He went to her room. He clasped her hand between his.
—Satina?
—Morning so soon, doctor?
—It’s still early, Satina. But things are a little unusual here today. We need your help. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I think you can be of great value to us, and maybe even to yourself. Listen to me very carefully, and think it over before you say yes or no—
God help me if I’m wrong, Mookherji thought, far below the level of telepathic transmission.
Chilled, alone, growing groggy with dismay and hopelessness, the Vsiir had made no attempts at contact for several hours now. What was the use? The results were always the same when it touched a human mind; it was exhausting itself and apparently bothering the humans, to no purpose. Now the sun had risen. The Vsiir contemplated slipping out of the building and exposing itself to the yellow solar radiation while dropping all defenses; it would be a quick death, an end to all this misery and longing. It was folly to dream of seeing the home planet again. And—
What was that?
A call. Clear, intelligible, unmistakable. Come to me. An open mind somewhere on this level, speaking neither the human language nor the Vsiir language, but using the wordless, universally comprehensible communion that occurs when mind speaks directly to mind. Come to me. Tell me everything. How can I help you?
In its excitement the Vsiir slid up and down the spectrum, emitting a blast of infrared, a jagged blurt of ultraviolet, a lively blaze of visible light, before getting control. Quickly it took a fix on the direction of the call. Not far away: down this corridor, under this door, through this passage. Come to me. Yes. Yes. Extending its mind-probes ahead of it, groping for contact with the beckoning mind, the Vsiir hastened forward.
Mookherji, his mind locked to Satina’s, felt the sudden crashing shock of the nightmare moving in, and even at second remove the effect was stunning in its power. He perceived a clicking sensation of mind touching mind. And then, into Satina’s receptive spirit, there poured—
A wall higher than Everest. Satina trying to climb it, scrambling up a smooth white face, digging fingertips into minute crevices. Slipping back one yard for every two gained. Below, a roiling pit, flames shooting up, foul gases rising, monsters with needle-sharp fangs waiting for her to fall. The wall grows taller. The air is so thin she can barely breathe, her eyes are dimming, a greasy hand is squeezing her heart, she can feel her veins pulling free of her flesh like wires coming out of a broken plaster ceiling, and the gravitational pull is growing constantly—pain, her lungs crumbling, her face sagging hideously—a river of terror surging through her skull—
—None of it is real, Satina. They’re just illusions. None of it is really happening.
—Yes, she says, yes, I know, but still she resonates with fright, her muscles jerking at random, her face flushed and sweating, her eyes fluttering beneath the lids. The dream continues. How much more can she stand?
—Give it to me, he tells her. Give me the dream!
She does not understand. No matter. Mookherji knows how to do it. He is so tired that fatigue is unimportant; somewhere in the realm beyond collapse he finds unexpected strength, and reaches into her numbed soul, and pulls the hallucinations forth as though they were cobwebs. They engulf him. No longer does he experience them indirectly; now all the phantoms are loose in his skull, and, even as he feels Satina relax, he braces himself against the onslaught of unreality that he has summoned into himself. And he copes. He drains the excess of irrationality out of her and winds it about his consciousness, and adapts, learning to live with the appalling flood of images. He and Satina share what is coming forth. Together they can bear the burden; he carries more of it than she does, but she does her part, and now neither of them is overwhelmed by the parade of bogeys. They can laugh at the dream monsters; they can even admire them for being so richly fantastic. That beast with a hundred heads, that bundle of living copper wires, that pit of dragons, that coiling mass of spiky teeth—who can fear what does not exist?
Over the clatter of bizarre images Mookherji sends a coherent thought, pushing it through Satina’s mind to the alien.
—Can you turn off the nightmares?
—No, something replies. They are in you, not in me. I only provide the liberating stimulus. You generate the images.
—All right. Who are you, and what do you want here?
—I am a Vsiir.
—A what?
—Native life form of the planet where you collect the greenfire branches. Through my own carelessness I was transported to your planet. Accompanying the message is an overriding impulse of sadness, a mixture of pathos, self-pity, discomfort, exhaustion. Above this the nightmares still flow, but they are insignificant now. The Vsiir says, I wish only to be sent home. I did not want to come here.
And this is our alien monster? Mookherji thinks. This is our fearsome nightmare-spreading beast from the stars?
—Why do you spread hallucinations?
—This was not my intention. I was merely trying to make mental contact. Some defect in the human receptive system, perhaps—I do not know. I do not know. I am so tired, though. Can you help me?
—We’ll send you home, yes, Mookherji promises. Where are you? Can you show yourself to me? Let me know how to find you, and I’ll notify the starport authorities, and they’ll arrange for your passage home on the first ship out.
Hesitation. Silence. Contact wavers and perhaps breaks.
Well? Mookherji says, after a moment. What’s happening? Where are you?
From the Vsiir an uneasy response:
—How can I trust you? Perhaps you merely wish to destroy me. If I reveal myself—
Mookherji bites his lip in sudden fury. His reserve of strength is almost gone; he can barely sustain the contact at all. And if he now has to find some way of persuading a suspicious alien to surrender itself, he may run out of steam before he can settle things. The situation calls for desperate measures.
—Listen, Vsiir. I’m not strong enough to talk much longer, and neither is this girl I’m using. I invite you into my head. I’ll drop all defenses if you can look at who I am, look hard, and decide for yourself whether you can trust me. After that it’s up to you. I can help you get home, but only if you produce yourself right away.
He opens his mind wide. He stands mentally naked.
The Vsiir rushes into Mookherji’s brain.
A hand touched Mookherji’s shoulder. He snapped awake instantly, blinking, trying to get his bearings. Lee Nakadai stood above him. They were in—where?—Satina Ransom’s room. The pale light of early morning was coming through the window; he must have dozed only a minute or so. His head was splitting.
“We’ve been looking all over for you, Pete,” Nakadai said.
“It’s all right now,” Mookherji murmured. “It’s all right.” He shook his head to clear it. He remembered things. Yes. On the floor, next to Satina’s bed, squatted something about the size of a frog, but very different in shape, color, and texture from any frog Mookherji had ever seen. He showed it to Nakadai. “That’s the Vsiir,” Mookherji said. “The alien terror. Satina and I made friends with it. We talked it into showing itself. Listen, it isn’t happy here, so will you get hold of a starport official fast, and explain that we’ve got an organism here that has to be shipped back to Norton’s Star at once, and—”