Chapter 15

THE UNIVERSITY OF PSIONICS

EARTH As such did not have a space navy; there was no danger of attack from space

and, as far as Earth was concerned, the outplanets could take care of themselves. Nor

did either WestHem or EastHem; with their ICBM's they did not need or want any

subspace-going battleships. Nor did any of the planets. Newmars and Galmetia were

heavily armed, but their armament was strictly defensive.

Thus InStell had been forced, over the years, to develop a navy of its own, to protect its

far-flung network of merchant traffic lines against piracy; which had of course moved into

space along with the richly-laden merchantmen. As traffic increased, piracy increased; so

protection had to increase, too. Thus, over the years and gradually, there came about a

very peculiar situation:

The only real navy in all the reaches of explored space-the only law-enforcement agency

of all that space -was a private police force not responsible to any government!

It hunted down and destroyed pirate ships in space. It sought out and destroyed pirate

bases. Since no planetary court had jurisdiction, InStell set up a space-court, in which

such few marauders as were captured alive were tried, convicted, and sentenced to

death. For over a century there had been bitter criticism of these "highhanded tactics,"

particularly on Earth. However, InStell didn't like it, either-it was expensive. Wherefore,

for the same hundred years or so, InStell had been trying to get rid of it; but no

planet-particularly Earth-or no Planetary League or whatever-would take it over. Every-

body wanted to run it, but nobody would pick up the tab. So InStell kept on being the only

Law in space.

This navy was small, numbering only a hundred capital ships; but each of those ships

was an up-to-the-minute and terribly efficient engine of destruction, bristling with the most

modem, most powerful weapons known to man.

High above Earth's surface, precisely spaced both vertically and horizontally, hung poised

the weirdest, the motleyest fleet ever assembled. InStell's entire navy was there, clear

down to tenders, scouts, and gigs; but they were scarcely a drop in the proverbial

bucket. InStell's every liner, freighter, lofter, and shuttle that could be there was there;

MetEnge's every ore-boat, tanker, scout and scow that could possibly be spared; all the

Galaxians every available vessel of every type and kind, from Hatfield's palatial

subspace-going private yacht down to Maynard's grandsons' four-boy flit about. More,

every spaceyard of the planets had been combed; every clunker, and every junker not

yet cut completely up, was taken over. Drives and controls had been repaired or re-

placed. Hulls had been made air-tight. Many of these derelicts, however, were in such

bad shape that they could not be depended upon to stay air-tight; hence many of those

skeleton crews worked, ate, and slept in spacesuits complete except for helmets-and

with those helmets at belts at the ready.

But each unit of that vast and ridiculously nondescript fleet could carry men,

missile-killers, computer-coupled !     locators, and launchers, and that was all that

was necessary. Since there was so much area to cover, it was the number of control

stations that was important, not their size or quality. The Galaxians had had to use every

craft whose absence from its usual place would not point too directly at Maynard's plan.

The fleet was not evenly distributed, of course. Admiral Dann knew the location of every

missile-launching base on Earth, and his coverage varied accordingly. Having made

formation, he waited. His flagship covered EastHem's main base; he personally saw

EastHem's first Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile streak upward. "This is it, boys, go to

work," he said quietly into his microphone, and the counter-action began. A computer

whirred briefly and a leybyrdite missile-killer erupted from a launcher. Erupted, and

flashed away on collision course at an acceleration so appallingly high that it could not be

tracked effectively even by the radar of that age. That acceleration can be stated in

Tellurian gravities; but the figure, by itself, would be completely meaningless to the mind.

Everyone knows all about one Earthly gravity. Everyone has seen a full-color tri-di of

hard trained men undergoing ten and fifteen gees; has seen what it does to them. But ten

thousand gravs? Or a hundred thousand? Or two hundred thousand? Such figures are

entirely meaningless.

Consider instead the bullet in the barrel of a magnum rifle at, and immediately after, the

instant of ignition of the propellant charge. This concept is much more informative.

Starting from rest, in a time of a little over one millisecond and in a distance of less than

three feet, that bullet attains a velocity of more than four thousand feet per second.

Those missile-killers moved like that, except more so and continuously. They were the

highest acceleration things ever put into production by man.

The first killer struck its target and both killer and target vanished into nothingness; a

nothingness so inconceivably hot that the first thing to become visible was a fire-ball

some ten miles in diameter. But there was nothing of fission about that frightfulness;

GalFed's warheads operated on the utterly incomprehensible heat generated by

dead-shorted Chaytor engines during the fractional microsecond each engine lasted

before being whiffed into subatomic vapor by the stark ferocity of its own performance.

