Now what the devil did they want with a crazy firebug hobo like that? He thought viciously, Goddam Mindees!
After they had flown him cross-continent to Buenos Aires, deep in the heart of the blasted Argentine desert, they sent him in for testing.
The testing was exhaustive. Even though he did not really cooperate, there were things he could not keep them from learning; things that showed up because they were there:
Such as his ability to start fires with his mind.
Such as the fact that he could not control the blazes.
Such as the fact that he had been bumming for fifteen years in an effort to find seclusion.
Such as the fact that he had become a tortured and unhappy man because of his strange mind-power.
“Alf,” said the bodiless voice from the rear of the darkened auditorium, “light that cigarette on the table. Put it in your mouth and make it light, Alf. Without a match.”
Alf Gunnderson stood in the circle of light. He shifted from leg to leg on the blazing stage, and eyed the cylinder of white paper on the table.
It was starting again. The harrying, the testing, the staring with strangeness. He was different–even from the other accredited psioid types–and they would try to put him away. It had happened before, it was happening now. There was no real peace for him.
“I don’t smoke,” he said, which was not true. But this was brother kin to the uncountable police line-ups he had gone through, all the way across the American Continent, across Earth, and from A Centauri IX back here. It annoyed him, and it terrified him, for he knew he was trapped.
Except this time, there were no tough, rock-faced cops out there in the darkness beyond his sight. This time there were tough, rock-faced Bureau men, and SpaceCom officials.
Even Terrence, head of SpaceCom, was sitting in one of those pneumoseats, watching him steadily.
Daring him to be what he was!
He lifted the cylinder hesitantly, almost put it back.
“Smoke it, Alf!” snapped a different voice, deeper in tone, from the ebony before him.
He put the cigarette between his lips. They waited.
He seemed to want to say something, perhaps to object. Alf Gunnderson’s heavy brows drew down. His blank eyes became–if it were possible–even blanker. A sharp, denting V appeared between the brows.
The cigarette flamed into life.
A tongue of fire leaped up from the tip. In an instant it had consumed tobacco, paper, filter and de-nicotizer in one roar. The fire slammed against Gunnderson’s lips, searing them, lapping at his nose, his face.
He screamed, fell on his face and beat at the flames with his hands.
Suddenly the stage was clogged with running men in the blue and charcoal suits of the SpaceCom. Gunnderson lay writhing on the floor, a wisp of charry smoke rising from his face. One of the SpaceCom officials broke the cap on an extinguisher vial and the spray washed over the body of the fallen man.
“Get the Mallaport! Get the goddammed Mallaport, willya!” A young Ensign with brush-cut blond hair, first to reach the stage–as though he had been waiting crouched below–cradled Gunnderson’s head in his muscular arms, brushing with horror at the flakes of charred skin. He had the watery blue eyes of the spacemen, those who had seen terrible things; yet his eyes were more frightened now than any man’s eyes were meant to be.
In a few minutes the angular, spade-pawed Malleable-Transporter was smoothing the skin on Gunnderson’s face, realigning the atoms–shearing away the burned flesh, coating it with vibrant, healthy pink skin.
Another few moments and the psioid was finished; the burns had been erased; Gunnderson was new and whole, save for the patches of healthier-seeming skin that dotted his face.
All through it he had been murmuring. As the Mallaport finished his mental work, stood up with a sigh, the words filtered through to the young SpaceCom Ensign. He stared at Gunnderson a moment, then raised his watery blue eyes to the other officials standing about.
He stared at them with a mixture of fear and bewilderment.
Gunnderson had been saying: “Let me die, please let me die, I want to die, won’t you let me die, please!”
The ship was heading toward Omalo, sun of the Delgart system. It had been translated into inverspace by a Driver named Carina Correia. She had warped the ship through, and gone back to her deep-sleep, till she was needed at Omalo snap-out.
Now the ship whirled through the crazy quilt of inverspace, cutting through to the star-system of Earth’s adversary.
