Equation of Doom Part 8

"O.K. Sit down at the controls, Ramsey. That's right. Don't try anything."

Ramsey was seated in the pilot chair again. His head was still whirling but his strength had returned. He wondered if he could chance rushing her but told himself she meant what she said. She would kill him in cold blood if she had to.

"Bring the _Enterprise_ down on that world, Ramsey."

He sat there and stubbornly shook his head. "Margot, you'll be meddling with a power beyond human understanding."

"Rubbish! You read my father's letter, didn't you? That fear's been implanted in your genes. It's part of the heredity of our people. It's rubbish. Bring the ship down."

Still Ramsey did not move. Vardin looked from him to Margot Dennison and back again with horror in her eyes.

"I'll count three," Margot said. "Then I'll shoot the Vegan girl. Do you understand?"

Ramsey's face went white.

"One," Margot said.

Vardin stared at him beseechingly.

Ramsey said: "All right, Margot. All right."

Five minutes later, subjective time, the _Enterprise_ landed with a lurch.

That they had reached a world in hyper-s.p.a.ce there could be no doubt.

But outside the portholes of the little freighter was only the murky grayness of the timeless hyper-s.p.a.ce continuum.

"They've gone down, sir!" Ramar Chind cried.

Garr Symm nodded. For the first time he was really nervous. He wondered about the Dennison letter. Could his fear be attributed to ancestral memory, as Dennison had indicated? Was it really baseless--this crawling, cold-fingered hand of fear on his spine?

There was no physical barrier. The _Enterprise_ had established that fact. Then was there a barrier which Garr Symm, along with all humanoids, had somehow inherited?

A barrier of stark terror, subjective and unfounded on fact?

And beyond it--what?

Power to chain the universe....

Think, Garr Symm told himself. You've got to be rational. You're a scientist. You've been trained as a scientist. This is their barrier, erected against you, against all humanoids, a million years ago. It isn't real. It's all in your mind.

"Do you want me to follow them down?" Ramar Chind asked.

Garr Symm envied the policeman. Naturally, Ramar Chind did not share his terror. You didn't know the terror until you learned about proto-man; then the response seemed to be triggered in your brain, as if it had been pa.s.sed to you through the genes of your ancestors, waiting a million years for release....

Fear, a guardian.

Of what? Garr Symm asked himself. Think of that, fool. Think of what it guards.

Power--

Teleportation or its equivalent.

Gone the subjective pa.s.sage of hours in hyper-s.p.a.ce.

Earned--if you were strong enough or brave enough to earn it--the ability to travel instantly from one humanoid world to another.

Instantly. Perhaps from any one point on any humanoid world to any one point, precise, specific, exact, on another world.

To plunder.

Or a.s.sa.s.sinate.

Or control the lives of men, everywhere.

_Sans_ ship.

_Sans_ fear.

_Sans_ the possibility of being caught or stopped.

Sweating, Garr Symm said: "Bring the _Dog Star_ down after them, Ramar Chind."

Ramsey smiled without humor. "What now, little lady?" he said mockingly.

"Shut up. Oh, shut up!"

"What are you going to do now?"

"I told you to shut up. I have to think."

"I didn't know a gorgeous tri-di actress ever had to think."

"Let me see those figures again," Margot said.

Ramsey handed her the tapes from the _Enterprise's_ environment-checker.

Temperature: minus two hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit.

Atmosphere: none.

Gravity: eight-tenths Earth-norm.

"And we don't have a s.p.a.cesuit aboard," Ramsey said.

"But it can't be. It can't. This is the home of proto-man. I know it is.