Analog SFF, December 2009

Novelette: WILDERNESS WERE PARADISE ENOW by H. G. Stratmann
Decisions must be based on the best information available—which can be dicey when that information is a hodgepodge of fact and illusion.
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,

Would not we shatter it to bits—and then

Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

* * * *
"Do you think the aliens killed them?"

Dr. Alexander Stone, NASA's head of space medicine, didn't look at the woman questioning him. The former astronaut stared instead at the three huge screens in front of them at the Mission Control Center in Houston. He focused on the screens’ words, numbers, and computer graphics showing the data feed from Zubrin Base—as if trying to use those displays like a telescope to see what was happening on Mars.

Finally the physician turned toward her and replied, “We don't know if Slayton is still alive. It's been over fourteen hours since his last message, but he didn't seem to be in immediate danger then. However, based on the last vital signs and other telemetry information he transmitted on Savitskaya's condition, my medical staff and our counterparts at the Russian Space Agency agree she must be dead by now. The injuries she sustained when the two of them explored the aliens’ artifact were too severe for her to survive much longer."

Nancy Kelley, flight director for the project, sighed. “That means it's time to notify Washington and the next of kin, then face the media. Challenger, Columbia, the ISS incident—this is the type of press conference I hoped I'd never have to give. It's been nearly sixteen years since anyone's died from being in space. I know our luck had to run out sometime. But it still hurts."

The flight director briefly removed her wire-frame glasses and wiped moisture from her eyes. Though she was a decade younger than Stone, her face seemed to sag to his age and beyond as she continued, “Everybody, especially Martin and Katerina, knew this first flight to Mars was the most dangerous space mission ever attempted. The biggest wild card was what the aliens would do. After all the good they've done by terraforming Mars and moving the planet closer to the Earth, we gambled they wouldn't turn hostile once our two people landed.

"Looks like we lost our gamble."

Kelley gazed sadly at the cardiologist. “This is hard on you too. How are you holding up?"

Stone shrugged.

Kelley left to speak with several flight controllers seated at nearby consoles. Stone rubbed his palm over the back of his bristly gray hair and peered again at the silent screens. These last tense hours made him feel every second of his sixty years.

After his great failure on the International Space Station in late 2020, he'd managed to keep all the astronauts under his care safe and healthy—until now. Crews on the last missions to the ISS, later ones to its successors, and flights to the growing lunar base had experienced only minor medical problems. There'd been no serious injuries or fatalities caused by human carelessness in space—a track record he hoped was at least partly due to lessons learned from his last tragic journey into orbit nearly sixteen years ago.

And now the person whose success his well-concealed soft sentimental side cared about most was dead—killed on her thirty-third birthday. Katerina was several months younger than Martin and only five years older than his own daughter. Stone remembered that sweet, talented cosmonaut sitting beside her fiancé in the health classes he'd given them before their trip to Mars. He'd intentionally projected himself as a stern father figure to those two young people—trying to teach them right from wrong based on his own mistakes, and keep them safe.

When the Russians discovered Katerina and Martin had become engaged and wanted to remove her from the mission, he'd talked them into keeping her. Yes, he'd honestly believed she was the best choice for this project and deserved to go to Mars. But no one else had to know that he was trying to help not just Katerina but himself too. She was his secret surrogate for another young woman he'd once known—a cosmonaut and colleague whose career and life he'd destroyed without wanting or meaning to. He'd been forced to choose between his responsibility as a physician to everyone who would ever travel in space and shattering only a single person's dream.

Did it hurt anyone besides him if he hoped Katerina's success might make up a little for what he'd done?

Now the cardiologist knew the answer to that question. History had repeated itself and he was responsible for destroying another life—

Stone noticed a growing commotion among the other personnel crowding the spacious control room. One screen in the front of the room showed an interference pattern that resolved into a picture transmitted from the sole human dwelling on Mars.

A video camera within the habitation module centered on a sight his training and experience as a physician refused to believe. If what he saw wasn't an antemortem recording, it was a medical miracle.

The slim attractive woman on the screen, transmitting from over twenty-five million kilometers away, had long auburn hair and hazel eyes. “Zubrin Base here. Katerina Savitskaya speaking. Martin and I are both alive. I cannot provide you now with more details about our situation. Do not, I repeat, do not try to contact us. I will send you an update when and if I can. End of transmission."

Stone stared at the screen where Katerina's image had just disappeared. The relief he'd felt momentarily was replaced by fear. She was alive—but based on her injuries and the limited medical care Martin could give her on Mars, she shouldn't be alive. Only something more than human could've healed her—and the price it demanded for doing that might be so high she'd be better off dead.

Something was very wrong on Mars—and he hoped Katerina and Martin could make it right.

Katerina stabbed a button on the communications console and ended the transmission. Her chair inside the habitation module's cramped compartment creaked as she rocked and prayed—struggling against the terrifying thoughts that tormented her. Her blue jumpsuit and black boots were caked and filthy with red Martian mud. Her whole body felt unclean.

The young cosmonaut's right hand clutched the three-barred golden cross hanging from a gold chain around her neck. She tried in vain to use this sacred symbol of her devout Russian Orthodox faith to exorcise the evil that possessed her. Attempting to free herself from the fears looping in her mind, she grabbed her music player from atop the console and fingered its click wheel. Finally she found a piece that matched her self-flagellating mood of anguished despair.

Hidden wireless speakers shook the tomb-like cabin with the Kyrie from Haydn's Missa in Angustiis. Katerina felt herself engulfed by shadows of D minor darkness too deep for the brightest light from heaven to dispel. The orchestra's slashing strings and solo organ's clashing chords mocked the pleas for divine mercy screamed by the chorus and soloists that echoed the ones in her own mind. Brutal fanfares by three piercing trumpets and a pair of pounding kettledrums sounded like steel-gray spikes being hammered through the outstretched limbs of the crucified Savior.

The music ended in a thundering repetition of its savage opening notes with no hint of hope or healing. Exhausted in mind and body, for now at least Katerina felt able to resist the “gift” the aliens had forced her to accept—the unwanted knowledge of how to manipulate matter, energy, gravity, and time that tempted her to be more than human. And while she possessed that hard-won self-control, she had to confront a challenge even greater than her own death had been.

Katerina walked stiffly through the habitation module's compartments to its open exit. Her boots thudded onto the short ramp leading down from the module, a squat metal cylinder nine meters in diameter by five meters tall and supported by an array of stubby legs, to the surrounding plain. She trudged out onto reddish-orange soil still damp from a recent shower and took deep breaths of the warm oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere the aliens had bestowed on Mars over the past ten years.

The morning Sun, shining only seven million kilometers farther away than Earth's average distance from it, brightened a clear azure sky tinged with a roseate blush. Katerina fingered her golden cross and braced herself for what she had to do. She had to find the man she loved and redeem him.

And if he couldn't be saved, she had to destroy him.

* * * *
Martin Slayton stood floating a meter above the ground and laughed. The aliens were right about the gift they'd given him. It was easy to manipulate gravity.

He rocketed up another forty meters into the air—chuckling at the feathery tickle that ascension made in his stomach. Curling himself up as though he were about to do a cannonball dive, Martin did several slow head-first rotations in place—just as he'd done in microgravity four months ago on the Ares VII rocket traveling to Mars. Still suspended in midair, he eased himself into a prone position with arms extending straight out in front of him.

Of course, flying took more than just changing how his body was affected by the ambient 0.91 g gravity the aliens had given Mars. But they'd also shown him how to manipulate matter and energy in any way he desired. He just had to provide all the molecules in his body with the right amount of energy and correct vectors to move at the same time in the direction he wanted.

As he flew in lazy circles above the Martian plain, Martin didn't care if he seemed to be violating the conservation of energy and several other laws of physics. It didn't matter that the aliens hadn't explained why he could do all these things now. The fact they'd showed him how to do them was enough. After all, he'd learned to walk as a toddler without knowing he had bones and muscles in his legs—much less how they worked. His new abilities required no more effort than moving his arm. They were as natural as speaking—as easy as thinking.

Martin zoomed farther up into the sky—arms spread outward to embrace a sun only slightly smaller and dimmer than it shone on Earth. But he stopped before rising too high—content to be Daedalus instead of Icarus. There he relaxed and enjoyed his bird's-eye view of the scenery far below.

He soared over a garden ninety meters by sixty meters that Katerina and he had planted a kilometer from the habitation module. The green bean bushes, cornstalks, and wheat growing there seemed to look up in awe at the Missouri farm boy-turned-astronaut sailing high above them. He imagined the denizens of that garden cheering him as their protector—a super scarecrow.

Martin smiled—pretending he was one of the four-color superheroes whose classic adventures he'd enjoyed reading as a boy. He pictured the maroon pullover shirt, white shorts, and ebony boots he wore, and the scarlet St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap covering his close-cropped black hair, replaced by more colorful garb. In his mind a red cape with stylized yellow “S” fluttered behind him in the Martian breeze.

Next he imagined himself donning instead a darker uniform of green, white, and black, then slipping a power ring onto the middle finger of his gloved right hand. The aliens had given him a gift that made him the most powerful man alive. All he had to do to save the world was to be honest and without fear—

His alien-enhanced vision spotted movement on the ground beneath him. Martin stopped in mid flight—scowling as the blue-clad figure walked to the edge of their garden and stood looking up at him. He glided feet-first to a soft landing five meters from where Katerina gazed at him with an undecipherable expression. His subtle attempt to pry into her mind and read her thoughts was instantly blocked by her own alien-augmented will-power.

Locked in a silent stare with her inscrutable hazel eyes, Martin didn't feel fearless anymore.

* * * *
Katerina masked her thoughts and feelings from the stranger frowning at her. The stone face she showed this parody of the man she loved hid her fear that the Martin she knew was lost forever.

The alien body that looked like Martin sneered, “You don't have to just walk anymore."

"You said the only miracle you really wanted to do was to ‘resurrect’ me."

"Yes."