Gunnderson sat in the cabin with the brush-cut blond Ensign. All through the trip, since blast-off and snap-out, the pyrotic had been kept in his stateroom. This was the newest of the Earth SpaceCom ships, yet he had seen none of it. Just this tiny stateroom, in the constant company of the usually stoical Ensign.
The SpaceCom man’s watery blue eyes swept between the pallid man and the teleport-proof safe set in the cabin’s bulkhead.
“Any idea why they’re sending us so deep into Delgart territory?” the Ensign fished. “It’s pretty tight lines up this far. Must be something big. Any idea?”
Gunnderson’s eyes came up from their focus on his boot-tops, and stared at the spaceman. He idly flipped the harmonica he had requested before blast-off, which he had used to pass away the long hours inverspace. “No idea. How long have you been at war with the Delgarts?”
“Don’t you even know who your planet’s at war with?”
“I’ve been rural for many years. But aren’t they always at war with someone?”
The Ensign looked startled. “Not unless it’s to protect the peace of the galaxies. Earth is a peace-loving…”
Gunnderson cut him off. “Yes, I know. But how long have you been at war with the Delgarts? I thought they were our allies under some Treaty Pact or other?”
The spaceman’s face contorted in a picture of conditioned hatred. “We’ve been after the bastards since they jumped one of our mining planets outside their cluster.” He twisted his lips in open loathing. We’ll clean the bastards out soon enough! Teach them to jump peaceful Earthmen.”
Gunnderson wished he could shut out the words. He had heard the same story all the way from A Centauri IX and back. Someone had always jumped someone else…someone was always at war with someone else…there were always bastards to be cleaned out…never any peace…never any peace…
The invership whipped past the myriad odd-colors of inverspace, hurtling through that not-space toward the alien cluster. Gunnderson sat in the teleport-proof stateroom, triple-coded loktite, and waited. He had no idea what they wanted of him, why they had tested him, why they had sent him through the pre-flight checkups, why he was in not-space. But he knew one thing: whatever it was, there was to be no peace for him…ever.
He silently cursed the strange mental power he had. The power to make the molecules of anything speed up tremendously, making them grind against one another, causing combustion. A strange, channeled teleport faculty that was useless for anything but the creation of fire. He damned it soulfully, wishing he had been born deaf, mute, blind, incapable of having to ward off the world.
From the first moment of his life when he had realized his strange power, he had been haunted. No control, no identification, no communication. Cut off. Tagged as an oddie. Not even the pleasures of being an acknowledged psioid, like the Mindees, or the invaluable Drivers, or the Blasters, or the Mallaports who could move the atoms of flesh to their design. He was an oddie. A strange-breed, and worse: he was a non-directive psioid. Tagged deadly and uncontrollable. He could set the fires, but he could not control them. The molecules were too tiny, too quickly imitative for him to stop the activity once it was started. It had to stop of its own volition…and occasionally it was too long in stopping.
Once he had thought himself normal, once he had thought of leading an ordinary life–of perhaps becoming a musician. But that idea had died aflaming, as all other normal ideas that had followed it.
First the ostracism, then the hunting, then the arrests and the prison terms, one after another. Now something new–something he could not understand. What did they want with him? It was obviously in connection with the mighty battle being fought between Earth and the Delgarts, but of what use could his unreliable powers be?
Why was he in this most marvelous of the new Space-Com ships, heading toward the central sun of the enemy cluster? And why should he help Earth in any case?
At that moment the locks popped, the safe broke open, and the clanging of the alarms was heard to the bowels of the invership.
The Ensign stopped him as he started to rise, started toward the safe. The Ensign thumbed a button on his wrist-console.
“Hold it, Mr. Gunnderson. I wasn’t told what was in there, but I was told to keep you away from it until the other two got here.”
Gunnderson slumped back hopelessly on the acceleration-bunk. He dropped the harmonica to the metal floor and lowered his head into his hands. “What other two?”
“I don’t know, sir. I wasn’t told.”
