The result was just as instantaneous and just as catastrophic as Garlock had expected. Both blocks went up almost instantly.
"Oh, no!" Atterlin exclaimed, his face turning white.
The girl shrieked once, covered her face with her hands, and collapsed on the floor.
"Oh, I'msosorry ... excuse my ignorance, please!" Garlock implored, as he picked the girl up, carried her across the room to a sofa, and assured himself that she had not been really hurt. She recovered quickly. "I'm very sorry, Grand Lady Neldine and Governor Atterlin, but I didn't know ... that is, I didn't realize...."
"You are trying to break it gently." Atterlin was both shocked and despondent. "This being the first planet you have visited, you simply did not realize how feeble our minds really are."
"Oh, not at all, really, sir and lady." Garlock began deftly to repair the morale he had shattered. "Merely younger. With your system of genetics, so much more logical and efficient than our strict monogamy, your race will undoubtedly make more progress in a few centuries than we made in many millennia. And in a few centuries more you will pass us—will master this only partially-known Gunther Drive.
"Esthetically, Lady Neldine, I would like very much to father you a child." He allowed his coldly unmoved gaze to survey her charms. "I am sorry indeed that it cannot be. I trust that you, Governor Atterlin, will be kind enough to spread word of our physical shortcomings, and so spare us further embarrassment?"
"Not shortcomings, sir, and, I truly hope, no embarrassment," Atterlin protested. "We are immensely glad to have seen you, since your very existence gives us so much hope for the future. I will spread word, and every Hodellian will do whatever he can to help you in your quest."
"Thank you, sir and lady," and Garlock took his leave.
"What an act, my male-looking but impotent darling!" came Belle's clear, incisive thought, bubbling with unrestrained merriment. "For our Doctor Garlock, the Prime Exponent and First Disciple of Truth,whatan act!Esthetically, he'd like to father her a child, it says here in fine print—Boy, if she only knew! One tiny grain of truth and she'd chase you from here to Andromeda! Clee, Iswearthis thing is going to kill me yet!"
"Anything that would do that I'm very much in favor of!" Garlock growled the thought and snapped up his shield.
This one was, quite definitely, Belle's round.
Garlock took the Hodellian equivalent of a bus to the center of the city, then set out aimlessly to walk. The buildings and their arrangement, he noted—not much to his surprise now—were not too different from those of the cities of Earth.
With his guard down to about the sixth level, highly receptive but not at all selective, he strolled up one street and down another. He was not attentive to detail yet; he was trying to get the broad aspects, the "feel" of this hitherto unknown civilization.
The ether was practically saturated with thought. Apparently this was the afternoon rush hour, as the sidewalks were crowded with people and the streets were full of cars. It did not seem as though anyone, whether in the buildings, on the sidewalks, or in the cars, was doing any blocking at all. If there were any such things as secrets on Hodell, they were scarce. Each person, man, woman, or child, went about his own business, radiating full blast. No one paid any attention to the thoughts of anyone else except in the case of couples or groups, the units of which were engaged in conversation. It reminded Garlock of a big Tellurian party when the punch-bowls were running low—everybody talking at the top of his voice and nobody listening.
This whole gale of thought was blowing over Garlock's receptors like a Great Plains wind over miles-wide fields of corn. He did not address anyone directly; no one addressed him. At first, quite a few young women, at sight of his unusual physique, had sent out tentative feelers of thought; and some men had wondered, in the same tentative and indirect fashion, who he was and where he came from. However, when the information he had given Atterlin spread throughout the city—and it did not take long—no one paid any more attention to him than they did to each other.
Probing into and through various buildings, he learned that groups of people were quitting work at intervals of about fifteen minutes. There were thoughts of tidying up desks; of letting the rest of this junk go until tomorrow; of putting away and/or covering up office machines of various sorts. There were thoughts of powdering noses and of repairing make-up.
He pulled in his receptors and scanned the crowded ways for guardians—he'd have to call them that until either he or Lola found out their real name. Same as at the airport—the more people, the more guardians. What were they? How? And why?
He probed; carefully but thoroughly. When he had talked to the Arpalone he had read him easily enough, but here there was nothing whatever to read. The creature simply was not thinking at all. But that didn't make sense! Garlock tuned, first down, then up; and finally, at the very top of his range, he found something, but he did not at first know what it was. It seemed to be a mass-detector ... no, two of them, paired and balanced. Oh, that was it! One tuned to humanity, one to the other guardians—balanced across a sort of bridge—thatwas how they kept the ratio so constant! But why? There seemed to be some wide-range receptors there, too, but nothing seemed to be coming in....
