Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/15

 for the workers' and used their eyes. Naturally the Morlens didn't try to tap your mind or mine; we would have known it I did what I could—put up a dome screen of countervibrations that seem to shut off our friends. But—what do you think?"

"You have more to tell me," said Jackson. "Go on."

"At it again?" asked Maclure with a grin. "Okay, mind-reader. Lamp this gimmick." He opened a cabinet and produced a small, flimsy device. "The engineering's pretty sound on this," he said, "but Pm still shaky on the psycho-manipulation you folks taught me last week. We'll see if it works."

He plugged leads and conductors into ponderously insulated powerpickups and laughed as Jackson laid a worried hand on his.

"That's fixed," he said. "I need all the juice I can get to bring over a vidio beam. Not wanting to blow out your power stations again I built a little thing of my own." Angel patted a stubby little casing of thick, tough glass. "Underneath that baby's hide," he said, "is 39 volts. Not that I'll ever need anything near that."

HE Angel's deft fingers made minute adjustments within the spidery frame of his new gimmick; finally he connected it with a standard television screen. "Lights out," he said as he snapped the switch. The room went dark.

Slowly, with writhing worms of light wriggling across the ground glass screen, the scene illuminated and went into full color. Maclure grimaced at the fantastic spectacle. The things he saw—!

The Morlens on whom he had focused, nine parsecs away, were hideous creatures. Like giant crabs in a way, and partly suggestions of octopi, they sprawled horribly over machinery and furniture. "That them?" he asked hoarsely.

"The Morlens," said Jackson. "Do you wonder that I have used my hypnotic powers to mask from you my own form?"

"I suspected that you were the same race," said Maclure. He turned again to the screen, and cut in the sound factor. A dull, clacking babble sounded from the speaker. "You know their language?"

Jackson shook his head. "They aren't talking language. It's a code that can't be broken without a key. They don't underestimate you, Angel. What else has the gimmick got?"

"Psycho circuit. If the damn thing works we won't need to break their code. We'll be able to tap their thoughts. Shall I try it? The most I've done before was to scout around back on Earth. Couldn't find much there, though. Okay?"

"Okay," snapped Jackson. "You only live once."

Delicately, with the most painful precision, knowing well that a too sudden and too amplified projection of the Morlens' minds would blow his mind out the way a thunderclap could deafen him, he turned the tiny screws of the gimmick.

The Angel winced and set his jaws as a surge of hate filled the room. It was the Morlens, far across the galaxy, who were the source. Like the pulsing roar of a dynamo the undersurge of detestation and the will to destroy beat into his brain. Hastily he turned down the psycho band, and concrete thoughts emerged from the welter of elemental emotion that rushed from the screen.

It took Maclure only a moment to solve the unfamiliar thought-patterns of the Morlens. One of them, in some commanding position, was