The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 231
"... twelve in fan formation still heading toward Vega, blue-white in sector one-ninety-one, edge of the Long Spray."
Raven sat up and gazed at the sky. The Long Spray gleamed across the zenith like a gauzy veil. Terrans called it the Milky Way. Between here and one significant gleam in the dark were a thousand worlds to divert the attention of oncoming ships. But they might persist on course, ignoring other attractions. When left alone to go their own sweet ways, the Denebs were unpredictable.
The end foreseen by Leina arrived after another three weeks. During that time neither radio nor spectroscreen made mention of recent interplanetary animosities, while their other offerings revealed no identifiable trend in any special direction.
Elsewhere, twelve long, black ships of space had nosed a quarter turn to starboard and now were approaching the eight planets of a minor binary system. Temporarily, at least, the drive toward Vega was arrested.
Altogether this day could not have been more peaceful, uneventful, without promise of anything to disturb its tranquility. The morning sun shone down, bright and warm. The sky was a clear blue bowl marred only by a streak of cloud low on the eastward horizon and a great curving vapor-trail rising into the stratosphere. Once more the Fantôme was Venus-bound.
A four-seater copter was the first indication that errors must be paid for, that the past has an unpleasant way of catching up with the present. It droned out of the west, landed near the crater which already was producing a crop of colorful weeds.
Getting out, its only occupant examined the hole in the ground, scuffed some dirt near its edge, gave up the problem of what had caused it and went to the house. Leina admitted him.
A young, well-built type with frank, eager features, he was a very junior operative of Terran Intelligence, a subtelepath able to probe minds but without a shield for his own. From the viewpoint of those who had sent him he was an excellent choice for his especial mission. Essentially he was open and disarming.
"My name is Grant," he introduced himself. Conditioned by his own status he spoke vocally. "I've come to tell you that Major Lomax, of Terran Intelligence, would like to see you as soon as convenient."
"Is it urgent?" Raven asked.
"I think so, sir. He instructed me to bring you and this lady in the copter if you were ready to leave at once. If not, I am to make an appointment at a time suitable to yourselves."
"Oh, so he wants both of us? Do you know what it is about?"
"I'm afraid not, sir." Grant's expression was candid and his unprotected mind confirmed his words. So far as he was concerned, this was a routine chore of taking a couple of people to an interview with his superior.
"Couldn't the major have come here with you?"
Grant became slightly embarrassed. "Possibly, sir. I don't know why he didn't. There must be a reason. It is not for me to question—"
"Never mind. We understand your position." Raven gave Leina an inquiring glance. "Might as well get it over now. What do you say?"
"I'm ready." Her voice was low, her eyes brilliant as she studied the visitor.
HIS FACE flushing, Grant fidgeted and prayed for some means of closing his mind which insisted on thinking, "She is looking into me, right inside of me, right at where I'm hiding inside myself. I wish she couldn't do that. Or I wish I could look at her the same way. She is big and cumbersome—but very beautiful."
Leina smiled but made no remark, not wanting to add to his manifest discomfort by showing that his thoughts had been read. She shifted her attention.
"I'll get my coat and handbag, David. Then we can go."
When she reappeared they went to the waiting machine which rose smoothly under whirling vanes and drifted westward. Nobody said anything during the hour's flight. Grant kept strictly to business, handled the controls, maintained his thoughts in polite and disciplined channels. Leina studied the bright landscape below, giving it the undivided attention of one who is seeing it for the first time—or the last. Raven closed his eyes and attuned himself to calls far above the normal telepathic band.
"David! David!"
"Yes, Charles?"
"They are taking us away."
"We, too, Charles."
The copter lost altitude, floated down toward a stark and lonely building upon a windswept moor. It was a squat, heavily built edifice resembling an abandoned power station or perhaps a one-time explosives dump.
Touching earth, the machine jounced a couple of times, settled itself. Grant got out, self-consciously helped Leina down. With the others following, he went to the armor-plate front door, pressed a button set in thick concrete at its side. A tiny trap in the armor plate opened like an iris diaphragm, revealed a scanner peering at them glassily.
Apparently satisfied, the trap closed over the eye. From behind the door came a faint, smooth whir of machinery as huge bolts were drawn aside.
"Like a fortress, this place," remarked Grant, innocently conversational.
The door swung open. The summoned pair stepped through. Turning on the threshold, Raven said to Grant, "It reminds me of a crematorium."
Then the armor plate cut him from view and the bolts slid back into place. Grant stood a moment, staring at the door, the concrete, the great windowless walls. He felt cold, cold.
"It does at that. What a lousy thought!"
Moodily he took the copter up, noticing that somehow the sun had lost much of its warmth.
Behind the door stretched a long passage down which a distant voice came drifting. "Please continue straight ahead. You will find me in the room at the end. I regret not being there to meet you but I know you will forgive me."
Seated in a chair behind a long, low desk, Major Lomax proved to be a lean individual in his early thirties. He had light blue eyes that gazed fixedly and rarely blinked. His fair hair was cropped to a short bristle. The most noteworthy feature was his extreme pallor. His features were white, almost waxy and one side of them had a permanent tautness.
