Rocket to Limbo

“We went over to the place where the ship had been, and began looking around for it, and then, just like that, we weren’t there, any more, but here. In the city. In a room with a dozen aliens, stripped of our weapons. I still haven’t found out what they did with our machine pistols. And every single one of the men dead asleep except me.”

“Except you,” Lars repeated.

“That’s right.”

“First you, then me. What’s so special about usF*

“You find me the answer for that, and we’d be on our way out of here,” Peter said grimly. “I don’t know why, and the City-people here either can’t or won’t tell me why.”

“Coincidence?” said Lars.

Peter snorted. “Do you think so?”

“But what else? What have they been doing with you?”

“Giving me lessons.”

“Look, lessons mean teaching something,” Lars protested.

“What are they trying to teach you?”

“I’ve been trying to find that out every since they started. I haven’t an inkling. But I know one thing. From the minute I turned up in this city, the City-people have been trying to teach me something, with every technique and resource at their disposal.” Peter gave him a grin. “So chew on that for a while.”

“Can you show me around this place, or are we locked in?”

“We’re free as the wind except at lesson-time,” said Peter wryly.

“Then show me around a bit.”

They left the quarters and started out on a tour of the remarkable city, Peter with a firm step, Lars walking in fear and trembling lest the airy structure of the place should suddenly tumble down upon them like a house of cards. They walked across a high bridge from their building (which Lars could have sworn was not there when they had first come) and around a long circular staircase down toward the ground. The end of the staircase was twenty feet up, so that it appeared that they must turn around and come back, but as they neared the end, the building, staircase and all, obligingly drifted down to firm ground for them.

Lars shook his head uneasily. “This is what I can’t understand,” he said, pointing to the staircase, which was rising up again. “This business of now-it’s-one-place-now-another. I see it happening, but I can’t quite get myself to believe it. Things don’t just up and vanish.”

“It’s the way they live,” Peter said. “Your bed last night, was it comfortable?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good and steady? It didn’t lurch around when you crawled in?”

“No, it was steady enough.”

“Well, have you figured out what held it up, yet?”

“No.”

“I don’t think you’re going to, either, because nothing was holding it up. These City-people have almost complete telepathic control of everything around them. Just the way the telep on 3-V back home can control the ball in the box.”

“Then these things are a result of extra-sensory perception?” Lars asked incredulously. “That’s impossible! Nobody has ever learned how to control extra-sensory powers like this, not even the most skillful telep on Earth.”

“The City-people do,” said Peter. “It’s what we think of as extra-sensory power, but with them it’s refined beyond anything we’ve ever seen on Earth. With these people it’s completely unconscious: telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, anything you want to call it. They control it. Their whole culture and civilization is based on it.”

Lars shook his head in confusion. “Our scientists on Earth have been working with ESP for centuries and they’ve never learned how to control it,” he said. “Some of them even claim it never can be controlled or useful for anything.”

“Well, these people can certainly use it,” Peter said. “You notice what a hodge-podge this city is?”

Lars nodded. “It looks as though the city planners were out to lunch when the plans were drawn up.”

“There weren’t any city planners. These people arrange things strictly to suit themselves. They can move a single molecule or the side of a mountain, individually or collectively, just by deciding that they want it moved. Their houses float when they want them to, or sit on the ground when they want them to. If they get bored with one kind of house they rearrange it into another kind. Since they travel around almost entirely by teleportation, the doors and windows are ninety per cent decoration. That’s why you see doorways like that.” Peter pointed to an oval-shaped building they were passing. It had pale orange doorways shaped like tall slender triangles.

“But what do they live on?” Lars asked. “They do eat, don’t they? How do they grow crops on a barren place like this?”

“That’s just it, they don’t need to grow crops! There’s plenty of plant and animal life on the planet, with plenty of protein, and fat, and carbohydrate molecules on hand. They simply rearrange them into palatable combinations when they get hungry. I suppose they could start with sub-atomic particles and work themselves up a genuine Montana beef steak, if they knew what one was.”

“By ESP,” said Lars.