HOLD SUBJECT IN TOP SECURITY ISOLATION PENDING INTENSIVE INVESTIGATION AND APPROPRIATE TESTS FOR PSYCHOPATHY, CRIMINALITY, AND/OR POSSIBLE KALQUOI CONNECTIONS.
HOLD SUBJECT IN TOP SECURITY ISOLATION PENDING INTENSIVE INVESTIGATION AND APPROPRIATE TESTS FOR PSYCHOPATHY, CRIMINALITY, AND/OR POSSIBLE KALQUOI CONNECTIONS.
CHAPTER V
Words on a card. That was all they were. But they spelled an end to hope.
Numbly, Dane looked at Nelva.
White to the lips, she dodged his gaze.
But beyond her, over by the door through which they'd entered, a man who wore a guard's uniform had suddenly appeared and now stood to one side, scanning the index-chamber.
While Dane watched, two more guards joined the first.
Dane crowded close to Nelva. His words came out a raw whisper: "Those guards—are they after me?"
She didn't answer.
Dane's belly knotted. His hands shook.
But he couldn't afford the luxury of cracking. Not now, of all times.
No. The only course open now was to follow desperation's dictates.
Psychopath? Criminal? Kalquoi agent?
If those were his labels, he might as well live up to them!
Grimly, he let his hand brush the heavy yat-stick still concealed beneath his tunic; forced his face into the caricature of a grin as he gazed at Nelva.
The girl seemed scarcely to be breathing.
Dane said softly, "We're getting out of this place. You and me, together. We're going to walk through the entry door at the far end of this room. Understand?"
Nelva's eyes distended, wide with sudden panic. Her mouth started to open.
Dane caught her wrist in a savage grip; twisted so sharply she came forward on tiptoe, face drawn with pain. "Scream and I'll break your arm!"
Only the faintest flicker of Nelva's lids indicated that she'd heard him. But she turned as he did under the pressure on her wrist and moved with him in the direction of the doorway.
Behind them, a loud voice cried, "Hey, there!"
Dane flung a quick glance back; glimpsed the guards starting towards him.
With a curse, he shoved Nelva forward, ahead of him, in a frantic dash for the door.
They made it in a rush. Heeling the panel shut in the faces of his pursuers, Dane wheeled right down the corridor.
But even as he turned, he came face to face with yet another guard, charging up the hall straight at him.
Savagely, Dane flung Nelva aside. Clawing out the yat-stick, he smashed its heavy head to the pit of the man's stomach.
The guard bent double. Bowling him out of the way, Dane pivoted, braced for attack or flight alike.
Yet to what end? In his heart, he knew it would be the same here as on the spaceship. Sooner or later, his adversaries would hunt him down; trap him....
Then, off to his left, a voice cried, "Clark! This way—!"
Nelva's voice.
Dane whirled; glimpsed the girl beckoning frantically from an alcove. Sprinting to her, he crowded past a door that she held open, and into a cramped, shadowy chamber beyond.
"Now, here...." Nelva's hand caught his, leading him onward.
Another door. Another. A room piled high with stored furniture and equipment.
Nelva said, "You can hide here for a little while. After that...." Her voice trailed off. She was breathing hard.
Dane said, "I'm tired of hiding. It gets me nowhere."
The girl's grey eyes widened. "But—what—?"
"Which way to your analytical computer?"
"Analytical computer—?" Nelva looked bewildered. "What computer? What are you talking about?"
"You know what I mean!" Dane bared his teeth. "Every planetary record center's built around one. It's the gadget that organizes your information, sorts out your data, makes your decisions when you've got too many complicating factors for a human mind to handle." He laughed harshly. "That's me, right now. I'm up against too many complicating factors. So I'm going to ask your computer for some answers."
Nelva stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad, Clark? At best, we've a few minutes' freedom for you. No more. Any moment, Security may send someone in here—"
"That's why I won't wait for them!" Dane came back fiercely. "Sure, you saved my neck, dragging me in here. I'm grateful for it. But not so grateful I'm willing to stand waiting till someone hunts me down." He hammered a clenched fist into his palm. "No, damn it! I'll do some of the hunting this time. And that starts with some questions for your computer!"
"But what—?"
"What questions?" Dane laughed again. "Can't you guess? I want to know that man who claimed I was his slave. About the silver needle. The Kalquoi. Who I am; why I can't remember anything; how it is I've no record in your files. Maybe even about you and what you're up to. Things like that, a lot of them."
New lines etched Nelva's lovely face. "Clark, you can't!"
"Can't I?" Dane paced the floor. "Take me there and we'll see whether I can or not!"
"No, no! You don't understand." Nelva's hands moved in a gesture of frustration. "It's just not that easy to use an analytical computer."
Dane stopped his pacing. He frowned. "How's that?"
"For one thing, the machine's self-limiting. It covers only certain areas of information, likely to be needed here on Mars. But your questions aren't localized."
"Give me an example."
"The Kalquoi. They're a menace to all the inner planets, not just Mars. So when you ask about them, the only answer our machine will give you is a referral to the big System Computer on Luna."
"Go on."
"Even setting up a question properly can take weeks. You have to be sure it's framed within the machine's limitations. Take this man you talk about. I wouldn't begin to know how to key a query on him, with nothing to start from but your verbal description of an emotionalized visual image."
"I see."
"It's the same with the silver needle. How do you classify it—as art, armament, or industrial equipment?"
Dane nodded slowly. "You make a good case, Nelva." And then: "But I'll still have a try at it. Let's go!"
The girl stared at him, and before his eyes the shreds of her earlier composure vanished. "Clark, I won't let you do it!"
Wordless, Dane reached for her arm.
She didn't even try to jerk back. Her words came in a rush: "Clark, you don't understand! Security keeps guards on all computers—a special unit of Thorburg Jessup's private zombies. They'd capture you or kill you before you even got close to the question boards—"
"That would make a difference to you?"
"Can I say it any plainer?" The girl's lips trembled. She caught Dane's hand between hers. "I won't let them get you, Clark! I won't! That's why I'm telling you these things; why I've tried to help you. We'll find some place to hide you, somehow, where even Security can't find you—"
"Sorry, Nelva." Dane shook his head. "I'm not fool enough to think I can hide from Security, even if I wanted to. And as for what you say about the computer—well, this is my day to see things for myself."
Nelva drew back. Her nostrils were flaring, yet she seemed closer to tears than anger. "You don't trust me!"
"That's right. I don't." Dane made it flat and brutal.
"But I—I've helped you...."
"Right again. But the way things stack up, I'm not sure why. So till I know for sure, I'll play it my way." Dane bit down hard, fighting down all impulses to warmth and tenderness. "We'll have a look at that computer now."
"Clark, wait—!"
"Well?"
"You won't have to go to the computer. I—I'll tell you—"
Nelva broke off raggedly. She was breathing too fast, and her eyes held a strange, wild look.
