He would exclaim delightedly and hurl it toward one of the twenty-seven other mutants in his compartment. Until the time he hit John in the back of the head with it, his intended victims had always parried it. John lay in a pool of blood, and Calvin began to cry—loud, shrill wails of despair and contrition. When Forential came, he knew instinctively what had happened.
Calvin represented the only failure the aliens had experienced in their mutation program; ten years ago his mind had ceased to develop. But for Forential’s intercession, the council would have had him destroyed long ago; Forential, like a proud parent, kept hoping to overcome Calvin’s heredity.
Forential waved his tentacles in exasperation. “You, here, Walt,” he said. “We’ll have to hurry. I’ll show you how, and you can do it.”
Walt, the most adept mutant in the compartment, listened attentively and then began to heal John. His face wrinkled in deep concentration. Flesh came together; blood ceased to flow; bone knitted. Forential grunted approval.
“Watch Walt, now,” the alien instructed. “He’s doing it nicely.”
The others, breath held, watched.
At length John’s head was healed. John stirred. He opened his eyes and looked about angrily. He stood up and hit Calvin in the face with his fist. Calvin, tears streaming down his cheeks, fingered his nose and sobbed brokenly. He put out a hand to touch Walt reassuringly.
Walt was his friend.
Walt—he had no other name—was six feet two inches tall, and, as Julia observed, handsome. His parents—he did not know this—were Americans; he had never seen them. He had been stolen from the hospital by Forential shortly after he was born. The alien, invisible, had come for him, clucked softly, wrapped him in a warm, invisible mantle, and taken him away; and the council of aliens had drawn a line through the names of another set of parents who had been exposed to the powerful, mutation-inducing field. Walt thought of Forential—in charge of their compartment—as a friend, as a parent, as a playmate, and as a counselor.
*
Shortly after Walt had healed John, the mutants of the smaller compartment gathered at the observation screen in the floor—or what was to them the floor: it was actually the broad rim of the wheel. They could look down at the screen and see a somewhat flickering image of Earth lying below their feet.
“Forential told us we’d get many strange powers . . . .” one said.
Just before we went down to the planet, another completed the thought.
It’s growing time, then.
They laughed together with excitement, and Calvin cracked his knuckles nervously.
“Let’s play a trick on Forential,” Calvin said. “Let’s see if we can go through the bulkhead.” His face was bright and hopeful. “Let’s huh?”
Calvin raced to the far end of the compartment. “Come on!”
Like guilty children, they looked at one another. Then a few of them joined Calvin. All right, let’s.
“Don’t,” Walt cautioned. “It’s just machinery on the other side.”
Why can’t our thoughts penetrate it, then?
We aren’t developed enough, Walt thought.
“Huh?” Calvin asked. He began pounding the bulkhead with his fist.
“No,” one of the other mutants said. “Like this.” He concentrated and tried to put a hand through the bulkhead.
We aren’t developed enough.
Still the mutants continued. Since the aliens had stepped up the power in the two transmitters (power that closed the final connection in the mutants’ brains and held it closed) the mutants were able to assault any problem with the full potentialities of the human brain. But even that was not enough. The aliens had planned carefully in order to keep the two mutant groups from discovering each other.
*
Forential came to make a special announcement. He spoke English with an accent that the mutants (who had learned the language from him) could not even imitate. As he surveyed them, his eyes shone with pride: they were a good, sturdy, healthy lot. “Children,” he said. “Earth is now in the middle of a war. There will be little work left for us within another two months.”
Calvin cried and waved his arms wildly and bounced the ball viciously around the room. Every earthman who killed an earthman was depriving him personally, of a victim. He wrung his hands.
“There’ll be a thousand or so left, Calvin,” Forential promised. “You must practice very diligently to be able to cope with them.”
Calvin sniffed and shook his head. “I can kill that many in a minute. You stop the war, Forential, please.”
“Think of it this way,” Forential said. “The less work there is to do, the sooner you can return to your own planet.”
“There’s no earthmen to kill on Lyria,” Calvin insisted stubbornly. “Please stop the war.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The alien smiled kindly. “You have the proper spirit. You are all very good children. You hurry, now, and practice all you can.”
I can see Lyria’s star now, Walt thought. We’ll be home in another year, then. How welcome that will be . . . .
He had not broadcast the thought. And suddenly, as if on another channel, another frequency, he felt Calvin in his mind and his mind in Calvin’s—an odd, unexpected blending of thoughts that seemingly had occurred unconsciously.
Forential describes it so it is so pretty, our planet, Calvin was thinking: Green wartle rivers whack throw the ball at him, easy now . . . . God, I hate those earthmen.
“I’ll practice,” Walt made Calvin say. He made Calvin hold the ball stationary. Then the contact between their minds was broken.
“Who did that?” Calvin demanded. “I’ll hit him and break all his bones!”
Forential smiled sadly at Calvin and withdrew.
“It’s nearly time,” a mutant rejoiced. “God, I hate them, every one of them.”
The mutants instinctively began forming their minds for the death radiation.
“They’ll issue the rods shortly,” Walt said.
Hatred blazed on Calvin’s face. He had already forgotten about the contact a moment before. “I will kill them even without a rod.”
“The radiation isn’t lethal unless we have something to focus it with, remember that.”
“With my hands!” Calvin cried happily. “I will kill them with my hands!”
Sweat beaded John’s face. “There will be enough of killing.”
It will be great pleasure to hunt them down.
They will kill some of us, Walt thought back. And, to himself: I wish I could be afraid.
Not me! Calvin thought joyously. It was uncertain when Calvin could telepath. Not me!
They have powerful weapons, too. Atom bombs, they are called. It will not be easy to kill them all. This thought came as a reminder from one of the aliens.
Calvin moved his powerful hands. “I can kill them all by myself.”
*
The smaller compartment, itself, was huge. To the left lay the hydroponics tanks, and to the right, the mutants’ cubicles.