While he was still studying and still baffled, some kind of stimulus, which was so high and so faint and so alien that he could neither identify nor interpret it, touched the Arpalone's far-flung receptors. Instantly the creature jumped, his powerful, widely-bowed legs sending him high above the heads of the crowd and, it seemed to Garlock, directly toward him. Simultaneously there was an insistent, low-pitched, whistling scream, somewhat like the noise made by an airplane in a no-power dive; and Garlock saw, out of the corner of one eye, a yellowish something flashing downward through the air.
At the same moment the woman immediately in front of Garlock stifled a scream and jumped backward, bumping into him and almost knocking him down. He staggered, caught his balance, and automatically put his arm around his assailant, to keep her from falling to the sidewalk.
In the meantime the guardian, having landed very close to the spot the woman had occupied a moment before, leaped again; this time vertically upward. The thing, whatever it was, was now braking frantically with wings, tail, and body; trying madly to get away. Too late. There was a bone-crushing impact as the two bodies came together in mid-air; a jarring thud as the two creatures, inextricably intertwined, struck the pavement as one.
The thing varied in color, Garlock now saw, shading from bright orange at the head to pale yellow at the tail. It had a savagely-tearing curved beak; tremendously powerful wings; its short, thick legs ended in hawk-like talons.
The guardian's bowed legs had already immobilized the yellow wings by clamping them solidly against the yellow body. His two lower arms were holding the frightful talons out of action. His third hand gripped the orange throat, his fourth was exerting tremendous force against the jointure of neck and body. The neck, originally short, was beginning to stretch.
For several seconds Garlock had been half-conscious that his accidental companion was trying, with more and more energy, to disengage his encircling left arm from her waist. He wrenched his attention away from the spectacular fight—to which no one else, not even the near-victim, had paid the slightest attention—and now saw that he had his arm around the bare waist of a statuesque matron whose entire costume would have made perhaps half of a Tellurian sun-suit. He dropped his arm with a quick and abject apology.
"I should apologize to you instead, Captain Garlock," she thought, with a wide and friendly smile, "for knocking you down, and I thank you for catching me before I fell. I should not have been startled, of course. I would not have been, except that this is the first time that I, personally, have been attacked."
"But whatarethey?" Garlock blurted.
"I don't know." The woman turned her head and glanced, in complete disinterest, at the two furiously-battling creatures. Garlock knew now that this was the first time, except for that instantly-dismissed thrill of surprise at being the actual target of an attack, that she had thought of either of them. "Orange-yellow? It could be a ... a fumapty, perhaps, but I've no idea, really. You see, such things are none of our business."
She thought at him, a half-shrug, half-grimace of mild distaste—not at the personal contact with the man nor at the savage duel; but at even thinking of either the guardian or the yellow monster—and walked away into the crowd.
Garlock's attention flashed back to the fighters. The yellow thing's neck had been stretched to twice its natural length and the guardian hadeatenalmost through it. There was a terrific crunch, a couple of smacking, gobbling swallows, and head parted from body. The orange beak still clashed open and shut, however, and the body still thrashed violently.
Shifting his grips, the guardian proceeded to tear a hole into his victim's body, just below its breast-bone. Thrusting two arms into the opening, he yanked out two organs—one of which, Garlock thought, could have been the heart—and ate them both; if not with extreme gusto, at least in a workmanlike and thoroughly competent fashion. He then picked up the head in one hand, grabbed the tip of a wing with another, and marched up the street for half a block, dragging the body behind him.
He lifted a manhole cover with his two unoccupied hands, dropped the remains down the hole thus exposed, and let the cover slam back into place. He then squatted down, licked himself meticulously clean with a long, black, extremely agile tongue, and went on about his enigmatic business quite as though nothing had happened.
Garlock strolled around a few minutes longer, but could not recapture any interest in the doings of the human beings around him. He had filed away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many bizarre aspects that he could not think of anything else. Wherefore he flagged down a "taxi" and was taken out to thePleiades. Belle and Lola were in the Main.
"I saw thedamndestthing, Clee!" Lola exclaimed. "I've been gnawing my fingernails off up to the knuckles, waiting for you!"
Lola's experience had been very similar to Garlock's own, except in that her monster was an intense green in color and looked something like a bat about four feet long, with six-inch canine teeth and several stingers....
"Did you find out the name of the thing?" Garlock asked.
"No. I asked half-a-dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that it might be something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a 'lemart.' And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out of anybody was just 'guardians.' Did you do any better?"
"No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls about his own experience.
"But I didn't find any detectors or receptors, Clee," Lola frowned. "Where were they?"
"'Way up—up here," he showed her. "I'll make a full tape tonight on everything I found out about the guardians and the Arpalones—besides my regular report, I mean—since they're yours, and you can make me one about your friend the green bat...."
