Exiles of the Stars

which to think about it, I knew that was true.

'Also'—Lukas turned to Lidj— 'tell them what registered on our receivers here.'

'We have a recording,' the cargomaster began. 'This esper attack began some time ago—and you were not here then. It broke in intensity about a half hour since—dropped far down the scale, though it still registers. Just as if some transmission of energy had been brought to a peak and then partly shut off. While it was on at the top range none of us can remember anything. We must have awakened, if you can term it that, at the moment it dropped. But the residue remaining is apparently enough to knock out anyone trying esper communication, as Krip proved. So if it was not Maelen—'

'But where is she now?' I swallowed experimentally as I raised my head, and discovered I felt better. 'I was alone in the flitter when I awoke—and no one can find a trail through that sand out there.'

'It may be that she has gone to hunt the source of what hit us. She is a far greater esper than any of our breed,' Lidj suggested.

I pulled myself up, pushing away Lukas's hand when he put it out to deter me. 'Or else she was drawn unwillingly. She felt something back there in that valley where we found the flitter, she begged me to get her away. She—she may have been caught by whatever is there!'

'It is not going to help her to go charging out without any idea of what you may be up against.' Lidj's good sense might not appeal to me then, but since he, Lukas, and Harkon made a barrier at the door of the sick bay I was sure I was not going to get past them at present.

'If you think I am going to stay safe in here while—' I began. Lidj shook his head.

'I am only saying that we have to know more about the enemy before we go into battle. We have had enough warning to be sure that this is something we have never faced before. And what good will it do Maelen, Sharvan, or Hunold if we too are captured before we can aid them?'

'Whatare you doing?' I demanded.

'We have a fix on the source of the broadcast, or whatever it is. On top of the cliff to the east-northeast. But in the middle of the night we aren't going to get far climbing around these rocks hunting for it. I can tell you this much—it registers with too regular a pattern to be a human mind-send. If it is an installation, which we can believe, working on a telepath's level—then there should be someone in charge of it. Someone who probably knows this country a lot better than we do. But we have our range finder out now—'

'And something else,' Harkon cut in crisply. 'I loosed a snooper, set on the recording pattern, as soon as Lidj reported this. That will broadcast back a pick-up picture when it locates anything which is not just rock and brush.'

'So—' Lidj spoke again. 'Now we shall adjourn to the control cabin and see what the snooper can tell us.'

The Patrol are noted for their use of sophisticated equipment. They have refinements which are far ahead of those on Free Trader ships. I had heard of snoopers, though I had never seen one in action before.

There was a flutter on the surface of the small screen set over the visa-plate of theLydis —a rippling of lines. But that continued without change and my impatience grew. All that Lidj had said was unfortunately true. If I could not use mind-seek without provoking such instant retaliation as before, I had little chance of finding Maelen in that broken country, especially at night.

'Something coming in!' Harkon's voice broke through my dark imaginings.

Those fluttering lines on the screen were overlaid with a pattern. As we watched, the faint image sharpened into a definite scene. We looked into a dark space where an arching of rocks made a niche. And the niche was occupied. It was the face of the man or being who stood there which riveted my attention first. Human—or was he? His eyes were closed as if he slept—or concentrated. Then the whole of the scene registered. He was not in the open, but rather enclosed in a box which, except for the space before his face, was opaque. That box had been wedged upright, so he faced outward.

At his feet was a smaller box. But this was broken, badly battered, wires and jagged bits of metal showing through cracks in it.

Harkon spoke first. 'I think we can see why the broadcast suddenly failed. That thing in front is an alpha-ten amplifier, or was before someone gave it a good bashing. It's meant to project and heighten com relays. But I never heard of it being used to amplify telepathic sends before.'

'That man,' Lidj said as if he could not quite believe what he saw. 'Then he is a telepath and his mind-send was so amplified.'

'A telepath to a degree hitherto unknown, I would say/' Lukas replied. 'There's something else—he may be humanoid, but he's not of Terran stock. Unless of a highly mutated strain.'

'How do you know?' Harkon asked for all of us.

'Because he's plainly in stass-freeze. And in that state you don't broadcast; you are not even alive, as we reckon life.'

He glanced at us as if he now expected some outburst of denial. But I, for one, knew Lukas was never given to wild and unfounded statements. If he thought that closed-eyed stranger was in stass-freeze, I would accept his diagnosis.

Harkon shook his head slowly. Not as if he were prepared to argue with Lukas, but as if he could not honestly accept what he was seeing.

'Well, if he is in stass-freeze, at least he's tight in that box. He did not get there on his own. Somebody put him there.'

'How about the snooper—can it pick up any back trail from that?' Lidj gestured to the screen. 'Show us who installed the esper and the amplifier?'

'We can see what a general life-force setting will do.' Harkon studied the dial of his wrist com, made a delicate adjustment to it. The screen lost the picture with a flash and the fluttering returned.

'It isn't coming back,' Harkon reported, 'so the life-force search must be at work. But as to what it will pick up—'