Concealment

  by A. E. van Vogt

  He not willing to blow himself and his strange weather station—

  that watched the movement of mlllennium-long storms of

  inter-stellar space—to atoms to conceal the secret of his

  people. They were safe, concealed In the haystack of a hundred

  trillion stars?—unless he gave a clue!

  Illustrated by Pax

  From Astounding Science Fiction - September. 1943, edition - Short Story

  His duty was to die, and carry the secret of his people’s hiding place to death with him. But even death was not concealment enough, though he was blown, literally, to atoms!

  The Earth ship came so swiftly around the planetless ‘Gisser sun that the alarm system in the meteorite weather station had no time to react. The great machine was already visible when Watcher grew aware of it.

  Alarms must have blared in the ship, too, for it slowed noticeably and, still braking, disappeared. Now it was com ing back, creeping along, obviously trying to locate the small object that had affected its energy screens.

  It loomed vast in the glare of the distant yellow-white sun, bigger even at this distance than anything ever seen by the Fifty Suns, a very hell ship out of remote space, a monster from a semi-mythical world, instantly recognizable from the descriptions in the history books as a battleship of Imperial Earth. Dire had been the warnings in the histories of what would happen someday—and here it was.

  He knew his duty. There was a warning, the age-long dreaded warning, to send to the Fifty Suns by the non-directional subspace radio; and he had to make sure nothing telltale remained of the station.

  There was no fire. As the overloaded atomic engines dissolved, the massive building that had been a weather substation simply fell into its component elements.

  Watcher made no attempt to escape. His brain, with its knowledge, must not be tapped. He felt a brief, blinding spasm of pain as the energy tore him to atoms.

  She didn’t bother to accompany the expedition that landed on the meteorite. But she watched w’ith intent eyes through the astroplate.

  From the very first moment that the spy rays had shown a human figure in a weather station—a weather station out here—she had known the surpassing importance of the discovery. Her mind leaped instantly to the several possibilities.

  Weather stations meant interstellar travel. Human beings meant Earth origin. She visualized how it could have happened: an expedition long go; it must have been long ago because now they had interstellar travel, and that meant large populations on many planets.

  His majesty, she thought, would be pleased.

  So was she. In a burst of generosity, she called the energy room.

  “Your prompt action, Captain Clone,” she said warmly, “in inclosing the entire meteorite in a sphere of protective energy is commendable, and will be rewarded.”

  The man whose image showed on the astroplate, bowed. “Thank you, noble lady.” He added: “I think we saved the electronic and atomic components of the entire station. Unfortunately, because of the interference of the atomic energy of the station itself, I understand the photographic department was not so successful in obtaining clear prints.”

  The woman smiled grimly, said: “The man will be sufficient, and that is a matrix for which we need no prints.”

  She broke the connection, still smiling, and returned her gaze to the scene on the meteorite. As she watched the energy and matter absorbers in their glowing gluttony, she thought:

  There had been several storms on the map in that weather station. She’d seen them in the spy ray; and one of the storms had been very large. Her great ship couldn’t dare to go fast while the location of that storm was in doubt.

  Rather a handsome young man he had seemed in the flashing glimpse she had had in the spy ray, strong-willed, brave. Should be interesting in an uncivilized sort of a fashion.

  First, of course, he’d have to be conditioned, drained of relevant information. Even now a mistake might make it necessary to begin a long, laborious search. Centuries could be wasted on these short distances of a few light years, where a ship couldn’t get up speed, and where it dared not maintain velocity, once attained, without exact weather information.

  She saw that the men were leaving the meteorite. Decisively, she clicked off the intership communicator, made an adjustment and stepped through a transmitter into the receiving room half a mile distant.

  The officer in charge came over and saluted. He was frowning:

  “I have just received the prints from the photographic department. The blur of energy haze over the map is particularly distressing. I would say that we should first attempt to reconstitute the building and its contents, leaving the man to the last.”

  He seemed to sense her disapproval, went on quickly:

  “After all, he comes under the common human matrix. His reconstruction, while basically somewhat more difficult, falls into the same category as your stepping through the transmitter in the main bridge and coming to this room. In both cases there is dissolution of elements—which must be brought back into the original solution.”

  The woman said: “But why leave him to the last?”

  “There are technical reasons having to do with the greater complexity of inanimate objects. Organized matter, as you know, is little more than a hydrocarbon compound, easily conjured.”

  “Very well.” She wasn’t as sure as he that a man and his brain, with the knowledge that had made the map, was less important than the map itself. But if both could be had—She nodded with decision. “Proceed.”

  She watched the building take shape inside the large receiver. It slid out finally on wings of antigravity, and was deposited in the center of the enormous metal floor.

  The technician came down from his control chamber shaking his head. He led her and the half dozen others who had arrived, through the rebuilt weather station, pointing out the defects.

