Title: Galactic heritage
Author: Long, Frank Belknap
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Galactic heritage" ***


                           Galactic Heritage

                         By FRANK BELKNAP LONG

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Thrilling Wonder Stories October 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


He called himself Jim Rush.

No uglier giant had ever come striding in out of the rain to make a
name for himself under the big top. He had the thickest eyebrows I've
ever laid eyes on--and the boniest face.

When you've been in the Carny game as long as I have you don't let
new faces get on your nerves. But Rush was out of this world! When I
looked at him I seemed to be in a dark room, sweating and stumbling
over things. Then the room would vanish, and he'd be sitting on the
platform at my side, his face a big piece of jagged glass glinting in
the sunlight.

It was just my nerves, of course. Just a midget's overheated
imagination. I'm sure he wouldn't have looked that way to Dali. It
didn't last anyway. In his street clothes, and most of the time on the
platform, all he did was scare the living daylights out of me.

But hold on tight now--we're going around a curve! I had him figured
out all wrong. He was the kindest big guy in the world. He was kind to
me, and that meant he'd have been kind to anyone--a stray kitten, a
broken-down short-change artist in an iron lung.

The first time Rush spoke to me the bally talker was adding a foot to
his height and wrapping a tape-measure around his biceps.

"Step in closer, folks! The kiddies want to see him too! That's
it--that's fine! Do you know where this big man was born?"

"The Constellation Cassiopeia," Rush said. "Or the Great Nebula in
Orion!" If he was really smart, he'd keep them guessing!

Coming from Rush, whom I'd taken for an uneducated man, that remark
gave me a jolt. Me, I've read a lot and know as much about the stars as
the average cultured bartender.

I opened my eyes wide. "He's not kidding anybody!" I said.

Rush chuckled. "No, I suppose not."

He looked at me. "Tell me something, Ralph. How do you spend your spare
time? I've often wondered."

My full name is "Tiny" Ralph Moffatt. But I like to be called by my
middle name. I stand three feet two in my stockings, and you don't know
what loneliness is if you've never had to climb on a chair to look
into the eyes of a friend. Chances are, you'll have made the trip for
nothing, for a midget doesn't have many friends.

That's why I answered so quickly. "Read a little," I said. "Go to the
movies in the village. Stand on a crate and shoot pool with Pop Carden."

"How would you like to chew the fat with me some evening?" Rush
asked. "I do a little--well, call it tinkering, in my spare time. I'm
interested in electronics. Know anything about electronics, Ralph?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Did I? I can build the cutest little radio set you'd care to see,
blind-folded, with one arm tied behind me.

"If it's a machine," I said, "I can call the turns on the power source
without looking at it!"

He grinned. "Great, Ralph! Why not make it this evening?"

So we practically shook hands on it, sitting there on the platform,
with the crowd gawking up at us and the bally talker giving us a
frenzied buildup.

When the crowd thinned out after the tent show he gave me his address.
He lived in the village, up two flights of stairs on a crummy street.

"When the landlord saw how big I was he jacked up the rent!" Rush
explained. "Guess he figured my tread would wear holes in the carpet."

"That's a pitch!" I wisecracked. "Me, I ought to get a room for
nothing."

He looked at me gravely. "Don't ever let it get you, Ralph. Your size,
I mean. It's not important."

That made me like him even better.

"I'm getting out of this rig and into my work clothes," Rush said.
"Hungry, Ralph? Like to join me in the pie car?"

I hesitated--then told him I was on a diet. It wasn't true, but I hate
sitting on a stool in the pie car alongside of grown men. The food
display counters are so far out of reach.

"See you at eight!" I promised.

The goose-necks were blazing when I slipped out into the twilight,
straddling a rain trench, and ducking around behind the animal cages
until I was out of sight.

An hour later I was climbing the stairs to his room. I'd dined alone
in my tent, on canned salmon. But nothing could dim the bright glow
that was in me. I like people who tinker--in dirt road garages, and big
laboratories fitted up like a grease monkey's idea of paradise.

I was out of breath when I reached the second floor landing. But I've a
sound heart and it wasn't the climb that started it jumping. It was the
droning.

I was almost at the door of Rush's room when I heard it. It was loud,
very loud, and somehow it scared me. It seemed to come from both inside
and outside my skull, if you know what I mean.