Dane stared. "You'll tell me what?"
"About the silver shaft, the needle. That's the only one of your questions I know anything about." The girl came up against him; clung to him, her face an anguished mask. "I wasn't lying about the computer, either, Clark. It is guarded by those awful creatures Jessup's biochemists have bred in the Mercury labs. You wouldn't stand a chance against them. That's why I couldn't let you go there. They're completely ruthless—all duty conditioning, not a trace of human feeling in any of them—"
"Forget about that!" Dane gripped her arms. "Tell me about the shaft. That's what I want to know!"
"It's—it's on Callisto...."
"Callisto—?" Dane stared. "That's Kalquoi territory, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course. They occupied it when they took over the outer planets thirty years ago."
"Then the shaft—"
"—is a relic of the days just before the occupation," Nelva finished for Dane. "It was a weapon, Clark—a weapon set up at Sandoz, the chief human city on Callisto. The Sandoz Shaft, they called it. Only then it didn't work, so people ended up saying it was the Sandoz Tombstone. It's mentioned in all the Kalquoi Invasion knowledge tapes. That's how I know about it."
Prickles of excitement ran up and down Dane's spine. For the first time he began to feel as if he were making progress, coming to grips with the mysteries which seemed ever to surround him.
"Do you know any more about the thing?" he demanded of Nelva. "How was it supposed to work? What went wrong?"
The girl's smooth brow furrowed in concentration. "As I recall, the shaft was nothing but a gigantic Udellian transmitter."
"A Udellian transmitter—?"
"Yes. Back when the Kalquoi first came to our system, someone discovered that high-frequency Udellian waves kept them from changing shape or swallowing up things. And if the amplification was strong enough, the waves would even shatter the crystals, the Kalquoi bodies. That was the whole idea behind the shaft: to destroy the Kalquoi if they tried to attack Sandoz."
"And what happened?"
Nelva shrugged slim shoulders. "I'm not enough of a tech in that field to tell you, really. But as I understand it, it turned out that the shaft was one of those things that works fine when you hold the size down to a laboratory model."
"But when they increased the size it wouldn't work?"
"That's right," Nelva nodded. "It seems that when the transmitter got beyond a certain size, the amount of power it took climbed way out of proportion—so much so the available broadcast relay equipment couldn't even activate the shaft, let alone make it effective against the Kalquoi."
"So?"
"So the Kalquoi came, and Sandoz—all Callisto—was abandoned." Nelva lifted her hands in a small, sad gesture. "That's all I know, Clark. Every bit."
Dane nodded slowly.
Nelva said, "I'm afraid that's the way it may turn out with all your questions. There won't be any answers—not real answers; not the kind that can help you. That's why I'm so anxious to see to it Security doesn't find you."
Dane pondered her words for a long, dragging moment. Finally he asked, "Where's that carrier you picked me up in?"
The girl shot him a quick glance. "The carrier—?" And then: "Why, on the roof here, I guess. But of course it's just short-range—"
"Do you think we could get to it?"
"Perhaps." Nelva studied him thoughtfully. "Surely you're not really thinking of trying to get away from Security in a carrier, are you?"
Dane grinned, a trifle thinly. "You never can quite tell about me, can you?" He let the grin develop into a chuckle. "How do we get up there, anyhow?"
"There's a pneumolift. Right through this door...." But though Nelva led the way, a shadow lay across her face that might have been irritation, or bafflement, or both.
It was strangely quiet in the building, it seemed to Dane. Especially considering there was a full-scale Security search for him in progress.
He tried not to think about it. He was tense enough as it was, without letting his imagination run riot.
Obliquely, he stole a glance at Nelva Guthrie, beside him in the lift.
The shadow across her face had vanished. Now the girl seemed almost placid. It was as if, in her eyes, everything was going precisely according to plan.
Dane smiled to himself a little at the thought ... wondered how long she'd be able to hold to her complacency.
The pneumolift eased to a halt. Warily, Dane followed Nelva out ... moved after her through the shadows to the carrier station.
Still no guards, no interruption.
A carrier, poised in its launching-rack, sleek-lined and graceful.
"There it is," Nelva whispered, gesturing. "Just be careful. It can't carry you much beyond the gravitational pull. You may end up playing tag with Phobos and Deimos!"
Dane noted that she stood well back, deep in the cover of the platform-beams.
Brooding, again he studied the carrier, so notably unguarded.
The silence echoed so loud it was making the skin along the back of his neck prickle.
Quite deliberately, then, he crossed to the cargo ramp, making it a point to follow the shadows, close in to the platform-beams.
A stack of loading-cases stood beside the ramp. Pausing briefly, Dane glanced back to where Nelva still stood craning to watch him.
Then, with no warning, he whirled and threw his whole weight against the high-stacked cases.
For a moment they tottered on the ramp's edge. Then, with a crash like cataclysm incarnate, they tumbled down in an avalanche of ringing metal.
But even as they fell, Dane leaped back into the shadows once again. In a rush, he spanned the distance between him and Nelva.
She stared at him wide-eyed, mouth agape.
But only for a moment. For then, as water spews from a geyser, the carrier erupted guards—three of them.
From the level below, too, came the sound of running feet, converging on the cargo ramp.
Beside Dane, Nelva whispered, "What is it? What's happening?"
"A trap." Dane laughed harshly. "But of course you wouldn't know anything about that."
The girl's nostrils flared. "Are you trying to say something?"
For a moment Dane leaned forward, not answering.
Then, as the last of the guards disappeared down the cargo ramp, he spun about, swept the girl up bodily over his shoulder, and headed for the carrier at a dead run.
He was already on the loading ladder before the first shout of discovery arose behind him.
Inside, now. The hatch slammed shut. The launching lever pulled.
A sudden, swift sense of acceleration. Then the easing off as equalizer pressure rose to match it. In the viewer, Mars fell away beneath them.
Dane glanced at Nelva Guthrie.
She stood beside him, the lovely oval of her face a study in pallor. Her fingers trembled as she smoothed the ash-blonde hair, and fear flickered in the grey eyes.
"Clark, where are we going?" Her voice came out a ragged whisper. "Don't you realize they're sure to catch us?"
"Are they?" Dane chuckled grimly.
"Of course. They'll have every landing-platform covered."
Dane laughed again. It was incredible, how well he suddenly felt, all things considered. "Not ours they won't cover!" And then: "Because damn it, we're going straight to Callisto!"
CHAPTER VI
Dane stretched the little carrier's resources to the limit, pushing it as far out from Mars as he could coax it.
Then, at last, when the craft was well established in a satellite orbit, between Phobos and Deimos and beyond all peril from the mother planet's gravitational pull, he cut the power, turned to the emergency distress-call communicator unit, and switched it on.
He knew Nelva's eyes were on him, even before he swung round to face her once again. It pleased him, how baffled she looked. But her lips stayed set in a thin, straight line—a memento of some of the things he'd said after the take-off—so he knew she wouldn't speak till he did.
