Rocket to Limbo

“By ESP.” Peter grinned. “There’s nothing magical or fantastic about it. You’ve seen enough of our own teleps to know extra-sensory powers exist. These people just know how to control those powers.”

They moved on through the maze of buildings. “Can you show me the ships?” Lars wanted to know.

“Afraid not. They’re forbidden. The City-people don’t want us near them.”

“How about the place where the men are—sleeping?”

“That’s even worse. The City-people themselves don’t like to go there. You might talk them into taking you there later, but right now I don’t think we should do anything to ruffle our hosts.”

“I suppose not.” Lars shook his head. “The thing that bothers me the most about this whole thing is how much these City-people look like humans. They’ve got fingerprints, did you notice? And their skin, and their hair, their musculature—I couldn’t tell the difference, unless I looked at their faces, and then I couldn’t be sure.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Peter said grimly. “The resemblance is more striking every time you see them close up. In fact, for my money, the resemblance is too striking.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’d swear by everything I believe in that these people are Earthmen.” Peter made an angry gesture. “It’s just about driving me crazy. They look like Earthmen, but they don’t begin to act like them. They’re like children. Their whole life revolves on this extra-sensory control of things. They use ESP just as naturally as they breathe, and yet they have no sense of logic whatever. Their minds are totally alien. They have no concept of science, or of machinery, or anything else. They don’t know about anything outside this city and this planet, and they don’t care, or didn’t until now. I’m certain that they honestly don’t know what we mean when we tell them we come from another planet of another star. But who are they? Where do they come from?”

“Have you asked them?” Lars said.

“I’ve asked them until I was black in the face. I might as well not have bothered. They didn’t even understand the question.”

They moved about the city until the sky began to darken, and then turned back to their quarters. As they walked through the corridor with the viewscreens, Lars stopped short. “Hold it,” he said. “I thought you told me they had no concept of science or mechanics. How did they get those things?”

“That’s a good question,” Peter said. “Try one once, and see what you think.”

Lars sat down before one of the gray screens. “How do you work it?”

Peter opened a wall slot and withdrew a small, flat cartridge. He fit this onto a spool at the side of the screen. Abruptly the screen leaped into life with the pale blue color Lars had seen before. There was a flickering geometric pattern, but no image that Lars could recognize. “Now what?”

“It’s a little tricky,” Peter conceded. “That’s not a 3-V screen, and the tape on that cartridge doesn’t work quite like a 3-V tape. You’ve got to—well, sort of tune in on it yourself. Watch it for a minute.”

Lars watched the screen. At first there was nothing. Then, gradually, he noticed a tingling in his fingers and toes. Images began to form on the screen, or in his mind, he couldn’t tell which for sure. Not a story, just a series of impressions drifting through his mind as he stared. He felt his scalp crawl. “Say, what is this thing doing?” he said, jumping up from it angrily.

The images on the screen blinked out.

“It’s projecting,” said Peter. “Our 3-Vs depend on visual images and audible sounds to get through to us. This little gadget by-passes the eyes and ears and goes right straight in. It projects mental images instead of visual images. That’s what you were picking up. The thing can be reversed so that you project to it and it records like a tape recorder.”

“But what was I seeing?”

Peter shrugged. “To the City-people what you just saw was a “history text.”

“It didn’t look like a history text to me. It didn’t make any sense at all.”

“Well, it’s the closest to recorded history that they have. Oh, they have a word-of-mouth sort of history. Maybe I should say ‘word-of-mind.’ You know, legends and superstitions. But as for recording history—” Peter scowled at the viewscreen. “I’m dead sure these people never made these screens. They couldn’t have. They couldn’t know how. They don’t know enough about science in general, or electronics in particular, to have done it.”

They walked through the filmy door into their quarters. “But who did make the screens, then?” asked Lars.

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “But I’ve got an idea. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’d swear that there is another land of creature on Wolf IV. A creature completely different from these City-people. I don’t know where, but I’m sure of it. The City-people know about them, and have been in contact with them, somehow.”

Lars chewed his lip. “Wait a minute, you mean the ones they call the Masters?”