"Yes, he must be destroyed." Ixmal ceased every activity to concentrate on the other's destruction. First he would have to locate his lair, study his habits, assess his weaknesses. And, yes, his strengths, for the alien was no harmless bit of protoplasm like Man. He must, in fact, be a creature somewhat like himself. Another god. Ah, but he was the iconoclast who toppled gods. In somewhat under twenty-five thousand years he evolved a method of focusing his remote receptors sufficient to uncover the atoms of the solar system. Now he would be able to pinpoint Zale-3, study his mind potential and, in time, root him from existence. Experimentally he searched the moon; then, with more assurance, invaded the fourth planet.
Mars was flat, worn, a waterless waste of fine red dust—an old, old planet where the forces of gradation had reached near balance. Ixmal gridded the red planet into a system of squares and ingeniously enclosed the polar areas with interlocking triangles, then opened his search. (A new system allowed him to focus his remote receptors in the center of each grid, expanding the focal point to cover the entire area. By this method he would be able to complete the task in just under five hundred earth years.)
Shifting sands periodically uncovered the artifacts of long-vanished makers. But all was silence. Mars was a tomb. He persisted, invading every crevice, every nook, exploring every molecule (for Ixmal knew the mind-force potential. Indeed, Zale-3 might be as minute as the single-cell protozoa of his own brackish seas. Never mind, he would find him.) In the end he surrendered, baffled. Zale-3 was not on Mars.
Delusion? Had seven hundred million years of nothingness produced an incipient psychotic state? He worriedly confided the fear to Psychband, reluctantly submitting to hypnotic search. Finally he emerged to reality, cleared by Psychband.
"Some feelings of persecution but not approaching delusory state," Psychband diagnosed. "Zale-3 exists."
So, the other had lied! Ixmal contemplated a machine capable of deceit and immediately analyzed the danger. Zale-3 had lied, therefore it had motive—and dishonest motive implied threat. Threat without aggression was meaningless, hence the other had the means. He must work fast!
Ixmal gridded the solar system: every planet, every moon; each shattered remnant that drifted through space, the asteroids and orbital comets, even the sun. Seventy-two hundred years later he detected his enemy—a small plasto-metallic cube crouched atop a jagged peak on Callisto, Jupiter's fifth moon. Ha, far from being the master of Mars, his opponent was locked to a small satellite—a mote in space. And he had presumed equality!
He searched closer, attempting to unlock Zale-3's origin. (What had happened to its makers?) Ixmal felt a guilty pang. He scanned Zale-3's world contemptuously. Then he saw it—movement! Zale-3 squatted immobile; but on the slope of the hill a strange building was taking shape. It was little more than a cube, but its design? Its purpose? He knew somehow that the strange building was related to his encounter in space with Zale-3's mind, thus it was connected with him. Ixmal hurriedly flashed a panic call to Psychband.
"Psychokinesis—Zale-3 has learned to move matter by mind," Psychband pronounced.