Part 6

Sounds of the second attack came from the area of the spaceship. The dome of light shimmered, then steadied, with eye-aching brightness. The second diversionary group, the one led by the little man with the huge nose, was now engaged.

The clearing opened ahead. It already teemed with activity. Fetzer and his sector leaders were channeling all comers into groups of about fifty, each under one of the leaders. The groups were fanned out along the edge of the clearing, facing toward the compound. Except for the muted crying of the very young, and the low-voiced commands from the sector leaders, the groups were quiet.

Fetzer ran to Lucifer.

"Better stay with me. This is your show from now on! Just tell me what you want us to do, and I'll pass the signal along. My God! Did you see what happened to the guard tower?"

"Some of it."

"Do you think we can do anything like that again?"

Lucifer looked over the nearest group. Many of the adults showed the same shock he had seen in Nina. The children were no longer so awed, and their eyes were strangely bright.

"I don't know what we can do again," he answered. "And I'm not sure I want to know."

The clearing filled rapidly. Each sector leader's group was separated by about ten yards from the next, and all formed an uneven, convex line some four hundred yards from end to end.

"All set, Doc," said Fetzer. He fired a cylindrical weapon, and a streak of orange light curved over the compound.

"That's to give our boys a chance to get back into the woods--those that still can. They'll be ready to hit again--if this other thing doesn't work."

He waited for orders.

Lucifer stared across the compound. The fear in his stomach made him feel like retching. These people were waiting for him to lead! Incredible.

"You have to go on now," Nina said.

His stomach was still sick, but he managed to smile at her. Through the slackening downpour he saw the bare walls and flat roof of Center.

"The Center," he told Fetzer.

Word leaped from group to group. Center. Center. Children picked it up excitedly.

"Now," said Lucifer.

Fetzer brought his arm down sharply. Lucifer saw the people around him pull themselves together for another effort. Nina looked faint.

Nothing happened.

Most of the children were bouncing with excitement. They still hadn't joined the psi focus. Lucifer ran up to a freckle-faced boy of about five.

"Let's have some fun," he said. "Blow up Center just like you did the guard tower!"

The words rippled from child to child, spoken and unspoken. Now it was a game instead of an awesome duty. Hey, Tommy, this is going to be neat. Blow up Center! Wow! Watch me. Aw, you aren't so hot! Quit shovin', will ya'? I can't see. Center. Blow up Center! Oh, boy!

Lucifer gripped the freckled boy by the shoulders.

"All right," he said, "you show them all.... Now!"

The boy's eyes glowed brighter. He'd show 'em. Right here in front of Mom and Dad. You bet he would! Just watch.

As child after child joined the psi focus, each grew quiet.

In some deep center of his being, Lucifer had the sense of a dark, rushing wind, a nightmare sense of falling into a void, and screaming, though you knew you would never reach the bottom.

Once again came that rending crack. Center disintegrated. There were no flying fragments. Just disintegration. A white light that was whiter than light.

The children buzzed ecstatically. Their parents were numb and silent.

Lucifer knew that if Huth still lived, he must be reorganizing his concept of what had originally happened. His reasoning would soon bring him to the truth.

There was a period of quiet. It strengthened in Lucifer the belief that Huth was alive and calmly directing the operation. He found himself hoping that Huth, indeed, was alive. He had a respect for the man that bordered on a sense of kinship.

The quiet was broken as Huth's men fanned in small groups through the compound. They moved with great, leaping strides. One squad probed toward the clearing. When its leader realized how many Earth people were assembled there, he signalled for a quick retreat toward the spaceship.

Again there was stillness.

"What now, Doc?" asked Fetzer. He looked five years older. "Shall we blast that ship before it opens up on us?"

Lucifer shook his head.

"I don't think it will open up--not just yet. This project means too much to Huth. He'll try to save as much of it as possible."

Once more groups of Huth's men scattered through the compound. This time the groups were larger. They followed converging courses that would end at the clearing.

"They're rushing us!" cried Fetzer.

"Stop them!"

The command leaped from sector leader to sector leader. Lucifer picked up the freckled boy so that he could see across the compound.

"Now we'll have some more fun," he said. "Those men are trying to get here. Let's see if you can stop them."

"Betcha we can!"

Stop 'em! Stop 'em!

Word of the new game spread psionically from child to child, and was repeated vocally. One tiny girl bounced up and down in glee, dancing, first on one foot and then the other, as if she were skipping rope.

A shrill whistle launched the attack. Five squads converged on the clearing. The bronze faces of Huth's men were impassive. Their long legs covered nearly three yards at a stride. Each man carried a short, silver-colored tube.

Once again the adults were first to project themselves into psi focus. But this time the children were not so slow to join and reinforce them.

The rain had stopped. The hot, humid air was motionless.

And it was a motionless wind that seemed to strike Huth's men. They were swept off their feet and spun around as if caught in a tornado. The huge leader of the squad bearing down on Lucifer's sector shot backward in a rising trajectory that cleared the compound. He screamed once. A hoarse, wild scream.

The freckled boy in Lucifer's arms clapped his chubby hands.