The other two were psioids, naturally.
When the Mindee and the Blaster arrived, they motioned the Ensign to remove the contents of the safe. He walked over nervously, took out the tiny recorder and the single speak-tip.
“Play it, Ensign,” the Mindee directed.
The spaceman thumbed the speak-tip into the hole, and the grating of the blank space at the beginning of the tip filled the room.
“You can leave now, Ensign,” the Mindee said.
After the SpaceCom officer had securely loktited the door, the voice began. Gunnderson recognized it immediately as that of Terrence, head of SpaceCom. The man who had questioned him tirelessly at the Bureau building in Buenos Aires. Terrence, hero of another war, the Earth-Kyben war, now head of SpaceCom. The words were brittle, almost without inflection and to the point, yet they carried a sense of utmost importance:
“Gunnderson,” it began, “we have, as you already know, a job for you. By this time the ship will have reached central-point of your trip through inverspace.
“You will arrive in two days Earthtime at a slip-out point approximately five hundred million miles from Omalo, the enemy sun. You will be far behind enemy lines, but we are certain you will be able to accomplish your mission safely, that is why you have been given this new ship. It can withstand anything the enemy can throw.
“But we want you to get back for other reasons. You are the most important man in our war effort, Gunnderson, and it’s tied up with your mission.
“We want you to turn the sun Omalo into a supernova.”
Gunnderson, for the first time in thirty-eight years of bleak, gray life, was staggered. The very concept made his stomach churn. Turn another people’s sun into a flaming, gaseous bomb of incalculable power, spreading death into space, burning off the very layers of its being, charring into nothing the planets of the system? Annihilate in one move an entire culture?
Was it possible they thought him mad?
What did they think he was capable of?
Could he direct his mind to such a task?
Could he do it?
Should he do it?
His mind boggled at the possibility. He had never really considered himself as having many ideals. He had set fires in warehouses to get the owners their liability insurance; he had flamed other hobos who had tried to rob him; he had used the unpredictable power of his mind for many things, but this…
This was the murder of a solar system!
He wasn’t in any way sure he could turn a sun supernova. What was there to lead them to think he might be able to do it? Burning a forest and burning a giant red sun were two things fantastically far apart. It was something out of a nightmare. But even if he could…
“In case you find the task unpleasant, Mr. Gunnderson,” the ice-chip voice of the SpaceCom head continued, “we have included in this ship’s complement, a Mindee and a Blaster.
“Their sole job is to watch and protect you, Mr. Gunnderson. To make certain you are kept in the proper, er, patriotic state of mind. They have been instructed to read you from this moment on, and should you not be willing to carry out your assignment…well, I’m certain you are familiar with a Blaster’s capabilities.”
Gunnderson stared at the blank-faced telepath sitting across from him on the other bunk. The man was obviously listening to every thought in Gunnderson’s head. A strange, nervous expression was on the Mindee’s face. His gaze turned to the Blaster who accompanied him, then back to Gunnderson.
The pyrotic swiveled a glance at the Blaster, then swiveled away as quickly.
Blasters were men meant to do one job, one job only, and a certain type of man he became, he had to be, to be successful doing that job. They all looked the same, and Gunnderson found the look almost terrifying. He had not thought he could be terrified, any more.
“That is your assignment, Gunnderson, and if you have any hesitance, remember they are not human. They are extraterrestrials as unlike you as you are unlike a slug. And remember there’s a war on…you will be saving the lives of many Earthmen by performing this task.
“This is your chance to become respected, Gunnderson.
“A hero, respected, and for the first time,” he paused, as though not wishing to say what was next, “for the first time–worthy of your world.”
The rasp-rasp-rasp of the silent record filled the stateroom. Gunnderson said nothing. He could hear the phrase whirling, whirling in his head: There’s a war on, There’s a war on, There’s a war on, THERE’S A WAR ON! He stood up and slowly walked to the door.
“Sorry, Mr. Gunnderson,” the Mindee said emphatically, “we can’t allow you to leave this room.”
