The idea had been to shoot these two out into space, far from the influence and interference of Earth; then they would work deeper and deeper into each other's minds, finally to discover the seeds of the shakes that were inevitably lying dormant.
One of the pleasant features of psychiatry is that once you have your problem broken down it is already solved. The synthetic element of logic is superfluous; analysis is sufficient. It might be that the shakes consisted of a fear of technical progress reaching epidemic proportions through hysterical contagion. You see a man fall in the street feebly kicking his heels in protest at being deprived of the liberty to roam on grassy fields and your own elements of protest are somewhat stirred.
Then one day you feel despondent and they explode when your censor band is not on guard against subversive urges like that. And for the rest of your life you are a spastic, kicking and squirming uncontrollably. Or until someone calmly explains to you what is wrong—about the machine age and the rest. Then you are miraculously cured. And one cure breeds a thousand as confidence grows.
Meanwhile there was the matter of interference from Earth. Boyle pushed the fuel rod down to the limits of the outward-bound trip.
Dammit, they'd have to get away from the static, he brooded.
'What's our position?' queried Boyle. He was relaxing, Cantrell at the driving panel.
'Practically ideal,' said his partner. 'I haven't checked, but we should be well out of the range of anything from Earth. Going high and fancy, we are—per second acceleration for two weeks. That's plenty far. Do you want to try out the polyphone again?'
'Blow off the dust,' grunted Boyle, swinging himself from the bunk.
Gravity on the ship was at Earth level; that had meant tons of extra equipment and power consumption far above normal, but these two on whom the fate of their planet depended could not be distracted by space sickness and flying soup.
Cantrell readied the polyphone, testing and checking the scores of minute connections and solders that held the complex creation together. Some he tightened, others he ripped out and replaced. At length the psychologist reported: 'All ready. Let's make this tryout a good one.'
'Right. You stay open and receptive; I'll drive as deep into your mind as I can. And Cantrell—I know it's not a nice thing to ask, but you'll have to have complete confidence in me. I don't want you to seal off any sections at all from me. I want you to stay as open as though you weren't being probed. You're a specialist; you could close off whatever you wanted to. But we don't know where the spastitis seeds lie. It may be in some group-unconscious engram or some especially unsavory crime you've committed and forced yourself to forget. I'll play square with you, Cantrell. For the sake of the whole planet back there—don't keep any secret places.'
His partner stared at him curiously. 'Okay,' he said at last. 'You know best. But if you find anything especially nasty, do me the favor of not telling me about it.'
'Agreed,' said Boyle with relief. He switched on the machine as they donned the head sets. The great tube glowed.
Cantrell relaxed in body and mind as he felt the probing fingers sent from his partner's brain pluck away at his grey matter. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, rather like a mental Swedish massage. Vaguely, images came through. He stiffened a little. There shouldn't be any images here, and if there were he shouldn't get them. For the moment putting aside the receptive mood, he reached out, shutting his eyes and wrinkling his brow in an effort to encompass the foreign thought vibrations that were filtering into his skull.
He saw a sky then through the eyes of some person on whose mind he had landed. The sky was curiously dusky. And with the vision of the sky was a poignant sense of longing that filled the mind of Cantrell's host.
The words of it seemed to be: 'My loved one! My loved one—on their side. Now we are enemies …'
A quick start of alarm. The sky swiveled away, and Cantrell saw through these other eyes a group of horsemen bearing down on his host. A shrill scream of terror, an intolerable wave of revulsion and regret, and then the blankness of death. Cantrell's host had been ridden under the hooves of the horsemen.
The psychologist, not believing what he had experienced, reached out with his mind and seized on one of the riders. He did know that there was a sense of guilt in the rider's mind; what it meant he could not tell.
He heard a conversation begun with a shrill, nervous laugh. Then:
'Damned rebel—we showed him.'
'Right. Fix them all up like that and this world will be worth living on, sir. Where do we go now?'
'Keep scouting. Look for rebels and treat them the right way, like that dead thing back there—'
Cantrell had suddenly lost interest in the conversation. The talk of rebels was beyond him anyway. He had been studying, through his host's eyes, the costume of the riders. They were unfamiliar, and somehow totally alien to anything earthly. Then with a shock of terror Cantrell saw that the horses had peculiarly long heads—and six legs!
He tore the set from his head and stared, wide-eyed, at Boyle. 'Where were you?' he demanded. There was a shrill, hysterical note in his voice.
'Trying to get over,' said Boyle as he switched off the set. 'But there was interference. We'll have to go farther yet. I tuned in on a series of love-affairs from back on Earth.'
'Sure of that?' countered Cantrell. 'Are you sure it was from Earth that you got the vibrations?'
'Why?' snapped Boyle. 'What did you receive?'
Cantrell told him, and Boyle sat quietly for a long time, rattling his fingernails on a tabletop. 'Yeah,' said Boyle at last. 'I suspected something like that. Those women reacted in wholly unearthly fashion.
The anatomy of these broadcasters is similar, but they aren't Homo sapiens.'
'Fourth dimension?' wildly hazarded Cantrell. 'Could we have tuned in on that?'
'No. For the reason that waves from the fourth dimension would have to be vectorially sub-operative to the seventh power, at least, and the machine would register any abnormal strain like that. No—not the fourth or any dimension except this one. Are there any invisible planets floating around? That alone would explain everything.'
'None that I know of, and I used to specialize in astronomy. Maybe—
maybe we've caught up with the thought-waves from Earth on a return trip from the end of space? That would explain the talk about rebels.'
'And your six-legged horses, of course. Don't be silly. We have to push on and get so damned far away from this spot that we won't even remember where it is. I'm going to gun the ship hard and fast. You get on the polyphone and tell me when the thought-waves from the place begin to weaken and die out.'
Boyle squared his jaw at the fuel gage and began to reckon how much they could allow for steerage and headway. How thin they could cut the corners for the return trip to Earth when the problem of the shakes was solved.
Cantrell donned the head set and turned on the machine again. Again he reached out probing fingers into the crazy planet where horses had six legs and you could kill a man because he was a rebel against someone or something unspecified.
On the screen of his mind things began to take shape. He had landed plumb in the brain of a lady who was waiting for a lover whom she pictured as tall and handsome. The lady turned slowly and surveyed a colossal city that rose about her. She was standing just outside its walls.
They were fine walls, solid and ponderous, fitted with gates able to withstand the charge of a battletank.
Her lover strolled up and there was a tender scene of greeting. Cantrell, feeling like a cad, reached out for another mind. He lighted on the brain of a person within the city; a person who considered himself as being of vast importance. All sorts of ponderous speculations were revolving through the important person's head, principally when he would eat next. A young man, clad in a sort of tunic, approached.
The important person smiled. 'Ah,' he cried. 'My dear boy!'
The dear boy grinned briefly. 'You'd better come. There's a strike on at the tubing works. They seized possession of the whole plant.' The important person exploded with rage, swearing by strange gods.
Cantrell shut off power and looked up.
'When,' he asked impatiently, 'are you going to get going? It comes in as strong as ever.' Boyle stared at him with a kind of sickly horror in his face. 'Cantrell,' he said, 'since you put on that set we've gone half a million miles at right angles to our former course.' 'Lord,' whispered his partner. 'They're following us!'
From random snatches of thought and casual, everyday conversation it is not easy, it is almost impossible in
