Drifting through space for thousands of years, successive generations of Quilquidorrians became resigned to an aimless existence. When the three remaining space arks passed into an unknown system, two of them crashed into a moon, killing most, while the third plunged to a fiery death in the molten seas of Tanse.

  The ancestors of the Qu'orr, the Quilquidorrians of the large heads and puny bodies, had come to spend the rest of eternity on Tanse Moon One, the blue world, all technology forgotten.

  Tregonsee and the other Lensmen would eventually find out most of these facts, but of the Eddorians none would know. The truth could never be revealed to any entity below the third level of intelligence. Soon, though--Mentor knew the future to the last detail--those special babies would come...

  As Tregonsee, his building of mental force completed, released his blisters from fusion and fell down unconscious, he sent out a message. "Thank you, Mentor!" But he had built well and that message traveled no farther than a few feet, stopped by the pyramidal wall he had just finished.

  Hours passed before Cloudd, at Tregonsee's side, was able to shake himself awake and stagger to his feet.

  As his eyes focused, he spread his feet and put his hands on his hips. His naked body took the stance of a defiant Tanser barbarian. Dirty and unkempt, with a loincloth of woven leaves and a necklace of strung thorns, he straddled the round head of Tregonsee, whose tentacle tips wound themselves around the human's ankles as Tregonsee's mind reactivated.

  The two of them were enclosed in a transparent, ten-foot-high, five-sided pyramid. In front of Cloudd, not many feet away, stood a pyramidal twin containing a tall, immaculate Kalonian in royal robes, his bare blue arms wrapped around his upper chest and neck, hands grasping his shoulders. His eyes and mouth were open, giving his handsome face a vapid expression.

  The expression on Cloudd's own face was now also becoming weird. His eyes bulged, his eyebrows lifted, his lips and teeth twisted into a painful, unfunny grin. Tregonsee had- entered his mind unbidden. He had become Tregonsee. He himself was the interloper in his own head.

  Cloudd knew automatically that the pyramid in which they were had been constructed by Tregonsee and was held together, in place, by the power of that prodigious mind. Somehow, Tregonsee had, almost in a twinkling, duplicated the original which sparkled before them. Without their pyramid they both would be dead or demented, joining the rest of the "lost souls."

  From the mind of the Kalonian, on a thin mental thread thrust by Tregonsee between the two shelters, there flowed a story of the Qu'orr.

  The ancestors of the Qu'orr corrupted, then ruined, by a malignant alien race, had come from another part of the galaxy on three spaceships, two of which had survived a crash on the moon. Despite the harsh conditions of the inhospitable environment, the Quilqu'orrians, Quilqu'orr, or Qu'orr, as they came to call themselves, managed to survive. Small groups built rock igloos and lived as hermits, growing food on the floors of their dwellings and rarely going outside, keeping in touch with the others of their race through telepathy.

  As the millenniums passed, the Qu'orr literally became

  rooted to their little patches of ground. The hands and feet that sifted the soil and harvested the fungus foods began to digest and absorb the nutrients directly from the plants and the soil itself. The Qu'orr sat immobile year after year, passing the time in mental exchanges and in dreams. The centuries rolled on; their dwellings disintegrated down around them and blew away as dust. The Qu'orr were plant people now, half vegetable, half animal, all sensory nerve endings gone except for touch, but with their receptors for seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, still within their brains. And within their brains they did see and hear and smell and taste their dreams.

  The Qu'orr had become The Dreamers.

  Quickly the rest of the story came to Tregonsee. Now the Rigellian Lensman knew all. The mystery of the phantom fleet was solved. He withdrew his mind from the Kalonian's and allowed Cloudd's mind to return partially.

  "I can understand up to the point where these plantmen became The Dreamers, Tregonsee. But the rest of the story-- you left me behind. You understood it too quickly. I can guess that the Qu'orr found life only in their dreams, their total existence. They probably dreamed and redreamed their racial memories, dreams of their long-gone culture so beautiful before the incursion by the maleficent beings."