  “Only twenty-seven sun points showing on the map,” he said. “That is ridiculously low, even assuming that these people are organized for only a small area of space. And, besides, notice how many storms are shown, some considerably beyond the area of the reconstituted suns and—”

  He stopped, his gaze fixed on the shadowy floor behind a machine twenty feet away.

  The woman’s eyes followed his. A man lay there, his body twisting.

  “I thought.” she said frowning, “the man was to be left to the last.”

  The scientist was apologetic: “My assistant must have misunderstood. They—”

  The woman cut him off: “Never mind. Have him sent at once to Psychology House, and tell Lieutenant Nes-lor 1 shall be there shortly.”

  “At once, noble lady.”

  “Wait! Give my compliments to the senior meteorologist and ask him to come down here, examine this map, and advise me of his findings.”

  She whirled on the group around her. laughing throng]) her even, white teeth. “By space, here’s action at last after ten dull years of surveying. Well rout out these hide-and-go-seekers in short order.”

  Excitement blazed inside her like a living force.

  The strange thing to Watcher was that he knew before he wakened why lie was still alive. Not very long before.

  He felt the approach of consciousness. Instinctively, he began his normal Dellian preawakening muscle, nerve and mind exercises. In the middle of the curious rhythmic system, his brain paused in a dreadful surmise.

  Returning to consciousness? He!

  It was at that point, as his brain threatened to burst from his head with shock, that the knowledge came of how it had been done.

  He grew quiet, thoughtful. He stared at the young woman who reclined on a chaise longue near his bed. She had a fine, oval face and a distinguished appearance for so young a person. She was studying him from sparkling gray eyes. Under that steady gaze, his mind grew very still.

  He thought finally: ‘T’ve been conditioned to an easy awakening. What else did they do—find out?

  The thought grew until it seemed to swell his brainpan:

  WHAT ELSE?

  He saw that the woman was smiling at him, a faint, amused smile. It was like a tonic. He grew even calmer as the woman said in a silvery voice:

  “Do not be alarmed. That is, not too alarmed. What is your name?”

  Watcher parted his lips, then closed them again, and shook his head grimly. He had the impulse to explain then that even answering one question would break the thrall of Dellian mental inertia and result in the revolution ol valuable information.

  But the explanation would have constituted a different kind of defeat. lie suppressed it. aud once more shook his head.

  The young woman, he saw. was frowning. She said: “You won’t answer a simple question like that? Surely, your name can do no harm.”

  His name. Watcher thought, then what planet he was from, where the planet was in relation to the Gisser sun. what about intervening storms. And so on down the line. There wasn’t any end.

  Every day that he could hold these people away from the information they craved would give the Fifty Suns so much more time to organize against the greatest machine that had ever flown into this part of space.

  His thought trailed. The woman was sitting up, gazing at him with eyes that had gone steely. Her voice held a metallic resonance as she said:

  “Know this, whoever you are, that you are aboard the Imperial Battleship Star Cluster, Grand Captain Laurr at your service. Know, too, that it is our unalterable will that you shall prepare for us an orbit that will take our ship safely to your chief planet.”

  She went on vibrantly: “It is my solemn belief you already know that Earth recognizes no separate governments. Space is indivisible. The universe shall not be an area of countless sovereign peoples squabbling and quarreling for power.

  “That is the law. Those who set themselves against it are outlaws, subject to any punishment which may be decided upon in their special case.

  ‘’Take warning.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned her head. “Lieutenant Nestor,” she said at the wall facing Watcher, “have you made any progress?”

  A woman’s voice answered: “Yes, noble lady. I have set up an integer based on the Muir-Grayson studies of colonial peoples who have been isolated from the main stream of galactic life.

  There is no historical precedent for such a long isolation as seems to have obtained here, so I have decided to assume that they have passed the static period, and have made some progress of their own.

  “I think we should begin very simply, however. A few forced answers will open his brain to further pressures; and we can draw valuable conclusions meanwhile from the speed with which he adjusts his resistance to the brain machine. Shall I proceed?”

  The woman on the chaise longue nodded. There was a flash of light from the wall facing Watcher. He tried to dodge, and discovered for the first time that something held him in the bed, not rope, or chain, nothing visible. But something as palpable as rubbery steel.

  Before he could think further, the light was in his eyes, in his mind, a dazzling fury. Voices seemed to push through it, voices that danced and sang, and spoke into his brain, voices that said:

  “A simple question like that—of course I’ll answer…of course, of course, of course—My name is Gisser Watcher. I was bom on the planet Kaider III, of Dellian parents. There are seventy inhabited planets, fifty suns, thirty billion people, four hundred important storms, the biggest at Latitude 473. The Central Government is on the glorious planet, Cassidor VII—”

  With a blank horror of what he was doing, Watcher caught his roaring mind into a Dellian knot, and stopped that devastating burst of revelation. He knew he would never be caught like that again but—too late, he thought, too late by far.

