Re: The Marquis 4...

In the midst of the vast chamber was a pool of cloudy, murky water.
Jurgensen knew it was water from the moist scent in the air, but it
was clearly not pure water, it was covered in a patchy scum of
something, and the liquid had an unpleasant greenish-gray color that
could not be explained by the harsh and strange light alone. The pool
was perhaps 200 feet wide, and perfectly circular, rimmed with
carefully worked stone, the water lapped against the side of the pit
about a foot below the floor level of the vast chamber. Jurgensen
could not even guess at its depth, so murky and impure was the liquid
that even in the intense light that flooded that hot underground
space, he could not see much if any past the surface of the liquid.

As Jurgensen stared into the vast chamber, still standing in the
doorway of the tunnel, he saw the water ripple and break, and
_something_ emerged at which the human stared in sheer disbelief,
wonder and amazement momentarily driving fear from his mind. First a
tip of something emerged, a long, sinuous...tentacle! It was not
quite transparent, more like translucent, or at least its outer
integument was so, Jurgensen could see a pattern of organs and tissues
beneath the semi-clear surface, though they did not look much like
conventional muscle or fat or bone. More tentacles appeared, and
there was a reddish color to them, and as Jurgensen watched in shock
more of the entity emerged from the water, it was easily thirty feet
long!

Now Jurgensen could see he entire creature, and he had never seen
anything remotely like it in a century of life. It was thirty feet
long, perhaps ten feet thick at the widest part, the part Jurgensen
took to be its 'body', though it narrowed steadily to the rear, the
'body' merging smoothly into a long 'tail' that ended in a cluster of
odd short tentacles. The larger, longer tentacles that Jurgensen had
first seen emerged in a set of three on either side of the thick part
of the creature's body, toward the front it narrowed into a bluntish
'head' with a single large organ that Jurgensen took to be an eye.
There was no sign of a mouth or gill slits, though Jurgensen had no
doubt the creature could feed if need be.

All this took only a couple of seconds of perception, the creature was
amazingly fast for its huge size, and even as Jurgensen took in the
unbelievable sight, one of the long tentacles, which were easily
twenty feet long individually, was reaching out toward him at
lightning speed, the whole creature moving his way. Jurgensen knew he
couldn't run fast enough to escape this impossibly swift monster,
instead he lashed out at the tentacle approaching him with a mental
technique he had learned from the Unity, he generated an 'explosion'
of mental force on the tip of the tentacle as soon as it was within
his range! [1]

The explosion erupted right on the tip of the tentacle and did some
damage, the monster polled the outreaching member back swiftly. In
the meantime the metallic walls of the chamber seemed to 'echo'
somehow to the blast in a way Jurgensen had never experienced, and
moments after the initial blast he struck at the monster again, this
time hurling his thoughts against it as the Unity had taught him.
Somehow he sensed that his own powers were feeble compared to he
creature's, but at the same time they seemed to be amplified by the
metal of the walls in a way he could not explain. The creature
recoiled as Jurgensen's mental energy impacted it, it clearly felt the
force much more strongly than Jurgensen had expected.

Now the creature hesitated, clearly surprised by the strength of the
human, but Jurgensen sensed he was still in danger. The psychic
senses that had failed him before now were _screaming_ warnings at
him, they had begun to do so the moment he stepped into this strange
chamber. Jurgensen raised his weapon, taking aim at the 'eye' of the
creature. It hesitated, then Jurgensen felt his gun yanked from his
hand by the intangible but irresistible hold of mental power, so
strong was the pulling force that his own psychic ability could not
even attempt to resist. The gun went flying across the room to come
to rest against the wall...and here luck finally favored Jurgensen,
because he had cocked the gun before it was taken and as it struck the
wall the gun was jarred and fired!

The shot struck the monster in the middle of its 'body', and ripped
through the semi-transparent 'skin' leaving a jagged hole through
which strange liquids oozed. The creature writhed, clearly in pain,
given Jurgensen a chance to 'snatch' the gun back with his
psychokinetic ability. It was on the edge of his range of effect, but
just barely inside, and the revolver still had five shots, which
Jurgensen now proceeded to unload into the creature! He could not
effectively aim at any part of the monster, because it was writhing
about too rapidly, but of his five shots three struck home, adding
additional damage to the beast.

But the creature was not dead, nor crippled, merely hurt, and it
regained enough control over itself to strike at Jurgensen mentally,
attacking his mind much as Jurgensen had tried to do to it. The sheer
strength of the telepathic attack was so overwhelming that Jurgensen
found his voluntary control of his body gone, he collapsed like a
puppet to the floor, unable to move a muscle. All his mental power
was focused on the effort of to repel the telepathic attack, he could
spare nothing for offense.

It was then that help arrived, in the form of a tremendous wave of
mental power that Jurgensen sensed to his relief emanated from the
Unity. He relaxed, letting the Unity scan his mind and see through
his eyes, and a moment later a surge of psychic power poured _through_
Jurgensen and into the monster, and now the creature found itself
fighting for its life against not just a single relatively weak human
psion but against a collective force that was its own sort of
monster. The battle lasted about ten minutes, with Jurgensen mostly a
bystander...and the Unity won.

It was a tremendous struggle, the monster had awesome powers, and the
Unity, though stronger in absolute terms, was working at extreme range
and with little understanding of what it fought. But the monster was
already wounded by four bullets into its vital organs, weakening it
significantly, and it also labored under other restraints neither
Jurgensen nor the Unity yet knew about. Be that as it might, when the
struggle was over the Unity was merely exhausted...while the bizarre
creature was quite dead, which was what counted.

Jurgensen required hours before he was physically back to normal, days
before his mental balance was fully restored. In the meantime, he and
his collective master were left with many more questions than answers.

MORE LATER.


Shermanlee


[1] In house-rule GURPS terms, he was using PK Blast.






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