"All right," he grinned, "what do you give me for our chances now, my dear Miss Mars Record Center Supervisor Guthrie?"
The line of her mouth drew even tighter. So, after a moment, he let drive with another needle: "Or maybe, as an expert on problems and solutions, you don't want to give a dangerous Kalquoi agent like me the benefit of your professional opinion?"
That did it. Dane could see the girl's knuckles whiten. Her eyes flashed, more ice-blue now than grey.
"You're a fool, Clark Dane!" she burst out furiously. "Once that signal's picked up, Security's sure to have patrol ships here within an hour!"
"Maybe." Dane permitted himself the luxury of grim humor.
"No maybe! You know it's true!"
"Or, maybe not," Dane went on, with no heed to Nelva's interruption. "It might even be Security won't pay the first bit of attention to it." He shot a sidelong glance at the girl. "Would you like to ask me why?"
A moment of obvious, barely-repressed fury. Then: "Why?"
"Because not even a Kalquoi agent would be fool enough to try to get clear of Mars in a four-place carrier." Dane leaned back; stretched. "No; Security's not going to be looking up here for us. Not when they've got all those landing-platforms down below to cover."
It did him good to see the way Nelva's jaw slackened.
"Of course," he observed wryly, "that opens up another question, too, doesn't it?"
"Another question—?"
"Yes, you know: the question about how you and I are going to get to Callisto."
The last of the anger-lines vanished from Nelva's lovely face. Her lips parted, breathless with interest. "Tell me, Clark! Have you really devised a way to do it?"
"I think so." Dane paused, letting the moment's tension build up. And then: "Only of course that's no sign I'll tell you about it and give you a chance to sour it."
As knife-twisting, it came off very satisfactorily. Nelva's face went white as if he'd slapped it. Her eyes turned blank, hurt-emptied.
Inside, Dane cringed a little. Of a sudden he felt cheap, ashamed he'd resorted to such pettiness even in anger. Miserably, he turned to the viewer and rotated its field, searching the void about him.
But before he could so much as complete the circuit, the proximity magnetron's gong tolled brassily. Whipping round the viewer's field in the indicated direction, Dane discovered the cylindrical bulk of a cargo ship wheeling towards the carrier. While he watched, the pickup bay's gate slid back. Receiver racks swung out and clamped onto the smaller craft, then retracted once more, lifting the carrier into the yawning bay as the gate slid closed.
Dane ran his tongue along lips gone suddenly dry.
But now it was too late to turn back. Pushing up from his seat, he stepped quickly across to Nelva.
Something in his gaze must have warned her. Eyes wide with panic, she tried to jump up and scramble clear.
Timing his blow with cool deliberation, Dane drove a hard right to the point of her jaw.
The girl's head snapped back. She crumpled with an unhinged limpness that almost made Dane ill.
But com-box blared in the same instant: "Carrier! What's your trouble? Can you open your hatches or shall we cut our way in?"
It broke Dane's spell. Snapping on the carrier's box, he bent close: "I've got a girl aboard here. She's hurt pretty bad. You'd better come prepared to take her off. As to the how and why of it all—well, probably the best thing would be to have your captain come in first and look it over."
"The captain—!" The spaceship's amplifier squawked protestingly. "Listen, mister—"
"To hell with that! You listen!" Dane tried to match the harsh belligerence of the performance Pfaff, the Security rep, had given aboard the survey ship. "I've got the kind of trouble here it's going to take top rank to handle, and I'm not going to waste time talking about it, either. Just see that your captain's the first man to come aboard this carrier. If he's not, I won't take responsibility for anything that happens—and plenty will, believe me!"
Dane snapped off the carrier's com-box as he finished. Wryly, he wondered what the spaceship's officers would conjure up as being the situation aboard the carrier. Certainly he'd given them no grounds for peace of mind!
But now it was time for him to prepare to receive the captain. Taking the yat-stick from beneath his tunic, he wrapped it hastily in loose plastic strips torn from the carrier's sleeper sheaths till it made a bundle about the same size and shape as his own head.
Then a knocking at the hatch told him his visitor had arrived. Gripping the bundle containing the yat-stick firmly beneath his arm, Dane levered open the hatch-cover and looked out gravely at the little knot of men who stood waiting on the spaceship's transfer platform. "Which one of you's the captain?"
A tall, thin, horse-faced officer with coarse grey hair, protruding eyes and an uncertain manner gestured diffidently. "Well, I am. Einar Helstrom. Captain Helstrom, that is...."
"Good." Dane tried to look even more solemn than before. "Captain, this is the kind of emergency that's for your eyes alone. I wouldn't want to expose anyone else to it till you've passed judgment."
He stepped aside as he spoke. After a moment's uncertainty and nervous shifting from foot to foot, Captain Helstrom in his turn swung aboard and uneasily stepped down into the carrier's passenger compartment.
As he did so, Nelva Guthrie moaned.
The captain tripped over his own feet getting to one side. Eyes seeming to protrude even more than usual, he peered down at the prostrate girl, then turned to Dane. "What—what is it? What's the matter?"
Dane shrugged. "A little fainting spell. She'll be all right in a few minutes. But this"—a brief pause while he held out the package containing the yat-stick ... "is something else again."
Captain Helstrom eyed the package fearfully. "What's in it?"
Dane returned the bundle to its place tight-clamped beneath his arm before answering. Then, quite deliberately and with an almost academic manner, he asked, "Captain, do you know what a proton grenade is?"
"A proton grenade—!" The captain's jaw dropped, lengthening his face so that he looked more like a horse than ever. "Not those things they tried out against the Kalquoi once, you don't mean? Not the ones that could tear a whole ship apart from just a little hand-bomb?"
He backed away with little teetering steps as he spoke, halting only when he bumped against the wall of the carrier's cabin.
"That's right," Dane nodded. "Have you ever seen one?" And then, shoving forward the yat-stick package and stripping away the outer layer of plastic till the T's crossbar was revealed: "See, here's the trigger-release mechanism—"
"Please, mister!" Helstrom croaked, bony hands spread as he tried to push Dane back. "Please, I don't want to see nothing. Nothing!"
"Well, if you don't want to...." Scowling irritably, as if disappointed, Dane wadded the plastic back over the end of the yat-stick. "You know who I am, captain?"
"N-no."
"Clark Dane, that's what they call me. Security's after me."
The captain's eyes bugged even further, and his Adam's apple moved up and down. He didn't speak.
Dane went on: "They thought they had me, down on Mars. I got away, though. Dug this"—he patted his bundle grimly—"out of a Security arsenal to bring with me."
The horse-face worked. The coarse grey hair appeared close to standing on end.
Dane scowled more ferociously than ever—as much to keep from laughing himself as to impress the captain. There was something so intrinsically absurd about the whole situation that he knew that one misstep would carry him over into gails of wild, hysterical mirth.
