Nightmare journey

the pain, the oncoming darkness, which had been too intense to have been mere unconsciousness. He sat straight up, whimpering.
    Melopina was there, as were Tedesco, Chaney and Kiera.
    You're all right, Melopina 'pathed.
    I died!
    Yes.
    Then- He looked sorrowfully from one to the other of his friends. Then, you're all dead too?
    Tedesco burst out laughing.
    Cynical as always, Chaney 'pathed, This isn't the afterlife, Jask. You didn't die and get sent to heaven or anything so good as that.
    But I died!
    And were resurrected, Kiera said.
    But the Resurrectionists can't be-
    Not resurrected in that sense, Tedesco said. You were killed by a device meant to guard the Presence against intruders. But it seems, that our friend from another world has access to miraculous machines we have never even imagined. He has one that, if it is supplied with a corpse in time, can seven times out of ten return the unfortunate to life.
    And you four?
    Not hurt.
    Why did it let me be hurt? Jask wanted to know.
    It didn't register our esp power, Melopina explained, because it was fifteen years into a twenty-year-long nap.
    Twenty years!
    The Presence has been on Earth more than eighty-five thousand years, but it's only lived a small portion of its life. A twenty-year nap is only standard procedure.
    While it napped, Jask said, how many espers died?
    That's a pointlessly vicious attitude, Tedesco 'pathed. We're lucky it was here at all.
    Jask knew the bruin was right, but his own death was too fresh in his mind to permit him complete objectivity just now.
    Besides, Kiera said, it uses images, not words, in telepathic talk. At first, it could not understand us at all. Apparently we aren't using our esp ability to its full potential. Until we do, we will stay here on Earth, taking instructions from the Presence, learning to overcome the handicap of being raised in a verbal society.
    Any optimism Jask was beginning to allow himself sank without a trace as Kiera spoke. Stay on Earth? How long?
    No more than a year, Kiera said. That's how long the Presence feels it will take to teach us imagistic communication.
    Besides, Melopina added, the ships the Presence sent for will not be here for another eight or nine months anyway.
    Why not?
    They need that long to cross the gulf of space.
    Then-the stars for us! Tedesco said.
    Jask looked at each of them in turn, these four he loved and with whom he had been through so much. He said, Are you sure you want the stars any longer?
    They 'pathed surprise.
    Jask 'pathed, Even if we can be taught imagistic telepathy, we'll always find ourselves thinking in verbalized frames. We won't be able to help making a slip now and again. We'll be marked as children, as cripples, all our lives.
    I doubt it'll be as bad as that, Tedesco 'pathed.
    And how will we comprehend and learn to work with all the pieces of miraculous science and machines they take for granted? We'll be like primitives. There is nothing special about us to make them want to welcome us into the society of the many worlds.
    That would be true but for one thing, Tedesco 'pathed.
    What thing?
    Despite all the advanced races of the galaxy, all those who have been telepaths for tens of thousands of years, no other race has any other psionic abilities.
    So?
    We have them! Consider your own ability to kill, to frighten a man to death. Further consider the trick Melopina taught us- the fireballs. And, finally, our ability to mesh into a single psychic force.
    They can't?
    No.
    Chaney 'pathed, Among the other espers the Presence has already rounded up, there are people who can levitate themselves and move small objects without touching them. Others seem able to see parts of the future.
    One woman can do the most exceptional thing of all, Tedesco said. She can concentrate and make moving pictures in the empty air, colors and designs, the most artistic things!
    It seems to me, Jask said, that some of these other talents are more exceptional than that.
    He's prejudiced, Chaney said. The artist he speaks of is a young bruin mutant named Kathalina.
    You just don't appreciate good art, Tedesco grumbled.
    Melopina 'pathed, Come on, Jask. Get dressed and come into the main lounge, where the others are.
    I think I'd like to stay here with you a bit, alone, he 'pathed, making her blush a brighter blue-green.
    You've a job, though, she 'pathed.
    A job?
    Tedesco explained. The Presence tells us that when mankind first journeyed to the stars, he was not telepathic-but he