Read Ebook: The Divers by Stamers James Wood Wallace Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 152 lines and 8347 words, and 4 pages

System, set in the Milky Way and surrounded by the related galaxies.

"Here's the spiral in Andromeda," said the doctor, using a long pointer. "I understand you went there...."

He took Fred Williams on a general tour of the hall.

Dr. Howard Sprinnell put his hands in his pockets and gazed at his polished shoes.

Fred Williams assured him and left the hall to go down to the police gym. He did not understand why the warning should be necessary. On the other hand, you could take it as a delicate permission to do anything that was not a security risk. He passed the police canteen and restrained himself from going in to order a doughnut with Martian syrup. It would keep him from Diving.

He rose into the atmosphere above the city and headed across America to the rendezvous above the West Coast. The Earth spun away from beneath him. He had time to be surprised that in the few hours back on Earth he had forgotten the unburdened clarity of mind in a Dive. He knew who he was. He was unquestionably Fred Williams up here, as much as he was Fred Williams down there. But here he felt different, free, while down there he was embedded and obscured in a shell of a body. Here, this time, his vision was not limited to a forward cone but extended in a complete sphere around him.

He saw the large nick in the coast ahead and came down to meet his tutor Diver.

Pat had said he looked like the inside of an egg, but he was not prepared for the great ovoid poised there below him. He came up to her with a rush and found he was even bigger by comparison. When they touched, he heard her voice. There was a slight resistance as his mind met hers and then she slipped inside his, so that he enclosed her mind within his ovoid mind.

"One of the disadvantages of a Diver," she said quietly within him, "is that we can only talk to each other by contact. A Psi could see our thoughts radiating out like an aurora, but we can't. We travel this way when two Divers are together, which isn't often, so that we both think of going to the same place. If we do get separated, come back here immediately and we'll start again."

"Fine."

"Sorry."

"Much better. Now, gently, out. Think of rising slowly.... That's right."

They rose away from the Earth.

"Over there," she prompted, "is the galactic spiral arm we are in. See, running from Orion? The Solar System is out here on a limb. Over here is where we're going, deep into the Galaxy, our own galaxy. You'll soon pick up the main roads. See that fan-shaped arch? That's a T-Tauri variable, signposts to us. Think of being just off that one now."

He did--and there they were, in a dark lane of the Milky Way.

"Now you can imagine what would happen if we were moving separately and turned our minds to different points. You have to go back and start again then. Now, we're going down this dark lane."

They moved through the splendor of the Milky Way, through vast lanes of fine dark nebulae, across a giant rift, past glowing clouds of hydrogen and oxygen and bright expanding shells, rings within rings, flowing out from intense stars in their center as if the star were a pebble dropped in a pond of burning space, the planetary nebulae.

The Sagittarian region was well known to Pat and she commented on the Lagoon, and Omega and Trifid Nebula suspended around them. The local system they sought lay off a loose globular star cluster, one of a crowd here deep in toward the center of the Galaxy, the bright core around which the spiral arms of the entire Milky Way ponderously swung.

He was part engrossed in the technique of moving his mind, part awed by the variety and beauty of the Galaxy, and part lost in the beauty of the mind within him. She moved with deft, clear thought like the chime of crystals. The sensory images of Earth were gross and distorted projections of the way he saw her, but she was at once the beating rhythm beneath rock-and-roll and the abstracted clarity of Chopin, the summer wind and the warmth of a wine. He held her mind within his in a new union so complete that anything else was mere fumbling.

"Thank you," he heard her voice say gently, and they sank down toward the rings of small planets they had come to visit.

A colony from Earth implied an atmosphere, and several planets in the group indeed looked fuzzy. The two Divers skimmed rapidly from one to another in a general survey, selected the largest of those which might support man, and sank down through its belts of radiation.

The central mass of land lay beneath thin clouds, through which the local sun shone in drifting spotlights over the cultivated areas and irregular groups of cities.

"When we get closer," her voice said, "you'll see them walking about inside their minds, which to us will be cloudy colored eggs around them. They cannot see this, of course, any more than a non-Psi or we ourselves on Earth. If it isn't obvious what they are thinking, we'll have to go close enough to touch their minds with ours. But be very careful before you do that. If they are very empty-minded, there is a risk that their body magnetism will polarize your mind in temporarily. You can get out again, but it's messy and unpleasant while it lasts. And it's almost impossible to avoid being sucked into a medium's mind, so I hope they haven't got any."

They were now over the main city and headed toward a large domed building, apparently modeled on the Capitol.

"How did they get here?" he asked.

"We don't really know. The contacts so far have been by radio to a very early investigating fleet. Obviously they must have come out after the hyper-space drive was invented--we're over twenty thousand light-years from Earth, here, I'm told--but they don't seem to realize the difficulties of sending them the envoy they asked for. Assuming these are the people that wanted one."

"Look, an old landcar--down there on the street!" he exclaimed.

The colony apparently still used ground vehicles. As they came closer, they could see people walking in the streets and moving in and out of doorways. There were no moving sidewalks, personal vertijets, anti-gravs. It was cleaner but otherwise as old-fashioned as the quarter in which Fred Williams lived on Earth.

"Imagine coming so far--to find this," he said, disappointed.

"You'll find colonies are usually several generations behind, but let's not be too hasty," she said. "We can have a look around later. First, let's see if we have the right planet and get this envoy matter out of the way. Down through the dome, here."

They passed through the weather sheathing and curved girders of the dome into an assembly hall full of human beings, seated around a central dais. The colonists had apparently been inspired by Congress. A quick glance at their minds showed they were politicians, no better and no worse than the Earth variety, intent on compromise and the exchange of benefits between the groups of interests they seemed to represent. Several carried visibly in their minds one fixed interest and a quick count showed that agriculture was, in one form or another, the main business of the colony.

"I think that answers it," she said. "We'll have to check on the other planets, but farm problems seem to be what they're most concerned about."

He felt dissatisfied. "Shouldn't we touch one of their minds to see if this is really the political center? It may only be a village meeting."

It seemed incongruous to use the wonderful reach of Diving to gather little facts like this and to depart knowing nothing else. Then again, he recalled the doctor describing it as a simple problem.

He felt her mind move understandingly within his. "All right, let's touch the Speaker and see how far his authority goes. He'd be very conscious of a superior Congress if there is one."

They moved together to the dais and brushed against the Speaker's mind. The short, bald man sitting impressively in the center of the bubble immediately leaned forward and banged his gavel. The entire assembly rose to their feet and stood still. The Speaker slouched in his chair. His mind shook off the influences of his body and rose up to touch the two of them.

"Welcome, at last," he said.

"You have been expecting us?"

"Of course. Though why do you say 'us'?"

They moved partly from each other, overlapping only at the extreme limit of their own minds, so that he could see there were two of them together.

A gasp sounded in the Speaker's mind like an echo and there was a movement throughout the assembly.

"Can they hear us?" Pat asked.

"Naturally. Psi capacity is a minimum requirement for the Senate. Can't you hear us?"

"Only by mental contact."

"How odd," the Speaker replied. "Still, we ourselves cannot merge in each other, only into housings."

"Housings?"

"But surely.... You must know. Of course you must."

"I'm afraid we don't."

"For heaven's sake, what part of the Solar System do you come from that you don't know a housing when you see one? Ganymede, Mercury, Jove, Venus, Bacchus? Although I was under the impression that the entire system used the same terms."

"One moment," Fred said. "What system are you talking about?"

"This system here, naturally."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet