The Star Magicians

10. THE COUNCIL OF WIZARDS

LURN FELT as if the last few days had been a weird, fantastic dream. Events so curious and different, jammed into so brief a span of time, lent a sense of nightmarish unreality to her experiences.

First, Drask’s discovery of her secret role as spy for the Goddess, then imprisonment, miraculous escape, the incredible unmasking of Perion as the mysterious and mighty White Wizard of Parlion … then their swift departure from the trader’s world and the race through space to weird, ghostly Xulthoom. She had watched with awe and amazement Calastor’s heroic struggle to destroy the Star Rovers and prevent their inexorable attack on the Nucleus-world.

For two days and nights the White Wizard remained awake, strapped to a battery of fantastic machines, a curious crystal helmet fastened to his head. With the aid of obscure antisomnificant drugs from remote Delaquoth the World of the Narcotic-Blenders, he had conquered fatigue and sleep, staving off exhaustion for fifty-three hours, while his amazingly-developed brain, amplified by mechanistic means, probed the Mist-World far below their invisible, orbiting ship.

To her, this was magic of the most inexplicable kind. But he had carefully explained the scientific principles behind what he was attempting to perform.

“We of the White Adepts know that the ultimate weapon is a medium for the conquest of the human mind,” he had explained to her as they ate a simple, hurried meal. “Men have always realized this, and from the dawn of history have invented various means of overcoming the minds of others … from the indirect attempts of poetry, music, propaganda, semantics, and psychology, through more blunt and overwhelming devices: hypnosis, narcotics, and the like.”

He had gestured towards the complex device into which he would soon be strapped again. “The ultimate perfection is simplicity itself. Mastery of a human mind can only be achieved through fullest use of another human mind. This instrument amplifies and focuses my mental images, broadcasting them to receptive minds on Xulthoom below. I am trying to play upon the primitive terrors and superstitions which are integral to the nature of the Barbarian, and his chief weakness.”

He grinned, a flash of mischief momentarily relieving the pallor of weariness and strain in his face.

“The Warlord’s choice of Xulthoom as the next milestone in his pattern of conquest played directly into my hands—thanks be to Shalakh, Lord of Luck! With its repellent Hooded Men, the brooding mystery of the age-old castle, the mind-torturing monotony of the crystalline desert, the ever-whining wind, the illusion-making mists, it seems almost created and designed with my plan in mind! So I envision for them black phantoms … whispering voices … icy, clutching fingers … and the tight-beam broadcasts the artificial emotion of terror into the consciousness of the Rovers, until by now they are starting at every shadow, every sound, their tempers exploding into murderous rage at the slightest opposition or fancied insult. A few more days of this and I will have the entire fleet at each others’ throats!”

“It still sounds like sorcery to me, the more you try to explain it by science,” Lurn confessed, pouring him another cup of steaming, fragrant kaf.

“Not really. The phenomenon we call ‘thought’ is simply a coded pattern of electrical impulses. The human brain is really nothing more or less than a marvelously compact and efficient electrochemical battery. The Adepts of Parlion discovered by sheer accident the dynamics that led up to the perfection of this device.” He nodded at the crystal helmet “They were exploring the full length of the electromagnetic spectrum, seeking to fill in the blank spots in our mastery of the full range of waveforms of radiant energy—”

He broke off, seeing the bafflement in her great wondering eyes—lovely eyes, it suddenly occurred to him, and in a hauntingly beautiful face.

“It begins to sound like magic when I begin to use these technical terms, eh? Well, let me put it this way. Light travels in waves, Lurn, like the ripples on a still pond. The color of this light is controlled by the distance between the ripples. Ripples very close together strike the nerves in our eyes in a steady stream. Rat-tat-tatatat. We see a color—purple. Ripples further apart—‘slower’ waves, rat … tat … tat—we see blue. The slower the wave, and we go through the colors, blue, green, yellow, to red. Are you understanding this?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Listen carefully, then. For upon this is based all of the magic and miracles of Parlion. This is the secret of our power.” ( … Speaking of color, he thought, bemused, her eyes are dimmest, shadowy purple… .) Firmly exerting control over his wandering thoughts, he continued his revelations.

