No part of their bodies was detonated into dreadful flame, however.
They didn't even fall.
They merely stood there on the silver steps, Ironsmith urbanely grave, Ruth shaking her head in sad reproof.
"Huh!" Forester gasped with a shocked unbelief, as if the two had wounded him with some unfair blow.
His bewildered eyes went back to the far horizon, where that tall mushroom of ominous cloud was beginning to thin and fade against the blue summer sky. He looked for another rock.
"Stop it, Forester!" the gaunt old man broke in hastily.
"There's no use wrecking all the landscape.
Because you can't hurt anybody - not with psychophysics." Forester retreated from him warily.
"You needn't be alarmed," the stranger rumbled softly. "You can't injure us, and we don't need to retaliate." He smiled, patient and not unkind. "If you'll calm yourself enough to listen, I might explain that you've apparently overlooked a couple of basic fundamentals." Forester stood swaying, blank and ill.
"You should have learned that the psychophysical functions are normally unconscious," the old man said.
"They belong very largely to that major fraction of the brain tissue which is not used for conscious thought.
Full conscious control of them always requires long training, and a high degree of integration to remove the interfering internal conflicts.
You should know that - though you have astonished us."
The cragged face showed a kind of admiration.
"I don't suppose you know the wonder of your own achievements. It is a rare thing that a mind divided by such savage conflicts as yours is able to attain any conscious psychophvsical control at all.
The explanation of what you have done, I believe, is in your unusual grasp of the physical and mathematical aspects, as well as in the tendency toward psychophysical compensation for physical handicaps in individuals under intense emotional stress."
Forester stood numb and stupid with his pain.
"Yet, for all your incredible accomplishments, you still show no real understanding." The old man turned gravely stern again.
"You've just proved your blindness, with this insane attempt at murder.
Anybody less crippled with hate would have learned, long ago, that psychophysical energy cannot be used for such destructive purposes.
"Because it's creative - can't you see that?
The basic creative force of the universe.
It builds stable atoms, out of disruptive ferromagnetic and rhodomagnetic components. It is the mother of suns and galaxies, and it aids the condensation of planets.
It kindles life. It is the driving power of organic evolution.
And it is mind."
Forester tried not to yield to his fatigue and his grief and his shock.
Thin blades of pain stabbed through his swollen knee, and small fangs of hungry agony nibbled at his stomach, and a groggy weakness tried to possess him. But he shook his head and he tried to listen.
"Psychophysical energy is mind," the old man insisted softly.
"Every atom in the universe has mentality to the tiny extent of its own creative component.
Every molecule has more. Every new development of structure - in the complex organic molecules, in the simple viruses at the borderline of life, in the human brain - each such forward step in evolution is brought about by a new emergence of that building component, on a higher level.
"Some of the mystics among us can see the working of it on levels even higher.
Studying the structure and the function of the entire creative mind arising from the substance of the whole universe, to make and shape all things, they perceive the actual anatomy of God."
Forester wanted to listen. But the phrases seemed too large and vague, and the warm breeze became suddenly oppressive.
Sweat began trickling down his forehead and his taut flanks, and something squeezed his chest and his knee let him lurch and stagger again.
"-sick, Forester," the old man was saying.
"You can't injure us, but the attempts are killing yourself.
Because the energy of life and mind - and divinity, if you like - is always creative.
When you attempt to turn it against itself, you set up conflicts which act to destroy your own identity.
A mind, like an atom or a star, can be shattered by a failure of the psychophysical component."
His knee buckled, and the tall man caught him.
Dazedly, aching all over, he sat down on the broad silver stair.
The breeze from the far blue estuary seemed suddenly cold. Wet with a nervous perspiration, he began to shiver in the thin pajamas.
Some stray pollen grain gave him a brief fit of sneezing.
He blew his nose and tried to listen.
"The full conscious control of the psychophysical functions requires a whole mind," the stranger said.
"A mature and integrated personality, free of inner strains.
No man who has discovered that mental poise and peace would be capable of attempting murder.
No man who has not would be able to commit it - not psychophysically. Because that creative energy will not destroy itself.
Does that tell you why you failed?"
Forester nodded uncertainly.