, though. They got minds like machines--It's like trying to psi into a quarter-horse motor!"

There was a pounding of footsteps outside the front door.

"Gotta go!" said Fetzer.

He twisted lithely through the window, closed it behind him and vanished into the sultry night.

Nina slipped from the couch and hurried into the bedroom.

The front door banged open. The room light flared on, blinding Lucifer.

Huth was there, with two of his men. The men ranged about the place with giant strides, going through the living room, the bedroom and out into the rear enclosure. One of the men worked on the visagraph, trying to light it up. He had no success.

Huth stood over Lucifer's couch. "Has anyone been here?" he demanded sternly.

"If there was, he was more quiet and courteous than you have been," snapped Lucifer. "Need I remind you that this has been a most exhausting day, and that to be awakened in this manner--"

"Mrs. Brill received a message, and informed you of it."

"Miss Poteil talks a great deal of nonsense, which you must also have overheard. However, I assure you, Sir, that I am not interested in her hallucinations, and if you are, I suggest you discuss them with her in the morning."

"What happened to the visagraph."

"If I knew, I wouldn't care. Your electronic gadgets impress me as being rather juvenile."

Huth bowed.

"Perhaps because you do not understand them, Dr. Brill."

The warning in his voice was clear. He turned sharply on his heel, motioned his men out of the room and left, shutting the door quietly.

* * * * *

With breakfast, the tubicular delivered a metal-backed manuscript that bore the scholarly title: "Genetics and Psi, with an Evaluation of Three Case Histories as Compiled from Earth Records."

Nina glanced at the title across the breakfast tray, then shifted her chair beside Lucifer's.

"I'd better read that, too," she said. "Maybe it will tell us something about our own genetics experiment."

Lucifer pursed his lips in disapproval at her frankness, but he held the manuscript so that both could study it. The introduction began:

"After studying the incidence of psi on Earth, we felt that the genetics approach should receive considerable concentration of effort. Our chemists, biochemists and physicists are naturally continuing their experimentation, but the geneticists seem to promise the maximum results in the minimum amount of time. If psi can be explained, understood and propagated through genetics, it can no longer be mis-nomered 'extra-sensory'. It will become no more 'extra-sensory' than sense of direction, sense of time and, in the case of musical aptitude, such component primary senses as sense of absolute pitch, sense of intensity, sense of harmony, sense of rhythm and sense of tonal memory. Thousands of tests have indicated that these musical senses may have an hereditary base."

"Physiologizers!" Lucifer exclaimed, contemptuously.

"Let's keep our windows clean," Nina murmured.

He stared at her in surprise.

"My father used to say that," she explained. "He told us to keep our windows clean--so truth can look in and out."

Lucifer turned back the manuscript. He felt somehow chastened.

After several paragraphs of further discussion on the hereditary aspects of the various senses, even including the inheritance through a dominant gene of the ability to taste, the manuscript went into a long analysis of the family trees of Arturo Toscanini, Kirsten Flagstad and the 19th century mystic, Daniel Dunglas Home.

"Please note," the manuscript emphasized, "that in all three family trees a favorable heredity and a favorable environment were perfectly blended."

Nina gasped excitedly.

"Oh, Lucifer--if this project can bring the right parents together...."

"Human beings are not white mice!" Lucifer snapped!

"They are on Mendel's Planet!"

Nina seized his hand.

"Think, Lucifer! Our child may be able to see things we have never dreamed of seeing! We will teach him to use his eyes from the very moment of birth--even before!"

Deep anger and resentment stirred within Lucifer, but before he could answer her, a click from the visagraph screen told them they were not alone.

Huth's usually calm voice betrayed his excitement. His dark eyes glowed.

"Mrs. Brill--how would you propose to train a child so early?"

"By encouraging him to use his own true senses rather than his superficial senses for his very first needs! My father raised all six of us and he used to say I was a good baby, because I never cried to be fed or changed. But maybe it was because he knew what I wanted and took care of me before I cried!"

Huth insisted on sending for them immediately. There was a three-day-old Earth child at Center. Huth had the baby's records before him when they arrived. Nina, flushed with eagerness, asked:

"How is the baby fed?"

Huth consulted a chart.

"Both formula and breast. But it doesn't appear that the mother will be able to nurse much longer."

"When is the next feeding time?"

"In approximately one hour."

Huth took them to the nursery. Through the window, they could see that the baby was still asleep.

The young mother was sitting up in her room. A tiny, thin-faced woman, she looked at them with alarm.

"Is something wrong with my baby?"

Nina knelt beside her chair.

"Don't you know your baby is all right?" she asked gently.

"I--I thought so. But when you all walked in like this, I wasn't sure."

