"Quite," Exmiril affirmed. "What we have here is the second recorded case of telepathic absolutism. By that high-sounding term I mean that we have a sentient race -- quite unprecedented in form, I assure you -- with the curse of telepathy."

"Curse?" put in another officer. "Telepathy is in our own people, you know.

And other races are even more adept. Jaxmal--"

"Was, like almost all known telepaths, quite limited. You see, he could read only surface thoughts -- and could shut them out at will. These cats read everything -- and have no way of shutting down."

"You mean, then, that these cats broadcast and receive all of everyone's thoughts?" the young signalsman asked incredulously.

"Quite so," Exmiril agreed. "They have no natural blocks. Oh, they almost certainly didn't start out that way. Back in the past, they probably had only latent, primitive abilities along these lines. But theirs is a vicious world -- and probably was even more so in the past. Their talents evolved to meet the crisis of survival -- probably first as sort of a racial warning system.

"But soon, if I may hypothesize, all of the beings were like this. Thus, the thoughts of one member of a tribe soon became impossible to separate from those of another individual. There existed, finally, a single Mind with a great many bodies. In this way it coped with, and outlasted, its stronger natural enemies. Some time in the past, this melding became absolute on a geographical basis, probably even taking in the much less developed predators around them.

At least, the cats always knew before an attack was launched, and so avoided the other predators of their world.

"Finally, what remained was a world of jungle cats, organized into tribal groupings, each with its own mass mind. Warfare of a peculiar sort was inevitable. A prisoner was simply assimilated into the mind of the victor. And so it's gone on -- for how long. . . ? It must be a tremendous mental struggle.

"It caused great progress, of course. All conflict does. And it caused the logical extension of the mass mind concept: absolute assimilation. Here, let me show you some pictures taken by the drones. We isolated and followed a raiding party. Watch. . ."

They were there, those sleek, muscular orange shapes, gliding noiselessly through, the dense green of the jungle. Their mouths were frothing; it was obvious that they had come a long way.

"Notice how the pack moves in almost uncanny unison," Exmiril pointed out.

Suddenly the pack halted, having spotted a family of four other animals.

To a Terran these would have resembled giant gophers, a meter high, with long, pointed teeth.

One of the cats went forward. The smaller animals did not run, and made no move to fight. They remained frozen like statutes.

The lead cat went up to the closest animal and methodically tore it limb from limb. The rest of the pack joined the first, and started on a second of the gopher creatures.

"Horrible!" someone muttered.

"Horrible, yes," Exmiril acknowledged. "but not the way you mean it. This chance footage gave the clues I needed, when matching it with the old data I mentioned.

"You noticed, I hope, that the prey never moved a muscle, gave no resistance at all. The cats simply assimilated the creature's lower brains into their own Mind and the Mind then ordered the things calmly sit and be torn to shreds for the common good. Note, too, that the cats ate only two -- they left the other two for when they needed them. That was the smart thing to do, not the actions of a bloodthirsty predator."

"But how does this explain what happened to our people?" someone asked.

"Why, that's simple," replied Exmiril, astonished that his listeners had not already seen the obvious. "They came close enough to one of the Mind's fields of mental domain, and were simply assimilated, having no defense. This included all of their past knowledge and experience, of course, so they could still fly the ship. The Mind obviously decided to have the ship brought in while it digested the new knowledge it gained. It was Jaxmal's probe that shocked it -- you simply cannot sort out all of an individual's knowledge and experiences, particularly alien ones, in a few minutes -- and the Mind decided to go on what it had and return the scout to the ship. It was doubtless prepared to try some bluff, get them back aboard, and move to assimilate the ship, too. As latent telepaths ourselves, the Mind's addition would make us like them. Those men in the scout could have done it. Then the cats would have a ship and the knowledge to fly it -- to conquer, perhaps become, the rest of the galaxy.

"The last time a race of absolutes was discovered, it did take the ship, and it did get back. All of a planet's population had to be destroyed before that one was resolved. We were more fortunate. The Mind simply didn't think and act fast enough -- such as to radio a reassuring message or something, we being just too alien for it to digest all at once. My guess is that if the entire race on that planet had finally become one mass mind, we'd have suffered a direct mental assault.

Just luck!"

"How was the previous case stopped?" asked the junior signalsman.

"The Kreb were still a race then. . ." Exrniril said slowly.

"Could we destroy these?" asked the captain, after a pause, thinking like a military man.

"Probably," Exmiril replied, "but it would be difficult. The danger would be that the Mind would be waiting, forearmed with knowledge of us, next time.

Faced with a common threat, however, the remaining minds would probably merge into a force potentially great enough to assimilate any ships attempting to destroy the planet. Automated attack would be more than we can manage at this stage. No, I think we just list it as Rhambda -- 'forbidden' -- and wait nature out."

"What do you mean, 'wait nature out'?" asked one of his own Science staff.