"Hey, Ilikethat!" Belle broke in. "Thatcouldbe taken amiss, you know, by such a sensitive soul as I!"
"Check." Garlock chuckled. "I'll have to file that one, in case I want to use it sometime. How're you coming, Belle?"
"Nice!" Belle's voracious mind had been so busy absorbing new knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight with her captain. "I'm just about done here. I'll be ready tomorrow, I think, to visit their library and tape up some planetological and planetographical—notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit words?—data on this here planet Hodell."
"Good going. You've been listening to this stuff Lola and I were chewing on—does any of it make sense to you?"
"It does not. I never heard anything to compare with it."
"Excuse me for changing the subject," Lola put in, plaintively, "but when, if ever, do we eat? Do wehaveto wait until that confounded James boy gets back from wherever it was he went?"
"If you're hungry, we'll eat now."
"Hungry?Look!" Lola turned herself sidewise, placed one hand in the small of her back, and pressed hard with the other her flat, taut belly. "See? Only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backbone—dangerously close to the point of utter collapse."
"You poor, abused little thing!" Garlock laughed and all three crossed the room to the dining alcove. While they were still ordering, James appeared beside them.
"Find out anything?" Garlock asked.
"Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain only seventy-five miles from here. No, in that I didn't find any duplication of nebulary configurations with the stuff I had with me. However, it was relatively coarse. Tomorrow I'll take a lot of fine stuff along. It'll take some time—a full day, at least."
"I expected that. Good going, Jim!"
All four ate heartily, and, after eating, they taped up the day's reports. Then, tired from their first real day's work in weeks, all went to their rooms.
A few minutes later, Garlock tapped lightly at Lola's door.
"Come in." She stiffened involuntarily, then relaxed and smiled. "Oh, yes, Clee: of course. You're...."
"No, I'm not. I've been doing a lot of thinking about you since last night, and I may have come up with an answer or two. Also, Belle knows we aren't pairing, and if we don't hide behind a screen at least once in a while, she'll know we aren't going to."
"Screen?"
"Screen. Didn't you know these four private rooms are solid? Haven't you read your house-tape yet?"
"No. But do you think Belle would actually peek?"
"Do you think she wouldn't?"
"Well, I don't like her very much, but I wouldn't think she would do anything like that, Clee. It isn't urbane."
"She isn't urbane, either, whenever she thinks it might be advantageous not to be."
"What aterriblething to say!"
"Take it from me, if Belle Bellamy doesn't know everything that goes on it isn't from lack of trying. You wouldn't know about room service, either, then—better scan that tape before you go to sleep tonight—what'll you have in the line of a drink to while away enough time so she will know we've been playing games?"
"Ginger ale, please."
"I'll have ginger beer. You do it like so." He slid a panel aside, his fingers played briefly on a typewriter-like keyboard. Drinks and ice appeared. "Anything you want—details of the tape."
He lighted two cigarettes, handed her one, stirred his drink. "Now, fair lady—or should I say beauteous dark lady?—we will follow the precept of that immortal Chinese philosopher, Chin On."
"Youarea Prime Operator, aren't you?" She laughed, but sobered quickly. "I'm worried. You said I flaunted virginity like a banner, and now Belle.... What am I doing wrong?"
"There's a lot wrong. Not so much what you're doing as what you aren't doing. You're too aloof—detached—egg-headish. You know the score, words and music, but you don't sing. All you do is listen. Belle thinks you're not only a physical virgin, but a psychic-blocked prude. I know better. You're so full of conflict between what you want to do—what you know is right—and what those three-cell-brained nincompoops made you think you ought to do that you have got no more degrees of freedom than a piston-rod. You haven't been yourself for a minute since you came aboard. Check?"
"Youhavebeen thinking, haven't you? You may be right; except that it's been longer than that ... ever since the first preliminaries, I think. But what can Idoabout it, Clee?"
"Contact. Three-quarters full, say; enough for me to give you what I think is the truth."
"But you said youneverwent screens down with a woman?"
"There's a first time for everything. Come in."
She did so, held contact for almost a minute, then pulled herself loose.
"Ug-gh-gh." She shivered. "I'm glad I haven't got a mind like that."
"And the same from me to you. Of course the real truth may lie somewhere in between. I may be as far off the beam on one side as you are on the other."
"I hope so. But it cleared things up no end—it untied a million knots. Even that other thing—brotherly love? It's a very nice concept—you see, I never had any brothers."
"That's probably one thing that was the matter with you. Nothing warmer than that, certainly, and never will be."