  The woman wasn’t quite so certain. She went out of the bedroom, and came presently to where the middle-aged Lieutenant Neslor was classifying her findings on receptor spools.

  The psychologist glanced up from her work, said in an amazed voice: “Noble lady, his resistance during the stoppage moment registered an equivalent of I. Q. 800. Now, that’s utterly impossible, particularly because he started talking at a pressure point equivalent to I. Q. 167, which matches with his general appearance, and which you know is average.

  “There must be a system of mind training behind his resistance. And I think I found the clue in his reference to his Dellian ancestry. His graph squared in intensity when he used the word.

  “This is very serious, and may cause great delay—unless we are prepared to break his mind.”

  The grand captain shook her head, said only: “Report further developments to me.”

  On the way to the transmitter, she paused to check the battleship’s position. A bleak smile touched her lips, as she saw on the reflector the shadow of a ship circling the brighter shadow of a sun.

  Marking time, she thought, and felt a chill of premonition. Was it possible that one man was going to hold up a ship strong enough to conquer an entire galaxy?

  The senior ship meteorologist, Lieutenant Cannons, stood up from a chair as she came toward him across the vast floor of the transmission receiving room, where the Fifty Suns weather station still stood. He had graying hair, and he was very old, she remembered, very old. Walking toward him, she thought:

  There was a slow pulse of life in these men who watched the great storms of space. There must be to them a sense of futility about it all, a timelessness. Storms that took a century or more to attain their full roaring maturity, such storms and the men who catalogued them must acquire a sort of affinity of spirit.

  The slow stateliness was in his voice, too, as he bowed with a measure of grace, and said:

  “Grand captain, the Right Honorable Gloria Cecily, the Lady Laurr of Noble Laurr, I am honored by your personal presence.”

  She acknowledged the greeting, and then unwound the spool for him. He listened, frowning, said finally:

  “The latitude he gave for the storm is a meaningless quantity. These incredible people have built up a sun relation system in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, in which the center is an arbitrary one having no recognizable connection with the magnetic center of the whole Goud. Probably, they’ve picked some sun, called it center, and built their whole spatial geography around it.”

  The old man whirled abruptly away from her, and led the way into the weather station, to the edge of the pit above which poised the reconstructed weather map.

  “The map is utterly worthless to us,” he said succinctly.

  “What?”

  She saw that he was staring at her, his china-blue eyes thoughtful.

  “Tell me. what is your idea of this map?®’

  The woman was silent, unwilling to commit herself in the face of so much definiteness. Then she frowned, and said:

  “My impression is much as you described. They’ve got a system of their own here, and all we’ve got to do is find the key.”

  She finished more confidently: “Our main problems, it seems to me, would be to determine which direction we should go in the immediate vicinity of this meteorite weather station we’ve found. If we chose the wrong direction, there would be vexatious delay, and, throughout, our chief obstacle would be that we dare not go fast because of possible storms.”

  She looked at him questioningly, as she ended. And saw that he was shaking his head, gravely:

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “it’s not so simple as that. Those bright point-replicas of suns look the size of peas due to light distortion, but when examined through a metroscope they show only a few molecules in diameter. If that is their proportion to the suns they represent—”

  She had learned in genuine crises to hide her feelings from subordinates. She stood now, inwardly stunned, outwardly cool, thoughtful, calm. She said finally:

  “You mean each one of those suns, their suns, is buried among about a thousand other suns?”

  “Worse than that. 1 would say that they have only inhabited one system in ten thousand. We must never forget that the Lesser Magellanic Goud is a universe of fifty million stars. That’s a lot of sunshine.’*,

  The old man concluded quietly: “If you wish, I will prepare orbits involving maximum speeds of ten light days a minute to all the nearest stars. We may strike it lucky.”

  The woman shook her head savagely:”One in ten thousand. Don’t be foolish. I happen to know the law of averages that relates to ten thousand. We would have to visit a minimum of twenty-five hundred suns if we were lucky, thirty-five to fifty thousand if we were not.

  “No, no”—a grim smile compressed her fine lips—“we’re not going to spend five hundred years looking for a needle in a haystack. I’ll trust to psychology before I trust to chance. We have the man who understands the map. and while it will take time, he’ll talk in the end.”

  She started to turn away, then stopped. “What/’ she asked, ‘about the building itself? Have you drawn any conclusions from its design?”

  He nodded. “Of the type used in the galaxy about fifteen thousand years ago.”

  “Any improvements, changes?”

  “None that I can see. One observer, who does all the work. Simple, primitive.”

  She stood thoughtful, shaking her head as if trying to clear away a mist.

  “It seems strange. Surely after fifteen thousand years they could have added something. Colonies are usually static, but not that static.”

  She was examining routine reports three hours later when her astro clanged twice, softly. Two messages—

  The first was from Psychology House, a single question: “Have wc permission to break the prisoner’s mind?”

 

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