A mile and a half of raging forest fire, and Alf Gunnderson the one responsible. So the Bureau had sent two Mindees.

"How did it start, Alf?"

The dead eyes closed momentarily in pain, then opened, and he answered, "I was trying to get the pot to heat up. Trying to set the kindling under it to burning. I fired myself too hard." A flash of self-pity and unbearable hurt came into his face, disappeared just as quickly. Empty once more, he added, "I always do."

The first man exhaled sharply, got up and put on his hat. The personality flowed out of his face. He was a carboncopy of the other telepath once more. They were no longer individuals; they were Bureau men, studiedly, exactly, precisely alike in every detail.

"This is the one," he said.

"Come on, Alf," the Mindee named Ralph said. "Let"s go."

The authority in his voice no more served to move Gunnderson than their initial appearance had. He sat as he was. The two men looked at one another.

What"s the matter with him? the second one flashed.

If you had what he"s got-you"d be a bit buggy yourself, the first one replied.

They hoisted the prisoner under his arms, lifted him unresisting, off the bunk. The turnkey came at a call, and-still marveling at these men who had come in, shown Bureau cards, sworn him to deadly silence, and were now taking the tramp firebug with them-opened the cell door.

As they pa.s.sed before him, the telepath named Ralph turned suddenly sharp and piercing eyes on the old guard. "This is government business, mister," he warned. "One word of this, and you"ll be a prisoner in your own jail.

Digit?"

The turnkey bobbed his head quickly."

And stop thinking, mister," the Mindee added nastily, "we don"t like to be referred to as slimy peekers!" The turnkey turned a shade paler and watched silently as they disappeared down the hall, out of the p.a.w.nee County jailhouse. He waited, blanking fiercely, till he heard the whine of the Bureau solocab rising into the afternoon sky.

Now what the devil did they want with a crazy firebug hobo like that? He thought viciously, G.o.ddam Mindees!

After they had flown him to Buenos Aires, deep in the heart of the blasted Argentine desert, they sent him in for testing.

The testing was exhaustive. Even though he did not really cooperate, there were things he could not keep them from learning, things that showed up because they were there: Such as his ability to start fires with his mind.

Such as the fact that he could not control the blazes.

Such as the fact that he had been burning for fifteen years in an effort to find peace and seclusion.

Such as the fact that he had become a tortured and unhappy man because of his strange mind-power...

"Alf," said the bodiless voice from the rear of the darkened auditorium, "light that cigarette on the table. Put it in your mouth and make it light, Alf. Without a match."

Alf Gunnderson stood in the circle of light. He shifted from leg to leg on the blazing stage, and eyed the cylinder of white paper on the table.

He was trapped in it again. The harrying, the testing, the staring. He was different-even from the other accredited psioid types-and they would try to put him away. It had happened before, it was happening now. There was no real peace for him.

"I don"t smoke," he said, which was not true. But this scene was brother to the uncountable police lineups he had gone through, all the way across the American continents, across Earth, to A Centauri IX and back. It annoyed him, and it terrified him, for he knew he could not escape.

Except this time there were no hard rocky-faced cops out there in the darkness beyond his sight. This time there were hard, rocky-faced Bureau men and s.p.a.ceCom officials.

Even Terrence, head of s.p.a.ceCom, was sitting in one of those pneumoseats, watching him steadily.

Daring him to be what he was!

He lifted the cylinder hesitantly, almost put it back. "Smoke it, Alf!" snapped a different voice, deeper in tone, from the darkness.

He put the cigarette between his lips. The men waited.

He wanted to say something, perhaps to object, but he could not. Alf Gunnderson"s heavy brows drew down. His blank eyes became-if it were possible-even blanker. A sharp, denting V appeared between the brows.

The cigarette flamed into life.

A tongue of fire leaped up from the tip. In an instant it had consumed tobacco, paper, and denicotizer in one roar. The fire slammed against Gunnderson"s lips, searing them, lapping at his nose, his face.

He screamed, fell on his face and beat at the flames with his hands.Suddenly the stage was clogged with running men in the blue and charcoal suits of the s.p.a.ceCom.

Gunnderson lay writhing on the floor, a wisp of charry smoke rising from his face. One of the s.p.a.ceCom officials broke the cap on an extinguisher vial and the spray washed over the body of the fallen man.

"Get the Mallaport! Get the G.o.ddammed Mallaport, w.i.l.l.ya!" A young ensign with brush-cut blond hair, first to reach the stage, as though he had been waiting crouched below, cradled Gunnderson"s head in his muscular arms, brushing with horror at the flakes of charred skin. He had the watery blue eyes of the s.p.a.ceman, the man who has seen terrible things; yet his eyes were more frightened now than any man"s eyes had a right to be.

In a few minutes the angular, spade-jawed, Malleable. Transporter was smoothing the skin on Gunnderson"s face, realigning the atoms-shearing away the burned flesh, coating it with vibrant, healthy pink skin.

