Part 3

She returned his level stare while she turned over in her mind the idea that had been burgeoning there. “Just one,” she said. “While I was probing the leader out there I received a number of definite impressions. Most of them were straight zombie--the usual ghastly _swackish_ stuff.”

After a brief, organizational pause, she added, “But there was also an impression of discomfort, almost of fear. The only comparison I can make is to the uneasiness a green rider feels mounted on a new and too-spirited horse. He knows he has control, but he isn’t quite sure what the beast may try on him, and he isn’t quite sure just how he’s going to come down--of his own volition, or his mount’s.”

“Then you think--”

“I think they’re still struggling for control,” Lynne said. “They can’t control the human mind because it’s too tough, too alien, and complex. They failed to take permanent possession even of a wide open TP brain. Now they’ve hit the other extreme--a bovine brain that is beneath their comprehension. They can move in on it, they can blanket it--but they can’t be sure it won’t kick off the covers.

“Not one of those beasts wanted to stampede the way they did. But once I triggered the beast-brain in the leader, and Joanna cracked her whip, he had to obey steer-instinct and flee. And the others had to follow him, zombie control or not.”

“What’s this leading up to?” Radchev asked. He had pulled out a plastopipe, and was packing it with coarse Martian shag. Lynne caught a wry longing for good Earth-tobacco, inhibited by a stern resolve to fulfill his obligations as Agricultural Director of Mars by using only the home-grown product.

She checked her amusement out of courtesy, and said, “There’s another factor that may prove vital--_farbishly_ so. In their disembodied form the zombies went streaking off at the first threat of danger. That’s why we haven’t been able to put them out of business for keeps. But this time, they may be in trouble. I’m not at all sure they can get out of these bovine bodies they’ve taken over.”

“So what do you propose?” Martin Juarez asked.

“We’re going to try to put the zombies to sleep,” said Lynne quietly. “I’ve already sent out a call for help to my TP pals from Nampura Depot. We’re going to set up a TP brain-team on Patagonia Station and use mass-hypnosis on the whole _farbish_ herd.”

“You’re going to hypnotize the zombies?” Joanna was appalled.

Lynne shook her head and smiled. “Hardly!” she said. “We don’t even know that they’ll react to our suggestions. We’re going to give the cattle immunity to possession.”

Radchev and Juarez exchanged glances. Then the director rose and took her small hand in his. “Young lady,” he said, “you seem to have done it again.”

“Better save your congratulations until the job is completed,” she told him. “We may not even get out of the batter’s box.”

Lynne and her colleagues were waiting at the trim Woomera Station landing field when the newcomers’ Nampura Depot runabout landed, and her twin brother and Rana Willis got out. Rana, looking irrepressible as usual, went into a bowlegged stance and said, “Well, pardner, how’s the roundup?”

Lynne sensed that the girl was glad to get briefly away from her first-born Mars-child as she made the introductions. At their conclusion, Revere Fenlay said, “Well, we brought the tri-di projector along.”

“Okay,” said Lynne. “Don’t unpack it yet. We’ve got a bit further to go. Back in with you, _czanworms_.” She waved farewell to the others and climbed into the runabout after them, to make the short hop to Mars’ still small cattle country.

They landed at the far side of Patagonia Station’s fenced-in acres, and Lynne stood by while Revere and Rana unpacked the light but sturdy gear. She had asked for and secured a three-dimensional projector, knowing that the eyes of cattle would not respond to a picture on a flat screen. Her plan was to flash a series of flickering, bright-moving objects before the animals, hoping to attract their attention willy nilly, very much as a toreador’s cape attracts a ring bull. Then, when the cattle were all focused, she planned to use the combined TP power of three minds like a trebly stepped-up battery--to hypnotize the entire herd and build a protective mental wall around each of the stupid steer brains.

If all went well, the zombies would be locked in their new bodies, but would be unable to control them at all.

VIII

Three hours after its inauguration, Lynne Marcein realized that the experiment was a failure. The cattle showed no signs of being menacing or resentful. They did not stampede or go into weird parade formations, or gore one another for sport. They were evidently spent of body from their exertions earlier in the day.

But, save for a few individuals, they simply refused to pay attention. Having glanced at the screen that was supposed to fix their interest they would lower their heads and resume grazing, or would simply turn away.

Five times, Lynne had Revere and Rana move the tri-di projector, in an effort to so arrange its viewing curvature so that general attention would be compulsory. Five times the possessed beasts figuratively shrugged, humped their shaggy shoulders, and mooed, _So What?_ Then they went about their bovine business.

“_Farbish_ clever, these Mars-steers,” said Revere with a weak attempt at humor, when Lynne finally called a halt.

“I’ve worn my _ferkab_ brain to the bone,” put in tiny Rana inelegantly, “trying to bring those stupid creatures under my spell. The _farb_ of it is, I can feel those zombies snickering at me. I should like to twist them out of their silly cow-brains with my bare hands.”

“I know,” said Lynne with a wan smile, suddenly close to the outer limits of physical, nervous and mental endurance. “I feel like....” She paused, her face turning deathly pale, and then said in a wondering tone, “I feel like I’m going to have the baby right here.”