"Well," Exmiril explained, "the scoutcraft was destroyed, and had only basic propulsion, anyway. Neither scout was a physicist, and they hadn't the tools, anyway, to build a ship. Most of you don't even understand why the light goes on when you press the switch in your room.

"Sooner or later, one mind will win out over all down there -- and that will mean stagnation for them. Without competition, there will be no progress, no motive force. They will devolve, or die out."

"I wish we'd never found it," the captain snarled in disgust. "It's a pity that there are no more Kreb to neutralize this threat. Even with ypur reassuring words, Exmiril, I feel this Rhambda world is a ticking bomb under us all."

"Indeed it is," the Science Master agreed. "And we must carefully wait until that bomb is defused, no matter how long that takes. But one thing still bothers me."

"What?" several asked in unison.

"We were in orbit for fourteen days before we sent the scout down. Eleven hundred of us were on this ship, some telepathic. For nine of those days we were in stationary orbit -- over one mind's territory. Yet it failed to notice us until we went to it, almost as if we were under a shield blocking us from contact. Why. . .

"Perhaps," said the young signals officer, rising to leave, "perhaps there are still some Krebs . . ." A strange smile was on his face.

The young signalsman was halfway to his room when he became violently ill. At any other time, he would have cursed the sex-changing of the race he had chosen; he'd more than once resolved in the past never to get near these accursed people again. But somehow he didn't mind it anymore. He suddenly felt a sentimental attachment for the body he wore. They had given him a weapon.

They had given him the weapon.

It had been so long, so very long since the last Unification, he thought.

Plans swam in his brain, ideas fitted together like intricate pieces of a puzzle. As he retched violently over the basin, he did not even see the bile and blood, nor feel any real discomfort.

He reflected, as he threw up again, that it was a most wonderful and auspicious day all around.

3.

"THE REST YOU can figure out," Exmiril was concluding. "The young signals officer was, of course, The Bromgrev, and once back on Caltik, he arranged a private expedition to the Rhambdan world. Instead of being assimilated by the Mind, his mind assimilated it -- and unified them all. My home world was his test, the first conquest. And The War began."

Wade moved back into view. Exmiril, head bowed, left quickly, overcome with emotion. It had been hard on him.

Savage was interested in the reactions of the people in the room with him.

Gayal had sobbed at the end, Vard looked very upset -- the first real emotion he had displayed -- while Jenny had almost squeezed his left hand off. Koldon, he noted, had shown massive disinterest.

"That's our history lesson," Wade was saying. "But, be assured. Haven was built by me of materials that could withstand the fierceness of its extradimensional environment. Being not in normal space, it is outside the range of the Mind. It cannot reach us here, and any member of the Mind who penetrated would be instantly cut off from contact with both the Mind and The Bromgrev, whose sheer mental force allows the Mind to stay unified despite massive distances and dispersions. Haven is unattackable by conventional means, unreachable even by unconventional ones, the only truly safe place in the galaxy.

"Haven.

"You know, now, the background of The War and of this place -- and of me. We already know a great deal about you. You are the hope of your peoples.

The Bromgrev, being condemned to the flesh, must fight by conventional methods; that means he can be beaten conventionally. We delivered a costly defeat to him not long ago. During the days and weeks ahead, you shall undergo training so that you can fight that battle with us. I know you will bear up under it, and that you will contribute greatly to the victory, for you all have a great stake in the outcome, and you have all seen what victory for The Bromgrev would mean for you and all of your people. Are there any questions?"

A few were asked, but nothing of consequence, and Savage called his little group together.

"Tomorrow we will begin our training," he told them. "All of you have been furnished with a great deal of background material that you will need. Study it, for tomorrow the questions and testing begin. All three of you are already in excellent physical shape" -- he looked at Gayal as he said this -- "and so we will be able to start out at a more advanced level than is usual. Meet me tomorrow morning at 0800 in this room." And, with that, he left them.

Jenny was silent all the way back to their quarters. Finally he asked her what the problem was.

"It's a hell of a thing for a good Baptist to swallow," she said.

"She takes to the simulator as if she's been flying all her life," Savage observed to Koldon, who just nodded.

The subject of the conversation was Gayal, who had proven to be the best pupil in simulator flight training for being a command pilot. It had been a complete surprise; she'd done only fair in much of the preliminary testing, and her submissive manner and, to put it nicely, extreme need for social contact had led to other conclusions.

"One might almost suspect that she's done it before," Koldon commented, "yet I've looked deep within her and see nothing suspect. It appears that we have a natural for machines."

Savage mulled this over. "Maybe," he replied. "But for somebody who's barely in the top quarter percentile in mechanical aptitude, her complete control of the ship and her mastery of some tight tactical problems is amazing."

Koldon snorted. "Come, come! I've watched you using an electric typewriter with great speed, but can you really explain to me why and how those words appear on the page when you touch an apparently unconnected key? One does not need to understand machines to operate them well."

The training problem ended, and Gayal emerged, her face almost radiant with pleasure.