Another few moments and the psioid was finished. The burns had been erased; Gunnderson was new and whole, save for the patches of healthier-seeming skin that dotted his face.

All through it he had been murmuring. As the Mallaport finished his mental work and stood up with a sigh, the words filtered through to the young s.p.a.ceCom ensign. He stared at Gunnderson a moment, then raised his watery blue eyes to the other officials standing about.

He stared at them with a mixture of fear and bewilderment.

Gunnderson had been saying: "Let me die, please let me die, I want to die, won"t you let me die, please..."

The ship was heading toward Omalo, sun of the Delgart system. It had been translated into invers.p.a.ce by a Driver named Carina Correia. She had warped the ship through, and gone back to her deep-sleep, till she was needed at Omalo snap-out.

Now the ship whirled through the crazy quilt of invers.p.a.ce, cutting through to the star system of Earth"s adversary.

Gunnderson sat in the cabin with the brush-cut blond ensign. All through the trip, since blast-off and snap-out, the pyrotic had been kept in his stateroom. This was the newest of the Earth s.p.a.ceCom ships, yet he had seen none of it. Just this tiny stateroom, and the constant company of the ensign.

The s.p.a.ceCom ensign"s watery blue eyes swept between the pallid man and the teleport-proof safe set in the cabin"s bulkhead.

"Any idea why they"re sending us so deep into Delgart territory?" the ensign fished. "It"s pretty tight lines up this far. Must be something big. Any idea?"

Gunnderson"s eyes came up from their focus on his boottops, and stared at the s.p.a.ceman. He idly flipped the harmonica he had requested before blast-off and had used to pa.s.s away the long hours in invers.p.a.ce. "No idea. How long have we been at war with the Delgarts?"

"Don"t you even know who your planet"s at war with?"

"I"ve been rural for many years. And aren"t we always at war with someone?"

The ensign looked startled. "Not unless it"s to protect the peace of the galaxies. Earth is a peace-loving-"

Gunnderson cut him off. "Yes. I know. But how long have we been at war with the Delgarts? I thought they were our allies under some treaty or other?"

The s.p.a.ceman"s face contorted in a picture of conditioned hatred. "We"ve been after the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds since they jumped one of our mining planets outside their cl.u.s.ter." He twisted his lips in open loathing. "We"ll clean the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out soon enough! Teach them to jump peaceful Earthmen."

Gunnderson wished he could shut out the words. He had heard the same story all the way to A Centauri IX and back. Someone had always jumped someone else; someone was always at war with someone else; there were always b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to be cleaned out...

The invership whipped past the myriad colors of invers.p.a.ce, hurtling through that not-s.p.a.ce toward the alien cl.u.s.ter. Gunnderson sat in the teleport-proof stateroom, triple-lokt.i.ted, and waited. He had no idea what they wanted of him, why they had tested him, why they had sent him through the preflight checkups, why he was here. But he knew one thing: whatever it was, there was to be no peace for him...ever.

He silently cursed the strange mental power he had. The power to make the molecules of anything speed up tremendously, making them grind against one another, causing combustion. A strange, channeled teleport faculty that was useless for anything but the creation of fire. He d.a.m.ned it soulfully, wishing he had been born deaf, mute, blind, incapable of any contact with the world.

From the moment of his life when he had become aware of his strange power, he had been haunted. No control, no identification, no communication. Cut off. Tagged as an oddie. Not even the pleasures of being an acknowledged psioid like the Mindees, the invaluable Drivers, the Blasters, or the Mallaports who could move the atoms of flesh to their design. He was an oddie: a nondirective psioid. Tagged deadly and uncontrollable. He could set the fires, but he could not control them. The molecules were too tiny, too quickly imitative for him to stop the activity once it was started. It had to stop of its own volition-and usually it was too long in stopping.

Once he had thought himself normal, once he had thought of leading an ordinary life-of perhaps becoming a musician. But that idea had died aflaming, as all other normal ideas had followed it.

First the ostracism, then the hunting, then the arrests and the prison terms, one after another. Now something new-something he could not understand. What did they want with him? It was obviously in connection with the mighty battle being fought between Earth and the Delgarts, but of what use could his unreliable powers be?

Why was he in this most marvelous of the new s.p.a.ceCom ships, heading toward the central sun of the enemy cl.u.s.ter? And why should he help Earth in any case?At that moment the locks popped, the safe broke open, and the clanging of the alarms was heard to the bowels of the invership.

The ensign stopped him as he rose and started toward the safe. The ensign thumbed a b.u.t.ton on his wrist-console.

"Hold it, Mr. Gunnderson. I wasn"t told what was in there, but I was told to keep you away from it until the other two get here."

Gunnderson slumped back hopelessly on the acceleration bunk. He dropped the harmonica to the metal floor and lowered his head into his hands. "What other two?"

"I don"t know, sir. I wasn"t told."

The other two were psioids, naturally.