They got her back to adjoining Woomera Station in a hurry, where she was soon stretched out on a dispensary plastomat, sobbing with pain, with fatigue and with the sickening sense of double failure. Not only had she failed to destroy zombie possession of the Patagonia Station cattle, but she had put aside her primary duty to handle the big problem--had neglected to take care of the precious unborn life she had fought so hard to keep for all but a tiny fraction of nine months.

She knew she was acting like a baby herself--whimpering, crying out when the pain grew severe, making an idiot of herself.

“Where’s Dr. Smetana?” she said to Martin Juarez, who was standing over her bed with rolled-up sleeves and a deep concern in his eyes.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” he told her soothingly, bending to inject something into her left arm. “Just relax now--”

“I want my husband,” she heard herself scream. “Where’s Rolf? He should be here at this time.”

Then, mercifully, she blacked out, riding a storm-tossed ocean such as Mars had not known for half a million years. Coming out of it, an indeterminable time later, she realized she must have been delirious. She had actually dreamed Rolf was there at her side--though she knew he was still on Earth trapped in an octopus monster of Mother-Planet red tape. She had dreamed of actually having her baby....

_Baby!_ Her hands flew to her abdomen. It was flat! All at once tears of utter desolation and defeat rolled down her cheek. She had lost the child--and through her own heedlessness and neglect, after working so hard, so faithfully, for so long.

“You’ve got nothing to cry about,” said a familiar voice.

She opened her eyes, and there was Dr. Smetana, sitting by her plastomat. She murmured, “Thank God! You got here, Doctor.”

“I got here,” he replied quietly, “but too _swackish_ late. By the time I arrived, your son was already born and howling.”

“_My son!_ Where is he?” Lynne cried eagerly, trying to sit up.

Dr. Smetana gently but firmly pushed her flat. “You’ll be up soon enough,” he told her. “When you’ve walked the floor a few nights with this he-banshee of yours you’ll regret every minute you didn’t lie down in your life. A good baby--eight pounds, thirteen ounces.”

“_Crehut!_” said Lynne inelegantly, pushing back the light hair from her forehead. “But how--I mean, who delivered it if you didn’t?”

“Dr. Martin Juarez, in person,” was the reply.

Lynne was puzzled. “I didn’t know he was a doctor,” she said.

“One of the finest,” said Dr. Smetana with a wry smile. “It’s his proud claim he never lost a calf, a foal, a kid or an egg. And now he’s batting a _zwirchy_ one thousand with a human birth.”

“You mean--he’s a veterinary?” Lynne asked incredulously. The idea that her child, the second human baby born on Mars, should have been delivered by an animal doctor was appalling. Then, suddenly, it was funny. Lynne laughed until tears again ran down her cheeks. Recovering, she gasped, “I want to see my baby.”

Dr. Smetana had it wheeled alongside the plastomat in a jerry-built incubator. “Afraid we can’t take him out yet,” he said. “Got to make sure he’s ready for the Martian atmosphere.”

“I understand,” said Lynne, turning her head to look at the bright red, tiny creature, asleep under its coverlet with its eyes squeezed tightly shut. _Did that come out of me?_ she thought, in the immemorial self-question of all new mothers. She probed gently for its thought, caught a blanket of sleep, and knew she was going to love it and care for it as no mother on any planet had cared for her child.

“As a matter of fact, you gave Dr. Juarez a pretty bad time,” said Dr. Smetana. “That boy of yours didn’t want to leave at all.”

“Then my neglect and carelessness these last few days didn’t hurt?” asked Lynne, with relief. “I thought that bumpy ride with Joanna--was it yesterday?”

“The day before,” said the doctor. “We’ve kept you under to give you some rest. As for that bumpy ride, it’s a good thing you had it, or you might have been carrying that infant another month.”

“You mean, I did my exercises too well?” Lynne asked.

“I mean, you didn’t need to do them at all,” was the reply, “although I’m beginning to believe they’re a good idea for any mother-to-be. You and the boy have proved exactly what I _farbish_ well hoped you’d prove, Lynne. Thanks to the increased density of atmosphere caused by E-power, Mars is safe for human birth.”

He paused, then added, “Two swallows don’t make a summer, of course, but I don’t believe either your TP or Rana’s had much to do with it.”

“All that work wasted!” mourned Lynne as one of the Station girls, in a striped nurse’s clout and bolero, wheeled the infant away.

“_Wasted!_” Dr. Smetana was indignant. “You and Rana have taken the biggest step forward since the first passenger ship landed on Mars. You’ve brought the planet out of a biological iron lung. When Dr. Juarez vidared me what was happening, I actually cheered.”

“Where _is_ Martin?” Lynne inquired. “I’d like to thank him.”

“You can--later,” said Dr. Smetana. “Right now, he’s out on Patagonia Station, watching your husband hypnotize those goofy cows.”

“Rolf!” she asked tremulously. “Rolf here? I thought I was only dreaming....”

“He wouldn’t stir from your side until the infant was safely born,” said the doctor. “He took the birth like a man--never so much as a whimper out of _him_. Then he got busy--_look!_” He nodded toward the big vidar screen on the opposite wall.