Indicating a two-person pneumaseat, the only other resting place in the room, Lomax said, "Kindly sit there. I thank you for coming so promptly." The blue eyes went from Raven to Leina and back again. "I apologize for not escorting you from the door. It is difficult for me to stand, much less walk."
"I'm very sorry," sympathized Leina.
There was no easy way of detecting the reaction. A swift probe showed that Lomax was a top-grade telepath with an exceptionally efficient shield. His mind was closed as securely as could be done by any human. Despite that, they might have riven this defense with a simultaneous and irresistible thrust, but by mutual consent they refrained from trying.
MOVING a thin pile of typewritten papers in front of him, Lomax continued in the same cool, unemotional voice as before.
"I don't know whether you now suspect the purpose of this interview, nor can I foretell what action on your part may be precipitated by it, but before we begin I want you to know that my function is prescribed here." He tapped the papers. "It has been worked out for me in complete detail, and all I must do is follow it through as written."
"You make it sound ominous," offered Raven.
Picking up the top sheet, Lomax read from it. "First, I have to give you a personal message from Mr. Carson, head of Terran Intelligence, to the effect that when informed of this interview he disapproved of it, opposed it by all legitimate means at his command, but was overruled. He wishes me to convey his sincere regards and assure you that no matter what may take place in this building he will always hold both of you in the greatest esteem."
"Dear me," said Raven. "This is getting worse."
Lomax let it go by with complete impassivity. "This interview will be conducted only on a vocal basis. It is being recorded for the benefit of those who arranged it."
Putting the top sheet aside, he picked up the next one and continued in the same robotlike way. "It is essential that you know I have been chosen for my present task because of a rare combination of qualifications. I am a member of Terran Intelligence, a telepath well able to cover his own mind and, lastly, very much of a physical wreck."
Glancing up, he met Leina's great optics and for the first time displayed the faintest shadow of expression in the shape of a vague and swiftly suppressed uneasiness. Like Grant and many others, he was disturbed when looked into so deeply.
He hurried on, "I shall not bore you with the full details. Briefly, I was involved in an unlucky smash and badly injured. I want you to keep that in mind because it is most important. I am in the abnormal mental state of a man who'll be glad to go. Therefore I cannot be intimidated by the threat of death."
"Neither can we," stated Raven, amiably bland.
It disconcerted Lomax a little. He had expected nothing less than a heated and indignant demand as to who was threatening his life. Concealing his surprise, he returned his attention to the papers.
"Further, although I do not fear death I shall be compelled to react to its approach in a quick and effective way. I have undergone a special course of mental conditioning which has created a purely reactive circuit within my mind. It is not part of my normal thinking processes, cannot be detected or destroyed by any other mind probe. This circuit automatically keys in the instant I am in serious danger of losing either my life or control of my free personality. It will force me to do something instinctively, unthinkingly, the result of which will be the immediate destruction of us three."
Raven frowned and commented, "Somewhere back of you is a badly frightened man."
Ignoring that, Lomax went determinedly on. "What I shall do is not known to me, nor will it be until the very moment I do it. You have nothing to gain by combining to beat down my shield and search my mind for what isn't consciously there. On the contrary, you have everything to lose—your lives!"
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE PAIR on the pneumaseat glanced at each other, did their best to look outwitted and aghast. Lomax had a part to play—but so had they. It was a curious situation without parallel in human annals, for each side was in mental hiding from the other, each was holding a master card in the form of power over life and death, each knew that victory for itself was certain.
Looking at Lomax, who refused to meet her gaze, Leina complained, "We came here in good faith, thinking perhaps our help was needed. We find ourselves being treated like common criminals. Indeed, it is worse than that, for no charge has been made against us and we are denied the proper processes of the law. Just what are we supposed to have done to deserve all this?"
"Exceptional methods must be applied to exceptional cases," remarked Lomax, quite unmoved. "It is not so much what you have done as what you may do eventually."
"Can't you be more explicit?"
"Please be patient. I am coming to that right now." He resumed with his sheets. "This is a condensation of facts sufficient to enable you to understand the reason for this meeting. Certain matters brought to the attention of the World Council ..."
"By a schemer named Thorstern?" suggested Raven, picturing Emmanuel's scowl when that came over the recording system.
"... caused them to order a thorough inquiry into the nature of your activities, especially during your recent operations on behalf of Terran Intelligence," continued Lomax, stubbornly. "Which inquiry was later extended to this lady with whom you—ahem—reside."
"You make it sound nasty," reproved Leina.
"Data was drawn from a large number of sources considered reliable and the resulting report, which was complete and exhaustive, made President Heraty decide to appoint a special commission to study it and issue a recommendation."
"Somebody must think we're important." Raven slid a glance at Leina who responded with an I-told-you-so look.
"Composed of two World Council members and ten scientists, this commission held that on the basis of the evidence before them you had displayed supernormal powers of eight distinct classifications, six known and two previously unknown. You are both multitalented mutants."