"And I suppose you got the thought—it must have jumped up and smacked you—" Lola's hot blush was visible even through her heavy tan, "how many times I've felt like running my fingers up and down your ribs and grabbing a handful of those terrific muscles of yours, just to see if they're as hard as they look?"
"I'm glad you brought that up; I don't know whether I would have dared to or not. You've got to stop acting like a Third instead of an Operator; and you've got to stop acting as though you had never been within ten feet of me. Now's as good a time as any." He took off his shirt and struck a strong-man's pose. "Come ahead."
"By golly, I'mgoingto!" Then, a moment later, "Why, they're evenharder! How do you, a scientist, psionicist, and scholar, keep in such hard shape as that?"
"An hour a day in the gym, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Many are better—but a hell of a lot are worse."
"I'll say." She finished her ginger ale, sat down in her chair, leaned back and put her legs up on the bed. "That was a relief of tension if there ever was one. I haven't felt so good since they picked me as home-town candidate—and that was a mighty small town and eight months ago. Bring on your dragons, Clee, and I'll slay 'em far and wide. But I can't actuallybelike she is...."
"Thank God for that. Deliver me fromtwosuch pretzel-benders aboard one ship."
"... but I could have been a pretty good actress, I think."
"Correction, please. 'Outstanding' is the word."
"Thank you, kind sir. And women—men, too, of course—do bring up certain memories, to ... to...."
"To roll 'em around on their tongues and give their taste-buds a treat."
"Exactly. So where I don't have any appropriate actual memories to bring up, I'll make like an actress. Check?"
"Good girl! Now you're rolling—we're in like Flynn. Well, we've been in screen long enough, I guess. Fare thee well, little sister Brownie, until we meet again." He tossed the remains of their refreshments, trays and all, into the chute, picked up his shirt, and started out.
"Put iton, Clee!" she whispered, intensely.
"Why?" He grinned cheerfully. "It'd look still better if I peeled down to the altogether."
"You're incorrigible," she said, but her answering grin was wide and perfectly natural. "You know, if I had had a brother something like you it would have saved me a lot of wear and tear. I'll see you in the morning before breakfast."
And she did. They strolled together to breakfast; not holding hands, but with hip almost touching hip. Relaxed, friendly, on very cordial and satisfactory terms. Lola punched breakfast orders for them both. Belle drove a probe, which bounced—Lola's screen was tight, although her brown eyes were innocent and bland.
But during the meal, in response to a double-edged, wickedly-barbed remark of Belle's, a memory flashed into being above Lola's shield. It was the veriest flash, instantly suppressed. Her eyes held clear and steady; if she blushed at all it did not show.
Belle caught it, of course, and winked triumphantly at Garlock. She knew, now, what she had wanted to know. And, Prime Operator though he was, it was all he could do to make no sign; for that fleetingly-revealed memory was a perfect job. He would not have—couldnot have—questioned it himself, except for one highly startling fact. It was of an event that had not happened and never would!
And after breakfast, at some distance from the others, "That is my girl, Brownie! You're firing on all forty barrels. You're an Operator, all right; and it takes a damn good one to lie like that with her mind!"
"Thanks to you, Clee. And thanks a million, really. I'm me again—I think."
Then, since Belle was looking, she took him by both ears, pulled his head down, and kissed him lightly on the lips. The spontaneity and tenderness were perfect at that moment. Clee's appreciation was obvious.
"I know I said you'd have to kiss me next time," Lola said, very low, "but this act needs just this much of an extra touch. Anyway, such little, tiny, sisterly ones as this, and out in public, don't count."
Lola and Garlock went to town in the same taxi. As they were about to separate, Garlock said:
"I don't like those hell-divers, yellow, green, or any other color; and you, Brownie, are very definitely not expendable. Are you any good at mind-bombing?"
"Why, I never heard of such a thing."
"You isolate a little energy in the Op field, remembering of course, that you're handling a hundred thousand gunts. Transpose it into platinum or uranium—anything good and heavy. For one of these monsters you'd need two or three micrograms. For a battleship, up to maybe a gram or so. 'Port it to the exact place you want it to detonate. Reconvert and release instantaneously. One-hundred-percent-conversion atomic bomb, tailored exactly to fit the job. Very effective."
"It would be. My God, Clee, canyoudothat?"
"Sure—so can you. Any Operator can."
"Well, Iwon't. Ineverwill. Besides, I'd probably kill too many people, besides the monster. No, I'll 'port back to the Main if anything attacks me. I'm chain lightning at that."
"Do that, then. And if anything very unusual happens give me a flash."
"I'll do that. 'Bye, Clee." She turned to the left. He walked straight on, toward the business center, to resume his study at the point where he had left off the evening before.