"But that's not all you want to do now."

"No."

Martin shook his head. “Don't you see, Katerina? We've been given an opportunity no one's ever had before. The aliens gave us the power to manipulate matter, energy, gravity, and time. I'm still experimenting to see what exactly that power lets us do—especially how we can manipulate time—but I know how their gift should be used. There's so much suffering, violence, disease, and death on Earth. We can use our powers to end all that misery and turn the world into a paradise!"

"Is that why you think the aliens forced us to accept their gift, Martin?"

"Heck, they're aliens! Who knows what they think or why they did it! Maybe they're trying to save humanity but have some variation of the Prime Directive that forbids them to do it directly. Maybe they believe it's okay to delegate their powers to natives like us to do the job for them. After all, we're the ‘insiders.’ We're in a better position than the aliens to know what's best for the human race and have the strongest motivation to help it!"

"Maybe the aliens are using us as their instruments—but not to help us. Perhaps their ‘code’ prohibits them from destroying us themselves. Instead, by giving us enough power they expect we'll destroy Earth or conquer it for them!"

Martin waved his hands dismissively. Then he concentrated on a patch of ochre Martian soil several meters from where they stood. The dirt swirled up in a miniature dust storm that sculpted itself and congealed into the form of a straight back chair. Martin sat down in it, still facing his fiancée.

"That's one of the oldest SF clichés around, Katerina. The first thing every mutant, member of Homo superior, or anyone struck by an Evolvo-Ray does is to try to conquer or crush ‘normal’ humans. That plot makes for exciting stories—but I would never do that!"

"Then why are you sitting on a throne?"

Martin stood up. He glanced back at his creation and made it crumble back into dust. “Sorry. It was supposed to be a club chair, like the one in my parents’ living room."

His eyes darkened. “I hope you're not thinking about pulling an Elizabeth Dehner on me."

"You're referring to the second Star Trek pilot, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before.’ No, I don't want to fight you, Martin."

"I'm surprised you've seen that episode. I didn't think you knew or cared much about science fiction. I usually have to sweet-talk you into watching my collection of old SF movies and TV shows with me."

"I haven't seen it—but you have. I saw your memories of it in your mind."

"So you're against me using my powers and won't let me read your thoughts—but you're perfectly willing to do it yourself! Well, do whatever you want inside my mind! Keep watching and listening to what I'm thinking! Maybe that'll convince you I won't let this power corrupt me!"

"I know you'd never intentionally hurt anyone, Martin. But although we've been given superhuman powers, our minds are still human—all too human. Even with the best intentions we could cause terrible pain and suffering because we don't know the best way to use these powers."

"But if we don't use the aliens’ gift to help humanity because we're afraid we'll do the wrong thing, we'll be shirking our responsibility to help others. Better to try and fail than to not try at all!"

"The stakes are too high, Martin. Instead of saving the world we could unwittingly doom it. The powers we've been given are so great we might not be able to undo our mistakes. ‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor—’”

Martin cut her off. “I know some quotations too—like ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ It's too late, Katerina. The genie's out of the bottle. I'm ready now to let Mission Control know what's happened—unless you've already done it."

"I've only told them we're alive. Nothing more."

"I presume you used our communications console. No need for that anymore."

Martin stared up at the sky. His mind probed out from the Martian wilderness into the void—searching through space until familiar images in Houston entered his consciousness. “You should try this, Katerina. It's like watching 3-D TV. Don't ask me how, but I can even hear what they're saying—and thinking."

He smiled. “Nope. They don't have a clue at Mission Control. Hey, Dr. Stone's there too. I bet he's wondering how I cured you. Let's see what he's thinking."

Seconds later Martin's grin collapsed in embarrassment. “Who would have thought ... so much guilt over what he did..."

"So now you're using your powers to invade other peoples’ private thoughts. How long will it be before you're telling them what to think?"

"Okay, I made a mistake. Now I know better. There are other ways to test my powers that I'm sure will help people."

Martin stroked his chin. “Maybe I should start close to home. Look in my mind and see what I do..."

* * * *
The isolated farmhouse shuddered as rain and golf ball-sized hail pelted its walls in front of an approaching tornado. From the gray night sky the thunderstorm ripped peeling paint from the dwelling's weathered wooden siding and tore shingles from its roof. Howling winds whipped the heavy limbs of the ancient oak tree in the front yard—splitting off a large branch that crashed through the home's picture window.

Amy Gale screamed as glass shattered and sprayed across the family room above her head. She sat hunched on the basement's cold concrete floor, surrounded by a thick darkness broken only by the fading flashlight beside her. Three-year-old Dottie scrunched closer and clutched her mother's blouse. The child whimpered as lightning flashed again outside the tiny basement window nearby—followed almost immediately by a thunderclap that shook the house like a miniature earthquake.

After the electricity went off thirty minutes ago, their only link to the outside world was the ancient battery-powered weather radio nearby. Its computer-synthesized male voice blandly informed them that a severe thunderstorm watch was in effect for Webster County, Missouri, until 9:30 p.m., and suggested they take shelter immediately. The voice added that conditions were right for the creation of a tornado.

Amy hugged her daughter and whispered that everything would be all right. But as the storm's fury grew she couldn't calm her own fears. She was only twenty-five—too young for the Lord to call her home. Little dark-haired, blue-eyed Dottie hadn't even begun to live. And there was no way to know whether her husband was safe. After their latest argument several hours ago, Nick had stormed out of the house and driven off in his pickup truck. Instead of being with his family he could be anywhere on the road between here and Marshfield—perhaps lying dead in a ditch....

Close to her ear Amy heard her daughter murmur through the thunder, “Please, God, make the storm go away. Keep Mommy, Daddy, and me safe."

Neither knew that in spite of Dottie's prayer the tornado would reach them in four minutes. Winds swirling at over three hundred kilometers per hour would blast away the roof, then crumple and splinter their house into a massive pile of debris. Seconds later the floor over their heads would be ripped away and expose the pair's sheltered hiding place in the basement. Mercifully they would feel only an instant of terror before their bodies were crushed and impaled by an avalanche of wood and metal collapsing on top of them—

Suddenly a miraculous stillness settled over their home. No more flashes of lightning illumined the basement's window. Amy listened in vain for thunder or shrieking winds. Then she heard a tiny voice snuggled near her smile three words.

"Thank you, God."

* * * *
The man who'd once been merely Martin Slayton chuckled. “See how easy it is to manipulate matter and energy, Katerina? A little change in temperature and barometric pressure, and the rain and lightning go away. Bleed off some energy from overexcited molecules in air, and no more tornado. Hurricanes, tropical storms, earthquakes, tsunamis—we could stop them all with our powers. Think of all the people we could save—the destruction we could prevent!"

"'He arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water; and they ceased, and there came a calm.’ I heard people praying to you, Martin. Do you enjoy being worshiped?"

"Nobody knows I saved them! It was an anonymous good deed! I'm not interested in getting thanks or glory. I don't care if they think it was a miracle!"

"Even if you don't call yourself a god or want to be one, you're still acting like a god. What are you going to do now, Martin? Are you going to continuously monitor weather throughout the world or check for every tectonic plate shift that could produce an earthquake for the rest of your life? And when do you decide to make a change? The same mild shower that gives farmers the rain they need for crops could also produce a rain-slicked highway that causes a fatal car accident!"

Katerina frowned at him. “I heard what you just thought about the ‘butterfly effect.’ You were remembering an old-time science fiction story and a later analogy based on chaos theory—that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could produce tiny changes in atmospheric conditions in a ripple effect that eventually causes a tornado in Texas. You saved lives now by stopping that particular tornado, Martin. But how do you know you haven't inadvertently doomed many more people in the future?"

"Next you'll be telling me that one little girl I saved will grow up to be a ruthless dictator—and that by keeping her from dying today more people will die years from now. No, Katerina, the aliens didn't give us the ability to predict the future. But by that same logic no one would be able to do anything for fear it might have unintended bad consequences.

"According to you, no doctor should cure a dying child because she doesn't know what kind of adult that child will become. Nobody should have children at all because none of us knows how they'll turn out! Police, firefighters, and paramedics shouldn't save anybody who's in danger because they don't know what kind of life the victim they help will lead afterwards! At least I'm trying to help people. You want to be the Angel of Death!"

"When you make changes this great, Martin—far beyond what the person you used to be could do—the consequences of your actions are equally great for good or bad. The aliens’ ‘gift’ has brought you closer to being omnipotent than any human being has ever been. You may rival God now in that one attribute—but not others. You're not all-wise, you're not all-knowing, you're not eternal, you're not—"

Marvin interrupted her contemptuously. “You want us to be like cattle and sheep—passive playthings in the hands of God, Fate, or whatever—afraid to do anything because we might make a mistake! I believe we should do what seems right today and deal with the future when it comes. I wonder how many people have died while we've been arguing about this—people we could've saved! If you won't help me, I'll do it myself—"

* * * *
The hospital room where Manuel Cruz lay dying had smiling teddy bears and rainbow-striped dinosaurs painted on its walls. Dolores Cruz sat beside her nine-year-old son's bed, holding his feverish hand. The boy seemed to be sleeping, his breaths coming in gasps through the clear plastic oxygen mask covering his lower face. The beeping from the heart monitor above his head and hiss of the blood pressure cuff periodically inflating and deflating around his wasted arm were the only other sounds she heard.

The nurses who wafted in and out of the room glanced at her sympathetically. Like her, each one was swathed in a yellow paper gown—hands encased in latex gloves, hair hidden beneath an azure surgical cap, mouth and nose covered by a mask. Dolores knew these “reverse isolation” measures wouldn't help her son anymore. But they made it easier for the professionals caring for Manuel in his final illness to fuss over his IV fluids and do their other work without lingering with her any longer than necessary. They didn't want to give her false hope or admit the truth any more than she wanted to hear it.

