The Best of Lester del Rey

would slowly develop the power—and their “teachers” would find ways of convincing them they were succeeding. Maybe they needed that faith, no matter how wrong it was. They would forget the legends that spoke of a time when the strange psi factor was bred out of the, race—for the benefit of a few, as he now knew. They would pretend there was only one race, instead of the two into which it had been split.

The pain caught him again, and Skora got up sympathetically to rub the back of his neck. It helped. “Men,” the old man told him, “have been finding ways to claim they are not all one race since there first were human beings. But it’s still wrong. And science has made mistakes, while legends are only superstitions.”

The old fingers found the spot of greatest anguish and began rubbing it out. Derek looked up, grateful in spite of his bitterness against what had been done. “The advantage of being a telepath,” he admitted. “You know where the pain is. Thanks, Skora.”

It always hurts at first, Skora’s voice said softly.

His lips had been tightly shut, and he was smiling. Derek felt his body tauten, and his eyes froze on the unmoving lips, while the voice continued quietly somewhere in his mind.

It takes time, Skora’s voice went on, with a warmth that had always been lacking in it before. And it hurts. So does the loss of some of the things we believe—that we are persecuted, that we must depend on god, that incomplete knowledge and old legends can tell us everything, or that we are more than one race. Telepathy is never easy for an adult, Derek. But with it, we can unite our whole race— perhaps even the ones we call an enemy!

The pain was gone now, leaving only a strange sense of completion behind it. Derek stumbled to his feet, choking over words that would not come.

The old man caught his mind, smiling, and led him to the viewing port.

“Sector Commander Derek,” he said aloud, while the warm soft echo of the words came into the former captain’s mind, “out there is man’s kingdom. All of space! But there’s no room there for any more of the superstitions we’ve all had too long.”

Derek looked out through the ports toward the stars

that rushed by the Sepelora, while the ship carried the two men into their future.

There was no jinx reflected in the port glass. There were only the images of two faces, smiling back at him.

For I Am a Jealous People!

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…the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves… and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low… they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish… because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets….

Ecclesiastes, 12:3-5

THE BOOK OF THE JEWS

there was the continuous shrieking thunder of an alien rocket overhead as the Reverend Amos Strong stepped back into the pulpit. He straightened his square, thin shoulders slightly, and the gaunt hollows in his cheeks deepened. For a moment he hesitated, while his dark eyes turned upward under bushy, grizzled brows. Then he moved forward, placing the torn envelope and telegram on the lectern with his notes. The blue-veined hand and knobby wrist that projected from the shiny black serge of his sleeve hardly trembled.

Unconsciously, his eyes turned toward the pew where his wife should be, before he remembered that Ruth would not be there this time. She had been delayed by the arrival of the message and had read it before sending it on to him. Now she could not be expected. It seemed strange to him. She hadn’t missed service since Richard was born nearly thirty years ago.

The sound of the rocket hissed its way into silence over the horizon, and Amos stepped forward, gripping the dusty surface of the rickety lectern with both hands. He straightened and forced his throat into the pattern that would give, his voice the resonance and calm it needed.

“I have just received final confirmation that my son was killed in the battle of the moon,” he told the puzzled congregation, which had been rustling uncertainly since he was first interrupted. He lifted his voice, and the resonance in it deepened. “I had asked, if it were possible, that this cup might pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, Lord, but as Thou wilt.”

He turned from their shocked faces, closing his ears to the sympathetic cries of others who had suffered. The church had been built when Wesley was twice its present size, but the troubles that had hit the people had driven them into the worn old building until it was nearly filled. He pulled his notes to him, forcing his mind from his own loss to the work that had filled his life.

“The text today is drawn from Genesis,” he told them. “Chapter seventeen, seventh verse; and chapter twenty-six, fourth verse. The promise which God made to Abraham and again to Isaac.” He read from the Bible before him, turning to the pages unerringly at the first try. “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.

“And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries: and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

He had memorized most of his sermon, no longer counting on inspiration to guide him as it had once done. He began smoothly, hearing his own words in snatches as he drew the obvious and comforting answer to their uncertainty. God had promised man the earth as an everlasting’ covenant. Why then should men be afraid or lose faith because alien monsters had swarmed down out of the emptiness between the stars to try man’s faith? As in the days of bondage in Egypt or captivity in Babylon, there would always be trials and times when the faint-hearted should waver, but the eventual outcome was clearly promised.

He had delivered a sermon from the same text in his former parish of Clyde when the government had first begun building its base on the moon, drawing heavily hi that case from the reference to the stars of heaven to quiet the doubts of those who felt that man had no business in space. It was then that Richard had announced his commission in the lunar colony, using Amos’ own words to defend his refusal to enter the ministry. It was the last he saw of the boy.

He had used the text one other time, over forty years before, but the reason was lost, together with the passion that had won him fame as a boy evangelist. He could remember the sermon only because of the shock on the bearded face of his father when he had misquoted a phrase. It was one of his few clear memories of the period before his voice changed and his evangelism came to an abrupt end.

He had tried to recapture his inspiration after ordination, bitterly resenting the countless intrusions of marriage and fatherhood on his spiritual forces. But at last he had recognized that God no longer intended him to be a modern Peter the Hermit, and resigned himself to the work he could do. Now he was back in the parish where he had first begun; and if he could no longer fire the souls of his flock, he could at least help somewhat with his memorized rationalizations for the horror of the alien invasion.

Another ship thundered overhead, nearly drowning his words. Six months before, the great ships had exploded out of nothing in space and had fallen carefully to the moon, to attack the forces there. In another month they had begun a few forays against Earth itself.

And now, while the world haggled and struggled to unite against them, they were establishing bases all over and apparently setting out to conquer the world mile by mile.