For over an hour he wandered aimlessly about the city; receiving, classifying, and filing away information. He saw several duels between guardians and yellow and green-bat monsters, to none of which he paid any more attention than did the people around him. Then a third kind of enemy appeared—two of them at once, flying wing-and-wing—and Garlock stopped and watched.
Vivid, clear-cut stripes of red and black, even on the tremendously long, strong wings. Distinctly feline as to heads, teeth, and claws. While they did not at all closely resemble flying saber-toothed tigers, that was the first impression that leaped into Garlock's mind.
Two bow-legged guardians came leaping as usual, but one of them was a fraction of a second too late. That fraction was enough. While the first guardian was still high in air, grappling with one tiger, the other swung on a dime—the blast of air from his right wing blowing people in the crowd below thither and yon and knocking four of them flat—and took the guardian's head off his body with one savage swipe of a frightfully-armed paw. Disregarding the carcass both attackers whirled sharply at the second guardian, meeting him in such fashion that he could not come to firm grips with either of them, and that battle was very brief indeed. More and more guardians were leaping in from all directions, however, and the two tigers were forced to the ground and slaughtered.
Since six guardians had been killed, eight guardians marched up the street, dragging grisly loads. Eight bodies, friend and foe alike, were dumped into a manhole; eight creatures squatted down and cleaned themselves meticulously before resuming their various patrols.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, Garlock felt Lola's half-excited, half-frightened thought. "Clee, do you read me?"
"Loud and clear."
"There's something coming that's certainly none of my business—maybe not even yours."
"Coming," and with the thought he was there. "Where?"
She pointed a thought, he followed it. Far away yet, but coming fast, was an immense flock of flying tigers!
Lola licked her lips. "I'm going home, if you don't mind."
"Beat it."
She disappeared.
"Jim!" Garlock thought. "Where are you?"
"Observatory. Need me?"
"Yes. Bombing. Two point four microgram loads. Focus spot on my right—teleport in."
"Coming in on your right."
"And I on your left!" Belle's thought drove in as he had never before felt it driven. Being a Prime, she did not need a focus spot and appeared the veriest instant later than did James.
"Can you bomb?" Garlock snapped.
"What doyouthink?" she snapped back.
A moment of flashing thought and the three Tellurians disappeared, materializing five hundred feet in air, two hundred feet ahead of the van of that horrible flight of monsters, drifting before it.
Belle got in the first shot. Not only did the victim disappear—a couple of dozen around it were torn to fragments and the force of the blast staggered all three Tellurians.
"Damn it, Belle, cut down or get to hell out!" Garlock yelped. "I said two point fourmicrograms, not milligrams. Just kill 'em, don't scatter 'em all over hell's half acre—less mess to clean up and Idon'twant you to kill people down below. Especially I don't want you to kill us—not even yourself."
"'Scuse, please, I guess I was a bit enthusiastic in my weighing."
There began a series of muffled explosions along the front; each followed by the plunge of a tiger-striped body to the ground. Faster and faster the explosions came as the Operator and the Primes learned the routine and the rhythm of the job.
Nor were they long alone. The roaring, screaming howl of jets came up from behind them; four Arpalones appeared at their left, strung out along the front. Each held an extraordinarily heavy-duty blaster in each of his four hands; sixteen terrific weapons were hurling death into the flying horde.
"Slide over, Terrestrials," came a calm thought. "You three take their left front, we'll take their right and center."
As they obeyed the instructions, "Theydon't give a damn where the pieces fly!" Belle protested. "Why should we be fussy about their street-cleaning department?I'mstarting to use fives."
"Okay. We'll have to hit 'em harder, anyway, to keep up. Five or maybe six—just be damn sure not to knock us or the Arpalones out of the air."
Carnage went on. The battle-front, while inside the city limits, was now almost stationary.
"Ha! Help—I hear footsteps approaching on jet-back," Garlock announced. "Give 'em hell, boys—shovel on the coal!"
A flight of fighter-planes, eight abreast and wing-tips almost touching, howled close overhead and along the line of invasion. They could not fire, of course, until they reached the city limits. There they opened up as one, and the air below became literally filled with falling monsters. Some had only broken wings; some were dead, but more or less whole; many were blown to unrecognizable bits and scraps of flesh.
Another flight screamed into place immediately behind the first; then another and another and another until six flights had passed. Then came four helicopters, darting and hovering, whose gunners picked off individually whatever survivors had managed to escape all six waves of fighters.
"That's better," came a thought from the Arpalone nearest Garlock. "Situation under control, thanks to you Tellurians. Supposed to be two squads of us gunners, but the other squad was busy on another job. Without you, this could have developed into a fairly nasty little infection. I don't know what you're doing or how you're doing it—we were told that you weren't like any other humans, and how truethatis—but I'm in favor of it. I thought there were four of you?"
