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                                LORELEI

                          By CHARLES V. DeVET

                  She was everybody's sweetheart--but
                       not every man's at once!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
             Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Seven days stranded on Europa. Seven days without hope. The courage
that had sustained me, like the numbness after a fatal blow, was
beginning to slip away. All that seventh day my nerves balanced on a
thin jagged edge. And that night the anamorph visited me in my bubble
cubicle.

I caught the sheathed rustle of a crinoline skirt and a scent of Peri
fragrance, and I knew she had come. Stubbornly I kept my face averted,
and tried my best not to think of her. If I did I was lost. My fingers
dug into the sponge fabric beneath me until they ached. I sucked breath
deep into my lungs and held it.

I wanted no visitors. But that of course was why she had come. She had
a way of divining who needed her most, the one whose morale was nearest
breaking.

"Poor Bill," she murmured. She knelt beside me. I felt her forehead
press against my temple and a tear--from eyes which I knew would
now be a clear candid blue, deep in the shadows, appearing almost
black--traced a salty path down my cheek.

The wall of my resistance broke. I reached up impulsively and pulled
her to me. She was all soft, yielding femininity, live and warm and
vibrant, the antidote to the raw need that was like a bleeding wound
deep within.

Still I tried to resist. I summoned my last dregs of resistance and
pushed her roughly from me. I opened my eyes, deliberately keeping my
mind locked against her.

She swayed back at my shove.

I saw that her features had not yet set into the mold she had probed
from my mind. Her head was round and shapeless, with doughy white skin
and the characterless face of a baby. The auburn mat on her head was
loose and coarse, with a consistency that was hair and yet not hair;
her body was too thin, too rigid, too stringy.

Yet she was Lois. Sweet, gentle, loving Lois, the bride I had left
behind on Earth, the girl I would never see again. Lois.

My breath came out in a ragged sigh of surrender, and my mind opened to
her unconditionally.

She altered visibly as I watched. It was too late to go back now.
Lois stood before me, full-fleshed and delicately tall, with her rich
brown hair curling inward at the ends, and her shapely shoulders all
honeyed-gold from the sun. Her supple body was straight, poised and
proud, her head back and her breasts pressing against her blouse. Just
as I remembered her.

I could have sent her away no more than I could have stopped the beat
of my heart. "Hi, hon," I whispered.

She laughed happily, and sat on the mat beside me and rumpled my hair.
We kissed gently, tentatively. I pulled her closer. As we kissed again
she kept her eyes open, looking at me sidewards in her fondly teasing
way. "It's good to be back, dear," she breathed against my cheek....

Long she lay at my side, regarding me with eyes that were filled with
her love, her only movement the throb of a pulse beneath my fingers as
they fondled her arched throat. I sighed contentedly. At the moment I
was filled with a warm serenity that had quite effectively subdued my
anxiety.

Once a man let himself go, there was no companion, male or female, who
could compare with the anamorph. She caught his every thought, crested
the tides of his every mood. She became the idealization of woman,
without flaws, formed and molded into a perfection beyond possible
actuality, her beauty and desirability greater than any real woman's
could ever be.

When full rapport had been achieved she was able to keep mentally ahead
of a man. She could gauge his every reflex, and match her speech and
actions to every subtle anticipation.

I felt almost happy then. The tragedy of being stranded here was
something apart, and the reality was the delightful woman-creature
warm against me ... until at last my passions grew sated with the
luxuriance of her charms and I slept.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the morning the anamorph was gone.

Eight other men had fears that must be eased. She might have spent
parts of the night with any one or all of them. The thought would
have been distasteful, except that absence made the sense of her less
all-pervading. I even experienced a kind of grateful relief. I was
able to regard her now, not as the real Lois I wanted, but as merely a
source of solace I had badly needed.

The anamorph's presence during the night had drained all my pent-up
frustrations. I was not happy, but I no longer felt the desperate
loneliness and need that had goaded me before. I dressed leisurely and
went out into the main compartment of the bubble.

Except in the sleeping rooms the plastic walls were transparent. I
looked outside at the surface of Europa, covered with a white material
I had been told was solid carbon dioxide.

A mild storm was brewing. The hydrogen, helium and methane in the
atmosphere were colorless, and the argon and krypton too minute to be
detected without instruments. But I could see and hear small particles
of liquid ammonia as they pattered against the plastic wall. The bubble
sagged in several places. But there was no danger of it collapsing.

In the space ship galley (to which the bubble had been attached) I
found the captain, Mark Burgess, and the anamorph having coffee.

She was no longer Lois. Now she was an older woman, with a bit of added
weight and thickness. She was still beautiful, but more matronly than
she had been as Lois. About her was none of the warm-blooded ardor she
had displayed the night before. And no remembrance of it in her eyes.

I poured a cup of coffee.

"Just how long do you figure we've got?" I asked Burgess.

"Mr. Lutscher--" he addressed me by my last name, as was his custom
with junior officers--"I will not equivocate. We have fuel enough to
furnish us with heat and electricity for well over a year. But our food
will last less than two months, even with strict rationing."