"Is that an offense?" asked Raven.
"I have no personal views concerning this matter." The major leaned forward, held his middle a moment while his face went even whiter. When he recovered, he said, "Kindly permit me to continue. If the evidence had favored no more than that, the World Council would have accepted the fact that multitalented mutants do exist in spite of so-called natural laws. But there are data in support of an alternative theory toward which some members of the commission lean while others reject it as fantastic."
LEINA and Raven stirred on the pneumaseat, showed curiosity and mild interest. No more than that. At every moment they were living the part they wished to play, as determined as Lomax to see it through to the bitter end.
"You are entitled to know the cogent items," Lomax carried on. He discarded another sheet. "A careful re-examination of your antecedents shows that both of you might well be persons very much out of the ordinary by our standards of today. It was by substantially the same method that Mr. Carson traced you in the first place and reached the same conclusion."
He paused while his features quirked with an inward strain, then said more slowly, "But the ancestry of David Raven should at best have produced no more than a superb telepath, a mind probe of redoubtable penetrating power and extremely acute receptivity. He could not exercise hypnotic or quasi-hypnotic powers of his own, even as a multitalented mutant, because there is not one hypno among his forebears."
"That may be—" began Leina.
Lomax chipped in, "The same remarks apply to you. They also apply to your two confreres upon Venus, which pair are now having the same kind of interview in similar circumstances."
"With a similar threat hanging over them?" Raven inquired.
Lomax took no notice. Well disciplined, he was answering no questions other than those pertinent to the stage reached in his task.
"Item number two: we discovered that David Raven either had died or shown all symptoms of death and then been resuscitated. The doctor who performed this feat is himself dead and can no longer be called upon for evidence. Such things do happen. It becomes remarkable only when examined in conjunction with other facts." The blue eyes shot a glance at Leina. "Such as the fact that this lady once went swimming, was caught in a powerful undercurrent, apparently drowned, but revived by artificial respiration. There are also the facts that your two prototypes on Venus also have had hairbreadth escapes."
"You've had one yourself," Raven riposted. "You told us so at the beginning. You're lucky to be alive."
Strongly tempted to admit the escape but deny the luck of surviving in his present condition, Lomax plowed grimly on.
"Item number three has indirect significance. You have been told by Mr. Carson of Terran space-ship experiments so there is no harm in adding more. To cut it short, our last exploring vessel went very far into the void. Upon its return the pilot reported that he had been chased by unidentifiable objects of unknown origin. All that his instruments could tell him was that they were metallic and were radiating heat. There were four of them, moving in line abreast at a distance too great for examination with the naked eye. They changed course when he changed and undoubtedly were in pursuit. They had greater maneuverability and far more speed."
"Nevertheless he escaped?" Raven put on an irritatingly skeptical smile.
"The escape is as much a mystery as the pursuit," Lomax reported. "The four were overtaking rapidly when a few strange sparkles and gleamings appeared in front of them, upon which they swung into a reverse course and went away. Our pilot is convinced that these four were artificial fabrications, and his belief is officially endorsed."
"What does this mean to us?"
Taking a deep breath, Lomax declared, "There is other life in the cosmos. Its form, powers, techniques and ways of thought remain matters of pure speculation. It may be humanoid enough to pose as veritable humans, gaining plausibility by using the identities of real humans who have died." He whisked aside another paper. "Or it might be parasitic by nature, able to seize and animate the bodies of other creatures, masquerading thereafter in a guise mighty close to perfection. We have no data to go upon. But we can think, imagine, conceive infinite possibilities."
"Frightened men have bad dreams," observed Raven.
"I think it's all terribly silly," Leina put in. "Are you implying that we may be intelligent parasites from heaven knows where?" she sneered.
"Lady, I am implying nothing. I am merely reading papers prepared by my superiors whose conclusions and motives I am not inclined to question. That is my job."
"Where does it get us?"
"To this point: in defiance of the rule that only the dominant talent is inherited, you may be multitalented mutants of natural human birth, in which case the laws of genetics will have to be modified. On the other hand, you may be a nonhuman form of life, disguised in our shape and form, living among us unsuspected until lately."
"For what purpose?"
MAJOR Lomax passed a hand over his bristly hair. He looked mentally and physically weary as he answered, "The purposes of other life forms are obscure. We know nothing about them—yet. We can, however, make a justifiable assumption."
"And what is that?"
"Another life form would make contact openly, without attempting concealment, if its intentions were friendly."
"Meaning that surreptitious contact is proof of hostile designs?"
"Exactly!"
Leina said, with some morbidity, "I can think of nothing more absurd than to suggest that human beings are not human beings."
"For the second time, lady," said Lomax, displaying frigid politeness, "I am not making suggestions. I am no more than a deputy appointed to inform you of the conclusions of experts. They say that you two are either multitalented mutants or nonhuman life forms and more likely the latter."
"I think they're impertinent," complained Leina, becoming femininely inconsequential.