"Captain," he clipped tightly, "how'd you like to have me blow up this ship?"
Whatever it was the captain answered, Dane couldn't understand it. He pressed on: "There's just one way to save yourself, captain. That's to take me where I want to go. Because even if you hit me from behind—stun me, kill me—this grenade will still go off. The trigger's already free. This wrapping's the only thing that's holding it."
The captain gulped—a hollow, dyseptic sound. "Wh-where do you want to go?" he asked finally.
Dane grinned. "Callisto."
"Callisto!" The grey hair was certainly sticking straight out now. "Mister, why don't you talk about Alpha Centauri or the Coalsack? They'd be every bit as easy!"
"Oh?"
"Security's got the Belt guarded like a vault. They'd brain-drain us before we were half-way through."
"You could set the guides for Callisto before we hit the Belt, couldn't you?"
"A computer-guide ramping on a satellite clear on the other side of the Asteroid Belt, with Jupiter's gravity pull to figure for?" Captain Helstrom shuddered. "Mister, you don't know what you're asking me for. Better to blow up your bomb now and be done with it!"
"Fair enough, if that's the way you feel about it," Dane agreed. He started to unwrap the yat-stick.
As if on springs, Helstrom sprang at him. "No, no, mister! I didn't mean it! We'll go; we'll go!"
Bleakly, Dane nodded. "I thought you might see it that way. So let's get started. And just for safety's sake, to make sure you don't change your mind—I'll stay right in your astrogation chamber with you!"
CHAPTER VII
Ahead, the belt began to take form on the visiscreen—a patternless, ever-shifting array of hundreds of asteroids of every size and shape, all gleaming bright against the black-velvet backdrop of the void as they wheeled slowly through their far-flung orbits.
The vastness of it brought a sense of awe to Clark Dane.
Awe, mixed with despondency and depression.
What chance did one man stand, trying to pick up the thin, tenuous thread of his destiny in this trackless chasm that was outer space? How could he hope to find identity, in a gulf so boundless that whole worlds were forever lost?
He'd been mad even to think—to dream—of choosing such a course.
Yet had he really chosen it? Was it truly his own will that had brought him to this moment?
Bleakly, he wondered; and as he did so, the old, infuriating sense of being a pawn in all he did ... driven by another, larger will ... swept over him once more.
Was he really a slave, thrall to the hairless man, the Being-Without-A-Name? Was it some darkly subtle conditioning, rather than his own impulses, that drove him?
Again—always; forever—Dane wondered....
But now, abruptly, the ship's com-box came to life to interrupt him: "Cargo Vessel 214XB7! Cargo Vessel 214XB7!"
It brought Dane back to the here-and-now—the cramped, instrument-banked, astrogation chamber of the spaceship. Gripping the yat-stick package tighter than ever, he tore his eyes from the wonders spread on the visiscreen and once again looked on horse-faced Captain Helstrom and pale, silent, tight-lipped Nelva Guthrie.
The com-box blared again: "Cargo Vessel 214XB7! Acknowledge, Cargo Vessel 214XB7!"
"That's us," the grey-haired captain grunted. He started to reach for the switch to the ship's own communicator unit.
Dane caught his arm. "No."
"What—?" The captain's protruding eyes fixed on Dane uneasily. "You can't just ignore that call, mister. That's a Security blockade station. Stall 'em and they'll throw their brain-drain on you!"
Dane laughed harshly. "They'll do it anyhow, won't they, when they find we're heading through the Belt?"
The captain's Adam's apple bobbed. His narrow horse-face drew longer than ever. "Well ... yes, I guess so."
"Get ready for it, then. Set your guides."
"On Callisto...?"
"On Callisto."
A shudder ran through the captain. "You ever been brain-drained, mister?"
"No."
"Well, I have, and it ain't fun. You're out of control. Completely."
A tiny chill touched the nape of Dane's neck. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Nelva watching him—the first hint she'd given that she knew he existed since they'd reached the astrogation chamber.
Once more, the com-box: "What the devil's the matter with you, 214? This is Security talking! We want an acknowledgment right now! You're already into blockade area. Wheel around fast, back away from the Belt, or we'll slap a drain on you!"
Another voice—this one from the amplifier of the ship's own communications network: "Captain Helstrom! Security's trying to get you! They say you're headed into the Belt! Is something wrong? Your door's locked. We can't get in to you...."
Dane ran his tongue along his lips. He could feel his companions' eyes upon him. The tension in the astrogation chamber was soaring higher every second.
"Cargo Vessel 214XB7, this is a last warning! Acknowledge this call and turn back at once! Failure to comply within thirty seconds will result in disabling dynamoencephalolytic action! Repeat, failure to comply within thirty seconds will result in disabling dynamoencephalolytic action...."
The captain and Nelva Guthrie, staring ... gleaming pinpoints on a darkened visiscreen ... a silver shaft and a hairless ghoul who laughed and laughed....
Dane sucked in air. "Are your guides set, Captain?"
"Computer guides set." Resignation and despair mixed in the greying officer's voice.
"For Callisto?"
"For Callisto."
Seconds, ticking by. Dane counted them as they passed.
Fifteen to go. Ten. Five. Four. Three. Two. One....
Nothing happened. Frowning, Dane started to turn to Helstrom.
It hit him, then—a sudden blazing bolt of power that surged and seethed through his brain. Dimly, as from afar, he was aware that the yat-stick package had slipped from his grasp and fallen to the floor, the truth as to its contents revealed as the plastic covering fell away. For his own part, a strange paralysis seemed to grip him. He stood upright, erect as before; yet it was beyond his power to move a single muscle. Sight and hearing—he still had them, but with vastly limited acuity. And while his brain still functioned, it seemed to work slowly, painfully, as if laboring under almost more of a burden than it could bear.
The captain and Nelva remained within the far periphery of his vision. Like him, both stayed motionless, frozen in the stance in which the brain-drain had trapped them.
Now Dane focussed on the visiscreen. Moment by moment, it gave him the record of the course the robot-directed spaceship followed. Asteroids loomed, big and small; then disappeared once more.
How long that phase went on, Dane never knew. His sense of time was far too warped to allow for even a reasonably intelligent estimate.
But finally, the last of the asteroids fell away. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the great globe of giant Jupiter moved in from the lower left corner of the screen.
Numbly, Dane watched and wondered. What, if anything, would he find at Sandoz? Or would the city even be there? No one could say for sure, for no human had set foot on Callisto in the thirty years since it had been abandoned to the Kalquoi.
Only then, before he could even glimpse any of the satellites that swept around Jupiter, a new object flashed onto the visiscreen.
It was close, this one—so close that if he'd had the power, Dane would have covered his eyes out of sheer panic. Ball-round, the thing at first looked for all the world like a wandering asteroid or, perhaps, a giant meteor.
Yet there was a strange sheen about it; a too-perfect symmetry.