But it was nothing to get worked up about. In the woods at night,
when you're looking up at the stars, you can hear all kinds of eerie
sounds--if you let yourself hear them. Just as if the sky had a life of
its own, a hidden, whispering life, shared by the rocks and the gaunt
trees.

But I wasn't in the woods now.

There was no excuse for what I did. I quickened my stride and walked
right into Rush's room without knocking. I threw the door open
and there he was, standing before a big, bare table littered with
everything in the Little Giant Fact Book of Electronics.

There was a brush yoke, and a four-way switch attached to a fractional
machine which looked as if it could generate all kinds of static
without frying an arc. There was a Bunsen cell setup. That's a primary
electric cell using zinc and carbon electrodes. The right kind of
Bunsen cell will deliver a terrific current.

There was a big, metal eye, threaded at one end, attached to a rod and
holding a crystal chunk of something ruby-colored that glittered in the
loop of the eye. There was a multi-speed motor with inside wiring, and
something that looked like a cuckoo clock perched on an hour-glass.

But I had no time to study the rest of the gadgets, for there was
something in the middle of the table that started my heart jumping
again and narrowed my vision like a vise.

It looked like a little, shriveled monkey. Wires ran from its skull to
a big, gleaming object shaped like a diving bell, and its mouth was
opening and closing as if it were trying desperately to say something.

The droning I'd heard in the hall was coming from the apparatus.

When Rush saw me he smiled quietly, as though he wasn't in the least
put out. He clicked off the apparatus, detached the wires from the
little beast's skull and tucked it under his arm, almost tenderly. It
clung to his sleeve, like a frightened marmoset.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of course! It _was_ a marmoset! I expect scientists use them
whenever they run short of white mice. But they're also Carny
animals--the kiddies love them. I told myself a little wildly that Rush
must have raided the stock cars to get so many of them. There were at
least a dozen marmosets in the room, jumping about in cages.

"There are definite limits to animal intelligence!" Rush said. "Speech,
for instance. This little creature can't talk even now. But I've
learned a lot from him. I'm making real progress!"

"Are you?" I managed to choke out.

Rush made a gesture of apology. "Forgive me, Ralph!" he said. "I didn't
mean to plunge right into the middle of things. But there are certain
things about the brain psychologists won't discuss if they can help it.
It makes ninnies out of them!"

He seemed terribly keyed up. His eyes were shining, and he was staring
at me as though I were the answer to something that had been torturing
him for a month.

"Look, Ralph!" he said. "I know it's asking a lot on the strength of a
short acquaintance. But will you let me adjust this helmet to your head
for a minute or two? It's not dangerous. I've made sure of that!"

So it was a helmet--not a diving bell! I just couldn't picture myself
wearing it, so I'd jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.

I looked him straight in the eye. "You mean--you want me to take the
place of that monkey?" I gulped.

Rush smiled quickly. "Heck no. The monkey couldn't wear it. Its brain
isn't complex enough. It would fit you, though. Will you let me try it
on?"

"For size?" I got out.

He shook his head. "Size has nothing to do with it, Ralph. It's the
complexity of the brain itself." A pleading look came into his eyes.
"It's just that I'm close to something tremendous. It doesn't matter to
me in the way it would matter to Einstein say--or Jeans! It's big in a
different way."

It never occurred to me that he'd take my stunned silence for consent.
Before I could retreat toward the door he'd picked up the helmet and
was fitting it to my head.

It did seem to fit, though it was as heavy as a metal bathtub, or felt
as heavy. It pressed against my skull and weighed me down, so that he
had to help me into a chair, and make some adjustments to enable me to
bear it.

The helmet got still heavier when he stepped swiftly to the table and
turned the juice on. There was a droning, but it didn't seem so loud
now that I was close to it.

I was close to nothing else.

The floor moved, carrying Rush from me, so fast his big body blurred.
The walls were moving too, rushing away from me. The marmosets blurred
inside their cages. Wavered, and turned brittle. Their eyes puffed
up like toy balloons, their bodies splintering, whipping away into
emptiness.