  "Yes, they did. In their minds, joined together as a unified mental beehive, they found fulfillment. Imagine a half million minds ebbing and flowing, sometimes separately, sometimes massed as one. Life was gentle again--nothing disturbed them--until the Tansers came."

  "What about the Tansers? How do they fit in? And, please, Tregonsee, will you relax my face? It aches."

  "Sorry, my friend," Tregonsee said, blinking Cloudd's eyes, closing his mouth, and flexing some of the man's muscles. "The Tansers are related to the Qu'orr. Quite closely, as a matter of fact. The Tansers--much like the way the races of Civilization are related to the life spores of Arisia-- sprang as a new evolutionary breed from the original seed of the Quilquidorrians. It seems that the other spaceship deposited the essence of the Quilquidorrians on Tanse even as it had been swallowed by the all-pervasive corrosive liquids there. So, as the moon survivors evolved into the Qu'orr, the life

  forces from the other survivors grew into the Tansers. The two races were distinctly different--yet between them was, still is, a strange linkage of minds."

  Tregonsee let Cloudd look out over the barren landscape with Rigellian perception. In the distance, like dried-up stalks of corn, grouped in a bunch here and there, were--? "Yes," said Tregonsee, "those are Qu'orr."

  "Different? I'll say they're different!" Cloudd said. "The Tansers are meat-and-blood musclemen with almost no mind, and the Qu'orr, well--"

  "But there's an affinity between them. And it's not a good thing."

  "But the Tansers, how did they ever get to meet the Qu'orr? Each race is isolated."

  "The Tansers came to the moon of the Qu'orr by accident. Blame it on the old Kalonians who had explored this section of space seeking recruits for the criminal army of Boskonia. They found Tanse inhabited with brutes who'd make fine slaves. But the Kalonians had to leave Tanse Moon One unexplored. Too much brain-searing energy emanated from it. What the radiation was they couldn't figure out, so they contented themselves with establishing a slave port on Tanse Moon Two from which they operated their lucrative slave trade.

  "Inevitably, a time came when a slaver crashed on Tanse Moon One. Rescue was impossible. The Kalonian masters soon died here, but the score of Tansers, all huge, stupid beasts, survived. They broke off pieces of the local shrubbery, the only possible food on the entire planet, and found it nourishing. Nourishment, however, brought with it a mental bombardment of painful, frightening dreams while awake. Despite the terror and the pain, hunger forced them to continue--Tansers eating Qu'orr."

  "How awful!"

  "No worse than the distant relatives you humans eat. Anyhow, the Qu'orr were intelligent beings, so they soon manipulated the Tansers into eating only the renewable leafy parts of their bodies, a parasitic situation which each could tolerate. When the Tansers ate the permissible parts they had pleasant dreams; when they ate the forbidden parts they had wideawake nightmares. One day, to the Qu'orr's misfortune

  a Kalonian spaceship had a forced landing. Most of the crew went insane and died horribly, but the ship did get away under emergency repairs--with a few Tansers found on board. From them the Kalonians soon knew enough about the Qu'orr and the antipathetic symbiosis to try a new kind of slavery, a slavery of the mind instead of the body. The Kalonians wanted to have those sensual experiences for themselves. Obviously, no uncontrolled thionite dream could be as pleasurable as the directed power of the Qu'orr. Think out the basis of your dream and begin to torture the Qu'orr--the Qu'orr would buy you off with detailed pleasure.

  "But the Kalonians couldn't go to the moon.... Or could they?"

  "They tried. They tried in every way to get here themselves without the impossible mental ordeal. They simply couldn't. With static on all frequencies, no kind of telefactor or probe would work, either. So they sent the original moon Tansers back by pre-programmed ships to uproot and return with living plantmen. The results were unsatisfactory. The Tansers' minds eventually fatally deteriorated and none of the transplanted Qu'orr lived for long. But the Kalonians did discover that although they could not get dreams on command from the moon across space to another planet, they could get the Qu'orr to create visions outside the minds of the Kalonians. Three-dimensional images would appear, naturalistic, with movement, sound and smell. And, to the amazed and enraptured Kalonians, the images could be handled as real objects! They had all the properties of existence without existing!"