For a long moment, it hovered so close that it occupied almost half of the visiscreen. Then, suddenly, a light blazed from a point close to its perimeter: a tight cone of blinding radiance that turned the whole viewing plate white.
The next instant, the visiscreen went dead.
The lights died, too—all save the self-contained, dimly-luminous emergency radiation lamps. The rhythmic throbbing of the ventilating system halted also. So did the force drive's heavier beat. A sudden, incredible feeling of lightness came over Dane. Then his angle of view changed, and he realized that—unaware—he'd drifted clear of the floor; was now floating in mid-air. So the artificial gravity was off too.
A numb horror crept through him in the same instant. In his mind he cursed himself for a blind, imperceptive fool.
The thing he'd seen on the now-blank screen was no asteroid or meteor, but a globe-ship, a Kalquoi globe-ship! And the light was some sort of energy-diverting ray that had the power to incapacitate spaceship equipment.
So this was the end of his mad venture: not at Sandoz, not on Callisto, but here, aboard this crippled craft, destined perhaps to drift forever in blackness on the void-tides between the Asteroid Belt and the Outer Worlds.
Dane would have killed himself in that moment, if he could.
But he couldn't even do that. No; he could only hang here in the dimness, paralyzed, somewhere between floor and ceiling, waiting ... waiting ... waiting....
But now light crept through the gloom—a pale, purplish radiance Dane found somehow vaguely familiar.
Then a slight movement of the ship changed his position. His eyes, searching, found the source of light.
It came from the unforked end of the Kalquoi yat-stick Dane had wrapped in plastic to simulate a proton bomb. While he watched, it grew brighter ... brighter ... as if the metal bar were oozing energy the way a fresh-cut spring twig oozes sap.
Now the radiance grew to an eddying, pulsing ball, so intense it lighted up the entire astrogation chamber.
The next instant there was a sort of soundless snap. Before Dane's eyes, the radiance transformed itself into a glowing crystal that rose and floated in mid-air.
A Kalquoi—!
There seemed to be no pattern nor rhyme nor reason to the alien's actions. Now it hovered; now it darted. One moment it drifted close to the floor; the next, explored the ceiling.
And all the time it radiated changing shapes and colors: a glistening silver corkscrew ... the dull grey of a microreel case ... pale blue ovals that resembled nothing Dane had ever seen.
Then sound came—the muffled clang of heavy hatch-lids. At once, the Kalquoi moved to the astrogation chamber's door and poised there, apparently waiting.
A moment later the door swung open. Two other aliens joined the first.
The three pulsed and glowed together briefly. Then one detached itself from its fellows and moved in close to Dane.
Immediately, he felt himself permeated by a strange, slightly prickling sensation, as if a slight electric current were being sent through him. Warmth enveloped him. The idea of sleep took on unique appeal.
Now the alien moved towards the door once more; and to Dane's intense surprise, he found himself following, drawn along bodily through the gravitationless ship like a towed target. In a sort of roseate haze—for fear, as of the moment, seemed to have lost its meaning for him—he wondered what would happen when he was transferred to the Kalquoi globe-craft. So far as he knew, the aliens themselves had no necessity for breathing, so the odds were against there being any air supply adequate to enable a human to survive.
But instead of moving him to the globe, the alien took him to the carrier in which he'd escaped from Mars; loaded him into it.
A moment later the second Kalquoi appeared, Nelva in tow. In seconds, she was installed in the carrier alongside Dane. Then, as if by magic, the hatch swung shut, and they were left alone.
Minutes dragged by, a dreary procession.
Then, so abruptly the shock rocked Dane, the paralysis that gripped him vanished. Feeling, the power of movement, flooded back into his body. His brain clicked into high gear, no longer dim nor foggy.
A moment later the carrier's gravity unit came to coughing life. Dane found that once again he had weight and could move about at will.
It brought him a quick surge of relief from inner tension; a sense of control over his situation.
He was glad. He had a feeling he was going to need all such he could get.
Beside him, Nelva Guthrie whispered incredulously, "Clark—! I can move! The brain-drain—it's off!"
"Could be," Dane nodded. He felt weak in the knees, just hearing the girl's voice—partly out of relief to know that she'd survived the ordeal of the brain-drain, partly because she seemed to have forgotten or be overlooking their earlier hostilities.
"Then we must be almost to Callisto!" New excitement crept into Nelva's voice. "That's the only way to explain it, Clark. We must be so far beyond the blockade stations that their relays are too weak to maintain catatonia!"
"Maybe."
"Maybe? What kind of talk is that?" Nelva's tone suddenly was tinged with irritation. "Can you offer any better explanation?"
"Yes, I think I can," Dane answered thoughtfully. "Especially if you stop to consider that the Kalquoi took over back while the brain-drain still had us stiff as boards."
"Still stiff—?" Nelva broke off sharply. Her lips trembled as she drew a quick, shallow breath. "Clark, you can't mean it!"
In spite of their plight, Dane couldn't help but smile wryly. "I can't mean what?"
"You know!" The girl's ash-blonde hair rippled as if a chill were passing through her. "You can't mean—that—the Kalquoi—"
"—that the Kalquoi have come up with an answer to the brain-drain?" Dane finished to her. "As a matter of fact, that's just exactly what I think. The way it looks to me, they've licked the thing, a hundred per cent."
Nelva's face was white, her breathing too fast. "But—Clark—"
"What's going to happen, you mean?" Dane shook his head. "I don't know, any more than you do. But one thing's certain: if I'm right, as of this moment all Thorburg Jessup's Security blockade stations on the inner-planet side of the Asteroid Belt are just so much scrap equipment."
The girl stared at him. He couldn't read the things in her grey eyes, and when her lips moved the words came out an incoherent whisper. She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook with soundless, racking sobs.
A wave of tenderness swept over Dane, so poignant it made his whole throat ache. Taking the girl in his arms, he held her to him, smoothing the soft hair, bracing her shoulders against the sobs.
The tears stopped, after a moment. Nelva raised her head; looked up at him, trying to smile even while her lips still trembled.
Gently, Dane said, "Don't worry, Nelva. We'll make it somehow."
"Don't lie to me, Clark. I know what's going to happen, and it really doesn't matter." The girl's lips still smiled, but a shadow lay across the grey eyes. "Just one thing, though, Clark: I've got to tell you, and you've got to believe me. I've never betrayed you, not ever, even for a moment." A pause. The grey eyes, falling again. "You see, I've—I've always loved you, ever since the first, so long ago—long before you remember. Only I couldn't help you, didn't dare to tell you, even a little...."
Dane stood very still. "You ... didn't dare tell me?"
"No. Because I didn't know enough—about you; your potential...."
"Butwhatdidn't you dare to tell me?"
Nelva buried her face against his shoulder. Her words came muffled now. "About the things you wanted to know—who you are, where you came from, the hairless man."