The table vanished in a blaze of light. There was nothing to hold on
to. The chair dissolved under me, but instead of falling I felt myself
plunging forward, straight toward a blazing wall that was swallowing up
everything in the room.

It ceased to be a wall when I passed into it. It became a wrenching and
a tearing that took hardly a second to separate my brain from my body
and hurl me piecemeal into an abyss of howling blackness.

When the howling stopped I decided I'd had some kind of epileptic fit
as a result of excitement.

There was a swaying beneath me, deep, terrifying, as if I were clinging
to the roof of a collapsing building. I could smell the damp earth, and
my face was drenched with sweat and I was clinging to something all
buckled into folds like an old leather harness.

Then the elephant trumpeted.

I let out a yell. I was perched on the neck of the beast, right up
between its ears, clinging to its wrinkled hide. It was raging mad,
swaying to and fro, rattling its leg chains and swinging its trunk
about.

My clothes had vanished along with the helmet.

       *       *       *       *       *

I don't know what saved me. Sheer blind panic, I guess. I just let go
and dropped to the ground, without thinking about it. It was cutting
corners with death, but it seemed only a moment before I was running
through the night, the trumpeting falling away behind me.

I headed straight for my tent, but it wasn't modesty that drove me in
that direction. People who'd be shocked by a midget in the buff would
be scandalized by a baby in its bath. I didn't give a hoot for the
blushes of somebody's maiden aunt--only for my sanity.

My tent was as black as pitch, but I didn't stop to fumble around for
the light switch. I knew exactly where my spare trousers were and--an
old sweater, a pair of shoes.

In my old clothes I looked as tough as a midget can look. Picture a
three-foot pug, ready to climb into the ring with a heavyweight and
start slugging. When the universe reels you're apt to get scared, then
angry. Don't ask me why, but that's the way it is.

I wasn't furious with Rush exactly, but I had to get back my faith in
the reality of the world around me--its solidness. You couldn't pass
through a solid wall and right out into the dark, swaying night!

You just couldn't! I was still telling myself that twenty minutes
later, at the top of the rickety stairs that led to the House that Rush
Built. A house within a house, that opened on blazing emptiness? I had
to make sure.

I wasn't even sure I'd find Rush when I reached his room and flung the
door open. My head was pounding from climbing the stairs so fast again,
and there was a screaming inside me.

What next, little man?

The room hadn't changed at all. Rush was standing before the table,
where I'd left him, and on a chair near the door were my clothes. Every
stitch I'd had on before the universe started reeling. The helmet
rested on the seat of the chair, as though I'd dissolved under it,
allowing it to sink gently to rest on my empty clothes.

When Rush saw me his face lighted up, as though I'd stepped out of
a door in the sky with a lot of blazing jewels in my arms. But his
expression changed when he saw how ill I looked.

There were no mirrors in the room, but I didn't have to see my face to
know how ill I looked.

"Are you all right, Ralph?" he asked, with real concern. "You'd better
tell me exactly what happened. Take your time now. The details are
important."

I told him.

I don't know why, but I never expected he'd burst out laughing. Nothing
about my experience had seemed ludicrous to me, so his reaction came as
a shock.

This is what he said. "You're small, Ralph, and an elephant's back is
quite an expanse of territory to you. It's dead against the law of
averages, but that law stretches sometimes! It's really terribly funny!"

"Is it?" I said, coldly.

The amusement went out of his eyes. "Forgive me for laughing, Ralph.
I didn't really mean to. I owe you an explanation, and I'll try to
give it to you, in one-syllable words."

"That's kind of you!" I said. "The only thing you haven't thrown at me
is the dictionary."

Rush shook his head. "I'm asking you to forgive me, Ralph. You've
helped me, and I'm grateful. You've helped me more than you know!"

The charm was still there, the winning friendliness. I told myself I
was quite mad to trust him, but somehow I couldn't help myself.

"The greatest mysteries are simple things," he said. "Take the human
brain. It has changed a lot and it goes right on changing. But what do
we know about it, really? You can cut away most of the brain and be
none the worse for it. A man can think, act, plan, feel with only a
walnut-sized part of his brain."

Rush nodded. "There's a big, quiet part which he doesn't seem to need.
Some psychologists call it the quiet brain. It does its work without
giving itself away."

"What kind of work?" I asked.

