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  Lucky Cross looked over the blasted volcanic landscape and coughed some dust and sulphur from her lungs. “And you think God’s hiding around here playing with us now or something?”

  Randi Queson looked around at the same landscape and shook her head. “No, not God. Definitely not God…”

  There was a darkening above and the sounds of rumblings in the distance.

  “Going to rain soon,” Jerry Nagel noted. “We ought to find some shelter while we have time.”

  “Great!” grumped Cross, in a singularly bad mood this day. “So we’ll be stuck in mud and wrapped in mud and slip-sliding the rest of the day.”

  “It’ll cool things off for a bit,” Queson noted hopefully.

  “Make us human mud-pies, that’s all,” Cross responded.

  “Where’s An Li?” Jerry asked them, looking around. “Li!An Li!” he shouted.

  “You two go find us a shelter,” Randi told them. “I’ll find An Li.”

  The former leader of the salvage team that employed them all wasn’t far away; she’d simply gotten distracted by something and that became the only thought in her mind. She was sitting there, dusty and stark naked, staring at something she’d found in the volcanic ash and humming a little tune from some distant point in her childhood.

  “Li, honey, you can’t go off by yourself like this,” Randi scolded. “You have to stay with us.”

  An Li didn’t seem to hear, but she was certainly aware that the older woman was there. She turned, looked up at Randi Queson, and smiled a vacant, little child’s smile, and held out whatever she had to show the team geologist what she’d found. “Pretty,” she said.

  Randi squatted down and took an object from An Li’s hand and looked at it. It wasn’t very large, but it was definitely no volcanic oddity. It was a bright, shiny, golden color, so polished that it reflected a distorted vision of whatever image it captured. It was certainly not heavy enough to be pure gold—a hundred and fifty grams, no more. It had a pentagonal base no more than fifty or sixty millimeters long with a series of pentagonal brackets, a half dozen or so, running down its length. Why it wasn’t sandblasted or bent and twisted was as much a mystery as what it was or whose it might be. The only thing she was sure of was that it couldn’t have been dropped very long ago from the looks of it, and whoever lost it just might come back looking for it.

  They were in strange territory now, and needed to tread softly and carefully. She wasn’t sure whether to take it or leave it, but An Li made up her mind for her by grabbing it out of her hands and clutching it to her. “Mine!” she said. “Pretty!”

  Randi sighed. “All right, you can keep it, but we have to go and find the others. It’s going to rain. Get very wet. Can you hear it?”

  As if on cue, loud rumblings of thunder sounded far too close to ignore.

  An Li got up and took Randi’s hand, clutching the strange artifact in the other, and kept pace as much as she could with the larger woman striding off towards where the other two had vanished.

  The golden artifact wasn’t the first such strange, small, manufactured alien object they’d come across on Melchior, and such things had been reported even in the original scouting reports. It seemed at times as if some alien machine was shedding parts, but it was more likely some minor tool of one of the stranded alien creatures they’d spent time avoiding. No two that they’d found had ever been alike, almost as if each were from a different creature or civilization, but that meant little. It was why the term alien had been invented.

  They often had wondered if Doc Woodward up on the paradise-seeming moon of Balshazzar stumbled over these things. Maybe he even found out from his alien friends what they were and why they were scattered all over the place. Still, it would make more sense if he found them on the relatively static garden moon than them finding such things here, on volcanic Melchior, where everything was constantly in motion from dust, quakes, volcanism just under the surface and sometimes on top of it, and violent rainstorms. Things like these should be mostly melted or worn away by now. Most instead looked almost new, like this thing. Even the aliens shipwrecked along the coast had been here long enough to have pretty much exhausted what they’d salvaged and they surely didn’t have the kind of technology to make whatever this stuff was. It made no sense at all.

  Rocks that stimulated your emotional centers and maybe spied on you and exquisitely manufactured pieces of junk that did nothing. Parts of the puzzle that they’d all love to solve, but which they had about as much chance of solving as they had of flying off this hellish world. Still, they occupied the mind, even Li’s.

  They came up over a rise and looked for Jerry and Lucky. A fumarole nearby spouted loud white noise and steam from venting the result of rainwater hitting something far too hot and not very far below. All of them had learned not to go too near those roaring holes in the rock.

  The storm was really coming towards them now; you could see its darkness creeping towards their position, blotting out the sky and landscape. If they didn’t spot the others quickly, it would be necessary to find someplace else to ride out the fury that was clearly unavoidable.

  Randi spotted an oval opening about a meter high and perhaps two wide that looked promising. Hoping that it opened out a bit, she headed for it, letting Li get down and back in, then doing the same, but the childlike woman got to the edge of it and suddenly shouted “No!” over the noise of the storm.

  “Come on! You’ve got to! Otherwise you’ll be out in the open!” Randi yelled back, but Li shook her head, twisted, broke away and began running off in the direction they’d been heading. Realizing that the only choices were between getting caught outside and staying put, the older woman decided not to chase the other. The gods had a strange protection for the mad.

