End as a Hero

Laumer, Keith. "End as a Hero." Galaxy June 1966. Coll. Nine by Laumer. Also coll. The Undefeated. New York: Dell, 1974.

Features Psi-powers, a matter-transmitter with Psi-control, and a portal with an alien invasion force on the other side; cf. KL's "Long Remembered Thunder," cited below. Note hero breaking out of captivity supervised by a military bureaucracy through an insight into the nature of "The matter transmitter—a strange device. A field, not distorting space, but accentuating certain characteristics of a matter field in space-time, subtly shifting relationships ... [¶] Just as the mind could compare unrelated data, draw from them new concepts, new parallels ... [¶] The circuits of the matter transmitter ... and the patterns of the mind ... [¶] The exocosm and the endocosm, like the skin and the orange, everywhere in contact ... [¶]"—and soon thereafter he pictures and then is on "a beach of white sand […] and nowhere were there any generals with medals and television cameras, or flint-eyed bureaucrats with long schemes ..." (Nine by Laumer 54). To what extent the transmission of the hero is mediated by the machine and to what extents it is pure power of his mind, we find ambiguous. (RDE, 07/05/01)