“Now, beyond the colors we can see, light continues to vibrate—in both directions, ‘slower’ at one end, to what we call infrared rays, down all the way to radio waves. The distance between one ‘wavecrest’ and the next, in the radio-section of the spectrum, is astonishingly large, measured in kilometers. While up above the octave of visible light, at the purple end as you might say, are ultraviolet rays—the invisible part of sunlight that tans your skin. Above that— and the waves are getting closer together all the time, remember—come x-rays, gamma and lambda radiation, cosmic rays and, presumably, even higher wavelengths. You see, girl, all forms of energy seem to belong to the spectrum. The difference between radio, light, and cosmic rays is just a matter of frequency—the ‘quickness’ or ‘slowness’ with which the waves ‘hit’ an object.”

“Yes, I see. But I don’t see what this has to do with your magic powers.”

He grinned. “All right. Now, I have just said there seems no reason why still swifter-frequency, unknown forms of radiation could not exist above the known wavelengths—or below them, for that matter. In fact, the Adepts did discover these unknown wavelengths above cosmic rays, very early in Parlion’s history. They are called the transcosmics, or ‘Cherenski Radiation’ after their discoverer. And, to get technical about it, their frequencies lie in the vicinity of ten-to-the-twenty-fifth-power cycles per second—and the wavelengths are measured in the range of point-oh-oh-one Siegbahn Units. These are the frequencies erf telepathic thought, and they went undiscovered for ten thousand years of history. Up there in the millionth-of-an-Angstrom band was hidden the wavelengths of the human mind, and of life itself, long known to be electrical but never measured until the age of the Interregnum, long after the Empire of the Galaxy had fallen. It was perhaps the most momentous discovery in science since the perfection of man’s use of atomic power.”

Now Lurn was fascinated, following with rapt absorption the White Wizard’s account of this unknown page of scientific history. The secret of Parlion—the secret behind magic! “X-rays penetrate solid matter. This is due to their wavelength. The shorter the wavelength the greater the penetration. X-rays are stopped by a layer of lead or cadmium. Cosmics, with even shorter wavelengths, pass through lead as if it were empty air. Very little, short of a few miles of planetary crust, stops the cosmics. Nothing stops the transcosmics.

“Our so-called magic is simply a technical control over thought. Through mental surgery, power-cells in the brain are stimulated to extraordinary efficiency. Gland-stimulation by sonic-beams gives us more mental power. My magic is of the mind. The old shaman was mistaken when he assumed the illusion-ring that gave me the likeness of Perion the Piper altered light, creating a visual illusion. It helped me manipulate the Rovers’ minds, creating a mental illusion. Yonder apparatus magnifies the strength of my mental waves—pushes them up to fantastic heights, somewhat over a quantum energy of between ten and one hundred billion electron volts. This is necessary, because with my one mind I am telepathing mental illusions into hundreds of minds across near-interplanetary distances.”

“But the way you ‘bent’ space, when you transported us from the Hall of Zargon to the seaside hill where your invisible ship was waiting. That was not a mental illusion, surely!” Lurn protested.

“No illusion, girl, but still a mental feat. Distance, you see, is an imaginary distinction between one ‘point’ and another—affected by size, velocity, viewpoint, and duration of observation. Lizaar of Algon nearly three centuries ago demonstrated that space is not rigid, but plastic (these are very imprecise terms, but I have no time to teach you the language of plenum mechanics)—to a mind of near-infinite size, velocity, or of supertemporal viewpoint, distance would be purely an illusion of limited sense. To put it very, very simply, what I did was to convince my conscious mind we were on that hilltop—and we were. Parlion has evolved a system of mental discipline beyond any other known.”

Leaving her with these marvels to digest, he had then returned to the crystal helmet and continued his telepathic seige of Xulthoom.