  She backed further in as the storm hit with all its fury and, feeling a bit more room, she managed to get back so that she never lost sight of the opening but could roll over if necessary or crawl on her elbows and knees. She didn’t want to get too far in; there would be nothing but absolute darkness not far from where she was now.

  Lying there, though, she first appreciated the cooler feel of the cave rock against her bare skin. A little bit of rain made it in, and there was a tiny rivulet now coming in and going around her which also felt quite nice. It wasn’t enough to fear flooding the cave, but she kind of rolled in it, wetting herself down some more and thus cooling off all the better, and she used a little of it to wet her lips. After that, she just lay there, waiting for the fierce storm to abate.

  For a while there was nothing but the roar outside, the slight wetness of the pencil-thin leakage, and the smell of damp rock but, as she lay there, she suddenly began to get the impression that she wasn’t alone.

  There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife on Melchior to fear; everything dangerous seemed to come from worlds even more distant than her own. Still, might not one of those have taken shelter from the storm just as she was doing now?

  The thought unnerved her, particularly when coupled with Li’s adamant refusal to take shelter there.

  She reflected that, since they’d been marooned here, she’d never really been alone nor, for the most part, had she wanted to be. Not even the kind of privacy that you got from going to your cabin on board ship, or doing the most private of things. They’d all stuck very close together, at least in pairs, even when there was nothing to do but lie around and brood. Now she was feeling that sense of being alone, of being apart from other human company, and her mind was playing the usual games with her. She knew that, but she also couldn’t shake it. She didn’t want to be alone, and the idea that she might well be, and that she might well not be but with something she didn’t want to meet, started to eat at her.

  The fear was becoming overwhelming; a sense not so much of claustrophobia as of being cut off, utterly, completely defenseless and alone, and she felt panic rising in her. The storm was still going, and it was still a very dangerous storm, but she fought a building compu
lsion to wriggle forward, to run out, to get away…

  There was something there! She couldn’t hear it nor did she have any physical evidence of it, but she could sense it, just back there, looking at her, studying her…

  She managed to turn slightly, to look back into the darkness, to make one last stab at conquering her insanity and, after a moment, she began to see what was back there, what was causing all the fear and distress.

  The Magi stones were there, embedded in the cave wall, and they were softly glowing…

  Radiation! she told herself. It’s just some form of radiation! They’re nothing but a geophysical phenomenon!

  But the operative word was “physical.” It was a real effect, and knowing that it was an effect of the stones did her no more good than realizing that a knife was a knife when the important thing was that the knife was stabbing you.

  She could feel it going right through her, right down to her soul, the feelings of fear and danger and menace.

  “It takes practice,” said a man’s voice, and she almost jumped out of her skin.

  “Who’s there?” she shouted, backing towards the cave opening.

  “It’s kind of like piloting. You can crash. It can even kill you. But if you can get the hang of it, it will change you in amazing ways.”

  The Magi stones seemed to pulse at the man’s words, keeping a throbbing action in between that beat at the inner corners of her mind. She wasn’t sure even now if she was hearing anything at all or if she was simply overwhelmed by the radiation of the stones and on her way to Li’s land of insanity or worse.

  “Calmly. If you know any meditation it helps,” the voice said. Now she was certain it wasn’t a physical voice, but speaking directly to her mind. “The stones were not designed for minds like ours. They grow them for themselves, we think.”

  “ ‘We’? Who’s ‘we’?” She was trying to focus just on the voice, breathing in a steady manner, and trying to put out of her mind the emotional pulses that rushed to the core of her being every time the other spoke.

  “My name is Robey. John Robey. I’m on station today and I was attempting to see what came in when I sensed you. We should not talk more now. Can you leave? Get away from the stones?”

  “I—I’m not sure,” she responded. “There’s a storm…”

  “Go if you can. It takes a lot of practice. I am holding off the effects as much as possible, but I’m not the most gifted at this. You are now tuned to this batch. Were I to lift my mental shield it might well steal your mind or your very soul. Come back. Any outcrop will do. Return for a few minutes each day. Alone. Slowly we will teach you.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” she asked again. “And why should I believe I’m not already having a conversation with myself?”

  “We are the Arm of Gideon. On Balshazzar. Make sure that Balshazzar is in your sky before you try again. The kind of power required to go through the big planet would fry your mind. Someone, often many, are always on duty. We will be watching for you. We’ve been wondering how long it would take before this happened. Now go if you can. If the storm will not kill you, you must go into it. Even with help, I’m losing it. Go!”

  She backed out of the cave even as she felt first a sudden release in her mind, then almost immediately a return to a building attack on her last emotional defenses.

  The rain was still falling but the worst of it was past, and the electrical activity was now intermittent even though occasional claps of thunder, echoing against the barren landscape, could still deafen her.

  She started to run. Not in any particular direction, just away, away from the cave. She didn’t think, she couldn’t think. It was as if her mind was totally blank leaving only emotion, a desire to flee, to just go anywhere but there. She ran through the rain, wild-eyed, more animal than human, until finally slipping, falling, she lost consciousness altogether in the remnants of the storm.