Dane's heart pounded. Silently, savagely, he fought against letting his voice soar with his tension; against drawing his arms too tight about the girl's slim shoulders.
"About the silver needle, too?" he pressed gently.
"No. Not that. I never knew too much about the overall picture; only the one part."
The tension was too great. Dane could stand it no longer. Spasmodically, he gripped Nelva's shoulders. "Then tell me what you do know, damn it! Who am I? How did I get on that asteroid? Why weren't my records in your files?"
"Please, Clark!" Nelva twisted. "I'm going to tell you. I want to. There's no need to hurt me—"
"Sorry, Nelva." Dane let go of her; turned away, ashamed. "It drives me, Nelva. I've got to know. Everything, everything...." He drove his clenched fist savagely into the palm of the other hand.
"I understand, Clark." The girl's hand was on his shoulder now. "You see—"
The carrier hit something, with an impact that threw them both, sprawling, to the floor.
Dane braced himself for further shocks. When they didn't come, he scrambled up; helped Nelva to her feet.
Before they could more than right themselves, however, the entrance hatch opened. An unfamiliar atmosphere rushed in, strangely scented yet breathable.
Raw-nerved, Dane stumbled to the open door and looked out.
The carrier lay on solid ground, in the shadow of the great Kalquoi globe-ship. An open port indicated that the smaller craft had been dumped unceremoniously from the larger.
Arm about Nelva, Dane turned now and looked off beyond the Kalquoi vessel.
Then, involuntarily, he stiffened. A chill of excitement ran through him. Instantly—instinctively, almost—he recognized the scene before him; knew the truth.
They stood upon Callisto!
CHAPTER VIII
This was Sandoz, man's last stronghold among all the outer satellites and planets ... fallen citadel, thirty years abandoned now.
Ruin's hand lay heavy upon it. Crumbling walls and shattered structures sprawled everywhere, and great saw-leaved, turquoise-blue plants half concealed long stretches of the cracked, disintegrating pavement. Scarcely a building stood staunch and whole.
Yet there was no mistaking the place. For though the last edifice might fall, the city's shining silver shaft still thrust up stark and proud into the sky.
Dane stared at it, fascinated, hardly able to tear his eyes away. It was compulsive, the inner drive he felt to draw still closer to it. Yet even though he recognized it as such, he could not fight it down.
Why did it pull him so—this strange, sky-spiking needle? Why, in spite of all logic, did the feeling surge so strong in him that his destiny was bound tight to his half-forgotten hope-gone-dead men called the Sandoz Shaft?
But only one segment of his brain kept up the wondering. For in his heart he knew the answer didn't matter. Not when the tie that linked him to the needle was strong enough to lure him across a million miles and more of void to certain death, here on this alien-fettered world.
Bleakly, he looked across to Nelva, and wished he could be with her in this hour. But the Kalquoi seemed to have rather definite ideas of protocol at this stage, and one of them involved his separation from the girl.
Now, parallel but on opposite sides of what once had been the city's central thoroughfare, Dane and Nelva trudged from the carrier towards the distant shaft. A sort of honor guard of Kalquoi surrounded each of them, directing them in the way they were to go by means of sudden, small, darting beams of light that stung like so many angry insects.
The shaft grew larger as they approached, till Dane was staring up at it in awe. With every step, the compulsive drive he felt to reach the needle grew stronger in him. Nothing else could hold his interest or attention. Once, briefly, he even caught himself wondering why it had seemed so important to him to hear Nelva's answers to his questions; to know his own identity, and that of the fiend-faced man without a name.
As if such could ever matter, when destiny lay at the foot of the Sandoz Shaft!
They reached what must once have been a small park, now. The street they'd followed ended in it. But mere lack of pavement seemed to mean nothing to the Kalquoi. Unhesitating, they herded their charges on across the open green.
And now, on the far side, Dane caught his breath. Before and below him, a broad natural bowl had been developed into an amphitheatre, back in the days of Callisto's human occupation. The metal-rimmed base of the silver shaft stood in the center of the arena at the bottom.
But even the shaft was as nothing in this moment. For never had Dane looked down on a stranger sight.
For Kalquoi crowded the dish-like hollow, hovering like fireflies among the fallen pillars and shrub-masked seats. Hundreds of them; thousands—they pulsed and glowed and changed shape amid the ruins, till the amphitheatre itself was transformed into a fantastic fairyland of energy and light.
But his escorts gave him no time for pause or contemplation. Already they were urging him down the nearest aisle to the arena below.
Then, at last, there was an end to his scrambling and stumbling through the debris. His guards halted him, close by the base of the Sandoz Shaft.
The drive to reach the giant needle boiled in Dane, almost overwhelming. But when he would have tried, a quick flick of light from one of his captors turned him back. He could only stare greedily, drinking the strangeness of the towering monument with his eyes.
And it was weird enough to hold any man's attention. Just as Dane remembered from his vision, the needle stood unsupported, a silver lance suspended in mid-air, completely clear of base, socket, bed-plate.
Studying it here at close range, Dane could see how delicate was its balance. The point quivered visibly where it hung above the socket, dancing like a plastic ball atop an airstream. Vibrations ran the slim length of the needle, till it seemed to turn into a flickering razor-edge of light.
How could it be? A beam of some sort—?
Something stung Dane's flank, then. The pain stabbed so sharp he whirled by reflex, questions and shaft alike momentarily forgotten.
As he did so, a light-beam flicked at his elbow, flame-hot. His guards were urging him to movement again, prodding him diagonally ahead till he stood directly in front of the shaft, but with his back to it.
Now he saw that Nelva Guthrie, too, had reached the arena. Surrounded by her captors, she stood to the left of the shining needle, just as a moment before he himself had stood to its right.
But the Kalquoi gave him little time for such observation. While he watched, a small group of them moved out into the arena and took places in a semicircle close before him.
Dane's guards fell back before the newcomers. In the seating area up along the amphitheatre's sloping sides, the assembled crystalline, light-emitting aliens eddied closer, glowed brighter. A hush seemed to fall over the hollow. Tension climbed like a spaceship at escape velocity.
Dane stood very still. There was nothing he could do but wait.
Then, suddenly, one of the Kalquoi in the tight arc close before him pulsed vivid scarlet. A familiar impulse leaped into Dane's brain ... a patterned, rhythmic groping:John Dane ... John Dane ... John Dane....
Dane sighed; tried to concentrate upon his answer: "Not John Dane. Clark Dane. Clark, not John...."
From then on, there was tumult and fumbling and confusion. Wordless and incoherent, alien intelligences probed every fold and convolution of Dane's brain.
Out of it all, for Dane, came not words, but feelings; not intelligibility, but insight. Slowly, deep within him, there began to grow the weird panorama of a race so alien man could never hope fully to understand it. A concept took form—the concept of a life-type composed wholly of radiant energy, without permanent shape or body ... beings that found their only reason for existence in the acts of shape-building and light emission. In his mind's eye, Dane saw how they replenished their life-force, transmuting into energy whatever convenient objects came to hand.