Dolores's glove wiped away tears. She and Carlos knew this day might come when they adopted Manuel at six months old. Both were in their late thirties and successful lawyers when they'd married. The fertility clinic they'd visited after failing to start a family had done everything medically possible to help. But after yet another miscarriage, she and her husband had decided on another option.

They could've adopted a “perfect” baby—not one innocently suffering from the sins of his drug-addicted, HIV-positive biological mother. But here was a baby that needed even more love than usual—and she and her husband had more than the usual to give. The doctors said the latest medications could suppress development of AIDS for years—and despite all those decades of setbacks there was hope that a cure might be discovered soon.

But time had run out for Manuel. His immune system had collapsed with that elusive cure no closer than when he'd been born. For the last two years he'd spent more days inside than out of the hospital—suffering from vomiting, diarrhea, and infections. Nutritional supplements, then a thin feeding tube passed through his nose and down into his stomach, and finally “central hyperalimentation” IV fluids hadn't prevented her son from wasting away to a skeleton covered by a layer of dry skin.

Manuel had been too sick in the hospital to even go to the funeral when his father died of a heart attack two months ago. Still reeling from that loss, Dolores knew that soon she would lose the other person she loved most. Her son no longer responded to the best treatments the doctors had for this latest recurrence of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia. Their medicines kept him from suffering too much. But there was nothing they could do to ease the ache in her heart.

Her vision blurred—imagining what her son would look like if he were well. She saw his sunken cheeks plump with health—his arms strong enough to give her a loving hug. Exhausted from grief and worry as evening turned into night, her head nodded for a few moments of soothing sleep....

Dolores jerked awake when a gentle hand touched her cheek. A startled cry escaped her throat as she saw a stranger sitting in her son's sickbed. She blinked and tried telling herself she was dreaming—but she wasn't.

The boy's hospital gown was too small for his filled-out healthy frame. He removed the oxygen mask with muscular fingers, a puzzled expression on his robust face. Then he spoke in a voice she couldn't mistake for anyone else's.

"Mom, why are you crying?"

* * * *
Stone sat in Mission Control and watched a small television screen near his elbow. CNN showed Kelley giving a press conference updating what they knew—or rather, didn't know—was happening on Mars.

He glanced at his wristwatch: 11:38 p.m. That meant he'd been here for eighteen hours—a typical work shift for a cardiologist. More importantly, it meant relatively few people—at least in the U.S.—were awake and watching Kelley evade questions about what the media dubbed the “Great Martian Mystery."

As reporters grilled the flight director for answers neither she nor anyone else on Earth had, Stone focused on the news items scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen. Some of them read like headlines on a checkout line tabloid. Eyewitness accounts of tornadoes and hurricanes being snuffed out could be attributed to overwrought imaginations or freak meteorological conditions.

But those reports coming from a growing list of reputable hospitals and clinics worldwide couldn't be dismissed. According to the TV, people on the brink of death were being inexplicably cured. Those with end-stage AIDS, cancer, heart disease, and other serious diseases were now completely healthy. Nursing home residents with Alzheimer's or old strokes were suddenly as mentally sharp and neurologically sound as they'd ever been. Amputees grew back new limbs and paraplegics walked. The blind now saw and the deaf could hear.

The physician grunted. If those stories were true, he might have to retrain in another profession—hopefully one with better hours....

Suddenly he realized there might be a connection between what Kelley was saying and these other events. If the aliens had healed Katerina they must also be responsible for those other cures. He wondered when someone else would think of that too.

Stone hoped that wouldn't happen soon. For it wouldn't take the public long to realize that a world in which miracles were routine might also be ripe for an apocalypse.

* * * *
"Not bad for somebody who barely passed college biology."

Martin's voice had a taunting edge. “I didn't even have to know any fine details about human anatomy or physiology to do it. All I did was will all those cures and healings in general terms—and they happened!"

"'Young man, I say to thee, arise.’ Are you enjoying playing God, Martin?"

"I keep telling you, this isn't about me! It's about correcting the mistake the God you believe in made by allowing all this pain and suffering!"

Martin folded his arms. “Of course, the aliens gave you the same power over matter, energy, gravity, and time that I have. You could reverse everything I just did. But if you make those children sick again or let people die, don't tell me it's for their own good!"

"I don't deny that what you did is good—today. But what about tomorrow? You didn't cure every person in the world. How do you think those you didn't help will feel? Even as we're talking more people are getting sick and being injured. Are you going to prevent or treat every illness and accident from now on?"

Martin scowled. “Even if I can't help everybody, helping some people is better than helping none at all! I intentionally didn't do some things I could've done, like making the elderly young again. I'm not sure yet that would be a good thing in the long run because of all the social and economic disruptions it could produce. So—responsible person that I am—I'll wait to do it until I figure out how to minimize any problems it might cause."

"You may already have done more damage than you realize, Martin. Besides being grateful for them, how else do you think people will react to these ‘miracles’ you performed? Will they live more carelessly—expecting that any damage they do to themselves or others will be healed by another of your miracles? Will it discourage researchers and doctors to find new treatments that, though not as perfect as yours, rely on what's possible by human effort and don't depend on your godlike whim? Are you ready to let all of Earth's people transfer responsibility for their welfare from themselves and place it on your shoulders?"

"No, I can't do everything. I won't be like the robots in ‘With Folded Hands.’ I'm going to leave people who can help themselves alone and let them succeed or fail on their own. But there are many others who through no fault of their own don't have the ability to help themselves. And I know how to start..."

It was already hot as the Sun crept above the horizon. Far too little rain had fallen on this region of sub-Saharan Africa for months. Parched grasslands and cracked powdery soil baked beneath a cloudless sky as the inhabitants of the village stirred. In one of the mud huts thirty-three-year-old Nehanda was already awake and dressed. Though she didn't know why, she felt stronger than ever.

In the dim sunshine filtering through the shack's sole doorless entrance, even her four surviving children, ages two through seven, looked better than they had for days. Last night Nehanda feared the youngest child, her bloated belly and wasted limbs a stark reflection of how severe the drought and famine were, would be ready to be buried this morning next to her father and two siblings. But now the little girl looked healthy—as if the tiny ration of food she shared with the rest of her family really was enough to keep her alive.

But it was useless to be thankful for even the rare good things in their lives. Maybe the soldiers would come back today and leave more death and tears behind. Perhaps the village's only well would run dry and add the pangs of thirst to the rumbling in their empty stomachs. The small plots of maize, wheat, and other crops worked and shared by her neighbors and her, now coming to final ripening, might've been picked clean by birds during the night.

As Nehanda walked outside her hut several other women nodded to her. They all trod silently toward where they hoped their next meal still lay. Nehanda's face fell as she saw how little there was to gather. The shriveled stalks of grain lay flat and lifeless. Her family's share of this meager harvest, ground and baked into coarse bread, would be enough for only several mouthfuls apiece. But it would be enough to keep them alive one more day—and that was all she could hope for.

As Nehanda bent over within one of those plots, a shadow fell across the land. She looked up—and the few dry stalks in her hands fluttered to the ground. Her voice joined the cries of amazement shouted by the other women.

Enormous dark clouds gathered above their heads at a speed so fast they seemed like racing animals. Seconds later a gentle sheet of rain bathed the village in a soothing shower. For the first time in ages Nehanda laughed. She let the cool droplets dance on her tongue, then cupped her hands and rubbed the tiny pools of moisture across her chest.

Something tickled her bare legs. She peered down—and gasped. All around her and throughout the other small fields, wheat and other crops were springing up from the ground at an impossible pace. What normally took months of slow germination and growth was happening in moments. Soon she was surrounded by a lush harvest that would keep her children and everyone else fed for months.

There was no explanation for this miracle. There was no need for one. It was enough that it was.

* * * *
"If I heal the sick, I also need to keep them healthy."

Martin walked under a noontime Sun into the nearby garden. He fingered a cornstalk's leaf approvingly. “I grew up on a farm and know what crops need. And it sure helps to be able now to accelerate their growth by a factor of thousands. No one needs to go hungry anymore!"

Katerina said nothing. Inside Martin's mind she saw millions of people—suffering through no fault of their own—rescued from the brink of starvation and death. They laughed and rejoiced—grateful to be spared the agony of watching their loved ones sicken and perish, then dying themselves.

For the first time since she and Martin had been transformed into something more than human, she doubted herself. She wondered if the role she'd assumed as devil's advocate to Martin's plans might be literally true. Perhaps great power didn't corrupt all the time. Katerina thought of the kings and queens, emperors and czars, dictators and presidents she'd read about. Some were sadistic butchers. Many were mixtures of good and evil. Others had honestly tried to help people but lacked the wisdom to do lasting good.

But she wondered if even the rare paragons of self-control and service to their citizens like Marcus Aurelius or George Washington would've been corrupted too if they'd acquired as much power as she and Martin now possessed. There was probably a good reason no actual saints she could think of had possessed any personal power except their own words and example. Even Tomas de Torquemada was said to be honest and pious in his private life. Yet when given absolute power, he saw no contradiction to defending the Gospel's message of love and forgiveness with torture and murder as fifteenth-century Spain's first Grand Inquisitor.

Katerina scanned her memories of all the great works of philosophy, religion, and literature she'd read—seeking guidance on what she should do. As ideas percolated through her brain, passages in Plato's Republic converged with plots from science fiction movies Martin showed her on the flight here. There was a way to persuade him to stop using his power—but it meant she had to use hers.

She wrestled with her conscience before deciding there was no other choice. Besides, Martin told her she could do whatever she wanted inside his mind....

"Remember, Martin—'Man does not live by bread alone.’ Those people you fed today will be hungry again tomorrow. What will you do then?"

Martin exited the garden and walked close to her. “I don't need to help people who can already help themselves. I'll confine my miracles to areas where they can't grow enough food to live."

"What if the problem isn't caused by Nature? What will you do if someone comes to steal that food you gave them—or uses violence against them?"

"That's a job for governments and police. And yes, I know those systems sometimes fail or can be part of the problem. But if no one else can stop violence, I'll help the innocent."

