Cascade Point

It was a long speech for a dreaming person to hear, but it did the trick. She was finally convinced. I said good-bye and broke the contact, knowing that as I did so she would wake up.

I awoke myself with the slightly disoriented feeling that I always get after sending a dream. Turning on my bedside light, I blinked at the ceiling for a minute, and then reached to the nightstand for Larry Holst's picture. Two down, one to go. As I marshaled my thoughts concerning this message, it occurred to me that I was about to make Dreamsender history: to the best of my knowledge no one had ever before tried dreamsending to the moon. Maybe I would rate a footnote in a history book someday. Snapping off the light, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Sometime—probably about an hour later—I was in the half-conscious, half- dreaming state that I need to make contact. With a slight effort I formed an image of Captain Holst in my mind. Slowly, an unfamiliar scene appeared around me, and from a mist at the edge of my vision a figure emerged. It was Larry Holst.

I moved toward him with a strange buoyancy I'd never felt before, almost as if I were myself in the moon's lower gravity. "Captain Holst?" I said. "My name is Jefferson Morgan—"

"It won't work," he interrupted wildly. "He can't get away with it."

"Sir, I'm here to help you," I said. "I'm Jefferson Morgan, a Dreamsender."

Images were flashing by, and I realized he wasn't really paying any attention to me. I opened my mouth to try again, then thought better of it. Maybe he would settle down in a few minutes; surely he couldn't maintain this emotional level for long. Meanwhile, I'd watch his dream images and try to figure out why he was so upset. It was something like trying to simultaneously watch five movies, all of which are on high-speed settings. Pictures popped up all over the place, sometimes out of nowhere, sometimes generated by preceding thoughts. Often a given image would start its own series, as well. Some of the images and thoughts were familiar—a series of craters, for example: Tycho, Krieger, Mairan, Foucault, Aristoteles, and more—while others I could only guess at. Circuit diagrams, sunlit lunar landscapes, scenes that must have been from science-fiction movies—all of it snarling together into an absolute mess of image, sound, and emotional coloring.

Enough was enough. This wasn't getting me anywhere. "Captain Holst!" I shouted over the din. "You must listen to me. Your wife is worried about you."

Everything slowed down as he realized I was still there. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jefferson Morgan, a Dreamsender. Your wife asked me to contact you, to see if you were all right."

Holst's emotional tremor was much gentler than Joa

"Krieger D barracks," he said and suddenly there were bars around us.

"Are you in jail there?" I asked, startled by the image.

"All of us were sequestered by the Colonel." I got a picture of Holst tinkering with a machine—circuit diagrams flashed again—near something that looked like surface-mining equipment. Several other men appeared nearby, and the cage around us expanded to include them.

"A mine?" I guessed, trying to make sense out of the images that were going by. "Where? What kind?"

"New one, north. Iridium vein, very rich."

"And you were all sequestered? Why?"

His answer, if he gave one, was lost in a new explosion of pictures: more movielike scenes in the background, while nearby a colonel was struggling to stuff something into a sack. A group of snakes appeared and Holst began to argue with them for permission to reassure his wife. Thoughts of her seemed to agitate him; the bars around us turned thicker and darker, and again his dream began to resemble a high-speed kaleidoscope. For the first time in my experience I felt myself being caught up in the emotional current. "I'll talk to you later. Good-bye," I said hurriedly and broke the contact.

I woke up covered with sweat. Rolling out of bed, I went into the kitchen to make myself some hot chocolate. Never before had a contact hit me that hard. I still didn't know what was going on up at Krieger, but something sure as taxes was worrying the stuffing out of Captain Lawrence Holst.

It was another two hours before I felt calm enough to go back to sleep. I spent most of that time going over that last contact, trying to recall as much detail as possible, and as I did so several elements of the dream began to stand out. The imagery was going to be tricky, though, and before trying to decipher it I decided to wait until I could consult with the local expert on Larry Holst's mind.

Louise Holst was at my office door at nine sharp. I sat her down, gave her a cup of coffee, and took a seat across from her. She was obviously eager for my report, but had the self-control to wait until we were settled.

"Did you contact my husband last night, Mr. Morgan?" she asked.

"Yes, I did." I hesitated. "I'm afraid your suspicions were correct. Something is definitely going on up there. Nothing obviously harmful to your husband," I added, seeing her stricken look.

"Then what is it?"

I shook my head. "I don't know for sure. There were a lot of images in his dream that made no sense at all to me. I hoped you could help me interpret them."

I proceeded to describe the contact to her. She asked occasional questions, but generally listened quietly to my account.

"I wish I could help you," she said when I had finished, "but I don't understand most of those symbols myself. All I can suggest is that Larry often refers to sneaky people as 'snakes.' I guess I don't know him as well as I thought I did."

"Don't let it worry you. I doubt that he understands much of his dream imagery himself," I told her. "I've been thinking about your husband's dream, Mrs. Holst, and I think I can take at least a stab at what he was trying to say. The outstanding elements are the new iridium mine, his own presence there, and the sequestering of everyone there by the colonel. Do you know this colonel, by the way?"

She nodded quickly. "Colonel Avram Stark is the commander of Krieger Base. He reports directly to General Blaine at the Pentagon."

"So Stark is completely in charge on the moon, eh?" I drummed my fingers on the chair arm. "Can you think of any reason he'd lock up everyone who had been at a new mine?"

"A bad accident, maybe? Something they didn't want publicity about?"

"I wonder. Stark was trying to put something in a sack in your husband's dream. Do you happen to know if he gets a percentage or bonus on new mineral wealth?" She looked astonished. "In the army?"

"I didn't think so. This is a wild idea, but do you suppose Stark is trying to take the iridium in that mine for himself?"

"How would he get it off the moon?"

"I haven't the foggiest. I've never given much thought to interplanetary smuggling. I imagine it's possible, though." We both considered this.

"If you're right," she said slowly, "then Larry is in real danger. Stark couldn't let word of the mine leak out, and he can't hold those men forever. He'd have to— to kill them." She turned suddenly widened eyes on me. "You have to help me, Mr. Morgan."

"How? I doubt if I can get any more information than I already have from here."

"You could go to the moon and get proof. You could get it to the newsmen, or the Pentagon, or someone—"

"Just a second, Mrs. Holst. I'm afraid you've got the wrong guy for this job. First of all, I can't get to the moon—I haven't got the money for a commercial flight, and there's an eight-month waiting list, anyway. Secondly, this isn't my field. You'd be better off hiring a private eye. And thirdly, our theory may be completely wrong, and if it is I'd be sticking my nose deeply into army business, a practice the Pentagon takes a very dim view of. I'm a Dreamsender, not a professional kamikaze. I've done my part here."