  * * *

  She came to, rather than awoke, trembling, and she looked up into the concerned face of Jerry Nagel. “Randi! Come on! Snap out of it! Are you all right?”

  Slowly her senses flowed back into her mind, but they didn’t make things any easier. She trembled as if she had contracted a serious palsy for several minutes, then choked on something, began having a coughing fit, and eventually she threw up over and over until there was nothing left for her stomach to give.

  She felt—weird. That was the word that came to mind, and it fit, even though she was having trouble defining it further. She felt detached, as if her mind, the thinking part, the personality, was somehow disconnected from her body but floating just beyond it. She could barely feel the body, nor did it fully respond to her commands. Still, when she could, she gasped, “Jerry!” And then for some reason she just began to break into uncontrollable sobs, grabbing and holding on to him with a viselike grip.

  He let her go for a little bit, but when he finally tried to break free and get her some water she couldn’t release him.

  “Please! Please!” she managed, breathless. “Just—humor me for a little bit. Just hold me. I need—I need to bring myself back.”

  So, for as long as he could, he just held her there and let her calm herself and gather her wits.

  Lucky Cross came up with a boot in her hand. It was one of Randi’s, and it was last seen on the woman’s foot. Now it was not only not being worn, it seemed to have been yanked, pulled apart, ripped half to shreds. “Pack’s back there as well,” the pilot commented. “Straps are broke but it’s still okay. We can probably mend it. She’s barefoot from now on, though. Musta been real wild to have had the strength to rip them things like that. Them boots are rated for industrial units!”

  Nagel looked down at Randi, who seemed half lost in some other mental place, but she was still awake, still staring at him.

  “You want to tell us what happened?” he prodded gently.

  “I—I needed to get out of the storm. The cave I picked had the rocks.”

  He gave a low whistle. “You’re lucky you didn’t go Li’s route,” he noted. “All comes clear now. I wonder just how common those damned things are?”

  “Very, I think. And there’s more, but even I can’t tell you if it was real or not.” Slowly, between gasps and occasional reflexive gags, she managed to tell the other two about her ethereal conversation with John Robey up on Balshazzar.

  Lucky cross-checked the sky, which was already clear after the storm. “Yep, it’s up there, all right. See it? ’Bout two hands up from the horizon to the west and maybe, oh, five o’clock.”

  They had discovered almost from the start that the other moons were readily visible when all were in the same part of the sky, and that Balshazzar, being so relatively close, was quite prominent. A blue-white world about the size of a gaming token in one of the bars back on Marchellus, it would have dominated any sky it was in save for the even larger gas giant that loomed over them and trapped them both.

  Kaspar, much farther out and smaller than either of the other two, was harder to spot, but hardly invisible in the night sky. There was just too much of a light source for reflection for anything of any size to remain hidden out there.

  “You think it was real?” he asked Randi.

  “I—I think it might have been. I think you and I both had an idea it was more than just a mineral. I wonder, though. Do they also have outcrops of them on the other two moons?”

  He smiled. This was the old Randi coming back, slowly but surely. “I think they might. At least on Balshazzar. Who knows about Kaspar?”

  She sighed, but made no move to get up or break physical contact from him. “He said it took practice. Like learning to fly. And that it was just as dangerous. Do you think maybe he really was real?”

  “Well, it ain’t like we got a computer with a roster handy,” Cross noted. “Still and all, mind-rotting rocks I can see, but mind-reading radio rocks, well, I got to say you’d hav’ta show me.”

  “Well,” Nagel said, “remember that horrible night
when those rocks took us over? I can’t help remembering that when those of us who survived, one way or the other, compared notes we found we all had the same nightmares. Pretty strange alien nightmares, too. Ones I never got out of my head, and I don’t think you two ever got out of yours. Suppose we were actually seeing something real? Some real places, real events? Something so horrible, so traumatic, it stuck in the minds of the entire alien race that created these things, assuming that they are artifacts, not natural. Maybe, just maybe, our minds don’t work like theirs so we don’t process the information right, but it’s nonetheless real. If these things could in fact be controlled… Think of it! Two-way telepathic broadcasting! And they—the Holy Joes up on Balshazzar—they’ve been stuck there a lot longer than we’ve been stuck here, and with more contact with other alien species who might have been there longer. It’s possible. It just could be…”

  “Then you think—maybe… I wasn’t losing my mind?”

  He gave a wan smile and shrugged. “You might well have been at the brink of insanity and still heard just what you heard. Who says they’re mutually exclusive? One thing’s sure, though. All of us—one at a time, anyway, with the others ready to pull them out—have got to experience this, maybe, if it’s learned, all get taught how to master the damned things. It may be the only chance we got of ever getting off this hole.”

  “Or it may just drive us all nuts like Li,” Cross noted.

  “If it isn’t real, what’s the difference?” Randi asked her. “And if it is, and even one of us manages it even if the price might be madness for others, then to me it’s more than worthwhile. I’m scared to death, and all I want to do is run and hide and sleep for a year,” she added. “And yet, tomorrow, I’m going to try it again.”

  II: TASK FORCE ELEVEN