  Cloudd looked ahead, into the other pyramid, at the blue Kalonian with the folded arms, frozen in the same position as when he had first seen that figure, hours, perhaps days?, before. A Qu'orr illusion? Surely not a real Kalonian where a real one could not exist?

  "The Kalonian is real," Tregonsee said, knowing with a fraction of his mind everything that Cloudd thought. The rest of his mind was solving the problem of the Qu'orr. "He's really real. And remember, labeling the Qu'orr images as 'illusions' is wrong. They are objects that exist, manufactured by very special intellects. As for that poor, half-dead Kalonian, he's a story in himself, which I'll get to.

  "Just consider. Put a clear image in the uncomprehending mind of a Tanser, send him to the Qu'orr with a nerve gun or a heat ray for applying torture, and get your desired image by coercion."

  "A clear image in the uncomprehending mind... ?"

  "Qu'orr can create images only of things they understand. Women and sex, or spaceships and weapons. They can create only things having counterparts in reality out of their experience or racial memories. The Qu'orr would create the product for any place chosen, such as on Kresh-kree itself. All the way from Tanse Moon One. A thing that was practically real. But a pattern is absolutely* necessary, either from the Qu'orr itself or from some other mental image.

  "What a market for such dreams!" Cloudd could see a greater demand for it than thionite. "What fortunes can be made!"

  "It doesn't work out that way," Tregonsee said. "If you can have every material thing you want, what do you need money for? Why sell this product which is so difficult to obtain? The Kalonians soon saw that. They would keep it for themselves; that is, for the small elitist group who could exploit this power. But how to harvest the fruits?"

  Cloudd saw the answer then. Or had he just now recalled what Tregonsee had so swiftly learned? The Kalonians instituted a religion. They planned it so that a steady supply of mentally immune slaves could be sent to the Qu'orr. So on the moon they called The Moon of the Gods they brought the sacrificial victim and indoctrinated him with their desires. Back to Tanse went the special spaceworthy coffin with the barbarian catalyst. There it would pass along the mental track between Tanse and its other moon through the racial linkage between the two offspring of the Quilquidorrians. Torture a Qu'orr, torture many Qu'orr, and make them give up an image or many images, to save themselves from agony.

  "Some Tansers die, and many more Tansers will yet die, but the Qu'orr enslavement grows stronger and stronger."

  Again Cloudd saw the logical conclusion. "Spaceships and the phantom fleet!"

  "The day some Kalonian," Tregonsee agreed, "caused a spaceship to be created was the beginning of big trouble for the Galactic Patrol." Tregonsee drew Cloudd's attention to

  the living statue of the Kalonian before them. "There's the genesis of the phantom fleet. Right there!"

  "So, if we destroy him," Cloudd began to suggest, "then..."

  "No. The idea has been passed on to the Qu'orr. The Kalonian has already done his dirty work. It will have to be the Qu'orr who are stopped."

  "But what role does he play? How did he get here? How could he succeed in living here when others had failed?"

  "He came in the same way the Tansers came, in a coffin shielded enough to get him through the barrier and on to the moon long enough to accomplish his mission. That was his success, but he, too, has had his life destroyed, although technically his body still exists. He was sent in order for the Qu'orr to make a better warship.

  "The first spaceships they made were exceptionally good. They had doors that opened and rooms that could be walked into. The ships could actually carry passengers at the instantaneous speed of thought. But they were not real, so they did not really work. Passengers would die from lack of life support systems or be crushed by unneutralized acceleration forces, nor would they have viewing screens or communication equipment. The ships existed, but they were only just pretty full-scale models. The woman-hating Kalonian male might love his beautiful female creation, as manufactured by the Qu'orr, but she would never serve him by bearing him his children. That was also true of his fake warships. They were supposed to fool by an appearance of powerful numbers, so they didn't have to really work, but unfortunately they did not look as if they really could work. They were much too obsolete-looking; after all, they were reproductions of the quaint, old Quilquidorrian warships. Something more modern and convincing was needed. The Qu'orr had to be given a detailed blueprint to make a realistic warship, one that could be scanned inside and outside, showing believable engineering and registering full crews. Such a warship had to appear sophisticated enough to deceive the Patrol instruments and perceivers, and it had to be visualized solidly enough to make the thought substance firm enough to be mistaken for material substance."