"One of us is not a fighter."
"Oh. You can knock off now, if you like. We'll polish off. Thanks much."
"But don't the boys on the ground need some help?"
"The Arpales? Those idiots you have been thinking of as 'guardians'? Which they are, of course. Uh-uh. Besides, we're air-fighters. Ground work is none of our business. Also, these guns would raise altogether too much hell down there. Bound to hit some humans."
"Check. Those Arpales aren't very intelligent, you Arpalones are extremely so. Any connection?"
"'Way back, they say. Common ancestry, and doing two parts of the same job. Killing these fumapties and lemarts and sencors and what-have-you. I don't know what humanity's job is and don't give a damn. Probably fairly important, some way or other, though, since it's our job to see that the silly, gutless things keep on living. We have nothing to do with 'em, ever. The only reason I'm talking to you is you're not really human at all. You're a fighter, too, and a damn good one."
"I know what you mean," and the three Tellurians turned their attention downward to the scene on the ground.
The heaviest fighting had been over a large park at the city's edge, which was now literally a shambles. Very few people were to be seen, and those few more moving unconcernedly away from the center of violence. All over the park thousands of Arpales were fighting furiously and hundreds of them were dying. For hundreds of the sencors had suffered only wing injuries, the long fall to ground had not harmed them further, and their tremendous fighting ability had been lessened very little if at all.
"But I'd think, just for efficiency if nothing else," Garlock argued, "you'd support the Arpalessomeway. Lighter guns or something. Why, thousands of them must have been killed, just in this last hour or so."
"Yeah, but that's their business. They breed fast and die fast. Everything has to balance, you know."
"Perhaps so." Garlock was silenced, if not convinced. "Well, it's about over. What happens to the bodies they're dumping down manholes? They can't go down a sewer that way?"
"Oh, you didn't know? Food."
"Food? For what?"
"The Arpales and us, of course."
"What? You don't mean—youcan'tmean that they—and by your thought, you Arpalones, too—are cannibals!"
"Cannibals? Explain, please? Oh, eaters-of-our-own-species. Of course—certainly. Why not?"
"Why, self-respect ... common decency ... respect for one's fellow-man ... family ties...." Garlock was floundering; to be called upon to explain his ingrained antipathy to such a custom was new to his experience.
"You are silly. Worse, squeamish. Worst, supremely illogical." The Arpalone paused, then went on as though trying to educate a hopelessly illogical inferior, "While we do not kill Arpales purposely—except when they over-breed—why waste good meat as fertilizer? If a diet is wholesome, nutritious, well-balanced, and tasty, what shred of difference can itpossiblymake what its ingredients once were?"
"Well, I'll be damned." Garlock quit.
Belle agreed. "This whole deal makes me sick at the stomach and I think my face is turning green too. But I'm devilishly and gleefully glad, Clee, that I was here to hearsomebodygive you cards, spaces, and big casino and still beat the lights and liver out of you at your own game of cold-blooded logic!"
"We gunners must go now. Would you like to come along with us and see the end of this particular breeding-hole of sencors?"
At high speed the seven flew back along the line of advance of the flying-tiger horde; across a barren valley, toward and to the side of a mountain.
An area almost a mile square of that mountain's side was a burned, blasted, churned, pocked, cratered and flaming waste; and the four helicopters were still working on it. High-energy beams blasted, fairly volatilizing the ground as they struck in as deep as they could be driven. High-explosive shells bored deep and detonated, hurling shattered rock and soil and yellow smoke far and wide; establishing new craters by destroying the ones existing a moment before.
While it seemed incredible that any living thing larger than a microbe could emerge under its own power from such a hell of energy, many flying tigers did; apparently being blown aloft along with the hitherto undisturbed volume of soil in which the creatures had been. Most of them were not fully grown; some were so immature as to be unrecognizable to an untrained eye; but from all four helicopters hand-guns snapped and cracked. Nothing—butnothing—was leaving that field of carnage alive.
"What are you gunners supposed to be doing here?" Garlock asked.
"Oh, the 'copters will be leaving pretty soon—they've got other places to go. But they won't get them all—some of the hatches are too deep—so us four gunners will stick around for two-three days to kill the late-hatchers as they come out."
"I see," and Garlock probed. "There are four cells they won't reach. Shall I bomb 'em out?"
"I'll ask." The slitted red eyes widened and he sent a call. "Commander Knahr, can you hop over here a minute? I want you to meet these things we've been hearing about. They look human, but they really aren't. They're killers, with more stuff and more brains than any of us ever heard of."
Another Arpalone appeared, indistinguishable to Tellurian eyes from any one of the others.