And because these aliens, these Kalquoi, themselves had no need for bodies or possessions, they'd been unable to conceive that other species might require such things ... might even be harmed if bodies and possessions were transmuted.
But now, at last, glimmerings of this truth had reached them. They'd begun to see the harm they'd done; were sorry for it.
Would man, in his turn, meet them half-way? If they'd stay clear of him and his possessions and allow him to return to the outer planets, would he abandon the disconcerting brain-drain that prevented their shape-changing and transmuting? True, the magnetic shield they'd developed protected them from it, after a fashion. But it was a nuisance. If possible they'd prefer to operate without it....
Numbly, Dane tried to force his aching brain to function. If only he could find the concepts—!
He verbalized it, spoke aloud in hope that meaning would somehow come through: "Yes, yes. Man wants peace as you do. He'll go half-way and more—"
The arc of Kalquoi pulsed approval. All but one.
The others' glow slowly faded.
Instantly, like a bomb bursting, the lone dissenter flared emerald and purple, a radiance so brilliant that Dane reeled back, near-blinded.
His brain reeled, too. For such was the burst of energy the Kalquoi spewed into it that flame seemed to sear at every cell. Dane screamed aloud, writhing in torment.
The flame snuffed out. The pain ebbed slowly. But a message stayed, fire-written:If all men want peace as you say, why have the others scorned us? Why are you the only one to open your brain to us?
Dane groped. "The others—? What others?"
But no coherent answer reached him; only a jumble of fragments and half-impressions. He sensed that the Kalquoi were arguing among themselves while he stood by, forgotten.
As if to prove him correct, his guards now goaded him back to his earlier post to the right of the Sandoz Shaft. Simultaneously, the other group of guards moved Nelva forward to the spot in front of the shining needle where Dane himself had stood.
Swaying a little from the aftermath of pain and mind-fatigue, Dane tried to watch her.
But now, all at once, his compulsion to reach the shaft was again upon him. It was stronger, this time; stronger than ever before. It was all Dane could do to resist it.
Yet resist it he must, for his captors still stood close by, and he had no taste for the sting of the light-beams they flung at him.
Grimly, he concentrated on Nelva Guthrie, trying to force himself to think of her instead of the sky-thrust lance so close beside him.
Strain-lines marred the girl's blonde beauty now. Her hair was tangled, her cheeks pale, her lips trembling.
And yet, for all of that, she was still the loveliest thing Clark Dane had ever seen. The yearning for her gnawed at him like a physical hunger.
Now the interplay of form and color from the line of Kalquoi indicated they were probing her mind. Dane could see her straighten, just a little ... breathe a fraction faster. Her hands moved, rubbing at the side-melds of her garment as if to scrub sweat from her palms.
More shapes, more colors from the Kalquoi. More signs of tension from Nelva Guthrie. Dane could catch only fragments of the projected thoughts and feelings.
Yet something was wrong. Instinctively, he sensed it. A knot drew tight, deep in his belly. He breathed harder.
To what purpose? No matter what happened, there was nothing he could do. He knew that.
Only—Nelva—
He never finished the thought. For abruptly, without warning, the same Kalquoi who minutes before had sent the searing charge through Dane's dazed brain blazed again—a great flash, orange and white and turquoise. The thought smashed in, so violent that even at this distance—even though it was directed at Nelva—the impact made Dane's head reel:She-creature, you close your brain to us! You hold back like the others! You want no peace—
Nelva's scream came like an agonized, overriding echo. Blindly, she staggered forward, clutching her head between her hands.
But the Kalquoi gave no heed. As if the girl were not there, he deluged the whole area with a raging, searing, tidal wave of energy.
Nelva sagged to her knees. Her cry was the keening of a soul in torment.
It was a trigger to turn a man to utter madness. Spasmodically, Dane started forward.
But there was no way to reach the girl, and in his heart he knew it. Too many Kalquoi, too many light-beams, stood ranged between him and her.
But the shining needle, the Sandoz Shaft—it was relatively unprotected for the moment—
Spinning, Dane dived towards it—low, beneath the level at which his captors hovered.
His shoulder crashed against the heavy, buttressed base. His hands closed on a corroded telonium bar. Tearing it from the litter, he surged up, heedless to the light-beams that stung at his back and sides.
The bar had weight to it. Dane swung it with all his might, straight at the seemingly empty space between socket and needle-tip.
If only he could upset the delicate balance of forces that held the shaft upright, and bring it crashing down, almost anything might happen!
The blow hit square and true. But to Dane, it was as if he'd struck the bar against a daggad column. Pain shot up his arms, clear to the shoulders. The telonium strip tore from his hands and sailed through the air nearly fifty feet.
Before the bar even hit the ground, a bolt of energy struck Dane. Helpless, hopeless, sobbing with fury at his own inadequacy, he found himself slammed back bodily against the metal rim that girded the shaft's base. His hands clamped to the alloy.
It was a moment completely incredible; a moment beyond all possibility of belief. For as Dane's hands touched the rim, sparks leaped from flesh to metal. His whole body convulsed. Blue flame crackled in a tight sheath round him. Power pulsed through every bone and muscle in a surging tide.
Then sound came—a high, thin skirl, louder and louder, till Dane thought his eardrums must surely burst.
But the sound still welled and swelled and echoed; and now numbly, it dawned on Dane that something was happening to the Kalquoi. Even blurred as his eyes were, and in spite of the spasms of his body, he could see that, one and all, the aliens had reverted to crystal form. No light gleamed in them. They moved jerkily, as if having trouble even rising from the ground.
The sound in Dane's ears reached a new high note—a note so clear and pure it ceased to be sound at all, to human ears. In its place came silence—a taut, thin-strung, nerve-fraying silence that somehow was almost more than flesh and blood could bear.
Now, while Dane watched in the eerie silence, a Kalquoi crystal suddenly cracked wide open in mid-air.
Its shards cracked, too; and its shards' shards. It was dust before it hit the ground.
On all sides, it was the same. Everywhere in the amphitheatre the aliens were shattering to atoms. In seconds, not one of them remained.
Convulsively, Dane twisted; managed to throw one anguished glance upward to the silver needle that was the Sandoz Shaft.
But so fast was the shaft vibrating that it now looked less like a needle than a flash of silver light.
Dane sagged back. Dully, he wondered how long it would take a man to die this way. Certainly there must be a limit to the amount of such maltreatment the human form could stand.
Yet he knew strength was not in him to break loose, tear away.
Was this, then, his destiny? Must he die here, a living conduit for the power now activating the Sandoz Shaft?
What a goal for a compulsion! What an end to a dream! He couldn't even see the spot where Nelva Guthrie lay....
Time blurred, after that. There were moments when he was conscious; more when he was not.
When he first heard the drone of the carrier's landing beam, he thought he was delirious.