Some of Huth's men smashed into dwellings and fell in broken heaps. Others landed in open spaces and rolled like tumbleweeds. The survivors crawled or ran, screaming and sobbing, toward the spaceship.

"We'd better get that ship now!" Fetzer urged.

"Perhaps Huth will try to talk to us first."

Five minutes passed. No sign came from Huth.

"They're up to something," said Fetzer. "Let's not wait anymore."

The gates of one of the administration training buildings swung open, and the _Goolies_ poured out, driven and prodded by their attendants. They came straight toward the clearing, running in weird, disjointed strides or bounding along on footless stumps of legs. Monstrous heads rolled loosely, snapping from shoulder to shoulder, from chest to back. Tiny, hairless, eyeless heads were fixed and rigid. Slack mouths gaped and drooled. Lipless mouths bared perpetual smiles. Dwarfed, naked creatures bumped against the knees of eight-foot giants.

It was an unbelievable synthesis of every nightmare since time began.

The freckled boy wrapped his arms around Lucifer's neck. His small body shuddered.

Lucifer felt his own stomach twist with the remembered horror, but he held fast to reason. The _Goolies_ were in themselves no danger. It was only their psychological effect. Huth was shrewd. He knew well the Earth framework of prejudice. If they could break up the psi focus, his own men could crash in behind them.

Confirming this line of reason, Huth's men were forming again on the outskirts of the compound.

"Don't let them reach the clearing!" he told Fetzer.

Fetzer waved his signal. Though shaken, the adults, too, responded to reason. They tried to focus. Children pressed against their legs, sobbing.

A focus seemed to form, but weakly. It was like an exhausted, distraught athlete trying to pull himself together.

The _Goolies_ faltered, appeared to lose some momentum and balance. The attendants drove them forward again. They came on as though wading against a strong current.

"Don't be afraid," Lucifer told the boy. "They really can't hurt you."

The small body continued to tremble.

"Try to stop them ... try!"

"I want my Mommy...."

Nina took the boy into her own arms. She cradled his face against her breasts, pressed her lips to his cheek.

"Just keep your eyes closed," she cooed gently. "Everything is all right now."

She stroked the wiry red hair, and murmured.

"You don't have to look to stop them, do you? Why, you can stop them any time you want to! Let's tell all the other boys and girls to keep their eyes closed--and stop those people so they can't hurt Mommy and Daddy! Here, I'll help you--we'll do it together."

Nina pressed her cheek tightly to the child's, and closed her eyes. The boy stopped trembling.

The _Goolies_ slowed. It became harder and harder for them to move against the invisible current. An attendant picked up one of the smaller creatures and hurled it forward. In midair, the _Goolie_ rebounded and knocked the attendant off his feet.

The psi current broke loose. Clusters of bodies flew in all directions, like the exploding fragments of a grenade, crashing in and through the metal walls of the compound buildings.

And then all was still, except for a few broken moans. They were the loneliest sounds Lucifer had ever heard.

He saw Huth, palms outstretched, walking steadily toward the clearing.

"Let him come," said Lucifer. "I will talk to him."

They met about thirty yards in front of the clearing. Huth's bronze features were chiseled deep with new lines.

"Dr. Brill," he said, "I am shocked and disappointed. I thought you had come to believe in this great experiment."

"There is no longer a question of belief--its success to this point is very obvious."

"Then why do you destroy it?"

"I am trying to save it."

"I don't understand," said Huth. But there was hope in his eyes.

"You have learned much about Earth and its people, but there is one thing you failed to learn: Man may be blind, warped and prejudiced, but his frameworks can be changed, and he must--above all--he must control his own destiny. This law has been proved so often through our history that I am surprised you missed it."

Huth bowed his head to acknowledge the rebuke.

"Then what do you see in the future of this project?"

"I see great problems, almost insurmountable obstacles; and the threshold of a vast unknown. I see our people slowly approaching that threshold--to find their own future."

Huth looked silently over the compound, over the shell of the project to which he had dedicated his life, and not even his tremendous will could keep his shoulders from sagging.

"I cannot say that I truly disagree with you, Dr. Brill. But my own culture views this project from its own framework. I, too, had to fight with prejudice to keep it going. We are a mighty race, in control of a great section of the galaxy, and I doubt that you could hold out against our full power, as you have done tonight against a fragment of it on this isolated outpost."

"There seems to be a new power on this tiny planet. A power greater than any of us can yet conceive," Lucifer answered calmly.

"That may be; but there is the extreme likelihood of its total destruction before you can find out how to use it. I could not prevent this destruction if I tried--once it is known what happened here tonight. My people, too, have a destiny, and they are determined to pursue it."

A great rumble, a mighty rush of air, swept them off their feet. The spaceship rose in a straight vertical line and leveled off some five hundred feet above the clearing. Its prow swung toward the Earth people. A finger of blue flame probed downward.

Huth heaved himself to his feet.

"No! No!" he shouted. "Oh, you fools...."