Missiles by the hundreds were launched; from EastHem, from WestHem, from the poles

and from the oceans and from the air; and in their hundreds they were blown into

submolecular and subatomic vapor. Thus it made no difference what kind of a warhead

any missile had carried. Fission, fusion, chemical, or biological; all one: no analysis,

however precise and thorough, could ever reveal what any of those cargoes had

originally been. Nor did any missile reach its destination. Admiral Dann had ships enough,

and missile-killers in thousands to spare.

Meanwhile hundreds of small, highly-specialized vessels had been flying hither and yon

above certain areas of the various oceans. They were hunting, with ultrasensitive

instrumentation, all Earth's missile-carrying submarines. They didn't bother about the

missiles launched by the subs-the boys and girls upstairs would take care of them-they

were after the pig-boats themselves. Their torpedoes were hunters, too. Once a

torpedo's finders locked on, the sub had no chance whatever of escape. There was a

world-jarring concussion where each submarine had been, and a huge column of water

and vapor drove upward into and through the stratosphere.

This furious first phase of the "police action" lasted except for the sub-hunt-only minutes.

Then every missile-launching site on Earth was blasted out of existence. So also were a

few subspacers attempting to leave EastHem-all Earth had been warned once and had

been told that the warning would not be given twice.

Then the immense fleet re-formed, held position, and waited a few hours; after which

time Dann ordered all civilian ships to return to their various ports. The navy stayed on 'in

its entirety. It would continue to destroy all ships attempting to leave Earth.

Twelve hours after Earth's last missile had been destroyed, two-hundred-odd persons

met in the main lounge of the flagship of the fleet. Maynard, his face haggard and drawn,

called the meeting to order. After the preliminaries were over, he said:

"One part of the operation, the prevention of damage to any important part of Earth, was

one hundred percent successful. Second, the replacement of EastHem's dictatorship by

a board of directors was also successful at least, the first objectives were attained.

Third, our attempt to replace WestHem's government by a board of directors which,

together with that of EastHem, would form a unified and properly-motivated government

of all Earth, was a failure. The Westerners did not try to leave Earth, but decided to stay

and fight it out. For that reason many key men changed their minds at the last minute and

remained loyal to WestHem's government instead of supporting us. Thus, while we

succeeded in evacuating most of our personnel, we lost one hundred four very good

men.

"The fault, of course, was mine. I erred in several highly important matters. I

underestimated the power of nationalism and patriotism; of loyalty to a government even

though that government is notoriously inefficient, unjust, and corrupt. I underestimated the

depth and strength of the anti-Galaxian prejudice that has been cultivated so assiduously

throughout the great majority of Earth's people; I failed to realize how rigidly, in the

collective mind of that vast group, Galaxianism is identified with Capitalism. I

overestimated the intelligence of that group; its ability to reason from cause to effect and

its willingness to act for its own good. I thought that, when the issue was squarely joined,

those people would abandon their attitude of `Let George do it' and take some interest in

their own affairs.

"Because of these errors in judgment I hereby tender my resignation, effective as of

now, from the position of Chairman of this Board. I turn this meeting over to

Vice-Chairman Bryce for the election of my successor."

He left the room; but was recalled in five minutes. "Mr. Maynard, your tendered

resignation has been rejected by an almost unanimous vote," Bryce told him. "It is the

concensus that no one else of us all could have done as well. You will therefore resume

your place and the meeting will proceed."

Maynard sat down and said, "I thank you, fellow Galaxians, for your vote of confidence;

which, however little deserved, I am constrained to accept. Mr. Eldon Smith will now

speak."

The meeting went on for hours. Discussion was thorough and heated; at times

acrimonious. Eventually, however, the main areas of discord were hammered out to

substantial agreement. The Board of Directors of the Galactic Federation concluded its

first really important meeting.

Earth's communications systems were restored to normal operating conditions and

Maynard, after ample advance notice, spoke to every inhabitant of Earth who cared to

listen. He covered the situation as it then was; what had brought it about, and why such

drastic action had been necessary. Then he said:

"At present there are ninety five planets in the Galactic Federation. Earth will be admitted

to the Federation if and when it adopts a planetary government acceptable to the

Federation's Board of Directors. We care nothing about the form of that government; but

we insist that its prime concern must be the welfare of the human race as a whole. Earth

now has two directors on our board, Li Hing Wong and Feodr Ilyowicz. Earth is entitled

to three more directors, to represent the regions now being so erroneously called the

Western Hemisphere. They must be chosen by an honest, stable, and responsible

authority, not by your present government of corrupt, greedy, and self-serving gangsters

and plunderers.

"We will allow enough freighters to land on WestHem's spaceports to supply WestHem's

people with its usual supply of food and of certain other necessities, but that is all. Our

milk-truck drivers have been recalled and we will do nothing whatever about the general

strike. If you wish to let an organized minority starve you to death, that is your right. You

got yourselves into this mess; you can get yourselves out of it or not, as you please.

