Time Thieves

unvoiced scream ululated along the telepathic channel, as frightening as some enormous, swift-moving centipede. It was not a scream of pain, so much as it was a forlorn cry of emotional anguish, of spiritual turmoil.
        
        Silence.
        
        Then it returned, long, wailing, scraping across the surface of Pete's mind like a hacksaw blade.
        
        He tried to break the connection. This time, because the alien was too preoccupied to interfere, he managed to seal off the contact.
        
        He got to his feet, weaving slightly, and hurried away from the garage and the expensive houses.
        
        The pressure was gone. His mind felt light, quick, almost intoxicated. The white sphere was gone as well; he was not being traced any longer.
        
        He should feel jubilant, flushed with triumph. Instead, he felt as if he had done something unspeakably cruel to that strange being whose toothless mouth had bellowed such an eerie and yet basically human call for help.
        

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    XIII
        
        
        His clothes were a mud-smeared, tattered mess. He didn't want Della to see him like this, first thing, before he had time to offer an explanation. He walked along Market Street to the Surplus Outlet Mart where he pawed through jeans and work shirts until he found ones he wanted. He paid for them and changed clothes in the rest room.
        
        It was only ten of eight, and the only other place open at that hour was Halberstrom's, on the square. He walked down there and bought himself a large breakfast. He sat in a corner booth, out of the main traffic, and allowed himself some thought for the the first time in many long hours.
        
        Just a day ago, the only problem had been finding out who had caused his amnesia and who was watching him from the sidelines. Now, abruptly, the problem was far more complex. It was no longer “who” but “what". Now, he had to consider extraterrestrial creatures. And robots. And spaceships, certainly. And all the other paraphrenalia of fantasy.
        
        At one time, he would not have been able to accept that. But, before last night, he had not been able to read the minds of other people. He had not been chased by robots with faces of pliable putty. He had not traced an alien creature's thoughts with his own telepathic probe. And last night, he had done all these things, and now he could believe.
        
        And despite these abrupt changes in his perception of the world, he did not feel particularly unsure of himself. If his strongest personality trait before had been a need for a minimal solidity to life-a home, a wife, a business, a style of existence-his most powerful trait now was his ability to assimilate anything, no matter how radical it was, and work within the new picture of the world that it presented to him.
        
        It was not solely his encounter with the eyeless alien's mind and with the indestructable robots that brought about the shift in his vision, though both those hings were surely a part of it. No, more than all that, more than spaceships and beasts from outer space and androids, was Della.
        
        Yet he dreaded going home and having to, in some way, explain it all to her. That was why he had bought breakfast first, he knew. What if Della could never understand? And, honestly, how could he ever expect her to grasp the world he now saw? She did not, after all, have the benefit of extrasensory perception.
        
        Worse still, what if, once he had come to know Della, once he had explored every nook of her mind, he grew tired of her? Might she turn out to be nothing more than a curious novelty for his new powers-and nothing but a silly antique when he had nothing more to know about her? They said that a woman's attractiveness often is related to the mystery that surrounds her. In a short time, a year or two, perhaps she would hold no mystery for his psionic mind.
        
        He refused to consider that. Della would always be Della. He would always be in love with her. No power on earth, even telepathic, could change that.
        
        Besides, she would be like a second part of him by the time that he had finished exploring all of her store of thoughts and hopes, theories, emotions and instincts. She would be Pete Part Two, an intricate part of all the things that made him the man he was. And did a man stop loving himself,