Lucifer didn't recognize this young woman; nor did she appear to recognize him. Her eyes, still dilated, roved apprehensively from face to face.

"You're not going to do something to my baby?"

Lucifer felt a great pity for this young woman, snatched away from Earth to bear a child with an unknown mate on this strange planet.

"I wouldn't harm your child," Nina told her. "I'm from San Diego--how about you?"

"Masselon, Ohio."

"Now tell me," Nina asked, "is your baby awake yet?"

The dilated eyes stared at Nina.

"I'm ... I'm not sure, but I don't think so."

"That's fine. Now, please don't be scared. I want to help you and your baby. Do you trust me?"

The young mother studied Nina unblinkingly. After an instant of hesitation, she nodded.

"Thank you. Now, are you going to feed your baby yourself this next time?"

"I'll try again; but I haven't been doing so well."

"Can you tell when your baby is starting to wake up?"

"I thought I could the first day or so. But then I didn't try--I guess I got used to having my baby brought to me every four hours."

"Is the baby usually crying when it is brought into the room?"

The young mother smiled.

"Oh, yes! She's got a strong, healthy cry!"

"Will you try to feed her this time before she cries, when she first tells you that she is hungry?"

"What--what do you mean?"

Nina took the young mother's thin hand between her strong, brown fingers. "You know what I mean! Don't be afraid to use what God has given you! Let's stop talking now so you can keep your thoughts with your child!"

Under the dominance of Nina's personality, the woman settled back in her chair.

Outside, the first rain of the morning swept over the forest and steamed up the windows. Huth stood statuesquely by the door, arms folded. The tall nurse remained watchfully beside him.

Lucifer struggled with an unaccustomed inner turmoil. Dissecting the tangle of his emotions, he was astonished to realize that his pulse was thumping with excitement.

Abruptly, the young mother spoke up. "My baby is hungry. She wants to be fed."

"Go feed her then!" commanded Nina.

She helped the young woman from the chair. Together they led the way down the corridor. As they neared the nursery, Lucifer edged closer to them. He saw that the child was still asleep. The mother saw it, too.

"But she's still asleep!" she said, bewildered. "I thought--"

"Does a child have to be awake to tell of its hunger?" Nina asked gently.

The young mother went ahead of them into the nursery. She took the child from the crib and cradled it in her arms.

The baby stirred, grimaced. Its lips groped in small, sucking motions.

The young mother hesitated, then opened her robe and brought the baby's lips to her breast. The child began to feed contentedly.

At a gesture from Nina, the others left the mother and child alone in the nursery.

When they were well down the corridor, Nina burst out triumphantly,

"The first contact! Child has communicated to mother. Message received and answered. Child has used primary sense of communication, rather than learning to rely on secondary!" Nina squared her shoulders proudly. "My baby won't have to cry to tell me that it's hungry or cold or wet and miserable!"

Lucifer's New England conscience prodded him. If indeed there was anything to this psi heredity business, then he had again hurt someone else, unknowingly, but deeply. What would Nina say and feel when she learned that he had no psi talent to pass on to their child?

But this uneasy remorse conflicted with another emotion in Lucifer: The sense of excitement that he suddenly realized had been lost somewhere back in the early years of his psi testing. Somewhere, sometime along the way the sense of wonder had gone out of his work and his life. The constant repetition of the same basic testing technique had made a familiar backyard out of--what had Huth called it?--the very frontier of science.

Huth was speaking to him.

"What do you think now, Dr. Brill? Could it be possible after all that the unorthodoxy of Earth's parapsychology might have to be shaken from its own orthodoxy?"

Lucifer frowned. "I do not want to split definitions with you. But it should be obvious to any scientific mind that Miss Poteil's experiment, although interesting, was painfully inadequate in methodology. In the first place, can we determine whether the child was communicating a need, or whether a psi-positive mother had some precognition of her child's need? In the second place, would a large number of children born of psi-positive parents react with significant difference from a similar number of children born of psi negatives?"

"A flash of lightning can be duplicated in the laboratory," said Huth, "but it is still a flash of lightning. We recognize lightning, we admit its existence, but we do not wish to go on proving forever in the laboratory that lightning is in fact lightning. If some of your earlier scientists had been content to do that, your cities would still be illuminated by oil lamps."

"A fallacious comparison!"

"Not entirely so! I merely wished to make a point. It is all a matter of objective. You have seen how older children are developing their psi talents in our classes. Your wife may have shown us how to begin training at a much earlier age, when training is most important."

"Still, I should think you would require more substantiation, some further testing, to support Miss Poteil's little experiment."

"Of course. Do you have any suggestions, Dr. Brill?"