He sat down and lifted the battered mouth organ from where it had fallen. He fingered it for a while, then put it to his lips. He blew, but made no sound.
And he didn’t leave.
They thought he was asleep. The Mindee–a cadaverously thin man with hair grayed at the temples and slicked back in strips on top, with a gasping speech and a nervous movement of hand to ear–spoke to the Blaster.
“He doesn’t seem to be thinking, John!”
The Blaster’s smooth, hard features moved vaguely, in the nearest thing to an expression, and a quirking frown split his ink-line mouth. “Can he do it?”
The Mindee rose, ran a hand quickly through the straight, slicked hair.
“Can he do it? No, he shouldn’t be able to do it, but he’s doing it! I can’t figure it out…it’s eerie, uncanny. Either I’ve lost it, or he’s got something new.”
“Trauma-barrier?”
“That’s what they told me before I left, that he seemed to be blocked off. But they thought it was only temporary, once he was away from the Bureau buildings he would clear up.
“But he isn’t cleared up.”
The Blaster looked concerned. “Maybe it’s you.”
“I didn’t get a Master’s rating for nothing, John, and I tell you there isn’t a trauma-barrier I can’t at least get something through. If only a snatch of gabble. But there’s nothing…nothing!”
“Maybe it’s you,” the Blaster repeated, still concerned.
“Damn it! It’s not me! I can read you, can’t I–your right foot hurts from new boots, you wish you could have the bunk to lie down on, you…oh hell, I can read you–and I can read the Captain up front, and I can read the pitmen in the hold, but I can’t read him!
“It’s like hitting a sheet of glass in his head. There should be a reflection or some penetration, but it seems to be opaqued. I didn’t want to say anything when he was awake, of course.”
“Do you think I should twit him a little–wake him up and warn him we’re on to his game?”
The Mindee raised a hand to stop the very thought of the Blaster. “Great Gods, no!” He gestured wildly. “This Gunnderson’s invaluable. If they found out we’d done anything unauthorized to him, we’d both be Tanked.”
Gunnderson lay on his acceleration-bunk, feigning sleep, listening to them. It was a new discovery to him, what they were saying. He had always suspected the pyrotic faculty of his mind. It was just too unstable to be a true-bred trait. There had to be side-effects, other differences from the norm. He knew he could not read minds; was this now another factor? Impenetrability by Mindees? He wondered.
Perhaps the Blaster was powerless, too.
It would never clear away his problem–that was something he could do only in his own mind–but it might make his position and final decision safer.
There was only one way to find out. He knew the Blaster could not actually harm him severely, by SpaceCom’s orders, but he wouldn’t hesitate blasting off one of the pyrotic’s arms–cauterizing it as it disappeared–to warn him, if the situation seemed desperate enough.
The Blaster had seemed to Gunnderson a singularly overzealous man, in any case. It was a terrible risk, but he had to know.
There was only one way to find out, and he took it…finding a startling new vitality in himself…for the first time in over thirty years…
He snapped his legs off the bunk, and lunged across the stateroom, shouldering aside the Mindee, and straight-arming the Blaster in the mouth. The Blaster, surprised by the rapid and completely unexpected movement, had a reflex thought, and one entire bulkhead was washed by bolts of power. They crackled, and the plasteel buckled. His direction had been upset, had been poor, but Gunnderson knew the instant he regained his mental balance, the power would be directed at him.
The bulkhead oxidized, and popped as it was broken, revealing the outer insulating hull of the invership; rivets snapped out of their holes and clattered to the floor.
Gunnderson was at the stateroom door, palming the loktite open–having watched the manner used by the Blaster when he had left on several occasions–and putting one foot into the companionway.
Then the Blaster struck. His fury rose, and he lost his sense of duty. This man had struck him; he was a psioid…an accepted psioid, not an oddie! His eyes deepened their black immeasurably, and his face strained. His cheekbones rose in a stricture of a grin, and the force materialized.