The Best of Lester del Rey

The body of the book began with the man’s need for people with unusually developed “ability” for his experiments, and his discovery of the border world of Vanir, where scientists had bred small groups for special abilities and were studying them.

In one of those little colleges, he had found the children he needed, and one child had proved capable of manipulating space as Aevan had been sure was possible. Moskez had even been able to force a few of the other children to bridge the difficult gap and begin work on it. There were long experiments and formulae for levitation, teleportation, penetrability, and other things. It ended on a note of self-adulation for his own success, in spite of the poor material he’d had with which to work.

Derek frowned and went back carefully, looking for the missing factor. The mathematics looked good, and in time Kayel could probably figure them out. But Aevan had been unable to make them work himself. It had taken some other ability.

He found it finally, in a footnote he’d skipped. It was telepathy. Aevan had known that the mental power needed was related to telepathy, and had been forced to find a group which had been bred for that. The boys on Vanir who succeeded had had more than eleven generations in which to build up such power.

Telepathy! And since the Collapse, while Vanir went on with its exclusive breed of telepaths, the rest of the worlds had had no such power—the psychologists had proved that it had been bred out of humanity, if it had ever existed. Yet without it, the mathematics would be useless. Only Vanir could have infinite power.

There the children had been forced to use it to survive. The single advanced one had somehow taught the others, and they had stolen their ideas for survival from the mind of Aevan. In suspended animation, his thoughts were nearly still, but his memories remained, and they could be tapped. Even dead, the memory cells were preserved for a time, though now they were deteriorating at last.

The amulets were only traditions to help them—they had used them as children, probably, to remember and feel the complex mathematical formulae, and the use of the tools had become so closely associated with the power that nobody questioned it now.

Derek tossed the book to Kayel and reached for the trigger. Nothing visible came from the weapon, but the body of the god—or Aevan—charred and began to vanish, along with most of the wall of the case behind it. Fourteen minutes had gone by.

He began to tense as the seconds drifted by, picturing Skora standing up there without the symbol of the power he had used, uncertain of his own powers, afraid to try them! If the man couldn’t work without the familiar—

Abruptly, they were back at the foot of the mountain, outside the tunnel they had cleared. Skora stood there, his face strained and white and his hands shaking; but his eyes were burning with the end of more than a thousand years of slavery to a useless custom and the fear of its loss.

“It worked—the tools still have power!” His voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting.

Derek had one final test. He turned toward the priest, keeping his lips sealed and trying to throw the words silently out of his mind toward the other. Not the tools, Skora. They were only memory aids. All you need is the knowledge and power that you have in your own mind. You were bound to a superstition!

Skora smiled wearily, his eyes moving toward the book Kayel still held. He nodded thoughtfully. “Superstition? I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. “Or conditioned reflexes of thought. Until about the age of nine, it was easier for a young telepath to explore the passive, unresisting mind of god than that of a busy adult. Eventually, it became the only way for them to learn in our culture. Now I suppose we’ll have to train teachers for the children.”

Kayel was staring at them, his mind busily adjusting to the new conditions. “Telepathy!” he said, without fear, but with a growing sense of wonder, as he knitted his brows and stood silently while Skora seemed to listen. Derek wondered why his own mind wasn’t curling up in horror at being read. But what difference would it make? He’d helped Vanir, but the Federation could never use the secret.

Skora sighed at last. “Sanity, new morals, many other things, Kayel. We only deceived you about our ability to read minds, and that for your own good. We were, afraid it might be too disturbing. And we’re doubly grateful now. If there is anything we can do…”

“Send us home on the Sepelora,” Derek suggested.

“The affairs of the rest of the universe are not ours, Derek,” the old man answered, and he seemed genuinely sorry. “We can’t risk having them brought to us by returning you. The decision of the majority went against me. Now all I can do is make you welcome here on Vanir.”

Derek stared up at the sky where the Sepelora lay out of reach but ready to carry them home. He let his eyes fall again to the planet that was to be their prison. He had come to like the people and to feel more at ease among them in many ways than among his own race. But there had been hope, until now.

“All right,” he said at last. “Keep your world, Skora, Live on it comfortably while the rest of the human race nearly kill themselves in another war. You’ll be safe. Dredge up a few more tricks from Aevan’s notes. You like being alone—most provincials do. And it won’t matter in your time. But when the children of my people find mechanical ways of doing what you do with your minds—when they sweep in here with ten battleships for each that your people can handle—remember that you could have joined us and saved us from the enemy that burned this planet once already. When that happens, cry for the brotherhood of men. See what they think of a single planet that kept its secrets to itself. Oh, damn it, send us back to Lari’s and let us alone!”

Skora reached for the amulet. Then he threw it away and stared at them, frowning in concentration without the help of tools. His hands clenched at his side.

They stood in Derek’s bedroom.

Derek lay wearily on the bed while Kayel’s low voice went on explaining things to Siryl. The woman had resented their going off without her, even though she had wanted no part of the trip. But now her hurt scorn had cooled down to an unbelieving interest. In a way, the captain thought, she had been right all along. But she didn’t seem to be enjoying it. He started to turn over.

Siryl screamed thinly. By the time he could look, she was throwing Aevan’s notebook away and whimpering. “No!” Her voice was low now, but rising slowly toward hysteria as Derek got off the bed. “No. No! It can’t be telepathy!”

“It is,” Derek assured her. “I tested it. So did Kayel.”

Her face contorted, and she swung toward him, groping for support. She found his shoulder and buried her face in it, clinging to him, her nails digging into his back as she strained closer. “Take me away! Derek, take me away. I can’t stand having them read my mind—every thought I ever had, every wish…. Derek!”

He reached up to disentangle the hands that were trying to dig through his backbone. “Siryl—” he began.

She flung herself from him and groped toward the door. But Kayel was there, his tortured face sympathetic. The little man caught her, and she dragged herself against him. He drew her closer while she sobbed, standing the pain of her hysteria as if he were being -knighted.

“I’ll protect you, Siryl. Some way I’ll protect you. They aren’t going to read your mind. I won’t let them.” He was scowling furiously with some effort as he tried to comfort her. His eyes turned toward Derek. “Maybe if they know about their god now, they’re upset! Maybe they won’t think too well. Get Lari, Derek—she’s not very suspicious, I hope. And don’t think about anything except that Siryl’s sick.”

The woman had whimpered at the mention of Lari’s name. Kayel drew her down beside him, rubbing her hair gently. “There, there, baby. Nobody is going to read your mind now.”

Derek found Lari in the kitchen, naturally, and brought her back with him. She was wearing her big apron with the amulet pockets, and moved ahead of him with the bowl in her hands clattering against one of them while she went on stirring—the picture of a quiet housewife, Derek thought bitterly. With the power of a god!

“Lari,” Kayel told her, “Siryl’s sick. We’re not just like you. We’re neurotics—we have been since the Collapse. We need things you don’t have which are on the Sepelora—Ferad will need them, too. Can you send Siryl and Derek up for them? They’ll know where to find the drugs.”

Derek started to protest. But this was more important to the physicist than escape. He was being the space knight who could slay monsters for his lady. The captain glanced at Lari, trying to keep his thoughts down. She