"Extra-sensory work," Rush said. "But telepathy, clairvoyance are just
ground swells in the quiet brain. Just rudimentary stirrings, of no
great importance in themselves. But where there are ground swells there
must be a solid core of something tremendous, something that can move
and shake. And build, Ralph."

       *       *       *       *       *

The big fellow paused long enough to flash me a cheerful smile. Then he
went on.

"I like that word, build. New cells, new bodies even. But I'm after
something more basic than that. You can change the body's structure,
bruise it, burn it with the quiet brain, if you try hard enough. But
what I did to you was more vital, more in the line of what I'm trying
to accomplish."

"What did you do to me?"

"Gave your quiet brain an electronic prod, and sent you right out
through a solid wall. You can send the body anywhere, if the quiet
brain is sufficiently stimulated. But that's just kindergarten stuff.
With the right kind of electronic hookup I'll have my big job solved.
I'm on the inside track now, thanks to you!"

Rush smiled. "Funny thing. When you wore that helmet your mind was open
to telepathic suggestion. I made you want to come out in front of the
animal cages. I implanted the thought in your mind. And that's where
you did come out. The elephant just happened to be in the way."

It was pure madness, of course. No man, not even a midget, could be
expected to take him seriously. But somehow I couldn't tear my eyes
from his face. I can usually tell when a man's lying. I'm sensitive to
the little facial quirks that mirror the mind's duplicity; I've trained
myself to be. There was nothing evasive about Rush.

"It was easier with a small body, of course," he said. "A powerful
mind acting on a small body can do more with it. It's curious, but
even animals have a quiet brain. Those marmosets taught me a lot--how
speech, intelligence, everything, really comes out of the quiet part.
The quiet brain is the real evolutionary mechanism across the ages.
It's stimulated by cosmic rays and it develops the brain you use, the
active, walnut-sized part."

He looked at me. "That's just a fascinating bypath, of course. My big
job just skirts it, and widens out into something more tremendous."

"What is--your big job?" I whispered.

I was taking him seriously now, despite myself. I felt bad though,
really physically ill.

"That can wait, Ralph," he said. "Until tomorrow, eh? You must be
tired. What you need is a little shut-eye."

"That's easy to say!" I choked. "You think I'll sleep?"

"Why not, Ralph? Life isn't any stranger than the things we dream
about. You've had quite a jolt tonight, but tomorrow you'll take it in
your stride."

I'd started to turn when he picked up the helmet. "No sense in taking
the town in your stride," he said. "It's a long trudge back to your
tent. A real Carny never walks when he can travel in style!"

Before I realized what he was about he was adjusting the helmet to
my head again.

"I'll bring your duds over first thing in the morning," I heard him
saying. "Think yourself back into your tent--"

His voice was drowned out by the hum of the circuit.

It was awful all over again. A spinning and a whirling--the floor
dissolving and the walls rushing off.

When the droning stopped I was back in my tent on the outskirts of the
town, my knees knocking together and my teeth chattering like chipmunks
in a haunted forest.

I didn't sleep a wink until the sun came up.

He was right, though. It didn't seem so terrifying in the bright
noonday glare, with the Midway filling up, and the bally talkers waving
their megaphones as though they really believed the ground to be solid,
the sky filled with little fleecy clouds.

There's always a lull before the worst of storms.

I was alone on the platform. Rush and the rest of the troupe were
inside rehearsing. The show wouldn't start for another hour, and I'd
walked out ahead of time to park myself on a nursery-sized chair on the
brink of the Midway.

I was sure that something terrible was going to happen.

You know the feeling. Everyone has it at times. It's worse in the
autumn, when the leaves coil up and blow away and the wind howls
through the bare trees. It's bad enough when it's just something vague
inside you that tells you the world is out of whack. But it's worse
when your head is under the chopping block.

Just by believing Rush and taking him seriously, I'd made myself a part
of it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet it started quietly enough. I heard a faint coughing inside the big
canvas tent at my back, as though someone had stepped into a draft of
cold air and out again.

Then the coughing became a wheezing, a rumbling, and the platform began
to sway.