The blue flame broadened at its extremity, until it resembled a long, inverted funnel. When it touched the ground, it reduced to grey ash a fifty foot area of buildings and trees. There was no burning, no odor, no smoke. Just a sifting of ashes that fell like snowflakes.

Huth cried out in agony at this destruction of his dream. He ran toward the path of the flame, waving his arms.

In the instant before the flame reached him, Huth stood motionless, arms outstretched, face straining upward, the great muscles of his neck standing out in rigid cords.

And then his statuesque body was a sifting handful of grey ash, falling gently to the damp ground. The flame leaped forward.

Lucifer got to his feet. He could think only one thought: That he must try to stand upright with as much dignity as possible.

He heard Nina's voice, but couldn't make out the words.

They were followed by a shrill, whistling sound. Surprisingly, the sound grew fainter, like a siren fading into the distance.

Lucifer realized he had closed his eyes. He opened them and saw the spaceship streaking upward. It tumbled end over end, out of control. The blue funnel of flame whipped in wild circles, hissing against the clouds. The ship disappeared momentarily behind a cloud bank, then could be seen again, glowing with an incandescent brilliance.

Suddenly it burst into a shower of sparks that flared like a dying meteor, and fell away into nothingness.

In the clearing behind Lucifer, children chattered gleefully.

* * * * *

Lucifer stood by the window and listened in silence as Albert Fetzer made his report.

The Earth people had returned to their quarters. Those whose dwellings had been destroyed or badly damaged were sheltered with friends for the night. Fifty-three of Huth's men and thirty of the women had survived. A score of _Goolies_ had come crawling and whimpering out of the forest. All were put under guard in one of the training buildings. Dr. Thame, his own shoulder smashed, was helping with the injured.

A twenty-four hour guard was set up to watch for return of the supply ship, or any other that might come.

"What about the children?" Lucifer asked.

"Mostly asleep. Some of them got a little frisky and started knocking over things--until their mothers marched them off to bed."

Lucifer shivered, and he was not cold.

"You'd better get some sleep," he told Fetzer. "We'll meet with the section leaders early in the morning."

When Fetzer was gone, Lucifer remained by the window. Nina came out of the bedroom to join him. Together they watched the clouds close out the stars, listened to the sweep of the rising wind and the drumbeat of the returning rain. The eternal rain.

"Our world," said Nina. "Our new world."

Lucifer started to answer, then could not speak. The weight of his thoughts was too great a burden to ease with words.

Nina put her arm around him.

"A frontier must always be like this," she said.

But what a frontier! There were the physical problems of existence, with Huth's administration and most of his technology gone. There was the moment when the supply ship would return, when a great fleet of ships might come to see what had happened to the project.

Yet those problems seemed like foothills to the towering peaks ahead, rising in range after range, beyond the outermost perimeter of thought.

As Lucifer stared into this unknown, he felt his mental stature shrivel to microscopic size. How could he, or any combination of men, offer leadership into such a future? If the project could survive against the return of Huth's people, what would keep it from disintegrating and destroying itself? How could a psi focus be channeled and used constructively? How could a professor of parapsychology, a professor who knew less about his subject than the youngest child on this planet, assail such peaks?

And the children! A freckled boy whimpering in his arms. A boy with a potential power that was as yet beyond the imagination. Lucifer thought of a tiny child behind the wheel of a great diesel truck, speeding through the crowded streets of a city. Or a child toying with the fuse of a hydrogen bomb. Raise that capacity for destruction to the nth power, and then....

God!

Tonight, for the first time, the children had glimpsed how great their power could be. Tomorrow they would begin to play new games. Quickly they would realize that they were stronger than their parents and other adult authorities. How could such children be controlled, educated, guided to maturity? If there were problem adolescents on Earth, what problems lay ahead with adolescents who could hotrod among the stars?

"But there are more than problems," Nina said, in a hushed voice. "A frontier means so much more!"

His thoughts, so recently liberated from their cubicle, drew back with conditioned reluctance, then leaped toward those towering peaks. A free thought could surmount any pinnacle, and look beyond the problems to the grandeur of the infinite.

The view was of a magnitude and beauty beyond his capacity to absorb. But small, incredibly wonderful details focused before him.

Now he saw knowledge and knowing from all the universe pour into this steaming jungle planet through communication channels opened by a psi focus that could leap time and space.

He saw knowledge and love and understanding transmitted outward again to fall like rain wherever there was parched earth.

His mind drew back from the summit. It was enough to see, for an evanescent moment of wonder, just a fragment of what lay beyond the wild mountains. It was madness to look too long.

The future receded; the present returned.

"I was there with you," Nina said, breathlessly.

He buried his face in the softness of her hair and the warm curve of her throat and shoulder.

He told her about himself, and their child.

She was silent and still for a long time.

"I must have known," she said. "I must have known all the time, without admitting it to myself."

"I'm sorry, Nina."

Her strong arm tightened around him. Her answer was steady:

"We must have hope, because there is so much to learn. But if our child cannot see...."

Her voice shook a little, then went on firmly,

"... If our child cannot see, we must find a Braille for the psi-blind! And we will walk together ... as long as we can ... on our frontier ... of infinity."