"And are you willing to use force, Martin—even kill—to prevent killing? With your power you could be judge, jury, and executioner for every criminal or anyone you deem ‘evil'—and no one could stop you. They wouldn't even know you were the one who did it!"

"You know me better than that! I'd never use my power to deliberately hurt anyone!"

"But you could do it unintentionally. What if you lost your temper—or even just dreamed about hurting people?"

Martin grinned. “I've seen and read enough SF to anticipate anything that could go wrong. I'll be a well-behaved Star Child—and I've watched Forbidden Planet umpteen times. I'll will my power to not work while I'm asleep. That way there'll be no Monster from the Id—and I won't inadvertently change someone who wants to fly into a seagull like in an old Green Lantern story!"

"You're underestimating the danger. Even if you control yourself, you'll still be like one of Plato's guardians—the ultimate arbiter of what people can do or not do. But who will guard you?"

Martin frowned. “I'll guard myself. And I don't have to stop force with greater force. You've made me think of a better way to stop violence. Let me show you..."

* * * *
Rustam Shahidi's sweaty palms clutched the steering wheel of his pickup truck. Sitting alone in its cab, he tried to look inconspicuous as his vehicle moved cautiously through the streets of Tehran.

Along the avenue vendors offered their wares to hundreds of shoppers in this large outdoor market on a sunny Sunday morning. Rustam's dilapidated truck, stuffed with lettuce and other produce along its metal bed and wooden sides, blended in well with similarly laden ones. But none of them carried the deadly cargo hidden within his vehicle.

The young man tried not to think about what would happen to him in several minutes when he arrived at his target. There'd be a dozen soldiers around the checkpoint his truck was approaching. A simple calculation of the number of enemy lives lost compared to his meant his martyrdom would be worthwhile.

He eased the truck behind a small green car that formed the end of a short queue of vehicles stopped at the checkpoint. As the line in front of him gradually shortened, he jerked—startled by the face staring back at him from outside the open driver's-side window.

The boy smiling at him was about ten years old. Rustam nodded back—squelching an urge to whisper to the youngster to run away. The bomb in his vehicle would produce a blast radius of around a hundred meters. He prayed that the boy and other innocents would be far enough away to survive. But if they didn't, they would join him in paradise.

At least he hoped there was such a place for all of them. As these last seconds of his life ticked away, doubts about the supernatural significance of what he was about to do crept back into his mind. But even if the sum of his sacrifice was only a blow against those who repressed his country's people, it was enough to justify his death.

Rustam lost sight of the boy as his truck crept forward. There were only three more vehicles in front of where the soldiers checked a frightened driver's papers. He was close enough now that a press of the button near his hand would make his mission a success. Before any more doubts or regrets entered his brain he reached for the detonator—

The uniformed man walked cautiously toward the stalled produce truck, slipping his rifle off his shoulder into a ready position. Instead of advancing when the vehicles in front of it had moved past the checkpoint, this one sat in the street frozen in place. In the tense atmosphere that now blanketed Tehran, anything that looked even remotely suspicious could be the harbinger of sudden explosive death.

Heart pounding—terrified the next instant could be his last—the soldier crept close enough to the open window beside the driver to hear what the young man behind the wheel was muttering.

"It's wrong to kill. I shouldn't detonate the bomb. It's wrong to kill. I shouldn't det—"

That mantra was silenced by the sharp crack! of bullets from the sergeant's rifle tearing through Rustam's head. Gun smoke filled the soldier's nostrils as he lowered the rifle. He called back to the privates who'd started toward him to contact the bomb disposal team. Then—trying to exude nonchalance instead of the nervous relief he felt—he sauntered back to the checkpoint. By the time he reached it, he was already wondering if his deed might earn him a medal.

In this fifth year of the bloody Iranian civil war, Sgt. Bahram Bayat of the Revolutionary Guards had single-handedly stopped a suicide bomber. The government whose nearly sixty-year-old grip on power was weakening from a violent homegrown rebellion needed every hero it could find.

* * * *
Though it'd been many hours since he'd slept, fear kept Stone alert and focused on the TV screen. Several of his colleagues had wandered from their posts to look over his shoulder or at other small television monitors scattered around Mission Control.

Every screen showed nonplussed newscasters and reporters relating a burgeoning series of bizarre events around the world. Police stations were jammed with people turning themselves in for every violent crime and act they'd committed. Bank robbers laid down the pistols they were aiming at tellers and surrendered. Child molesters, individuals guilty of domestic violence, and rapists tearfully begged to be put in jail. Criminals ranging from street thugs to the top bosses of organized crime demanded punishment for the injuries and deaths they'd inflicted. Those ranks also included an alarming number of “respectable” citizens confessing to heinous deeds no one had ever suspected them of doing.

Stone shuddered. It was as if millions of people with a sick or nonexistent conscience had suddenly been healed. But his career as a physician had taught him many uncomfortable truths. One was that a person's basic personality and actions weren't improved without great effort—and only then if the individual cooperated. Another was that no medicine or treatment was risk-free and worked all the time.

He wondered what side effects this particular “cure” might have.

* * * *
Martin floated upright five meters above the ground and smiled. Waves of contentment rippled through his mind as he sensed images and thoughts from Mission Control and all across Earth.

A voice from below interrupted his reverie. “So that's your solution to violence. You're going to control people like puppets and destroy their free will!"

"No one has a right to ‘freely’ hurt another person, Katerina. All I'm doing is implanting feelings and ideas in peoples’ minds that should've been there all along. Things like empathy and remorse."

"And love? Are you going to make people care about each other?"

"No. I'm just giving them the chance to love others. Whether they choose to do that is still up to them."

"But it's just as important that they choose not to hate or hurt others!"

Katerina glared up at him. “You're not treating those people like human beings. To you they're just wild animals that need to be tamed. Even if it isn't the physical type, you're using force on them!"

"But I'm using gentle force—in a good cause. The people I've changed deliberately threatened, injured, or murdered others. The only way police can deal with criminals and killers is with the same weapons the bad guys use.

"What I'm doing is more benign. It's like a surgeon operating on someone with a brain tumor. My treatment causes less pain to sick patients and heals them better than a doctor could—"

Martin flinched as an unexpected power seized his body and dragged it to the ground. As his boots settled back onto the paprika-colored soil he laughed. “Good. I finally got you riled enough to use your own power. Maybe now you'll understand how easy it is to use."

"No. I just want you to look into my face when I talk to you."

Katerina walked closer to him. “Don't compare yourself to a doctor, Martin. Unless someone is mentally incapable of making a decision, a physician can't treat a patient without that person's consent. You didn't ask those people you changed if they wanted to be treated or not. And even if you did and they refused, you would've altered their minds anyway!"

She scowled. “Have you ever read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov?"

"Tried to read it. Never finished it. Long meandering novels make me fall asleep. Besides, what does that have to do with—"

"If you'd read it, Martin, you'd know you should be comparing yourself to Grand Inquisitors. They thought they were doing good by protecting their flock from dangerous ideas. They thought they were being merciful to heretics and unbelievers by trying to save their victims’ immortal souls—even if it meant rending their bodies with the rack and wheel or burning them at the stake!

"The method you're using is more subtle but ultimately just as corrupt. You're imposing your own orthodoxy of action—making people be ‘good’ instead of choosing to love and care for others. Yes, I know your intentions are good. But even the most caring, well-intentioned, and wise Grand Inquisitor is still a Grand Inquisitor. And you're infinitely more powerful and dangerous than any of them ever was!"

Martin snapped, “You sound like the Jesuits who taught me at the university. I regurgitated enough of what they said on tests to pass the theology courses I had to take. But they couldn't make me believe what they said."

Katerina took hold of the golden cross hanging from her neck. “Maybe those priests asked you this question. After being taunted, tortured, and crucified, why didn't the Savior come down from the cross and show the whole world who He really was?"

"Well, we both know the obvious answer!"

"Of course, Martin. If He were only a human being whose goodness inspired His followers to make Him into God, He didn't do it because He couldn't do it. But just assume for a moment that He really was both human and divine.

"If so, why did He choose to ‘only’ die and rise again instead of stopping His execution and creating a paradise on Earth? Like you, He could heal the sick, feed the hungry, and inspire sinners to repent. I think the reason He didn't stay to miraculously eliminate all evil and suffering is that He wanted us—humanity itself—to do it! He became weak to show us how we could become strong!"

Katerina's hazel eyes softened. “None of us will ever be perfect or without pain. Though we delay it for as long as the Old Testament patriarchs are said to have lived, we all eventually die. But whatever measure of paradise we create on Earth, Mars, or other worlds will be one we earned—not something given as a ‘gift.’ If we make life better it'll be because we used science to make Nature less dangerous and relieve human suffering. If we choose to be kind and care about others, we can claim credit for doing it.

"He showed us what we could do with our own human abilities. It's up to us to freely accept His challenge and imitate Him."

Martin grunted. “Are you finished? I was afraid you were going to make a speech longer than John Galt's in Atlas Shrugged. I admit you can weave a pretty bouquet of ivory tower ideas together like a Jesuit. But even the nicest words can only accomplish so much. What I'm doing is actually helping people and not just making rhetorical noise!"

"Is it, Martin? Maybe you're right that I should use my own power more. So far I've just been inside your mind seeing what you've done to Earth. Let's both go there to see everything you've done."

"Challenge accepted!"

* * * *
Katerina closed her eyes and extended her consciousness outward. She sensed Martin's mind accompanying her as she seemed to float up through the inverted bowl above them and move sunward through space.

Then a cacophony of sights and sounds on faraway Earth flooded Katerina's brain. With a neurosurgeon's finesse she separated images and sounds, thoughts and emotions like threads in the intricate tapestry of humanity's entire experience. Instantly she absorbed countless stories of terror turned to joy, suffering changed to health, and hunger relieved. Based on what she sensed and felt across the continents, Martin's actions had indeed brought justice to the innocent and guilty.

