“I’ve been rural for many years. But aren’t they always at war with someone?”
The ensign looked startled. “Not unless it’s to protect the peace of the galaxies. Earth is a peace- loving …”
Gunnderson cut him off. “Yes, I know. But how long have you been at war with the Delgarts? I thought they were our allies under some Treaty Pact or other?”
The spaceman’s face contorted in a picture of conditioned hatred. “We’ve been after the bastards since they jumped one of our mining planets outside their cluster.” He twisted his lips in open loathing. “We’ll clean the bastards out soon enough! Teach them to jump peaceful Earthmen.”
Gunnderson wished he could shut out the words. He had heard the same story all the way from A Centauri IX and back. Someone had always jumped someone else … someone was always at war with someone else … there were always bastards to be cleaned out … never any peace … never any peace …
The invership whipped past the myriad-odd colors of inverspace, hurtling through that not-space toward the alien cluster. Gunnderson sat in the teleport-proof stateroom, triple-coded loktite, and waited. He had no idea what they wanted of him, why they had tested him, why they had sent him through the preflight checkups, why he was in not-space. But he knew one thing: whatever it was, there was to be no peace for him … ever.
He silently cursed the strange mental power he had. The power to make the molecules of anything speed up tremendously, making them grind against one another, causing combustion. A strange, channeled teleport faculty that was useless for anything but the creation of fire. He damned it soulfully, wishing he had been born deaf, mute, blind, incapable of having to ward off the world.
From the first moment of his life when he had realized his strange power, he had been haunted. No control, no identification, no communication. Cut off. Tagged as an oddie. Not even the pleasures of being an acknowledged psioid, like the mindees, or the invaluable drivers, or the blasters, or the mallaports who could move the atoms of flesh to their design. He was an oddie. A strange breed, and worse: he was a nondirective psioid. Tagged deadly and uncontrollable. He could set the fires, but he could not control them. The molecules were too tiny, too quickly imitative for him to stop the activity once it was started. It had to stop of its own volition … and occasionally it was too long in stopping.
Once he had thought himself normal, once he had thought of leading an ordinary life — of perhaps becoming a musician. But that idea had died a-flaming, as all other normal ideas that had followed it.
First the ostracism, then the hunting, then the arrests and the prison terms, one after another. Now something new — something he could not understand. What did they want with him? It was obviously in connection with the mighty battle being fought between Earth and the Delgarts, but of what use could his unreliable powers be?
Why was he in this most marvelous of the new SpaceCom ships, heading toward the central sun of the enemy cluster? And why should he help Earth in any case?
At that moment the locks popped, the safe broke open, and the clanging of the alarms was heard to the bowels of the invership.
The ensign stopped him as he started to rise, started toward the safe. The ensign thumbed a button on his wrist console.
“Hold it, Mr. Gunnderson. I wasn’t told what was in there, but I was told to keep you away from it until the other two got here.”
Gunnderson slumped back hopelessly on the acceleration bunk. He dropped the harmonica to the metal floor and lowered his head into his hands. “What other two?”
“I don’t know, sir. I wasn’t told.”
The other two were psioids, naturally.
When the mindee and the blaster arrived, they motioned the Ensign to remove the contents of the safe. He walked over nervously, took out the tiny trecorder and the single speak-tip.
“Play it, Ensign,” the mindee directed.
The spaceman thumbed the speak-tip into the hole, and the grating of the blank space at the beginning of the tip filled the room.
“You can leave now, Ensign,” the Mindee said.
After the SpaceCom officer had securely loktited the door, the voice began. Gunnderson recognized it immediately as that of Terrence, head of SpaceCom. The man who had questioned him tirelessly at the Bureau building in Buenos Aires. Terrence, hero of another war, the Earth-Kyben war, now head of SpaceCom. The words were brittle, almost without inflection and to the point, yet they carried a sense of utmost importance:
“Gunnderson,” it began, “we have, as you already know, a job for you. By this time the ship will have reached central point of your trip through inverspace.
“You will arrive in two days Earthtime at a slipout point approximately five hundred million miles from Omalo, the enemy sun. You will be far behind enemy lines, but we are certain you will be able to accomplish your mission safely, that is why you have been given this new ship. It can withstand anything the enemy can throw.
“But we want you to get back for other reasons. You are the most important man in our war effort, Gunnderson, and it’s tied up with your mission.
“We want you to turn the sun Omalo into a supernova.”
Gunnderson, for the first time in thirty-eight years of bleak, gray life, was staggered. The very concept made his stomach churn. Turn another people’s sun into a flaming, gaseous bomb of incalculable power, spreading death into space, burning off the very layers of its being, charring into nothing the planets of the system? Annihilate in one move an entire culture?
Was it possible they thought him mad?
What did they think he was capable of?
Could he direct his mind to such a task?
Could he do it?
Should he do it?
His mind boggled at the possibility. He had never really considered himself as having many ideals. He had set fires in warehouses to get the owners their liability insurance; he had flamed other hobos who had tried to rob him; he had used the unpredictable power of his mind for many things, but this …
This was the murder of a solar system!
He wasn’t in any way sure he could turn a sun supernova. What was there to lead them to think he might be able to do it? Burning a forest and burning a giant red sun were two things fantastically far apart. It was something out of a nightmare. But even if he could …
“In case you find the task unpleasant, Mr. Gunnderson,” the ice-chip voice of the SpaceCom head continued, “we have included in this ship’s complement a mindee and a blaster.”
“Their sole job is to watch and protect you, Mr. Gunnderson. To make certain you are kept in the proper, er, patriotic state of mind. They have been instructed to read you from this moment on, and should you not be willing to carry out your assignment … well, I’m certain you are familiar with a blaster’s capabilities.”
Gunnderson stared at the blank-faced telepath sitting across from him on the other bunk. The man was obviously listening to every thought in Gunnderson’s head. A strange, nervous expression was on the mindee’s face. His glaze turned to the blaster who accompanied him, then back to Gunnderson.
The pyrotic swiveled a glance at the blaster, then swiveled away as quickly.
Blasters were men meant to do one job, one job only, and a certain type of man he became, he had to be, to be successful doing that job. They all looked the same, and Gunnderson found the look almost terrifying. He had not thought he could be terrified, any more.
“That is your assignment, Gunnderson, and if you have any hesitance, remember they are not human. They are extraterrestrials as unlike you as you are unlike a slug. And remember there’s a war on … you will be saving the lives of many Earthmen by performing this task.