It was keyed to a Patagonia Station tower. Lynne stared at the picture, first with incomprehension, and then with admiration for the man she had married, the father of her child. Almost out of the screen were four small gleaming dots humans in their aluminum climate-proof coveralls. They were clustered around a black cube that was the tri-di director. They were standing ankle-deep in snow!

Facing them, as if polarized by some invisible magnet, was a great herd of Martian cattle. The animals were clustered close together, and were all looking directly at the projector. Rolf had done it, she thought with relief. He had converted her failure into triumph. The cleverness with which the possessed cattle avoided looking at the projector proved, to her satisfaction, that they were not strong enough to withstand the hypnosis directed at them.

“Who thought of using a snowstorm?” asked Lynne. “Was it--?”

“It was Rolf,” said Dr. Smetana. “It seems he had been keeping in telepathic touch with your problem all the way from New Samarkand. When he got here, he simply gave the orders.”

“That’s the trouble with Earthtraining,” said Lynne. “I read somewhere that cattle always turn their backs on a snowstorm. But it didn’t really register. I never saw cows, or steers outside of a zoo--until I got to Mars.”

“We have all the disadvantages of Earth, here on Mars, Lynne,” Dr. Smetana said, smiling. “Including, from now on, children. You get some rest now, and let me get a little. If you’re restless think about your first PTA meeting. That should drop you off in a hurry.”

IX

When next Lynne woke up, Rolf was there, his hair still wet with snow. Lynne’s heart went out to him in a manner that left her, weak and spent as she was, aware that she had never been so glad to see anyone in her life, even the baby. His eyes were suspiciously moist.

“Well, my _zwirchy_ darling,” he said, “you went and did it.”

“I’ll have them bring the baby in,” she said.

“I just had a look at him,” Rolf told her. “I’m the proudest father on Mars.” He lit a cigarette and handed it to her. Then he lit another for himself. “I don’t know if you’re marked ‘Fragile, don’t break’ but I’d like very much to kiss you.”

“Since when did you ever ask to kiss me--or any girl!” said Lynne, reaching for him.

“They couldn’t hold me on Earth,” said Rolf, standing up and exhaling twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils. “With you using the team on the cattle at Patagonia, I got the pickup on Earth. When you and Revere and Rana start TP’ing, the whole Solar System gets it. Wild _czanworms_ couldn’t have held me.”

“But I flopped,” said Lynne, feeling safe and comfortable and secure, merely having Rolf on the same planet with her. “You had to come up with the snowstorm idea.”

Rolf grinned. “Didn’t you ever see anyone come along and put the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle?” he asked.

Lynne said, “Come back here.” She held out her arms.

It was three full Mars-days later when Lynne, Rolf, the baby--whose name was, by unanimous decision, Martin Juarez Marcein--Revere Fenlay and Rana Willis flew back to Nampura Depot, with Rolf at the controls. The time had been employed, not only in preparing the infant for travel, but for testing and re-testing the processed cattle, until all were satisfied that the zombies’ power had again been broken--this time, it was hoped, for good.

Revere Fenlay said, “I hope this does it for keeps.”

Rolf replied, thoughtfully, “So do I. But I’d like to be sure they’re safely contained in their new bodies.”

“I’ll never eat steak again,” said Rana, shivering.

“Neither will I--without mushrooms,” said Lynne. She looked backward, to check the baby, who was sleeping peacefully.

Rolf and Revere Fenlay raised their voices in the old Martian refrain, “There’ll never be brisket on Mars. For that we must go to the stars. Give me some tablets with vitamin Q. If you don’t like it, to Earthside with you!”

It was dark when they reached the Depot under a blazing Martian night sky that looked to Lynne definitely less spectacular than it had a mere Martian year before.

With the new baby safely asleep in his incubator, they crossed the hall to visit Rana and Tony Willis, leaving Revere and Lao Mei to watch the tot.

They found Tony up to his elbows in baby-suds in the bathroom. Regarding them fondly, he said, “Congratulations, Lynne. I hear you were tactful enough to provide Ranita with a future boy-friend.”

“If I know kids,” Rana said, “they probably won’t speak to each other, except to bring down the other one’s crushes.”

“When were you ever a child?” Tony Willis asked.

“She’s still a child,” said Lynne. “And a truly _zwirchy_ child, too. So stop kicking each other around.”

“Well,” said Tony, thoughtfully. “When I had the time, which was _farbish_ seldom, I did miss the little character.”

Rolf, who had appeared to be in a brown study, came out of it with, “You know, _czanworms_, we ought to help Tony out.”

“Take over,” said Tony, nodding toward the sink full of baby wash.

Rolf made a gesture of disdain. “Use your wits, man,” he said. “You and I are going to pay a visit to New Samarkand. _On business._”

“What business?” asked Tony.

Lynne and Rana, being TP’s, were already laughing.

“What do you think?” Rolf asked. “We’ve got to get busy and start a diaper service. If you think I’m going through what you’ve been through for the last week, you’re mad!”

Transcriber’s note:

This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, June 1956 (Vol. 5, No. 5.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version.