"We will not broadcast again until three qualified representatives of WestHem have been

accepted by us as members of the Board of Directors of the Galactic Federation. Until

then, do exactly as you please. That is all."

There is no need to go into what happened then throughout the nations of WestHem; the

many nations whose only common denominator had been their opposition to the East.

Too much able work has been done, from too many different viewpoints, to make any

real summary justifiable. It suffices to say here that the adjustment was not as simple as

Maynard's statement indicated that it should be, nor as easy as he really thought it would

be. The strife was long, bitter, and violent; and, as will be seen later, certain entirely

unexpected events occurred.

In fact, many thousand persons died and the Galaxians themselves had to straighten

WestHem out before its three directors were seated on the Board.

There is no agreement as to whether or not the course that was followed was the right

course or the best course. Many able scholars hold that the Directorate was just as

much of a dictatorship, and just as intolerant of and just as inimical to real liberty and

freedom, as was any dictatorship of old.

It is the chronicler's considered opinion, however, that what was done was actually the

best thing-for humanity as a whole-that could have been done; considering what the

ordinary human being intrinsically is. By "ordinary" is meant, of course, the person to

whom the entire field of psionics is a sealed realm; the person in whose tightly closed

and rigidly conventional mind no supra-normal phenomenon can possibly occur or exist.

And the present state of galactic civilization seems to show that if what was done was

not the best that could have been done it was a very close approximation indeed thereto.

At what exact point does liberty become license? What is Freedom? Is Ethics an

absolute? Can any system of ethics ever become an absolute? The conclusion seems

unavoidable that until human beings have progressed much farther than they have at

present-until supra-normal abilities have become normal-the "liberties" and the

"freedoms" of many will have to be abridged if the good of all is to be served.

Newmars was the first planet to be colonized and it was designed from the first to

become completely independent of Earth in as short a time as possible. Thus, as well as

being longer-established than the other planets, it grew faster in population. Therefore

Newmars had a population of about a billion, whereas the next most populous planet,

Galmetia, had scarcely half that many people and all the rest of the colonized planets

together did not have many more people than did Earth alone.

Geographically, Newmars had somewhat more land than Earth and somewhat less

water, but the land masses were arranged in an entirely different pattern. There was one

tremendous continent, Warneria; which, roughly rectangular in shape and lying athwart

the equator, covered on the average about ninety degrees of latitude and about one

hundred fifty of longitude. There were half a dozen other, much smaller continents, and

many hundreds of thousands of islands ranging in size from coral atolls up to

near-continents as large as Australia.

Most of Nevmars' people lived on "The Continent," and some seven millions of them lived

in and around the coastal city of Warnton, the planet's only real business center and the

capital city of both the Continent and the whole Warner-owned world.

In establishing the University of Psionics, then, Adams did not have to think twice to

decide where to put it. Earth, even though it would furnish most of the students, was out

of the question; the U of Psi would have to be in Warnton, Newmars.

Within a day of landing, however, Adams realized that the business of starting such a

project as that was not his dish. He simply could not spend important money. He had

never bought even an expensive scientific instrument; he had always requistioned them

from some purchasing department or other. He had never in his life written a check for

more than a few hundred bucks; he had no knowledge whatever of the use of money as

a tool. Wherefore the Explorer landed at Warnton Spaceport and Barbara Deston took

over. It had been Adams' idea to buy-or preferably to rent-a small apartment house to

start with, but Barbara put her foot down hard on that.

She bought outright a brand-new forty-story hotel that covered half of a square block,

saying, "We don't want large class-rooms-the smaller the better, since it will be

small-group work-so this will suit us well enough until the architects get our real university

built. Then we can either sell it or form an operating company and merge it into the hotel

chain."

When the project was running smoothly, and after the eight had developed a nucleus of

some fifty psiontists, the Destons took the Explorer to Earth and the Joneses and the

Trains, in two Warner-owned subspacers, started out to cover the other planets, in

descending order of population.

The Destons took up residence in their suite in the Hotel Warner and went to work. They

scanned colleges and universities, whether or not any such institution of learning had ever

shown any interest in psionics. They scanned Institutes of this and that, including several

of Psychic Research. They scanned science fiction fan clubs and flying-saucer societies

and crackpot groups and cults of all kinds and psychic mediums and fortune-tellers. They

attended-unfelt-meetings of the learned societies. They scanned the trades and the

professions, from aardvark keepers and aerialists through electricians and jewelers and

ophthalmologists and spacemen to zymurgists. Detecting a psionic latent, however weak,

was now easy enough. There was an aura, if not an actual radiation, that was

perceptible to the triggered mind at almost any distance. Any mind possessing that

unique and unmistakable characteristic could and did feel and respond to the touch of a

directed thought. Or, more exactly perhaps, a focused or tuned thought. Any such mind

could and did (under such expert tutelage as theirs now was) learned telepathy in

seconds; and, with very few exceptions, all persons with such minds became Galaxians

and went to Newmars.