"Did I do well?" she asked, knowing she had. "Amazing," Savage told her.

"Simply amazing. It's almost like you and the simulator were one."

"That's the way it feels in there," she replied. "It is-- well, hypnotizing, wonderful, like a god almost."

Now it was Koldon's turn. Although he had ridden on ships since he was small, and was certainly the most cosmopolitan of the group, he had the most trouble in training -- almost the reverse of Gayal. Koldon understood everything, almost never missed a question; yet he fared poorly in the pilot's chair and did only slightly better as a gunner. The Quoark had sought to explain it, but it exasperated him as much or more than everybody else.

"Comes from knowing what everyone else around you is thinking. This telepathy is like a machine: you get to depend on it to do the work for you. Once in there, I do not become the machine, the machine becomes me -- and live creatures can outthink a machine any time, if their power and speed is boosted to the machine's level."

Even so, Savage wondered about the great bear. He was a fine conversationalist, never at a loss for words, able to hold his own with experts in almost every subject. It was almost as if his failure in the simulator was compensation for such genius -- or camouflage.

A few minutes later, Koldon was done. His score had improved, but it was nowhere near the expected norms. Koldon studied the printout and shook his head in disgust.

"Vard's turn, now," Savage said. He looked around. Vard was not there.

"Where'd he get to?"

"He didn't do well on the syllogismic problems yesterday," Koldon replied, "and he was upset because he usually does quite well. Said he was going to run some checks through the computer room and see what went wrong."

"Bad timing," Savage growled. "There are a lot of people waiting to use this simulator, and I have to fight to get on the day's schedule. This character's kind of strange, anyway, isn't be?"

Gayal nodded. "Yes. During the entire trip here he said not ten complete sentences to us. He is a most disagreeable and unsocial person."

"The fellow's a bit kinky," Koldon agreed, "but you have to understand him. He's had no social life for years -- not since becoming the agent on Fraska.

He's had to seal himself away from everyone, in sort of like a self-imposed prison sentence. He's not used to dealing with people."

"Fala did so with no problems," Gayal pointed out.

"That's true," Koldon acknowledged. "But Fraska is not Delial, and the social customs and such that Vard needed and suppressed for so long a time are quite different than ours -- and were impossible for him when he was an agent.

Now such a life is still denied him as a refugee."

"You're quite an apologist, aren't you, Koldon?" Savage put in. "War is a leveler, and fighting it is a team job. If Vard doesn't realize this and adjust, we'll have to wash him out. Put him in a little room with communications devices like he had on Fraska and let him rot."

The Terran stalked off angrily toward the computer section, leaving the other two standing there looking at each other.

"He has quite a temper," Gayal commented.

"True," Koldon agreed, "but he's right."

"He is such a strange man. . ."

"I'm afraid I have to agree, knowing a lot more of his history than you do.

But, even so, I cannot get down to the part that counts in him -- his blocks are so strong that I can only read what he's actually saying. I suspect there's a complex and fascinating enigma in his brain, but it's beyond reach. For all the power of personality he has shown and the contradictions he's presented, one would almost think he might be quite a bit more than he appears."

Gayal studied the big bear's features. They betrayed nothing, as usual.

"Why shouldn't he be anything other than what he claims?" she asked.

"You know," Koldon mused, "one of The Hunter's best-trained and one- hundred-percent-blocked agents would be a perfect place for The Bromgrev."

"You don't think he is-- ?" Gayal gasped, horror stricken.

"No, I don't," Koldon replied thoughtfully. "But, likewise, I don't think that he isn't."

Savage stalked to the computer room nearest the training center, blood in his eye. He had just fifteen more minutes and then he would have to clear out for the next simulator group -- and this ass was screwing up the works. He fondly hoped he'd never be in a situation where he would have to depend on Vard.

Savage entered the computer room, one of the smaller rooms with access to the master computers, quietly. Surprisingly, no one else was around. Vard sat alone in a center chair, helmet on, figures dancing across the screens in front of him at a dizzying pace. The Fraskan seemed unaware of Savage's existence.

Savage did not speak to him immediately. His curiosity was aroused beyond measure by the various complex figures dancing on the screen, a little too fast for him to read. But there were definitely too many equations, too many diagrams flashing on, however briefly, for Vard to be reviewing training problems.

Savage noiselessly took a seat in the back of the room and put on a helmet, punching the required codes to tie him in with Vard's display.

At first glance they seemed to be tactical problem anyway, but Savage stuck with it for a minute or two. Something was certainly not right. It took him only second longer to realize it -- the red and yellow band flashing along the sides of the picture!

They weren't problems, they were actual exercises. The stripes denoted classified information.

They were Haven military defense contingency plans. Suddenly the display stopped, and was replaced by readout in clear English -- which was particularly surprising, since Vard spoke not a word of it. It read: HELLO SAVAGE * I HAD NOT INTENDED TO BE FOUND OUT SO.