I leaped up in sick horror. The explosion was deafening. It seemed to
come from deep inside the tent, but it was more than just a blast of
sound. A cyclone accompanied it, and a screaming. When I swung about
there was a spiraling funnel of radiance pouring out of the tent
through a big rent in the canvas.

I could see straight into the tent through the radiance. It was weird,
mind-numbing. Like looking through a periscope poked into a furnace
filled with waltzing men and women.

Inside the tent people were whirling about like leaves in a blast
furnace. The fact that they were my kind of people made it all the more
nightmarish.

Then I saw Rush. He was sitting on the inside platform, staring down
at his palm. His big, bony hand looked like an upset spider, twining
its legs around a little metal disk. The disk was smoking but he didn't
seem to want to let go of it.

He was grimacing in an angry sort of way, as though he'd exploded a box
of matches by accident and was furious with himself.

I can't explain it, but I had a hunch he'd done just that--exploded the
disk by accident.

But suspecting that didn't lessen my terror. If you've never seen a
Carny show fill with smoke you can't know how terrifying it is. So many
things can happen to start a panic, and send innocent people to prison
for life.

Hysteria can twist the human brain, make it callous to grief. Children
can be trampled by men with children of their own, without a backward
glance. Even cowardice doesn't explain the utter demoralization that
can sweep people trapped in a burning tent.

I shut my eyes for a minute. I was afraid to look.

When I opened them someone had put the fire out by ripping down a flap
of canvas and stamping on it.

But everyone was staring at Rush. Shrieking, shouting, converging upon
him as though he'd tried to set fire to the universe. There was a
maniacal glint in the eyes of the troupe, as though they were going to
bypass the law and tear him limb from limb.

It was the old Carny dread of fire, mounting to a subconscious frenzy,
and fastening on Rush as the man responsible. The very fact that he was
slow in getting up weighed against him. It seemed to confirm his guilt.

Rush was slow in getting up, but not slow in streaking for the outside
platform. He swung himself up beside me in a long, impetuous leap,
grabbing a dangling rope and plunging out through the still smoking
tent flaps like a clockwork orang-utan.

"We've got to beat it, Ralph!" he shouted. "I can't explain it to them.
They wouldn't understand."

I started to shout at him that it was his own funeral pyre and I didn't
care how fiery it got. He could rot in the jug for all of me. I was
washing my hands of him then and there.

But then I saw the look on his face. He was pleading with me like a
stricken deaf mute, as though my loyalty had robbed him of the power
of speech and if I let him down now, he seemed to be saying, he'd go
somewhere where it was cold and dark, and hang himself to the nearest
tree.

At least a dozen witnesses saw me cook my own goose. By throwing in my
lot with him I was making myself an accessory. What had I to gain by
taking to my heels? It was pure madness!

We were both out of breath when we reached the village. "I just took
that midget beam-generator out of my pocket to toy with it, idly, as
you'd flip a key, or a coin!" he grunted. "The first thing I knew--"

"You toyed with it too hard, I suppose!"

"I'm afraid so, Ralph!" he admitted. "But no harm has been done. They
got the fire out and my big job is finished. There's nothing to keep us
here."

I had an answer ready for that one. If he wanted to hop a freight, it
was all right with me. But why did I keep silent? Why did I let him
think I was checking out too?

       *       *       *       *       *

When he spoke again we were almost at the door of his room.

"Everything's ready, Ralph!" he said. "I'm going to send you right out
on the mountain. I'll follow in a car. It's a long drive going through
the bleakest country east of the Great Smokies. When you get a glimpse
of it from the mountaintop you won't envy me the drive!"

"I didn't know you had a car," I said. Then I flared up. "If it's
_me_ you're talking to, you're not sending me anywhere! But I'd
like to know where you think you're sending me!"

He laughed. "You'll go, Ralph," he said. "Deep down you trust me, like
me."

That was too much for me. I tried to shrug it off, but inside me there
was a gnawing dread which got worse when we reached his room.

I had all I could do to keep from screaming when he picked up the
helmet again.

"Ralph, frankly, I'd rather not tell you until I get there myself," he
said. "How about it? Will you trust me?"

What could I say? I'd trusted him beyond reason already, but when the
noose is over your head there's not much sense in making a break for it.

The helmet didn't seem to make any sound at all this time. But maybe
the sound was drowned out by his voice, for he spoke very loudly.

