What does if mean? Lynne was unused to Martian directness, unused to taking peremptory orders, especially from a man. She had no intention of obeying before she was good and ready and....
Suddenly they were there, all around her. Thanks to having viewed the murals and the scene on the visual-grid that afternoon she was able to get some idea of their nature—or what had been their nature before a dying globe had driven them to seek the refuge of pure thought and feeling-forms.
First one of them came fluttering into the room, like some giant invisible moth, then came another and another and another until she lost count. They were gay for some reason and nibbled at her mind like moths nibbling at wool in a closet.
Worse, now that she had allowed them into her brain she was unable to drive them out. They darted away, amused, just beyond the reach of her questing probe. Then they came back, doing their strange dances and whispering outrageous suggestions. Alien or not they had definite erotic appeal, that awakened in Lynne responses she had never before suspected she possessed.
What kind of creature am I? she thought hysterically after a particularly ingenious lascivious mental embrace. And then, from some hidden source, she drew the strength to fight. She concentrated as never before in her life—even while working with the group-machine—and little by little began to win the battle with the aliens.
You'll regret it—just let us have the loan of your body and we'll show you joys you have never dreamt of. The thoughts pounded at her head with frail persistent powdery punches, that promised to win through sheer weight of numbers what they lacked in power.
But Lynne forced herself to think of kindly prosaic Mother Weedon. At once, seizing upon her thought, the invaders suggested all sorts of indecent sports for that mature lady. And the very idea of Mother Weedon indulging in such pursuits was so absurd that Lynne was unable to resist laughing out loud.
At once the creatures were gone. They were unable to stand the brain waves of ridicule. Lynne wondered about it. For the moment she felt carried aloft on a wave of high excitement at her victory. She tried to code through a message to Rolf Marcein through the proper Cathayville channel.
Cathayville had been attacked earlier in the evening and for awhile the telepath on duty had been forced to keep his mind resolutely shut, lest he fall prey to the enemy. Repulsed, they had moved on to Barkutburg and Lynne. She gave the message for relay, received information to the effect that Rolf Marcein's current whereabouts were unknown and that he was maintaining a closed mind to all messages and was therefore not to be reached.
Lynne felt terribly alone at this message and the invaders chose that moment, while her mind was still open, to return in greater force. This time Lynne found herself in actual pain. Their promise was no longer mere physical pleasure—although their abandonment of bodies had unquestionably led them to overstress the joys of the flesh. Now they promised pain unless Lynne were to give way to them, the sort of pain, a thousand times magnified, that she had felt sympathetically while Revere was enduring similar attack.