  "So," Cloudd concluded the idea, "this Kalonian was the one who transmitted the plan. He was the sacrifice for the Kalonian cause."

  "Correct. And a gruesome sacrifice it is, too. He was a special person with an exceptional mind. His father, Helmuth's son, obsessed with the magnitude of his idea, chose the best Kalonian he could find. The victim was his own son, Helmuthyounger-the-Son. Obviously it worked for Helmuth-the-Younger. He got what he wanted: thousands of Qu'orr, tortured into a frenzy, by a hundred or so Tansers, produced the phantom fleet."

  "By Klono!" Cloudd could see utter confusion for the Patrol when the enemy could flood space with billions of warships! Any kind of defense might become impossible!

  "There is a limitation," Tregonsee said. "One Qu'orr equals one small ship. And there are only a half a million Qu'orr."

  Only half a million! thought Cloudd. That could still be disastrous by mixing them with real ships. He shifted his attention from the future to the present. "What's the purpose of the pyramid?"

  "It is a mental matrix constructed by the Qu'orr to contain the insane Helmuthyounger-the-Son. He arrived on this moon as a crazy man. The Qu'orr took the images of spaceships from his mind, but the Kalonian did not die. He ran about, throwing his mental waves around like darts and daggers, like slashing sweeps of a cutlass, so they quarantined him. His intellect is gone and, although the brain still lives, he will slowly die, his madness fading away until the danger is gone."

  "And the Qu'orr put us in this pyramid to save themselves from us?"

  "No. I did it," Tregonsee said. A few of the tendrils of his tentacles tightened on Cloudd's ankles, as if to give evidence that his body was still alive and in a trance by choice. "The assault upon us by the Qu'orr was almost overwhelming. I couldn't even call for help from other Lensmen. We're cut off from everyone beyond this moon--especially so, as we're in this isolation pyramid. This is the first time I haven't been mentally battling the Qu'orr defenses. With help from my

  Lens, I discovered the matrix pyramid, recognized it as a temporary haven, and constructed one myself. I dragged your unconscious form in here, just in time, I think."

  "What went wrong? I thought I wasn't supposed to be affected? Obviously I didn't pass as a Tanser."

  "You certainly were rejected as an outsider. It wasn't the large bulk you have, I'm certain, and my mental disguise of a Tanser, in which I encased your mind, should have worked. Must be that the past assaults by the Kalonians have sharpened the Qu'orr's defenses. Anyhow, I have, during my recovery period since our arrival, formulated a plan which should work. I am going on a reconnaissance utilizing the body of Helmuthyounger-the-Son. I will try to stay in contact with you, but if I don't you must not worry."

  There was a blankness, then, in Cloudd's mind, and in front of him he was aware of the near side of the other pyramid shimmering. A blue form seemed to drift out of a blue fog. It was Helmuthyounger-the-Son. The Kalonian, royal blue robes swaying with each stiff step, stalked slowly toward the distant clump of Qu'orr.

  Cloudd followed the figure with his eyes, but there was no sound, nor a single feeling or thought wave touching his mind. Minutes passed in an agonizing crawl, with only the blurred vision of a blue figure and some tall sheaves to be seen motionless together. Cloudd's body was aching with tension by the time some movement was seen again. The Kalonian came shuffling back and, as Tregonsee once more dissolved the pyramid wall, returned to his original position. Cloudd felt Tregonsee's presence once more in his own mind.

  "As I had hoped," Tregonsee said, his mental projection ended and his mental waves strong within Cloudd, "I hid under the madness in the Kalonians brain, masking my presence from the Qu'orr. I approached them with no threats, and they treated me with indifference. I was able to study them closely, and made some very profitable observations as to the way they think, so that I might communicate with them. I told them I was a spirit come to save them and that I would return. I am now going to undertake the same trick with you as with my vehicle. My body again stays protected in this mental matrix of a pyramid, and we go out together-- your body, my mind over yours. I saw some Tansers nearby

 

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