But like sunspots scattered across Sol's face, the young cosmonaut also found instances of pain and savagery caused by the changes he'd thrust on unwilling hearts. Some of those whose sinful deeds he'd laid bare or stopped were now battered and bleeding—others killed by those they'd threatened or hurt. Whether those people had truly received justice or greater punishment than they deserved was now moot.

Katerina's attention returned to her fellow watcher standing nearby. The stunned look on his face showed he too had seen the horrors he'd caused.

"Are you proud of everything you've done, Martin?"

"What I did wasn't enough to prevent violence. I thought it was enough to begin by stopping people who'd committed or were about to commit the worst kinds of crimes. I should've known those I affected weren't the only ones capable of hatred and murder."

"That's because it's easier to hate than to love—to seek revenge than to forgive. Do you think you can change human nature, Martin?"

"I can try!"

* * * *
Lieutenant Sergei Kijé shivered as his boots trudged across the frigid ground. He stopped and placed both hands in the pockets of his brown army jacket, then glanced up at a slate-colored afternoon sky promising snow soon. Behind him voices murmured from the two parked open-backed troop transport trucks where the twenty men he commanded sat bunched together. His soldiers, rifles slung carelessly over their shoulders, were trying to keep warm by bragging about their latest exploits on leave. Those inflated accounts of how much vodka they'd drunk and how many women they'd satisfied helped relieve their boredom.

The young lieutenant raised the image-stabilized high-power binoculars suspended from his neck and peered at the border three kilometers away. After studying the empty landscape he lowered the binoculars and sighed. It was rare for anything to actually happen on one of these routine patrols. He hoped the negotiations between his government and the Chinese were going well today. If they didn't, Moscow might send orders for another token incident. Perhaps a quick incursion of his soldiers across the border, or a barrage of artillery to make craters on the foreign land to the south—just enough to let the other side know that their northern neighbor was displeased.

A faint whistling crescendoed into a terrifying shriek. Three hundred meters to his right a geyser of soil erupted as the mortar shell hit. His men leapt out of the trucks, scattering and stretching prone along the ground. The lieutenant unsnapped a transceiver from his belt and tried to contact field headquarters for orders. Hopefully they'd be told to retreat instead of retaliate—

He winced as another blast rocked the earth two hundred meters to his left. The fact only one mortar seemed to be firing instead of multiple weapons blanketing them implied the Chinese weren't very motivated to wipe them out. They might not even know his troops were here and were just creating a token political incident of their own. But an unintentionally lucky shot would be just as deadly to him and his men as a deliberate one.

A deafening third explosion close behind him drowned out the reply spluttering from the transceiver. He sent a signal back to repeat that message and groaned when he heard it. His men cursed when they heard their orders. They rapidly removed their long-range mortars from the back of the trucks and started setting up to return fire.

As he supervised their work Sergei prayed that today wouldn't be the start of a real war—and that he and his contingent wouldn't be its first casualties. In the lull following that third explosion the lieutenant listened for the screaming descent of a final shell aimed directly at him. But his men's weapons were ready before it came. Though they'd be firing blind, at least they'd let the other side know he and his troops weren't defenseless. Unfortunately it'd also let the Chinese know they had a living target—

But as he started to give the order to return fire, he stopped. Sergei and his men stood frozen—their minds seized by an overpowering force. Thoughts not their own repeated in their brains like the incessant rumble of a distant drum. The same command pressed down on each man's consciousness—trying to crush his will.

Violence is wrong. War is wrong. You must not hurt others.

A great silence engulfed the whole Earth. On every continent each human being ceased moving and heard that command in his or her own language. Every heart and soul reverberated with that same overwhelming decree. For a few seconds over eight billion people lived without hatred or brutality in a world where only peace reigned.

And then humanity began to destroy itself.

* * * *
Two minutes before the global apocalypse started, Stone woke from a catnap and refocused on the TV screen. A news commentator was describing the public's muted reaction to the day's “miraculous” events. Comparing it to the panic that raged when Mars and Venus began inexplicably moving closer to Earth a decade ago, she suggested people might still be too emotionally exhausted from that previous crisis and the reported existence of aliens to react as violently this time.

Stone groaned. It was more likely people were in denial and suppressing their fears than that they'd been desensitized to this new uncertainty. At least the newswoman didn't make a direct connection between the aliens and what was happening now. That idea might still be the spark to make the public's pent-up terrors explode once again—

The physician's mouth froze in the middle of a yawn. Suddenly his thoughts, feelings, and consciousness were seized by a power and will not his own. It felt like his brain had been plunged into an ice-cold ocean and strong unseen hands were holding his head beneath the surface. Sweat leached from his forehead and he gasped through the terrified pounding of his heart.

A sense of impending doom seized Stone as he struggled to thrust off the vise squeezing his mind. He barely sensed the words about violence being wrong thundering within his head as he fought to retain his own identity. Something alien was stripping and peeling his very reason away like a flaying knife. The sickening dread of what madness might be left behind after that unknown force finished its work made him fight ever more fiercely for the release of freedom—or death.

Stone dimly heard the muffled whimpers and shrieks of everyone around him at Mission Control. Suddenly, as if a ticking bomb planted in his head exploded, an exhilarating howl burst from his lips. For an instant he felt only relief—freed at last from whatever parasite had invaded his brain. Then the shredded debris of what had been his personality and self-control scattered like dust in a tornado—never to return again.

With an agony beyond human endurance Stone's mind caved in—crushing his finely structured ego. Defenseless now against his own inner demons, he plummeted screaming into the hell he'd created for himself...

* * * *
For the first few of the handful of seconds Martin thought it would take to rid humanity of its own evil, everything went well. Then the smugness on his face faded. The corners of his lips drooped as he felt the inexorably growing reaction to the mental ultimatum he'd delivered to the whole human race. The stunned surprise he'd sensed in all those individual brains when he'd first linked with them unraveled into countless threads of fear, anger, and hatred. He'd seized the minds of over eight billion people and pulled them in the direction he wanted—but now they were pulling away from him—fighting back and attacking him!

Martin's face tensed from an agonizing effort that consumed every bit of his energy and power. His body stiffened as his mental tug-of-war with his fellow humans settled into an unstable stalemate. Standing dumbstruck on the Martian plain, he was assaulted by a combined consciousness far stronger than its individual members. Though each mind was only a spark compared to the stellar radiance of his own, focused together with laser precision at the source of their pain they formed a raging conflagration.

He clenched his fists and tried desperately to end the titanic struggle he'd started. For a moment the tiny corner of his mind still reserved for thought considered giving up. If humanity was too afraid or perverse to be changed—if all those people couldn't understand that eliminating their capacity for violence was for their own good—then they deserved the world they lived in!

But then Martin remembered all the crimes, wars, and other injustices that claimed so many innocent victims in the past and present. If he didn't use the aliens’ gift—if he didn't stop that sordid history from perpetually repeating itself or ending in humanity's self-inflicted extinction—who would?

As his mind wrestled with the unwilling ones of an entire world, Martin sensed another presence standing silently nearby. He felt that other enhanced consciousness inside his brain passively observing—like someone watching a movie—the life-and-death conflict being played out on two planets. She held the balance of power to end this war—and surely the woman he loved wouldn't desert him when he and the entire human race needed her most!

He barely had enough strength to speak. “Help me, Katerina! I can't control them on my own! If you add your power to mine we'll beat them and make them give up violence forever!"

Martin saw her nod.

"Yes, Martin. I'll help you."

He started to smile—and then a blinding light like a supernova seared through his brain. For an instant the rage of an entire world flooded his defenseless mind. A jet-black emptiness swallowed him as his body fell limply to the ground....

* * * *
Millions of people died during the moments Martin waged a one-man war against human nature. Airplane pilots in flight, drivers racing on busy highways, firefighters rescuing people in burning buildings, surgeons performing operations all found their minds ripped away from their surroundings. Those whose bodies were suddenly crushed in coffins of speeding metal never felt the impact. Others, standing paralyzed while individuals they'd been trying to help died, didn't notice their loss.

Then the great force clamping humanity in its unwanted grasp suddenly disappeared. Released from its chains, the human race found itself free again. But that freedom came at a terrible price.

Some, mainly babies and children, lay quiet and catatonic—their minds emptied of any volition or will. The power they'd experienced had rendered them incapable of hurting others. It also destroyed their fragile developing personalities and rendered their minds forever tabula rasa. Only their most primitive neurological functions remained.

Others weren't as fortunate. The struggle against the power gripping their minds demolished the well-constructed psychological defense mechanisms they'd constructed to protect their sanity. Now all the fears, anxieties, and regrets buried within their psyches and memories erupted like molten lava—searing away every other thought and feeling. Immersed in guilt, self-pity, terror, and grief, some sat perpetually weeping and screaming—trapped forever in a cocoon of pain.

The stronger-willed chose more directly self-destructive paths. Across the world, people jumped from bridges and tall buildings. Some used knives and guns to end their lives. Fire and water snuffed out the existence of still more.

But for others that abrupt removal of inhibitions shielding them from their true nature or curbing their worst instincts led to destruction and death on a global scale.

* * * *
Sgt. Bahram Bayat shuddered as his mind broke free of the power trying to bind it. He focused again on the crowded Tehran street and found new targets for the rage boiling within him, incited by that nearly successful attempt to enslave his very being. The fear and disgust he felt toward the civilians standing nearby, waking from their own mental struggle, swelled to a murderous level.

Several young men near him suddenly went berserk. They ran toward him screaming curses and threats. But just before their fists reached him, a burst from his AK-47 left the men bleeding and writhing on the ground. Bahram laughed as he emptied his rifle into them until their punctured corpses stopped jerking.

As he reloaded, he ordered his fellow soldiers at the checkpoint to join him. More rifles sprayed bullets into the mostly unresisting crowd. As the sergeant and his men concentrated on mowing down women, children, and any other civilians in range they didn't notice one man slip into the parked truck close to them. The man searched beside the driver slumped dead at the wheel, found the detonator button, and pushed it—

The explosion shattered windows over a block away. A blasted smoking crater, masses of debris, and shredded body parts marked where the truck had sat. Sgt. Bahram Bayat, his soldiers, and more than a hundred other people no longer existed. Most of the wounded farther from ground zero soon joined them in death.