When Drask shattered the radium-ruby, and the Goddess spoke, it was nearly as astounding a surprise to Calastor as to the Warlord or the shaman. The other phantom terrors of Xulthoom had been the work of Calastor’s superb mentality, intensified beyond the limits of human capability by the artificial resonance-accelerator and projector embodied in the crystal helmet.

But this was intervention from an Unknown.

An unwelcome intervention, too, as it spurred the frayed temper of the Warlord, motivating him to abandon looting the World of Mists and to initiate his long-dreaded assault on the Nucleus-world of the future empire.

When that decision had been put into action, Calastor abandoned his mental bombardment, quit the mind-multiplying machine and went swiftly to the controls. The slim cruiser leapt from her orbit and hurtled through the void to a region of space well clear of the interference of planetary magnetic fields. Calastor was going to attempt telepathic communication with Parlion across the awful gulf of interstellar space. Well he knew so terrific an effort might burn out his brain, but the only way he could destroy the Star Rovers lay in summoning aid from the White Order.

Before he could attempt communication, something began to happen—

The first sign of it was noticed by Lurn. The girl felt a curious, gathering tension in the cabin. Her skin crawled. Her scalp prickled. The very air seemed charged with electrical excitement, as it does before a sudden thunderstorm.

Lurn shrieked!

Seven ghostly figures materialized within the cabin.

They faded into visibility with magical swiftness and ease, like developing a photograph. One moment you are dipping a blank white film in the chemical solution; in the next instant the film bears a picture.

“Lurn—fear nothing! These are friends,” Calastor said, slipping his arm reassuringly about her slim shoulders. He strode forward to greet their mysterious visitors.

They were seven men, naked except for loincloths of immaculate white fabrics. At first glance they seemed old— and old. Some were diminutive, others tall and gaunt. Some were bald, others wore snowy manes of untrimmed hair. A few were clean-shaven, others wore long, patriarchal white beards. Strangely, at second glance, Lurn could not tell whether they were very old … or agelessly young. Their eyes were clear, sharp, alert. Warm good humor sparkled there, but there was also the sense of scalpel-keen minds: intellects vast and cool and awesome. But no visible signs of age showed in their straight, erect posture. The old men had faces smooth and unlined, where ancients Lurn had seen on other planets wore visages of sagging, worn-out tissues, pouched, tired eyes and flabby, pendulous jowls. These men had the faces of youths, and only the faintly visible tracery of millions of tiny wrinkles betrayed any greater age.

Their bodies, too, did not bear the ravages of time. Smooth-muscled, slim, tanned and healthy, they moved with the lithe vigor of the young and strong.

These were the Arch Adepts of the Order, the super-magicians of fabulous Parlion.

“Greetings, O Calastor!” the foremost of the seven addressed the young man in ringing tones. “It was not needed that you attempt to communicate with us, for we have been observing the progress of your mission—with this.”

On his outstretched palm appeared, in the blinking of an eye, what seemed to Lurn to be a large sphere of cloudy crystal, filled with vague, drifting lights. Then it seemed to her wondering eyes that it was an immaterial orb of dense, misty light, a rigid globe of force held under mental control.

“By means of the Space-Eye,” the thin old man said, indicating the static globe of energy resting in his palm, “we have followed the course of events and were made aware of your need of our assistance. Hence are we come.”

“I … have failed, Magister,” Galastor confessed. The ancient smiled.

“No. You have done all that could be expected—indeed, far more than we could have hoped! Given more time, even now, your mental conquest of the Rovers should succeed. But now events are moving too swiftly to be corrected by the tactics of Psychowar. The Rovers are leaving Xulthoom even as we speak. Within hours they will lie in orbit about the green orb of the Nucleus-world. Come, enter full linkage with us; we must confer.”