"You'll find something there, Ralph--a big metal cylinder crumbling
into rust. But the heating apparatus still works. Just press the little
knob at the bottom of the big, circular panel you'll find in the middle
compartment."

There was a strange eagerness in his voice. "One thing more, Ralph.
Look in the--well, clothes-closet to you! You'll find a surprise!"

I heard the droning then. His voice grew fainter: "Relax now, Ralph.
This is the last trip you'll ever take on Earth. I'm implanting the
destination in your mind now. That's it--easy does it! Be seeing you in
about eight hours."

The whirling again.

When the droning fell away I was lying on my back staring up at the
sky. My clothes were gone again, and an icy wind was raising goose
pimples on my shoulders and chest.

I didn't stay on my back. I leaped up so fast the landscape went every
which way for a minute. Pinwheeled, blurred--ran away from me in a
bubbly streak.

Then it settled back into place and I was staring up at the bleakest
forested region I'd ever seen. There's a bald mountain in the
Adirondacks that's like a big bare skull set down between spruce trees
filled with black crows and a cawing that never stops.

But this mountaintop was twice as barren, twice as bleak. A gray-green
slaty barrenness that stretched to a circle of dark green firs as stark
as sentinel cranes standing guard over the ruins of a vanished race.

But there were no ruins that I could see. Just a waste of stone and
rubble, blackened here and there as though by fire, and made even
bleaker by chilling flurries of snow.

Luckily I didn't have to search for the cylinder. It was right there
before me, looming up against the firs, a big, half-buried mass of
yellow metal all crushed in on one side.

I walked around it in a kind of daze, telling myself I'd be crazy to
freeze to death, even though I was too desperate and frightened to care
much whether I lived or died.

I was a little afraid the cylinder might vanish when I touched it.
But it was solid enough, coated with hoar frost and so cold it sent a
tingling coursing through me.

When I reeled back and studied it, I saw that I could get inside. There
was a big circular opening at one end, covered by a metal flap. The
flap was heavy, and I wasn't strong enough to give it a vigorous heave.
So I simply wedged it up with my shoulders and crawled inside on my
hands and knees.

There was a suffocating deadness in the air I was breathing a few
minutes later. I could breathe the air, and I could see the panel,
looming up in the choking darkness. There was just enough light to see
by, but don't ask me where it came from.

       *       *       *       *       *

At least he hadn't lied. The heat came on just as he'd promised when I
pressed the right knob, and I found myself in a warm little compartment
with the cold shut out.

A half hour later I was still sitting there, wondering why he didn't
come. Then I remembered he'd said eight hours. I remembered something
else he'd said.

"Look in the clothes-closet, Ralph! You'll get a surprise!"

I got up and went stumbling around in the shadows.

It wasn't a closet, really--just a yard-high, yard-wide niche in the
metal wall. But there was a garment hanging there, on a metal peg.

I took the garment out. It had a musty smell, but it wasn't the smell
that brought a sudden catch to my throat.

It was a little one-piece suit, just my size!

My size!

For an instant I almost passed out from shock. Then I was laughing
wildly and pulling the garment on. It wasn't an ordinary suit such
as I'd shed under the helmet. It was a helmeted suit, but the helmet
was small and transparent, and could be pushed back, leaving my face
exposed.

It was bulky, too. A little like a diver's suit, with pleats in it, and
there were boots in the locker to go with it, and fuzzy mittens.

It fitted me like a wrinkled glove. Even the pleats and creases fitted
me, draped themselves to my body as if months of wear had molded the
suit to my way of walking and sitting.

The instant I had the suit on I went out on the mountaintop again, a
bursting wonder in my chest. When emotion's overwhelming that's where
you feel it, in the chest, like a warmth and a throbbing spreading out.

I went back after a moment, because a blizzard was coming up. But I
kept going out and back, stamping around in the snow, not minding the
cold at all now.

I was outside when I heard him coming up the mountaintop. He was
singing at the top of his lungs, as though he were coming home from a
journey in a far country and could hardly wait to share the wonder of
it.

Long before he came into view over the top of the crest, with the two
little metal cylinders under his arm, I knew who he really was.

He shouted and waved to me and I waved back.

He was out of breath when he reached my side.