But the casualties on that single street were trivial compared to the millions injured and dying elsewhere.

* * * *
In eastern Russia the force enslaving the minds of Lt. Kijé and his men disappeared. They staggered—shaken out of the stupor that had suddenly seized them. Then a savage hatred devoid of thought erupted within them. The men quickly obeyed their commanding officer's order to launch the mortar barrage they'd prepared.

As the projectiles whistled toward their distant targets, the soldiers gleefully followed their next order to pile back into the trucks and drive south. As they crossed the border into China, each man readied his rifle and hoped the enemy was near. The vision of their bullets ripping through the bodies of those who'd attacked them drove them wild with pleasure. There was no fear within them—only a white-hot obsession to kill without mercy.

Bouncing along the scrubby terrain toward their destiny, they would've rejoiced over what their superiors in Moscow were doing at that moment. The nation's top political and military leaders felt the same berserk bloodlust possessing the occupants of the two trucks now invading the enemy's homeland. Top-secret orders and codes spread throughout Russia's military network. Bombers scrambled into the air and missile silos opened.

Unaware of the massive attack being readied, the lieutenant sat in the cab of one of the two trucks and scanned the horizon for movement. He barely noticed when the other truck, driving several hundred meters in front of him, hit a land mine. By the time his truck reached the site his driver managed to swerve around most of the wreckage and ruptured corpses scattered across the plain.

By luck their remaining truck avoided running over a mine. The lieutenant gritted his teeth as he saw several heads bob above a trench half a kilometer ahead. He unholstered his automatic and prepared to bark an order to halt—

He never gave that order. Two rocket-propelled grenades hit the front of the truck and turned it into a fireball of shrapnel and flying chunks of uniformed bodies. But the half-dozen Chinese troops who'd repelled this initial enemy thrust into their country had little time to celebrate. An hour later the first of hundreds of nuclear bombs and missiles rained down on China's population centers and military installations.

Even as Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities with their millions of inhabitants vanished beneath mushroom clouds, an equally massive retaliatory strike was on its way toward Russia. Within several hours Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other former names on the map were graveyards of radioactive rubble.

Smaller nuclear exchanges across the Indian-Pakistani border and in the Middle East killed more millions. Other millions farther away from those firestorms were sentenced to die in hours, days, or weeks from injuries or radiation exposure. Over the next months billions were destined to perish from disease and starvation as the Northern Hemisphere's late calendar winter changed into a nuclear one covering the entire globe.

In areas yet untouched by atomic catastrophe, millions used fists and whatever weapons they could find against family, neighbors, and strangers. Wherever there'd been suppressed resentment and anger against individuals, races, or religions, people divided into passive or unwilling victims and murderers. Explosions, gunfire, and screams deafened the world.

Meanwhile, a great stillness reigned on Mars.

* * * *
The Sun was settling toward the western horizon when Katerina awoke after what seemed hours later. Her head pounded and eyes throbbed as she sat up. She flicked dusty auburn hair back over her shoulders and squinted up at the empty sky.

As her vision cleared, Katerina struggled to retrieve her last memory. She'd been waiting for the right time to use the full power the aliens had forced on her, and when it came she—

The young cosmonaut rose awkwardly to her feet. A crumpled figure dressed in red, white, and black lay motionless on its back several meters away. Her heart raced as she stumbled toward the spot where Martin's body sprawled in the orange dirt. His glassy gaze seemed to be looking up at circling Martian buzzards beginning their descent.

"Martin! Are you all right?"

There was no reply as she knelt by his left side. The wide-eyed stare and open mouth he directed at the heavens terrified her. Martin looked as if the last thing he'd seen was Satan's laughing face coming toward him. Katerina did a jaw thrust to open his airway. Her right ear hovered above his lips as she peered down at his chest—hoping to feel his warm breath against her skin. As she waited to see if his life and hers had ended, Katerina prayed for a miracle.

A wisp of air like the fluttering wings of the Holy Spirit caressed her ear. She saw the blood-red shirt Martin wore rise and fall slightly with his shallow breaths. Her fingertips moved to his neck and she gasped with gratitude for the strong pulse there. Katerina reached out to gently touch his mind—

And felt nothing. She sobbed as her miracle was snatched away. Martin's body was still alive—but it was like a dried cocoon left empty by a long-departed butterfly. Katerina stroked the pale forehead of the man she loved—as if her fingers could meld into his flesh and give him the handhold he needed to pull himself up from the abyss he'd stumbled into. Her mind delved deeper into the void within his brain—searching in the darkness for any hint of consciousness that would tell her he wasn't forever lost.

Her thoughts plunged deeper into him. Don't leave me, Martin! Come back to me!

Then Katerina sensed the whisper of another awareness at the boundary of her enhanced senses. Follow me, Martin! Let me help you!

From out of the depths his mind touched hers. Together they rose back into the light—

Martin groaned. He looked up at Katerina's tear-streaked face, touched her lips—and then bewilderment twisted his face. “What happened?"

"I don't know, Martin. It was like something grabbed and squeezed my mind so hard the pain made me black out. I just woke up a few minutes ago."

"The last thing I remember was...” Martin's gaze turned distant and vacant. As he absorbed sights and sounds on distant Earth his face contorted with horror.

He staggered to his feet. “It was like I was asleep all that time having a terrible dream. But my mind must have still been linked to everyone on Earth—and it's all real! Everything I saw in my nightmare—the nuclear war, the suicides and murders, Dr. Stone and everybody at Mission Control going crazy—it really happened!"

Katerina stood up and tried to kiss his lips. Martin ignored her, walking away and shouting, “Why did it happen? What went wrong?"

Katerina reached out to blend with his mind again. The ghastly visions she saw in it sickened her. Either Martin had gone mad—or the world had.

Then he was walking back toward her—his enraged face almost as ruddy as the soil they stood on. “What did you do, Katerina? I remember now I asked you to help me! What did you do?"

"I helped you, Martin. I used my own power to nullify yours."

He stopped ten meters away and stared at her. She wondered if the Savior had looked the same way at Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Martin clenched his fists. “Why did you do that?"

"I couldn't let you enslave everyone on Earth—and I had to prevent them from hurting you! I didn't know there'd be some kind of mental backlash that would make us both lose consciousness when I did it!"

"No, Katerina, you must've done more than that! Just stopping what I was doing wouldn't have caused all that death and destruction! I begged you for help—and you betrayed me! Were you so jealous I was proving you wrong—that despite what you said, my power really was helping people—that you made me fail?"

"No, Martin! I'd never intentionally hurt you or anyone else! I don't know what caused everyone on Earth to go insane! Maybe if we work together we can stop the killing and heal those who are still alive! Look into my mind and see I'm telling the truth!"

Martin's voice held only hatred and contempt. “No, Katerina, you have the same power as I do. You can make the thoughts you let me hear lie to me. I need to know what you did so I can prevent you from doing it again and killing more people! And the only way I can be sure you're really telling me the truth is if I force it out of you!"

Martin strode toward her like an executioner. His mind whipped out and squeezed hers in a mailed fist. Katerina screamed with skull-splitting agony at his brutal psychic assault. She reflexively raised her mental barriers again—barely able to defend herself from Martin's relentless telepathic attempt to rip through her brain searching for an admission of guilt that didn't exist.

Last night she'd faced death and expired with quiet dignity, with only fleeting doubts and fears clouding final resignation to her fate. Today she saw Death walking toward her wearing the face of the man she loved—and this time she was very afraid.

* * * *
On Earth, Nature responded to the rage in Martin's mind and joined humanity in going mad.

Calm winds suddenly whipped up into hurricanes and tornadoes. In the Missouri Ozarks a three-year-old girl whimpered in her bed. In the next room her reunited parents screamed at and attacked each other—obsessed with revenge for every disagreement in their marriage.

Then a revived tornado slammed into their house and passed on, searching for more victims. In its wake the tornado left a crumpled pile of wood and metal with nothing alive inside.

In a city on the West Coast a mother and her newly healed young son vacantly hugged each other and wept over all the pain and loss they'd endured. The hospital they sat in trembled as tectonic plates kilometers away shifted. As the earthquake rocketed up the Richter scale their building and hundreds of others crumbled, leaving mangled bodies inside the wreckage.

In southern Africa the gentle raindrops nourishing accelerated crops suddenly grew and froze into deadly baseball-sized hail. Rampaging flash floods washed away plants, animals, and whole villages. Elsewhere ocean waves churned to skyscraper heights, capsizing ships and ferries. Tsunamis struck costal regions, leveling towns and cities. Lightning flashed and struck, turning acres of forests and jungles into infernos. Every minute air, water, fire, and earth slaughtered thousands more people.

* * * *
On Mars, Nature also joined Martin's side in a deadly personal battle. The peaceful garden beside its two combatants tore itself apart. Green bean bushes, cornstalks, and wheat uprooted themselves and rocketed toward Katerina's face like shrapnel. They were too light to hurt her directly—but the distraction of deflecting them with arms and mind weakened her defenses against Martin's continuous telepathic attack.

She stumbled backward—battered by mental blasts like a tornado's winds. All around her, Martian dirt swirled up and enveloped Katerina in a miniature dust storm. A barrage of pebbles stung her face like a swarm of hornets. She winced as small rocks flew up and pummeled her blue jumpsuit.

Coughing and choking from the dust infiltrating her nose and throat, with a desperate burst of telekinetic power Katerina repelled the soil and winds around her. For seconds she stood in the clear eye of a hurricane. As the frustrated Martian dirt and air raged furiously in an opaque fog a meter away from her, their attack barely held back by the force of her mind, she concentrated the remainder of her mental energy on repelling Martin's unceasing attempts to seize and viciously probe her brain.