When the Mindee and the Blaster arrived, they motioned the ensign to remove the contents of the safe. He walked over nervously, took out the tiny recorder and the single speak-tip.

"Play it, Ensign," the Mindee directed.

The s.p.a.ceman thumbed the speak-tip into the hole, and the grating of the blank s.p.a.ce at the beginning of the record fined the room.

"You can leave now, Ensign," the Mindee said.

After the s.p.a.ceCom officer had securely lokt.i.ted the door, the voice began. Gunnderson recognized it immediately as that of Terrence, head of s.p.a.ceCom. The man who had questioned him tirelessly at the Bureau building in Buenos Aires. Terrence: hero of another war, the Earth-Kyben War, now head of s.p.a.ceCom. The words were brittle, almost without inflection, yet they carried a sense of utmost importance: "Gunnderson," he began, "we have, as you already know, a job for you. By this time the ship will have reached the central-point of your trip through invers.p.a.ce.

"You will arrive in two days Earthtime at a slip-out point approximately five million miles from Omalo, the enemy sun. You will be far behind enemy lines, but we are certain you will be able to accomplish your mission safely.

That is why you have been given this new ship. It can withstand anything the enemy can throw.

"We want you to get back after your job is done. You are the most important man in our war effort, Gunnderson, and this is only your first mission.

"We want you to turn the sun Omalo into a supernova."

Gunnderson, for perhaps the second time in thirty-eight years of bleak, gray life, was staggered. The very concept made his stomach churn. Turn another race"s sun into a flaming, gaseous bomb of incalculable power, spreading death into s.p.a.ce, charring into nothing the planets of the system? Annihilate in one move an entire culture?

What did they think he was capable of?

Could he direct his mind to such a task?

Could he do it?

Should he do it?

His mind trembled at the possibility. He had never really considered himself as having many ideals. He had set fires in warehouses to get the owners their liability insurance; he had flamed other hobos who had tried to rob him; he had used the unpredictable power of his mind for many things, but this- This was the murder of a solar system!

He wasn"t in any way sure he could turn a sun supernova. What was there to lead them to think he might be able to do it? Burning a forest and burning a giant red sun were two things fantastically far apart. It was something out of a nightmare. But even if he could.. .

"In case you find the task unpleasant, Mr. Gunnderson," the ice-chip voice of the s.p.a.ceCom head continued, "we have included in this ship"s complement a Mindee and a Blaster.

"Their sole job is to watch and protect you, Mr. Gunnderson. To make certain you are kept in the proper, patriotic state of mind. They have been instructed to read you from this moment on, and should you not be willing to carry out your a.s.signment...well, I"m certain you are familiar with a Blaster"s capabilities."

Gunnderson stared at the blank-faced telepath sitting across from him on the other bunk. The man was obviously listening to every thought in Gunnderson"s head. A strange, nervous expression was on the Mindee"s face.

His gaze turned to the Blaster who accompanied him, then back to Gunnderson.

The pyrotic swiveled a glance at the Blaster, then swiveled away as quickly.

Blasters were men meant to do one job, one job only; a Blaster became the type of man he had to be, to be successful doing that job. They all looked the same, and now Gunnderson found the look almost terrifying. He had not thought he could be terrified, any more.

"That is your a.s.signment, Gunnderson, and if you have any hesitation, remember our enemy is not human.

They may look like you, but mentally they are extraterrestrials as unlike you as you are unlike a slug. And remember there"s a war on. You will be saving the lives of many Earthmen by performing this task.

"This is your chance to become respected, Gunnderson.

"A hero, respected, and for the first time," he paused, as though not wishing to say what was next, "for the first time-worthy of your world."

The rasp-rasp-rasp of the speak-tip filled the stateroom. Gunnderson said nothing. He could hear the phrase whirling, whirling in his head: There"s a war on, There"s a war on, THERE"S A WAR ON! He stood up and slowly walked to the door.

"Sorry, Mr. Gunnderson," the Mindee said emphatically, "we can"t allow you to leave this room."He sat down and lifted the battered mouth organ from where it had fallen. He fingered it for a while, then put it to his lips. He blew, but made no sound.

And he didn"t leave.

They thought he was asleep. The Mindee-a cadaverously thin man with hair grayed at the temples and slicked back in strips on top, with a gasping speech and a nervous movement of hand to ear-spoke to the Blaster.

"He doesn"t seem to be thinking, John!"

The Blaster"s smooth, hard features moved vaguely, and a quirking frown split his inkline mouth. "Can he do it?"

The Mindee rose, ran a hand quickly through the straight, slicked hair.

"Can he do it? No, he shouldn"t be able to do it, but he"s doing it! I can"t figure it out...it"s eerie. Either I"ve lost it, or he"s got something new."

"Trauma-barrier?"

"That"s what they told me before I left, that he seemed to be blocked off. But they thought it was only temporary, and that once he was away from the Bureau buildings he"d clear up.

"But he hasn"t cleared up."