Since the operators knew what to do and exactly how to do it, the work went fast; and,

very shortly after its beginning, a definite pattern began to form. Every possessor of a

strong latent talent was at or near the top of his or her heap. If a performer, he or she

had top billing. If a milliner, she got a hundred dollars per copy for her hats. If a

mechanic, he was the best mechanic in town.

It need scarcely be said that Maynard, Lansing, Dann, Smith, Phelps, DuPuy, Hatfield,

Spehn, Miss Champion, the seven leaders of the Planetsmen and their assistants and

hundreds of others of the Galaxians were found to be very strong latents. Or that, even

though most of them were too busy to go to Newmars to study, each was given

everything that he could then take that his teachers could then give.

On the other hand, not even the Adamses could at that time get into touch with a

non-psionic mind. It was not that that mind refused contact or blocked the exploring

feelers of thought; it was as though there was nothing there to feel. It was like probing

with sentient fingers throughout the reaches of an unbounded, undefined, completely

empty and utterly dark space.

And the conservative ("Hidebound", according to Deston), greedy capitalists of Earth

were non-psionic to a man.

The response to this psionic survey was so tremendous that the hotel building, immense

as it was, was jammed to overflowing before the first real University building was ready

for use.

As Barbara had foreseen, the psionics classes were small, but there were plenty of

teachers; people whose former titles ranged from Instructress-In-Kindergarten to

Professor Emeritus of Advanced Nucleonics. And these classes were being driven. They

wanted to be driven. Each person there had been-more or less unconsciously -unhappy,

discontented, frustrated. The few who had known that they had psionic power had been

hiding it or disguising it; the others had known, either definitely or vaguely, that they

wanted something out of life that they were not getting. Thus, when their minds were

opened to the incredible vistas of psionics, they wanted to be driven hard and they drove

themselves hard. They graduated fast, and either went right to work or formed

advanced-study groups-and in either case they kept on driving hard.

When the Explorer emerged near Newmars, Barbara did not wait for the slow

maneuvering of landing at the spaceport and then taking the monorail into town, but

'ported herself directly into the main office of the University. Five minutes later she drove

a thought to her husband. "Babe, come here, quick! Here's something you're simply got

to sec!"

He appeared beside her and she went on, "I knew they were working fast, but I certainly

didn't expect anything like that so soon." Her mind took his up into a small room on the

thirtieth floor. "Just look at that!"

Deston "looked" at the indicated group of four; who, heads almost touching, were seated

at a small square table. One was a gangling, coltish, teen-age girl in sweater, slacks,

and loafers, with braces on her teeth and her hair in a ponytail. The second was an old

friend of Deston's-a big, taut, trim space-officer in a uniform sporting the insignia of a full

captain. The third was a lithe and lissome brunette made up to the gills; the fourth was a

bald and paunchy ex-banker of seventy.

"And that combination picked itself out?" Deston marveled.

"Uh-huh," she said, gleefully, pressing his arm tightly against her side. "All out of their

own little pointed heads and Stella says they're the prize group of the whole University.

Dig in. Look. Just see what they're actually doing."

"Uh-uh. I don't want to derail their tram of thought." You won't. Maybe if you grabbed 'em

by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and slammed 'em against the wall a

few times you could, but nothing any gentler than that."

"They're that solid?" He went in and looked, and his whole body stiffened. He stayed in

for five long minutes before he came back to Barbara and whistled through his teeth.

"Wow and wow and WOW!" he said then. "All of us Big Wheels are going to have to look

a little bit out-we're going to have competition. We may have to demonstrate our fitness

to lead-if any."

"That's what I mean, and isn't it just wonderful? The University doesn't need us any

more, so we can start doing whatever it is that we're going to do right now instead of

waiting so long, like we thought we'd have to."

"They've done a grand job, that's sure. Let's do some long-distance checking-see how

Spehn and Dann are making out."

They were making out all right. Since both were now psiontists, Intelligence and Navy

were barreling right along. Graduates from the University of Psionics had been pouring

into both services for weeks. Both services were expanding rapidly, in both numbers and

quality; and, since the opposition was practically non-psionic, the Galaxians' advantage

(Spehn and Dann agreed) was increasing all the time. Also, the opposition was not really

united and could never be united except superficially because its factions were, by their

very natures, immiscible. How effective could such opposition be?

Unfortunately, Spehn and Dann were wrong; and so were the Destons. It is a sad but

true fact that a college graduate at graduation knows more than he ever did before or

ever will again; and so it was with these young new psiontists. They thought they knew it

all, but they didn't. They had a long way to go.