Suddenly Katerina saw a pair of bare hairy arms reach out toward her from that dense reddish-orange cloud. She didn't notice the maniacally swirling dust nearby collapse back onto the ground as Martin grabbed hold of her shoulders. Katerina cringed at the savage face staring back at her from centimeters away. Her mind reverberated with deafening words.

"It's your fault everything went wrong, Katerina! What did you do? Confess! Tell me what you did to sabotage me!"

Katerina jerked back from Martin's brutal grip and struggled to break free. He shook her until she tripped over her feet and tumbled backward. She gasped as her back struck the hard Martian soil and Martin fell down on top of her. He pinned her arms against the dirt before she could try pushing him away. Katerina writhed helplessly beneath his heavy body as he tore away the last thin layers of fading will-power she had protecting her from his assault.

With his attack on the verge of consummation there was only one way to stop him and heal the sickness inside his mind. There wasn't enough time to convince him of her innocence or even to pray. Through the maelstrom of fury assaulting her consciousness she hoped he'd hear her last words to him and understand.

"I love you, Martin. Good-bye."

* * * *
Martin grunted triumphantly when he felt the fallen woman crushed beneath him go physically and mentally limp. All resistance to him collapsed and he began to penetrate her innermost depths—

Suddenly he stopped and raised himself to a kneeling position. His mind delved deeper into a blackening void whose final glimmer of light faded and disappeared.

Katerina lay motionless on her back with her eyes closed—as if she were sleeping. Her face was powdered with dust except for scattered lines like a spider's web on her cheeks, where tears had cleaned away the filth he'd flung at her. The blue jumpsuit she wore was ripped where he'd manhandled her, exposing the pale imprints of his fingers on her bare flesh. Her auburn hair was matted and tangled beneath her lolling neck.

"Katerina! Are you all right? I didn't mean to hurt you!"

There was no response. His heart raced as he moved rapidly to her left side and reflexively began the CPR protocol he'd used on her only yesterday. Yes, she was still breathing and the carotid pulse he checked was strong. Her body was still warm and alive.

But her mind was gone—wiped clean as her last act in life. Martin wailed in grief as his consciousness found nothing within her brain but the lowest autonomic activity. Her personality and intelligence, her ability to think and love had vanished—and not even the great power the aliens had given him could bring those things, could bring her back to him. She'd prevented him from becoming her murderer or worse ... by destroying herself first.

Shocked back into a semblance of sanity by her self-sacrifice, Martin bent down over the empty body of the woman he loved and kissed her forehead. His heartbroken sobs slowly subsided. He wanted to die now, he deserved to die—but not yet.

No, first he had to help whoever was still alive on Earth. There might be enough survivors even after this day of Armageddon to eventually rebuild civilization.

Kneeling beside Katerina, Martin raised his lost bride-to-be's upper body enough to embrace her. Then his mind reached out toward a wounded world. He saw the raging winds and other destructive forces of Nature stirred up by his anger and calmed them. Next he directed his power to manipulate matter, energy, and gravity at the radioactive ruins and clouds of dust, soot, and smoke that covered huge swaths of post-World War III Earth. Those death-dealing isotopes and molecules were gripped and flung out into space on high-speed trajectories toward final resting places in the Sun.

Then Martin turned his attention to the physical injuries inflicted by war and smaller-scale violence. Across the world, burns, broken bones, and radiation-induced damage to vital organs were all healed.

Finally a command inspired by a favorite TV episode spanned the distance between him and every other living human being. What remained of humanity was too weak and distracted to resist his order.

Sleep.

Across Earth bodies slumped to the ground and found respite from the torment within their minds. Now there'd be time for him to heal their damaged psyches. Martin's consciousness flitted through the minds of billions of his comatose fellow beings, searching for the means to restore their mental health—

But it was too late. His thoughts touched an emptiness within the remnants of humankind only slightly less than that within Katerina. Whatever personalities they'd possessed—whatever had made them unique individuals—was gone forever. All that remained were crude neurological reflexes or the rage and remorse they'd accumulated over their lives. No hint of rationality remained behind to curb their unfettered emotions or help them become human again.

A terrible pressure grew in Martin's chest. He was the only sane human being left alive.

Then he laughed—realizing his mistake. There were no sane human beings left.

"You were right,” Martin whispered to Katerina's empty body—unable to muster the faith to believe her soul was somewhere she could hear his words. He remembered a line from Byron's Manfred he'd read in a college English Lit class.

I loved her, and destroy'd her!

And not only her—the whole human race too. The fictional Krell destroyed themselves by unwittingly releasing their own inner monsters. His guilt was much greater. He had known the risk. And only he was responsible for using his power to strip his fellow beings of everything that made them human—leaving only their lowest animal impulses and instincts.

Martin's arms were too weary and unwilling to release Katerina to shake his fist at the heavens—and at the aliens who'd tempted him to know more than he should. His bleary eyes watched the setting Sun reach the horizon. Twilight shadows draped the barren plain and the two “gods"—one already dead, the other soon to be—alone on it. He and his lost love would share this final sunset—then they and every human being would go gently into their last good night.

His mind reached out through space one last time. With no hope for recovery, no way to relieve all that endless suffering, Martin willed the heart of every surviving person on Earth to stop. As humanity died peacefully in its sleep, it was time for Katerina and him to do the same.

The late Dr. Stone said during CPR classes that it took only about five seconds for a person to become unconscious after his heart stopped—not long enough for the last man alive to have any second thoughts. Such a simple final action for someone who'd been granted such great power over matter, energy, gravity, and...

* * * *
The noontime Sun was slowly descending from its zenith as two figures confronted each other on the ochre plain.

Martin frowned. “I'll guard myself. And I don't have to stop force with greater force. You've made me think of a better way to stop violence. Let me show you..."

His face froze. For long moments he stood petrified—as if staring at the hissing serpents writhing on Medusa's scalp.

Finally Martin snapped out of his trance and whispered, “Look into my mind, Katerina."

She did—and saw him replay a hellish nightmare. Her alien-enhanced consciousness absorbed horrifying events occurring over what seemed hours compressed into a rapid montage lasting only moments. While devils delighted at the destruction of billions, the world ended in a nuclear inferno and madness untouched by any heavenly intervention.

In that hypnotic vision of humankind's terrible last day Katerina saw herself and Martin standing here locked in a titanic struggle ending in her own self-inflicted death. As the final act of that tragedy played out, he told her what happened next.

Martin said, “Just as I was about to kill myself, I remembered what else the aliens gave us the ability to manipulate—time. I used that power to restore your health last night when you were about to die. But I wasn't sure how else I could manipulate time—or if I could use that power to save the world.

"So I experimented. I found the aliens’ gift didn't let me physically travel back in time. Then I recalled a story I read in an old SF magazine. It was about a musicologist who inadvertently causes a nuclear war that destroys humanity on a parallel Earth. His ‘future’ self goes back in time long enough to tell the ‘earlier’ version of him how to avoid that disaster."

He grinned weakly. “Just a silly story by some obscure writer—but remembering it saved us and the world. I discovered the aliens had given me the power to send information into the past. So I sent my memories of that future I created—one that won't happen now—back into my mind moments ago. And now I won't make the mistake of trying to change human nature too much or too soon!"

Katerina said, “Why didn't you send your memories farther back into the past, to before you started changing the weather or healing people?"

"I couldn't bring myself to do that. Maybe you were right about that too and something bad will eventually come out of what I did to help them. But I couldn't let those people suffer and die!"

Martin stepped closer to her. “I learned a humiliating lesson, Katerina. I was so eager to stamp out stupidity, hatred, and evil in others that I forgot they're part of me too. Before I can control others, I have to control myself first.

"I made a terrible mistake—but I've learned from it. The next time I try to improve the way people think I'll be more subtle and test it on only a few of them first—"

"What?"

Katerina looked furious. “I just saw how you and your good intentions exterminated the whole human race! Are you going to risk doing that again?"

"I have to do something to make the world better, Katerina! It's so full of greed, ignorance, and violence that it'll eventually wreck itself if I don't change things. I have a responsibility to use my powers to save the Earth!"

"And do you think that's what the aliens want you to do—or will even let you do? We don't know why the aliens forced their ‘gift’ on us, Martin. We don't know why they chose us to receive it.

"Maybe we're just a sick, depraved form of entertainment to them. Right now they could be waiting to see what you'll do next—hoping that foolish insignificant ant I'm talking to will think up some new way to inadvertently torment and destroy his entire anthill. And when it does happen again—when you've amused them once more with your antics—they'll watch you use the power they gave you to undo all that damage for yet another fruitless try!"

Katerina sneered, “'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.’ But once you've annihilated and recreated humanity enough times, maybe the aliens will get bored. Perhaps, after you've left the Earth once more in flaming ruins and massacred billions, as a parting joke they'll remove your ability to make it right again.

"Imagine how they'll giggle as you realize that this time you've destroyed the world permanently. As the final curtain falls on the human race, maybe they'll let you hear their applause for a fine performance before they head for another inhabited planet searching for someone else as gullible as you!"

Martin shifted his feet and tried hiding the doubt bubbling up in his brain. The confident look on his face sagged. “I don't know what to do, Katerina. I want to do the right thing—but I'm not sure what the right thing is!"

"Then follow the rule Dr. Stone mentioned in one of his classes. He told us physicians always want to give their patients the best treatment—but they don't always know what the best treatment is. So they follow the precept ‘First, do no harm.’ If you're not sure how to use your power—and I pray you aren't—then don't use it.

"I don't believe you, I, or any human being is wise enough yet to know how to use this much power. If I could, I'd pluck the aliens’ ‘gift’ out of me and fling it back at them! Better to be ‘only’ human and do whatever limited good we can than to be a ‘god’ and commit terrible sins, even with the best intentions!"

Katerina's mind touched his. “If you could, Martin, would you become human again with me?"