"But why do you want to mix into something that's none of your business?" Knahr was neither officious nor condemnatory. He simply could not understand.
"Since you have no concept of our quality of curiosity, just call it education. The question is, do or do you not want those four deeply-buried cells blasted out of existence?"
"Of course I do."
"Okay. You've got all of 'em you're going to get. Tell your 'copters to give us about five miles clearance, and we'll all fall back, too."
They drew back, and there were four closely-spaced explosions of such violence that one raggedly mushroom-shaped cloud went into the stratosphere and one huge, ragged crater yawned where once churned ground had been.
"But that'satomic!" Knahr gasped the thought. "Fall-out!"
"No fall-out. Complete conversion. Have you got a counter?"
They had. They tested. There was nothing except the usual background count.
"There's no life left underground, so you needn't keep this squad of gunners tied up here," Garlock told the commander. "Before we go, I want to ask a question. You have visitors once in a while from other solar systems, so you must have a faster-than-light drive. Can you tell me anything about it?"
"No. Nothing like that would be any of my business." Knahr and the four gunners disappeared; the helicopters began to lumber away.
"Well,thathelps—I don't think," Garlock thought, glumly. "Whata world! Back to the Main?"
In the Main, after a long and fruitless discussion, Garlock called Governor Atterlin, who did not know anything about a faster-than-light drive, either. There was one, of course, since it took only a few days or a few weeks to go from one system to another; but Hodell didn't have any such ships. No ordinary planet did. They were owned and operated by people who called themselves "Engineers." He had no idea where the Engineers came from; they didn't say.
Garlock then tried to get in touch with the Arpalone Inspector who had checked thePleiadesin, and could not find out even who it had been. The Inspector then on duty neither knew or cared anything about either faster-than-light drives or Engineers. Such things were none of his business.
"What difference would it make, anyway?" James asked. "No drive that takes 'a few weeks' for an intra-galaxy hop is ever going to get us back to Tellus."
"True enough; but if there is such a thing I want to know how it works. How are you coming with your calculations?"
"I'll finish up tomorrow easily enough."
Tomorrow came, and James finished up, but he did not find any familiar pattern of Galactic arrangement. The other three watched James set up for another try for Earth.
"You don't think we'll ever get back, do you, Clee?" Belle asked.
"Right away, no. Some day, yes. I've got the germ of an idea. Maybe three or four more hops will give me something to work on."
"I hope so," James said, "because here goes nothing," and he snapped the red switch.
It was not nothing. Number Two was another guardian Inspector and another planet very much like Hodell. It proved to be so far from both Earth and Hodell, however, that no useful similarities were found in any two of the three sets of charts.
Number Three was equally unproductive of helpful results. James did, however, improve his technique of making galactic charts; and he and Garlock designed and built a high-speed comparator. Thus the time required per stop was reduced from days to hours.
Number Four produced a surprise. When Garlock touched the knob of the testing-box he yanked his hand away before it had really made contact. It was like touching a high-voltage wire.
"You are incompatible with our humanity and must not land," the Inspector ruled.
"Suppose we blast you and your jets out of the air and land anyway?" Garlock asked.
"That is perhaps possible," the Inspector agreed, equably enough. "We are not invincible. However, it would do you no good. If any one of you four leaves that so-heavily-insulated vessel in the atmosphere of this planet you will die. Not quickly, but slowly and with difficulty."
"But you haven't testedme!" Belle said. "Do you mean they'll attack us on sight?"
"There is no need to test more than one. Anyone who could live near any of you could not live on this planet. Nor will they attack you. Don't you know what the thought 'incompatible' means?"
"With us it does not mean death."
"Here it does, since it refers to life forces. The types are mutually, irreconcilably antagonistic. Your life forces are very strong. Thus, no matter how peaceable your intentions may be, many of our human beings would die before you would, but you will not live to get back to your ship if you land it and leave its protective insulation."
"Why? What is it? How does it work?" Belle demanded.
"It is not my business to know; only to tell. I have told. You will go away now."
Garlock's eyes narrowed in concentration. "Belle, can you blast? I mean, could you if you wanted to?"
"Certainly ... why, I don'twantto, Clee!"
"I don't, either—and I'll file that one away to chew on when I'm hungry some night, too. Take her up, Jim, and try another shot."
Numbers Five to Nine, inclusive, were neither productive nor eventful. All were, like the others, Hodell all over again, in everything fundamental. One was so far advanced that almost all of its humanity were Seconds; one so backward—or so much younger—that its strongest telepaths were only Fours. The Tellurians became acquainted with, and upon occasion fought with, various types of man-sized monsters in addition to the three varieties they had seen on Hodell.