So there it was. In two months we'd probably all be dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Someone back on Earth had erred badly. In their calculations every item
had been gauged closely, as was necessary. But they should have allowed
safety margin.

The take-off had been calculated nicely. Ships had already been sent to
the moon and to Mars. But this was the first trip this far out. We had
not intercepted Europa quite as plotted. We had to chase it halfway
around Jupiter, and land with the satellite going away, rather than
meeting us. After we landed and new calibrations been made, we made a
discovery. Our fuel was too short for the return trip.

Kohnke was our lone hope. A metallurgist, he knew the properties of the
ship's pile.

But Kohnke was insane.

I had not liked the man from the first. With his nervous, subservient
personality, he had been a constant irritant in the confining quarters
of the ship. And during the early weeks of the flight I observed the
slow dawning of an awful awareness in our weak-charactered member.
He was realizing for the first time the prodigious and unpredictable
forces to which he had exposed himself. Soon he was convinced of the
certainty of death.

He did not have the mental stamina to cope with that certainty. When we
missed Europa on the first pass, Kohnke's mind cracked.

My attention returned to the anamorph. She was staring at me now,
her features white and strained. She must have read what I had been
thinking of Kohnke.

What was there about the crazed man that frightened her so? I wondered
again.

I went out into the bubble. The rocket man, Andrews and I spent the
next several hours adding another compartment to the main room. Andrews
fed dirt into the hopper of the converter while I operated the nozzle.

This was more difficult than the original bubble had been. Normal
air pressure was enough to keep that expanded; but here we had to
make supports and rig up an auxiliary vent. Also it was cold near the
walls, a cold that sucked at the heat in our bodies; Europa has a mean
temperature of -140° Centigrade.

When our job was finished I left Andrews at the door of his cubicle. I
glanced back and saw that he hadn't gone in. He was standing with his
head down and his shoulders slumped.

Andrews I had always regarded as an extrovert, and a good man. He was
big, active and almost always cheerful. Even his bald head seemed to
add to his masculine virility. He had a vast fund of stories. Everyone
liked him.

I suspected, however, that his bland acceptance of our predicament was
not all it seemed. He was an instinctive psychologist. He was doing his
part to keep up the spirits of the rest of us. In my judgment Andrews
was quite a man.

But now his capacity for dissimulating had apparently reached its limit.

At that moment a woman-form drifted past me from the ship. The
anamorph had come to perform her self-appointed duty.

She was a robust woman now with a body designed for love-making, the
wide-hipped form made to propagate the race with healthy offspring. Her
dress was cut low at the neck, innocently immodest.

Andrews looked up, still brooding.

It was he who had discovered the anamorph, the second day after our
landing. Where she had come from, or how she had gotten through the
plastic wall without rupturing it, we never did learn. She had had this
identical form when Andrews found her.

The anamorph began to dance. A slow, languid pirouetting. The sound of
a wordless crooning song reached me. The tempo of her dance heightened
and her wide green skirt came up around her waist, exposing fair thighs.

Andrews grunted and shifted position. Abruptly he reached out and
grasped her wrist. "Come here, baby," he said hoarsely.

The anamorph kicked and squealed in mock protest as Andrews swept her
off her feet and into his arms, but she made no real effort to free
herself as he strode with her into his compartment.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning when I stopped in with Kohnke's breakfast I found him
wearing a gold crown.

With strictly amateur knowledge, I had diagnosed his illness as
schizophrenia, and this latest display seemed to confirm the diagnosis.
Now he had escaped harsh reality into a world of his own, a world where
he was obviously a personage of considerable eminence.

Kohnke smiled at me and greeted me condescendingly. I went along with
his delusion. If I were to help him it was good that he accepted me
as part of his world. I sat at his feet and made as one of the unseen
audience he was addressing. I was wryly amused a few minutes later when
I understood who he thought he was.

However, it was the gold crown that fascinated me. Where had he gotten
it? There could be only one answer. And if what I suspected was true,
there were startling implications.

I had to speak again soon with the anamorph....

She did not keep me waiting.

I returned to my compartment. The pseudo-Lois entered soon after and
stretched out indolently on my cot. "You wanted to see me, Bill?"

Incongruously I found myself staring at her low-heeled shoes, the ones
she always wore when we danced at the Prom. I restrained the impulse
to take her in my arms. "I saw the crown you made for Kohnke," I said
carefully, making a special effort to keep my inner thoughts hidden.
"It's beautiful."

"Thank you."

Those simple words meant much to me. I had succeeded in getting her to
admit that she had made the crown.

Which meant we still had a chance!

"Then you'll be able to make the fuel we need," I said casually.

Her expression became wary, shifting instantly to petulance. She
reached over and put one hand on my arm. "Why do you want to leave me,
Bill?"

       *       *       *       *       *

I tried to explain, but she couldn't or wouldn't understand.

I tried another tack. "Why are you afraid of Kohnke?" I asked. My
theory was that she did not understand insanity, and so her inability
to follow the illogical thought processes of the demented man
frightened her.