Then he opened his eyes, and the craft hung there before him, less than fifty feet away. While he watched, it ramped down. The hatch opened.
It was then heknewhe was delirious, for sure.
Because the first of the two men who climbed out was thick-bodied, bullet-headed, lump-faced, scowling Pfaff, the Security rep with whom he'd clashed.
And the gaunt figure behind Pfaff was that of the hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed, hairless man, master of slaves, whom Dane knew only as the Being-Without-A-Name!
CHAPTER IX
"Well, Dane, how does it feel to be the savior of your race?"
Slowly, painfully, Dane forced his eyes to focus and search for the speaker.
It turned out to be the hairless man. He sat on a crumbling stone bench, hunched forward slightly and with his teeth bared in a cold, knife-edged smile. Glowering Pfaff stood to his right, scrubbing a palm over a hairy forearm. To his left, a uniformed, strangely blank-faced stranger stood too stiffly at attention.
Dane moved his head a fraction, seeking Nelva.
She sat off away from the three men, still farther left. Her face wore a stiff, strained look, and she kept her eyes on a spot distant from the group, as if to avoid involvement with them.
Dane shifted his gaze back to the hairless man. He still said nothing.
"I do make a striking picture, don't I, Dane?" the other observed as if answering a question. His smile twisted mirthlessly. "If you'd like to try the effect yourself, a proper dose of some types of radiation poisoning will do it. In my own case, the hair follicles were killed completely—scalp, eyebrows, facial and body hair, everything. I felt rather bad about it at first, for I was vain enough in my younger days. But then I found that even the loveliest of women is more apt to be impressed by the unique, the different, than run-of-sex handsomeness; and no man ever forgets me. So there are adequate compensations. Personally, I'm quite satisfied."
The voice held the same twist as the smile—a twist of bitterness, of irony, of lurking menace. It was the voice of a man who enjoyed playing cat-and-mouse ... or forcing those in his power to confess their thralldom.
The very sound of it made Dane's hackles rise, in spite of all he'd been through. "Who are you?" he asked tightly.
"That's right; you don't know, do you?" The man leaned back a fraction. The lids of the deep-set eyes flickered. "We might make a sort of game of it, even—let you guess—"
"He's Thorburg Jessup." This, quite unexpectedly, from Nelva. Hate rasped in her words. Her eyes were smoldering.
"Thorburg Jessup—!" Involuntarily, Dane's eyes widened. He pulled himself round; sat up.
"Oh! You're feeling better!" Jessup chuckled. "That pleases me. It would have been a pity to lose you, after all the effort I put into your creation."
Dane breathed in sharply. Then, catching himself, he counted off three deeper breaths before speaking: "And ... what did you have to do with my creation?"
The Security chief lifted a long-fingered hand. "It was my idea. All of it, from the beginning."
"Your ... idea—?"
"Precisely. My biochemical staff in the Mercury laboratories is superlative technically, but they need a broader, more incisive mind to shape their concepts. I gave them that—outlined the exact requirements they'd have to meet in developing the type of creature we'd need to send against the Kalquoi."
"The type ofcreature?"
"Of course. You didn't think you were human, surely?"
Dane's throat drew so tight he couldn't answer. Numbly, he dug his fingers into the dirt of the arena, trying to hide their trembling.
Jessup watched him for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed—jubilant, sadistic; the self-same laugh Dane had heard that other time, so many worlds away.
Only then, suddenly, Nelva Guthrie was on her feet—fists clenched, eyes blazing. "Stop it, you fiend!" she screamed. "Stop it! Stop it!"
Jessup's laugh cut off as if severed by a knife. "Oh, my dear! Have I disturbed you?" Mock solicitude flowed from him like oily vapor. "Really, Ididhave to handle it this way, though. I simply couldn't use a human. There was the matter of subconscious memory, inadverent knowledge. You have to consider those things when you're dealing with telepaths like the Kalquoi, you know."
Beside the Security chief, pig-eyed, smirking Pfaff moved smoothly into the conversation: "You didn't have much time, either, Mr. Jessup."
"A vital factor," the hairless man nodded. And then, to Dane again: "As you may have guessed, the Kalquoi already had perfected a shield against the brain-drain. It was urgent for us to strike a strong blow at them before they seized the initiative. I decided the Sandoz Shaft, here, offered us our best opportunity. We'd already worked out a new-type catalytic relay that would activate it on practically no power. The only problem lay in coupling the relay to the shaft. To do it by normal procedure, with a task force, would have destroyed its whole value, because it would have driven the Kalquoi from Callisto."
From Pfaff: "Brilliant analysis, Mr. Jessup!"
"So, I conceived the idea of an artificial man with the relay built in, made part of his tissue structure—a creature something on the order of my guard, here"—a gesture to the blank-faced man in uniform—"but of a higher order. He'd be physically strong, well endowed with initiative. His mind would be good, too, and properly pre-stocked with all necessary information, as well as conditioned to a compulsive drive to reach Callisto and the Sandoz Shaft."
Dane shuddered. Were these the things that dreams were made of—conditioning, packaged data, concepts born in someone else's brain? Was he really one with the blank-faced guard—"but of a higher order"?
He wished he'd died at the shaft's base.
Jessup was still talking: "... and as a special twist, we named you Clark Dane, after a John Dane who stayed on at Sandoz, long after everyone else had left, trying to learn more about Kalquoi culture. Because he'd established some slight communication with them, I thought his name might help you...."
Another piece of the puzzle, clicking into place. Another of Dane's questions answered.
"... like every life-form, the Kalquoi needs periods of quiescence. The yat-stick provides a closed circuit where a Kalquoi can rest with no escape of energy. So, you were left by a yat-stick experts assured me contained a Kalquoi in repose. I knew your name would arouse the creature's interest. Tie that to your drive to reach Callisto, and the odds were good you'd live to activate the shaft. If you didn't"—a shrug—"it didn't matter too much, because you lacked any knowledge detrimental to us."
Of a sudden, Dane was tired of words and explanations. He no longer cared about questions or their answers. Lurching to his feet, he stumbled past the Security chief, out of the arena.
Jessup eyed him curiously. "Where are you going?"
Dane continued his unsteady march. He didn't bother to answer.
Thick-bodied Pfaff moved round to block him. "Hey, you! Mr. Jessup asked you a question!"
Dane veered to pass him.
Belligerent, bullet-head down, Pfaff thrust a foot between Dane's. Dane tripped and fell.
Now Nelva Guthrie was running to him; kneeling beside him. Her fingers were cool upon his face. "Let him alone, can't you?" she cried fiercely. "Haven't you done enough to him, without more of this torture?"
Jessup's smile faded just a little. "You've been a favorite of mine a long time, Nelva," he said in a too-quiet voice. "Don't jeopardize that status now."
The girl stared up at him, face tear-streaked. "Do you think I care about status at a time like this?"