"You've guessed, Ralph?" he said, stamping the snow from his shoes.

"Guessed?" I cried. "Brother, I know now, I remember!"

His eyes began to shine. "We had to buck an alien world, Ralph.
You remember that? With our ship a wreck, our hopes of getting
back blasted, we knew we'd have tough sledding. For you amnesia,
self-imposed. You had to stay sane while I tried to work something out."

"You've stayed sane too, brother!" I told him. "And now you've won
through? You can build a new ship?"

He looked at me. "I think so, Ralph. All those experiments paid off.
I've found out how to stimulate the quiet brain as it has never been
stimulated on Earth. Our quiet brains, Ralph. Simply by studying the
quiet brains of animals and a few humans. You were a great help to me,
because you have something which humans lack."

"My amnesia vanished when I found the suit!" I said. "Did you know it
would."

"I thought it might, Ralph!" he said.

"Ralph's not my real name, brother!" I said. "You know that."

"It's our human name, Ralph, and you felt and thought and acted like a
human for twelve years. I sort of got to like you all over again."

"It's all right, brother," I said. "Any name suits me the way I feel
now!"

"I'll still call you Ralph, then."

He showed me the two little cylinders then, and scratched his head,
just like a human mechanic, a grease monkey rolling up his sleeves. My
brother Rush! Only--Rush wasn't his real name either. He was my genetic
twin opposite. I was the small twin.

       *       *       *       *       *

He'd been good at electronics as a kid back where we came from. We
didn't call it electronics in our world, but the worlds aren't so
different, the people on them not so different either. In the deep,
pulsing core of the Great Nebula there are green, pleasant, warm little
worlds. One of those worlds was home to us.

"We won't need helmets," my brother said. "There's more of what it
takes in these cylinders. They're mass-building cylinders, polarized to
convert diffuse energy back into elementary matter, under the direction
of our quiet brains. We have a better than even chance of building a
ship as real as this mountaintop!"

"And we've a head start over humans," I said. "We know how to construct
a ship just like the one that was smashed up, down to the minutest
detail. We've a clairvoyant mind picture of it."

He was singing again when we drove the cylinders deep into the frozen
soil, two hundred feet apart, and stood back and let our quiet brains
soar.

The energizing flames darted out just as he'd known they would. Between
the cylinders, in great fluttering pinions, and our quiet brains built
a ship from the keystone of matter itself, from disintegrating stone
and the cosmic dust.

[Illustration: Our quiet brains built a ship from the keystone of
matter itself.]

Thought can do things to energy, to matter--not conscious thought, but
the kind of thought that shaped the Universe of Stars.

How can I describe it to you?

If you'd been there you'd have seen something like a bursting energy
shell first, then a banked mass of swirling light and the ship taking
shape under the light.

But how can I make you feel the breathtaking wonder of it? You've never
built a ship that way, a ship you'll be going home in, your ship!

You've never seen it grow from the inside out, with all the intricate
parts falling into place, the gleaming controls and the smooth
bulkheads, so neat and precise, and the great pulsing power drive
building itself up like a living thing.

I think I blinked more than I should, and my eyelids got wet, and froze
to my cheeks. You know how it is when you've done something tremendous
that shakes you to the depths. When you're through, you don't feel like
saying much. You just feel humble and very little, and the bigness of
the accomplishment takes away your breath.

So we just looked at each other, my brother and I, and then we looked
at the ship. My brother slung his big, loose-jointed arm around my
shoulder and we went inside.

I'm writing this now in the pilot jetty, a hundred billion miles from
Earth. I'm putting it all down just as it happened, before my human
memories dim.

I'm going home, see? And I might remember too much if I took it all
with me. How the earth looks after an April thaw, with the spring
peepers going full blast in woodland pools, and how the stars blaze
down on frosty nights.

Shucks, I even liked the Carny tents in the spring. The rioting colors
and the toy balloons and the whistling peanut carts.

Yeah! Well, writing about it helps to get rid of it. I don't want to
take it with me.

Near to me now, blazing bright, there's a pinwheeling rush of familiar
stars. Another star cluster and another--and another! After all, I am
going home, and in my book there's nothing better, nothing to compare
with that!



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Galactic heritage" ***


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