parts, but it seemed to him that gigantic bridges arched over seemingly limitless abysses. Those bridges did not attach to the surfaces they touched but penetrated into the stone with the continuous motionless movement that a great cataract of water presents to vision. The simultaneous opening and closing of the five-angled edges gave the impression that the matter of which those pinnacles were constructed was both material and immaterial. More dimensions than four were in play; that vertiginous rampart that struck its bulk over a half kilometer of empty space extended into time as well as into space. It was what it was — and yet it was in process of becoming what it already was, and becoming something other and beyond that also.
And it was all of a color that was no color at all.
Moms spoke more quietly than Vern had heard her speak before. “I cannot bear it,” she said. “No one can.”
Vern said, “Echo does not give up.”
He pointed to his sister. Echo was clapping her hands and swaying in an excited dance, her face full of joy. “Shy-nee shiny shiny shiny shy- nee,” she sang. She left off dancing and broke into a clumsy run. The air was bright there at the cliff-edge and Echo ran to enter into it, to plunge into empty space.
This transliterated approximation was the closest Terran English could approach to the piercing command- trilling the Old Ones’ shoggoths made as they traveled, each telling its whereabouts to its sibling organisms. It had been anciently recorded in the unfinished narrative left by Arthur Gordon Pym and further attested by later writers and adventurers, and it always carried with it a nauseating feeling of dread.
Seeker held her face in her hands and drew deep, harsh breaths. She had not withdrawn from the Terran’s mind and the sound of that trilling had shaken her.
“How close are the shoggoths to the Remnant?” I asked.
She was silent a space, gathering her thoughts. Then she said she could not tell. “That sound is vivid in her mind because of her great fear, but I cannot judge distance.”
“Navigator?” I asked.
He studied his panel for some time. “Not so near as to be deadly, I think,” he said. “It is very difficult to judge distances.”
“We have found where this Remnant is,” I said. “We also have pictures from the locators. Where shall we set down the beacon?”
“Not so close as to attract the Old Ones to them nor so far that the autist cannot travel to it.”
“We must put the beacon down soon,” Seeker said, “so that it can set the Gate in place. I will have to go down to the planet surface.”
Three of us said no at once.
“The danger is too huge,” I said. “If the Old Ones are close, your mind could be erased. A shoggoth could sense what you are. If you are lost to us, the Remnant is lost and so are we.”
She looked at us steadily, each in turn. “If I do not exhibit myself in my own person, just as I have pictured me to the autist Echo and her queenie, they will not come through the Gate and we cannot bear them away. Then truly all will be lost.”
“How have you pictured you?” I asked.
“Looking as I do, but with all pleasantness and all welcoming and offering safety to the family. I have tried to picture myself happily to the queenie, but I do not know if she knows and interprets in the same manner as the others. She has strong smell-sense; I would like to transmit odors to her but cannot.”
“Are you certain it is needed for you to descend?”
“Yes,” Seeker said.
“There is no other way?”
She indicated no.
“Then let us rehearse the protocols and do all speedily,” I said, and once more and assiduously we bent to our tasks.
There was one procedure we could not rehearse.
If the Old Ones mind-touched Seeker, they would recognize our mission and why and how. Then they would try to trace us back and locate the Great Ones’ operational point for this mission. The disaster that followed would endanger and probably result in the slaughter of many races on many planets and the Old Ones would then take care that no Remnants were left. They would scour clean every planet and sun-system.
To prevent, I would kill Seeker. That is, I would order Ship to kill her before her mind could reveal its contents or before the Old Ones could assimilate. If the instruments detected that I did not emit the order quickly enough, Ship would enact its final program and detonate itself and all of us to atomic gas. There would be nothing left for the Old Ones to trace — but they would have been warned, and there would be consequences of that.
But Seeker declared that she must descend in her own person and not by image transmission to planet surface. She knew the minds we others could not know. And she would not imperil the mission needlessly. So I reviewed the steps and all seemed to be in order and we had to do everything quickly and with no mistakes.
There was a complication. Navigator had found a desirable site; the locators furnished detailed pictures of a green plateau above a river and the unactivated beacon was on its way, disguised, like Ship, as debris. It hurtled toward Terra, along with a flock of moon-chunks, and once it was surfaced, Ship would activate it for a brief time so that Seeker’s mind-signals could be amplified to the female telepath and directions would be vivid to her, though not a picture of the site, which Seeker explained would mean nothing or too much. Then the beacon would be deactivated, so as not to attract attention. When the time came,
But Navigator was finding precise measurement difficult. We had thought that the distortion of the local space-weave was accidental, a product of the great inter-dimensional engineering the Old Ones were undertaking. As an ancillary quality, the distortion would remain constant and the anomalies could be taken into account. The distortion was increasing, Navigator told us, and he now thought it was not accidental. The Old Ones were transforming local space-time.
“They are not satisfied to remake the objects of the cosmos,” he said. “They are changing the makeup of the vessel that contains the cosmos. It begins with Terra and will spread, wave upon wave, throughout the whole universe. We will be unable to ascertain when or where anything is.”
“How can they change the nature of space without destroying themselves?” Doctor asked.
“I do not know,” Navigator said.
“Perhaps underspace will not be affected,” I said.
“And this transformation — if it is really taking place — will require a very long time to complete. We must rescue this Remnant promptly and return to the Great Ones. They will understand how to halt the process.”
“Perhaps,” Navigator said. His voice was doubtful. “I will try to work out a mathematics for the rate of distortion and we will follow our plan whether it is useful or not.”
“That is best,” I said because I could think of nothing else to say.
And then it was time for Seeker to go down. The beacon was in place and had already proved its worth. The Terran telepath had received Seeker’s pictures most clearly and Navigator reported that the family was marching toward the plateau. He suggested that we configure the beacon transceivers in a different way and thus access some of the energy the Old Ones were using to distort space-time. We could do so undetected, so much of that energy was surplus and not closely tabulated.
“It would require too long,” I said. “Those shoggoths are too near, are they not?”
He watched his screens and scopes for a little and then agreed.
Seeker went into the Gate-entrance chamber. She had freshened her robe and made her long hair brighter. Doctor and I kept our gazes upon each other, for though our sister strode into the exchange chamber steadily and with all purpose, we knew that she must have been enduring most horrible fears. She was descending into the territory of the Old Ones and she absorbed the terror of them ferociously, being in contact with the Remnant that survived just outside the verge of their icy intelligences and had witnessed what things they had done.
We tested the communications and Seeker said she could well hear me.
