Holder hated his Communist captors so much
he wished them out of existence. Impossible, of
course—and yet they vanished before his eyes....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
October 1957
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Get the hell out of my sight, Nocher!" Holder shouted.
The scientist had held his temper ever since he had been taken captive.This had set up such a condition of strain within him that even inhis dreams, he had seen himself destroying Reds. He had blown them upwith hydrogen bombs, he had destroyed them with death rays, he haddisintegrated them with weapons that no other mind had ever imagined.Most of all, he had hated the poking, prying political commissars, whohad breathed down his neck in every experiment he had ever attempted,or had watched from the TV camera installed in every laboratory of thevast installation, to make certain that any discovery that was madewent to the right place.
But even Holder's most fantastic dreams were nothing in comparison towhat actually happened.
Nocher was a big man, standing six foot two inches tall. There wasCossack blood in him, which gave him a vast feeling of superiority forall men not of his race. This was particularly true of the captivescientists being held prisoner in this secret Ural stronghold. In spiteof the fact that every one of them had a better brain than he had, thepolitical commissar looked down upon them as being creatures of aninferior race.
As Holder shouted at the Commissar, Nocher lost his expression ofsuperiority. His face turned a dim shade of blue, then a thin shade ofwhite.
Then, clothes and all, he vanished.
Nocher went like smoke before the wind, roiling and turning. When hevanished, he left a vague outline of a human body behind him whichlooked like a hole in space, like a ghost outlined against a gray sky.Then this vanished too. Of Nocher's bulk, not even a wisp was left.
John Holder was aware of thundering elation somewhere deep down insideof him. There was horror too, but the elation was greater. He stared atthe empty spot where the commissar had been standing a moment before.
Sounds came from his lips but he had no conscious knowledge that he wasuttering them. They were noises that had existed long before languagehad come into being. Their meaning was pure horror. As they came fromhis lips, Holder felt every muscle in his stomach begin to tighten intoa knot.
There was absolutely no question in his mind that he was responsiblefor Nocher's disappearance. Out of his dreams, out of his hate for thecommissars and all they represented, this ability had been created.A million to one chance had come true! This ability was something hedid inside himself. It needed no outside equipment to function, nogenerators to feed energy to it, no crystals to control its frequency.It was its own generator and its own frequency control! And it was allin his own mind! It was new, it was totally different from anything anyscientist had ever envisioned before.
In this moment, staring at the spot where Nocher had been, John Holderfelt as if the concrete floor on which he was standing had no more realsubstance to it than empty space. All that existed was mind, energy,and the dance of the atoms. He also knew that everything he had thoughthe had known about science was drivel, the mouthings of an idiot. Thestring of degrees after his name, which had so impressed the Red andhad led to his capture by a nation hungry for scientists and willingto go to any lengths to g