As Lurn watched, she witnessed the most strange council ever seen—a Council of Magic, in which the mightiest Adepts of mental magic the Galaxy had ever known entered rapport. Calastor and the seven ancients formed a ring. No words were spoken in this eerie council, but thought-currents flashed between the Adepts. So swift, so intense were the currents of this telepathic dialogue that the very atmosphere of the cabin seethed with mental forces. No telepath, even Lurn seemed to “overhear” scraps and snippets of thought, as the eight men exchanged ideas, opinions, and discussed plans.

“—one last illusion, projected by eight minds in—”

“—full linkage! Never before attempted—”

“—Tension index per capita: 39.04—”

“—Enough? Surely! Hysteria—revolt—”

“Illusion: (query)—human? Animal?”

“—something so huge—”

“—(query): mythological?—primal terror—”

“—(affirmation): inconceivably large—”

“—beast-image—night-fears—”

“—analysis of the Barbarian id—”

“—agreed, then?”

“— (affirmation)—”

“—(affirmation: complete).”

They broke apart, and the taut mental atmosphere of electric tension dissolved. Calastor stepped to the controls. The Wolfhound sprang forward in lightning acceleration.

When the Rover fleet left its orbit about Xulthoom, the slim craft of the White Wizard followed, invisibly, indetectibly. An hour or two later, after the Magister had given the weary Calastor a short but deeply refreshing hypnotic sleep, the Council of Adepts convened in full Linkage again to mentally project the images of fantastic dragons of space into the minds of the star-pirates.

Through the magic of the Space-Eye, the Adepts observed as terror smote the hearts of the Rovers—as ravening beams and bolts of blazing force slashed at the slowly oncoming forms of the space-dragons …

Drask swore, clenching his fists till the nails bit into his hard palms. The dragons floated on towards the fleet, huge bat-wings beating with ponderous slowness against the bitter black of interplanetary space. They came on in the teeth of the searing laser-bolts. Could nothing stop them?

Suddenly, the shaman laughed.

The sound was jarringly incongruous in the tension of the moment. Drask flashed a glance at Abdekiel, wondering if his mind had snapped.

“I understand all now, Lord,” the shaman said, smiling imperturbably. “From the haunting terrors of Xulthoom to these mysterious space-monsters.”

“What are you talking about?”

The shaman gestured with a plump hand. “Note, Sire, the laser-beams neither consume the dragons nor rebound from their impenetrable hides! Instead, the rays vanish into the monstrous bodies. If the space-beasts were invulnerable to our weapons, the rays would be shattered upon contact with their scales—would shower off the mailed forms in a pyrotechnic display clearly visible even at this distance. They do not. No—the rays are passing harmlessly through the monsters!”

Wonderingly, Drask peered closely at the images on the screens. Somewhere behind him, Shangkar began to curse in a hard undertone.

“They are illusion, Lord. Mirages with no physical, material existence. Moreover, I begin to suspect they are not purely visible—but mental. This is the work of Calastor. And so, I assume, were the ghosts and voices that plagued us upon Xulthoom. How it is done, I do not know—hypnosis, telepathy—but we have nothing to fear from these creatures. They are monsters of the mind, naught more. The fleet can pass straight through them without harm.”

Drask smiled coldly. “We should have guessed this, shaman, from the fact that they did not clearly register on the radar. Gorm!” He snapped a brusque command to the grizzled old pilot. “Radio the news of this discovery to the fleet. Tell them to allay their fears, and continue forward according to the assault-plan, ignoring the illusion of the monsters.”

(—“That does it, Magister! Nothing to do now but pin everything on one final try!”

(—“We understand, youth. We are with you—strike now!”)

Shangkar pointed.

“Look! The dragons are gone!”

Drask laughed harshly. The last impediment to his conquest had proved an immaterial shadow cast upon the mind. Then he froze, uncertainly—

In the cavernous dimness of the giant domed control room, nine shadowy figures faded into existence.

Calastor, Lurn, and the Seven Sages of Parlion stood facing the astounded Star Rovers in the control room of the enormous battleship. Abandoning all other plans, they had bent space—to confront and destroy the leaders of the Barbarian fleet in person.

If possible.