Vera signalled the two men to keep their minds locked, when they were about to relax. Understanding, for it might be a ruse to discover them, they waited. It was not till three hours later that they cautiously opened their minds. No mental probe greeted them.
“They’ve gone back to Earth,” sighed York, “as they said.” He went on heavily. “They have won. We know now that we can’t penetrate their screen. They can ours, in a longer battle.”
“But, Tony, why can’t we build a better screen, and find some force to penetrate theirs?” suggested Vera.
York shook his head. “It would take years—centuries! In that time, civilization will be destroyed, the very thing we’re trying to save. Don’t you see, Vera? The Eternals are eighteen thousand years ahead of us. Ahead of Kaligor, too, for he lay impotent, dreaming, for that long time while they crawled up on the scale of science.”
“Impotent! Dreaming!” Kaligor gave a mental sigh. “Yes, dreaming. Ah, if I could only use some of the science of my dream world! Mirbel and Binti, that time they fought the triple minds of Kashtal, had a wonderful weapon… But it is no use. Their science was of the six-dimensional Universe, useless in ours. All dream stuff, all?, all——”
York and Vera almost pitied him, as he faded away into his dream world again, where all harsh realities could be solved.
“There’s only one hope,” pondered York. “Developing the telekinetic force. If we made a larger concentrator, one for all three of our minds at once, we might get a large enough blast out of it to smash their screen, instead of just pushing them away. What do you think of that, Kaligor?”
But Kaligor was lost in his dream, and Vera firmly silenced York’s half angry shouts to awake him.
“Tony,” she said softly, “waking from a beautiful dream ’is the worst feeling in all the world. Let poor Kaligor break into waking life gradually. He has been twenty thousand years in that other world—only a few days in ours!”
A week later, after a slow, careful cruise lest the Eternal’ detect them with long-range finders, they landed on an isolated section of the Moon, away from mining outposts.
Despite their grim situation, it amused them to tune into the radio news from the world of mortals.
“A dozen more ships have now docked, with burned-out instruments, and reported the same mysterious occurrence of last week, out in space somewhere between Earth and Moon,” said one announcer. “Without warning, loose energy of some sort surged in that area, burning out all radios, lighting systems, and intership phones. Dr. Emanuel Harper, famous physicist, estimates that some forty-five trillion ergs of energy were expended in a few minutes, at some point thousands of miles away from his particular ship.
“This would be enough energy to light all of Sol City for three thousand years! It was all scattered away in a few minutes. Who or what could do that? Is Anton York out there somewhere? What is he doing? A thousand years ago he moved planets. Is he preparing some similar engineering feat, to astound mankind?”
Vera smiled wanly. “Another chapter in the mythology of Anton York is writing itself. The truth they would not even believe!”
Tooling their scientific knowledge, Kaligor and York worked out a large-sized brain wave concentrator. In the workshop room of York’s, ship was every conceivable scientific tool. For raw material they used the molecules of the lunar terrain, shaping them into any metal, or product with applied chemical telekinesis.
They tested the machine one day. All three of them poured a combined mental command into the receiver. With creaks and groans that they felt as vibration through the ship, a nearby lunar mountain moved back ten feet!
“Remember that old Biblical adage, Vera?” said York, awed himself. “If ye have faith, ye can move a mountain!” York had moved much greater things at one time—whole worlds in fact. But he had used world-moving energies produced through gigantic machines. What they had done now had been done purely through mind, with the veriest of thoughts. And thoughts were limitless in scope.
They could have commanded the mountain to dance away and plunge into space at the speed of light, had they wished. Even so, would this peat new force prevail against the ultra-scientific Eternal Three?
They sailed to Earth, boldly now. The Three Eternals had already begun construction of a marble home, like that on Mount Olympus, on the key island in the Pacific. Their green-hulled ship came to meet them. Over the ocean waters they battled.
The Eternals hurled their Jovian charges of energy against York’s screen, rapidly wearing it down. Keeping their nerves in check, York, Vera and Kaligor stood before their brain wave projector. At Kaligor’s signal, they thrust a common mental command into the receiver.
A measurelessly powerful telekinetic beam leaped for the enemy ship. But nothing happened. Its screen did not buckle, as they had hoped.
And the ship itself did not even budge one inch, where at least it should have been dashed away!
“Failed, didn’t it?” came the taunting telepathic voice from the Three Eternals. “We managed to deduce it was telekinetic force with which you escaped last time. We’ve installed a simple enough counter radiator that split your beam and caused it to flow around your ship.”
Beyond, where the split beam rejoined and angled down to the ocean’s broad bosom, water churned madly. A mile-wide hole appeared, clapped together again and sent a mile-high wall of water rolling toward distant shores. Hours later, several coastal cities of mortal man would be wrecked by the greatest “tidal wave” in history.
“And now,” came the frosty announcement, “prepare for death!”
A particularly vicious blast shook York’s ship and nearly burst through his screen. York jerked his ship up and away. Flight again! But with no hope this time of escape.
So it seemed. Hounding them, the Eternals’ ship prepared to send its final barrage against York’s tattered screen. In another moment—annihilation.
But queerly, the Eternals suddenly lost the range. Their ship blundered past, almost striking them, and went on, as though searching. Soon it had lost itself in the curtain of space. York saw then that Kaligor was still standing before the telekinesis projector.
Only now he turned away.
“Hypnosis,” he explained wearily, as though it had drained all his wind. “I hypnotized them into the belief that we had suddenly become invisible. Change course quickly, York. They will be back in an instant. It won’t work twice.” York, as once before, shifted the ship at random arcs till they were far from their original position. The Eternals did not appear. Safe, for the time being.
They hardly spoke to one another in the next hour, as their ship cruised slowly in space. With the brain wave projector useless against the Eternals, they could think of no other weapon or force to, try.
“But we have to do something,” said York haggardly. “We can’t give up. Kaligor, there anything—anything—”
Kaligor shrugged wearily and lapsed into his escape world of dreams. York almost envied him and wished that he might dream so pleasantly. But York’s dreams, lately, had been nightmares in which the Three Eternals endlessly chased him to the remotest corners of space and time.
Vera smiled at him wanly.
“You must rest, Tony,” she admonished gently. “Let’s forget about the Three Eternals for a while. Maybe our minds, fresher, will think of something later. Let’s look out at the peaceful stars.”