Martin felt his surroundings melt into a mystical vision. The beautiful woman standing nearby seemed transfigured into a heaven-sent saint glowing with otherworldly radiance, calling him to repentance. The golden cross hanging from her neck swayed like a hypnotist's watch—drawing him into a trance.

His desire to regain this celestial being's love and approval tempted him to submit to her will. The deadlocked struggle raging inside his soul tilted slightly—just long enough for him to say, “Maybe I would..."

The smile emanating from Katerina's angelic face almost convinced him he'd said the right thing. Then a sense of intense dread snapped him back to reality.

Martin's skin tingled with prickling fear. His gaze whipped around the landscape, searching for his terror's source but already knowing what it was. He felt its ponderous presence like the bottom of a giant's foot rushing down to crush him into a Martian grave.

An impossible living mass of sparkling pinpoint lights writhed and undulated several meters away. Their countless numbers scintillated in every color of the spectrum, like the manic motion of every star and galaxy in the cosmos seen by some eternal being peering in from outside the Universe itself.

Then he and Katerina waited while the aliens decided their fate.

* * * *
Sweat trickled down Martin's sides as the aliens focused their attention on him. A passionless voice rippled at him from infinity.

You wish to renounce our gift.

Martin glanced at Katerina. The sad plea in her puppy-like eyes melted whatever resistance he could mount. He whispered, “Yes."

Then it was Katerina's turn for attention.

You wish to renounce our gift.

"Yes!"

The shimmering lights expanded toward the two of them—twisting menacingly in psychedelic hues.

You both wish to renounce our gift.

Martin nodded slightly.

Katerina screamed, “YES!"

There is nothing to renounce. You never had the power you thought you had. Your ability to understand and manipulate what you call Nature is limited by your own nature.

We do not have your limitations. Each time you believed you were manipulating matter, energy, gravity, and time, we responded to your thoughts. We created and did what you wished. Everything you saw, heard, thought, and felt beyond the range of your own minds and senses you did through us.

Katerina murmured, “So you really are like Descartes’ evil genie."

Martin frowned. “Who? Oh, you mean the—"

Katerina interrupted, “I think what you did was a test. You wanted to see what we would do with godlike powers. Well, we don't want them! Yes, we have great limitations—but despite those limitations we're still capable of great things.

"We don't need to be as powerful as you to love, to feel compassion and caring, to fill our world with happiness and joy. Even if our intelligence is nothing compared to yours, it's enough to let us marvel at Creation and use whatever science we can develop to explore its mysteries. We may never be able to travel to other planets and stars as easily as you—but when we do, we'll have earned that destiny!"

Martin began, “I'm not sure they're really interested in what you're saying—"

Katerina continued, “It's that curiosity, our need and struggle to explore, to learn all we can, that makes us what we are and gives our lives meaning! I feel sorry for you if you already know all there is to know. What gives meaning to your lives?"

Martin cringed—expecting the aliens to be so annoyed after Katerina finished pontificating that they'd zap the two of them into quarks. But as the seconds passed he relaxed slightly. Maybe his overzealous fiancée had managed to beard the lion—

You are a curious species. Your “Earth” is one of many worlds we tend and nurture. When your planet was young, we made it possible for life to one day arise on it. We moved and settled it into an orbit ideal for life based on water and carbon chemistry to develop over time.

We made a body similar in size to this one collide with your world to create a moon large enough to produce higher tides, slow its rotation, and reduce its winds to accelerate the development of complex life. We adjusted your planet's axial tilt to make seasons that would moderate its temperatures and directed small bodies rich in organic chemicals to strike it.

After we prepared your world and sowed those seeds on its fertile surface, we waited to see what forms life would take. When a path proved sterile, with no hope of developing a suitable level of sentience, we altered your planet's biosphere by directing more bodies to strike its surface and by other simple methods. This let other types of life come to dominance and follow new paths.

Martin shuddered. It was one thing to read a science fiction story—quite another to be living one. If the aliens were telling the truth, those mass extinctions in Earth's past weren't random accidents—

Your species is the most promising your world has developed. We have given you every opportunity to show us you are suitable. We moved the two planets closest to yours deeper into your sun's habitable zone. We altered them to make it easier for you to travel to and live on them. Then we waited to see if you would send the best your species has to offer to discover why we did it.

Martin suppressed his chuckle at being described as “humanity's best.” The aliens could read his thoughts—and they might not value humility or self-deprecation.

As you approached this planet we created an artifact to evaluate your curiosity and encourage you to stay here. We made a second artifact to motivate you as strongly as possible to accept our gift. We have watched how you used that gift.

All this has been done so you could show us what you are. You have been tested to see if you are suitable.

Katerina said, “We've shown you our best and our worst—our weaknesses and our strengths. We make mistakes—but we learn from them. We can be foolish—but we're also wise enough to realize that we shouldn't keep your gift. With all our faults, we can still feel love and compassion great enough to even give up our lives to save others. Based on everything you've seen, I hope you do find us ‘suitable.’”

You have indeed shown us what you are.

Martin glanced at Katerina. The serene expression on her face was the same an ancient Roman martyr displayed before a mighty emperor—confident he could only break her body and never shake her faith.

The aliens spoke again. You have failed our test. You are like the animals you call cattle and sheep. Your kind has no future.

We grant you enough time to prepare for your end.

The shimmering lights lingered for a moment before disappearing. A cold breeze ruffled the clothes of the two human beings standing alone on the silent plain. Each of them pondered the parting words of the vanished aliens.

Both of them were afraid—and one of them seethed with a growing anger.

* * * *
Stone's attention seesawed between the TV monitor showing reports of medical and meteorological miracles, and the mammoth screens in the front of the room. He kept hoping for another transmission from Mars to explain why so many inexplicable good things were happening and to ease his fears that they were the prelude to some catastrophe.

Then he noticed Nancy Kelley, newly returned from her press conference, huddling at the other side of the room with several of the project's other senior people. The worried expressions they shared indicated that whatever they were discussing wasn't good.

Kelley separated herself from the group and walked toward Stone. He met her halfway and said, “What's going on?"

The flight director murmured, “I'm not sure—but if the aliens really have turned hostile, it may mean the end of the world!"

* * * *
Martin was the first to move after the aliens left. He ignored Katerina and trudged past her, heading back toward the habitation module.

She caught up with him. “What do you think they meant, Martin?"

He scowled wordlessly at her and kept walking.

After Martin mutely rebuffed that same question again, Katerina resigned herself to patiently accompanying him back home. The tension between them was so strong and distracting she nearly slipped several times—as if the ground were shifting beneath her feet.

When they reached the module she followed Martin into its communications center. Still waiting for him to speak, she watched him sit down and activate their primary transceiver.

"Mission Control, this is Slayton speaking, audio only. I'll send a detailed description of the situation here after you acknowledge reception. Over."

As they waited the several minutes it would take that message to reach Houston and receive a reply, Martin acted as if he didn't see his fiancée sitting beside him. Katerina tried reassuring herself that he couldn't stay angry forever.

Then he looked at her and hissed, “Is there anything you want to tell me, Katerina?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Martin!"

"No? Just before they disappeared, the aliens gave me a private telepathic message. They informed me you really did sabotage my effort to save humanity! You used your ‘power’ to pull a stunt on me from one of those grade-Z 1950s science fiction movies I showed you during our flight here, Invasion U.S.A.

"I let you have free access to my mind to show you I had nothing to hide—and you took advantage of my trust! You used your power to put those ideas in my head about how to change human nature—and then you hypnotized me! And while I was in that trance you told me what the aliens said you called a ‘noble lie.’ All those terrible things I thought I did—everything that seemed to happen to you, me, the people at Mission Control and throughout the world—none of it really happened! I thought I'd saved the world by using one bad SF cliché. Instead you made me fall for the biggest cliché of all—'It was all a dream!’”

Martin shouted, “I only thought I tried to change human nature! I only imagined I destroyed you and the whole human race! Those ‘memories’ I seemed to oh-so-cleverly send back through time were just a noontime nightmare you created inside my mind using my own thoughts, doubts, and fears—a nightmare that seemed to go on for hours but really lasted only moments! It was all just a mental melodrama you deliberately directed—even acting out the role of my ‘innocent’ victim—to convince me I was wrong about how we could help humanity!

"That's why we failed the aliens’ test to see if we could improve human nature—because you never let me try!"

A voice at Mission Control crackled from the transceiver's speaker. “Stone here. Please describe your current medical condition and Savitskaya's. Let us know if either of you is in any immediate danger."

Unintelligible voices murmured excitedly in the background before Stone continued, “I've been asked to tell you that the orbiters at your location and ground-based observations indicate Mars is experiencing a significant new decay in its orbit. The planet's rate of movement toward the Sun is more rapid than when the aliens moved it previously.

"There's insufficient data yet to determine where or if Mars will resume a stable orbit. If you have any information about this new anomaly, please send it immediately!"

Martin looked at Katerina contemptuously. “Well? Should I tell them what happened? You were afraid I might accidentally destroy the human race if I tried to help it. Now, because of you, it will be destroyed!"

"What do you mean, Martin?"

"You were so sure the aliens were surrogates of Satan, tempting us to accept and use power we shouldn't have, that you didn't think how things might look from their point of view. Instead of improving humanity like they wanted us to do, you tricked and pressured me into joining you in throwing their gift back in their faces. No wonder they decided we were a couple of cowardly obnoxious ingrates and that our entire species wasn't ‘suitable’ for their help!"

Martin sneered. “Don't look at me like you don't know what happens next. You heard what Stone said about Mars moving toward the Sun again. The aliens practically confessed to redirecting an asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs and causing other mass extinctions. They also claimed to have created the Moon by slamming a Mars-sized planet into Earth billions of years ago.

"I think they're planning to do it again with the real Mars—and when those two worlds collide it'll be the last thing the whole human race ever sees!"

Katerina stammered, “I can't believe—” But the heavy hands that this time grabbed and shook her shoulders for real cut her off.

Martin glared at the deceitful woman he'd loved and screamed, "What have you done?"