"He is so intelligent," she startled me by saying.

"He's crazy," I protested.

"What is crazy?"

"His reasoning faculties do not function properly."

She seemed to be reading my thoughts carefully, trying to understand
better what I meant. After a minute she smiled and her teeth showed
white and even against her tan. "Isn't it possible that his mind works
too swiftly for you to follow, and the only way you can explain your
lack of understanding is to say that he is insane?"

So that was why she feared Kohnke. To her he was a brilliant intellect.
So great that she could neither understand nor influence him as she did
the others of us. His aborted reasoning, his sudden shifts of interest,
his small concern with a situation that aroused our distress, were all
evidence of that superior intellect. I did not try to disabuse her of
the belief. It fitted well with my semi-formed plan.

"He is like the Masters," the anamorph interrupted my thoughts.

I quickly took up the diversion she offered: I did not want her to see
what lay in my thoughts. Also she had aroused my curiosity. "Who are
the Masters?" I asked.

"I'm not certain. I think...." Her voice trailed off. "I'm never too
sure that what I'm thinking are my own thoughts, or what I'm reading in
your mind, or have read in others," she said. "Perhaps if I looked away
from you....

"Many years ago the Masters landed on this small world to make repairs
on the meteor shield of their space ship," she began again in a low
voice. "They were passing through this part of the Galaxy on their
way home from a distant planet. I belonged to one of them. For some
reason they left me behind when they went away." She stopped talking,
saddened by the recollection of her desertion.

I saw her in a new light then. She had been a pet, a plaything, who
perhaps had strayed just before ship leaving time.

She nodded, smiling brightly. "A pet," she exclaimed, clapping her
hands. "That is right." I realized then, with mild astonishment, that
she was not very intelligent. Her apparent wit and sharpness before had
been only reflections of what she read in our minds.

"Are you all Kohnke's pets?" she caught me unprepared.

I coughed uncomfortably, and shook my head.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her mood changed. "I've been so lonesome, Bill. When I do not belong to
someone I am so unhappy. But I won't be unhappy anymore." For the first
time I felt sorry for her.

"Bill?" Her voice was timid. "Do you believe I will be punished for
leaving the Masters? I did not mean to."

"Who would punish you now?" I asked.

"The Masters' God. They always told me he would punish me if I were
bad. And he is such a terrible God." Her expression became bright with
hope. "Is your God terrible, Bill?"

I tried to reassure her, to pacify this naive creature with her own
private terrors, but she must have read in my mind how our Christian
God could also be terrible in his wrath and justice, for she gave a
small cry and pulled herself close to me.

Several minutes went by while she trembled in my arms and wept
disconsolately. Finally she quieted and in a young girl's voice asked,
"May I use your hanky, daddy?"

In surprise I held her out from me and saw that now she was my
daughter, Joanie, with her newly bobbed hair, and her sweet face still
wet with tears.

Of course. While I held her I had been thinking of her as a child. As
my child, Joanie.

I wiped away her tears and blew her nose.

I thought swiftly. Perhaps this was my opportunity. Speaking as I would
have to Joanie I asked gently, "Won't you help us get the fuel we need,
honey?"

"I can't." Her childish wistfulness was replaced by the stubbornness I
had encountered before.

I was careful to restrain my impatience. "You could come with us to
Earth," I argued, without raising my voice. "You wouldn't be lonesome
there."

"I couldn't live that long out of the sun," she answered.

"How did you live on the Master's ship?" I asked.

"They could bring the sunlight inside. You can't."

"Isn't there any way we could keep you alive?" I asked.

She shook her head.

Which left nothing except my desperate plan.

       *       *       *       *       *

Burgess made the preparations I requested, without question, and I
returned to Kohnke. It took me some time to get him in the frame I
wanted. When he began to blubber, "I want to go home, I want to go
home," I led him from the ship.

The anamorph was outside, as I knew she would be. The men were all in
the ship.

I bowed deeply to Kohnke and turned to the anamorph. "He would speak
with you," I said impressively.

Her eyes widened with apprehension. I was not concerned about her
reading my thoughts now. What she read in Kohnke's mind would be more
believable to her.

"We must have fuel!" I shouted at Kohnke. "She can give it to us!" I
pointed at the anamorph. "Command her!"

Kohnke concentrated his wild gaze on the girl and mouthed something
inaudible.

The anamorph drew back. Her features seemed to lose their character, to
be melting together.

This was the critical moment. "Tell her about your Father," I commanded.

His lips writhed damply and he began again his inarticulate muttering.

The anamorph cried out plaintively and covered her face with her hands.
I shifted my attention to the pile of soil I had asked Burgess to
prepare.

It quivered, flattened ... and hardened into six fuel ingots!

Twenty minutes later we were in space.

Our last glimpse of the anamorph was the dejected figure of a small
girl, standing alone in the middle of the bubble.

She had had to obey Kohnke, of course. For she believed what she read
in his mind.

And Kohnke thought he was the Son of God.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lorelei, by Charles V. DeVet
{'title': 'Lorelei by Charles V. De Vet', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}