Every planet they visited had Arpalones and Arpales. Not by those names, of course. Local names for planets, guardians, nations, cities, and persons went into the starship's tapes, but that welter of names need not be given here; this is not a catalogue. Every planet they visited was peopled byHomo Sapiens; capable of inter-breeding with the Tellurians and eager to do so—especially with the Tellurian men. Their strict monogamy was really tested more than once; but it held. Each had been visited repeatedly by starships; but all Garlock could find out about them was that they probably came from a world somewhere that was inhabited by compatible human beings of Grade Two. He could learn nothing about the faster-than-light drive.
Number Ten was another queer—the Tellurians were found incompatible.
"Let's go down anyway." Belle suggested. "Overcome this unwillingness of ours and find out. What do you think they've got down there, Clee Garlock, that could possibly handle you and me both?"
"I don't think it's a case of 'handling' at all. I don't know what it is, but I believe it's fatal. We won't go down."
"But it doesn't make sense!" Belle protested.
"Not yet, no; but it's a datum. Enough data and we'll be able to formulate a theory."
"You and your theories! I wish we could get somefacts!"
"You can call that a fact. But I want you and Jim to do some math. We know that we're making mighty long jumps. Assuming that they're at perfect random, and of approximately the same length, the probability is greater than one-half that we're getting farther and farther away from Tellus. Is there a jump number, N, at which the probability is one-half that we land nearer Tellus instead of farther away? My jump-at-conclusions guess is that there isn't. That the first jump set up a bias."
"Ouch.Thatisn't in any of the books," James said. "In other words, do we or do we not attain a maximum? You're making some bum assumptions; among others that space isn't curved and that the dimensions of the universe are very large compared to the length of our jumps. I'll see if I can put it into shape to feed to Compy. You've always held that these generators work at random—the rest of those assumptions are based on your theory?"
"Check. I'm not getting anywhere studying my alleged Xenology, so I'm going to work full time on designing a generator that will steer."
"You tried to before. So did everybody else."
"I know it, but I've got a lot more data now. And I'm not promising, just trying. Okay? Worth a try?"
"Sure—I'm in favor of anything that has any chance at all of working."
Jumping went on; and Garlock, instead of going abroad on the planets, stayed in thePleiadesand worked.
At Number Forty-three, their reception was of a new kind. They were compatible with the people of this world, but the Inspector advised them against landing.
"I do not forbid you," he explained, carefully. "Our humans are about to destroy themselves with fission and fusion bombs. They send missiles, without warning, against visitors. Thus, the last starship to visit us here disregarded my warning and sent down a sensing device as usual—Engineers do not land on non-telepathic worlds, you know—and it was destroyed."
"You're a Guardian of Humanity," Garlock said. "Can't you straighten people out?"
"Of course not!" The Arpalone was outraged. "We guard humanity against incompatibles and non-humans; but it is not our business to interfere with humanity if it wishes to destroy itself. That is its privilege and its own business!"
Garlock probed down. "No telepathy, even—not even a Seven. This planetisbackward—back to Year One. And nothing but firecrackers—we're going down, aren't we?"
"I'll say we are!" Belle said. "This will break the monotony, at least," and the others agreed.
"You won't object, I take it," Garlock said to the Inspector, "if we try to straighten them out. We can postpone the blow-up a few years, at least."
"No objections, of course. In fact, I can say that we Guardians of Humanity would approve such action."
Down thePleiadeswent, into the air of the nation known as the "Allied Republican Democracies of the World," and an atomic-warheaded rocket came flaming up.
"Hm ... m ... m. Ingenious little gadget, at that," James reported, after studying it thoroughly. "Filthy thing for fall-out, though, if it goes off. Where'll I flip it, Clee? One of their moons?"
"Check. Third one out—no chance of any contamination from there."
The missile vanished; and had any astronomer been looking at that world's third and outermost moon at the moment, he might have seen a tremendous flash of light, a cloud of dust, and the formation of a new and different crater among the hundreds already there.
"No use waiting for 'em, Jim. All three of you toss everything they've got out onto that same moon, being sure not to hurt anybody—yet. I'll start asking questions."
The captain who had fired the first missile appeared in the Main. He reached for his pistol, to find that he did not have one. He tensed his muscles to leap at Garlock, to find that he could not move.
Garlock drove his probe. "Who is your superior officer?" and before the man could formulate a denial, that superior stood helpless beside him.
Then three—and four. At the fifth:
"Oh, you are the man I want. Prime Minister—euphemism for Dictator—Sovig. Missile launching stations and missile storage? You don't know? Who does?"
Another man appeared, and for twenty minutes thePleiadesdarted about the continent.
"Now submarines, atomic and otherwise, and all surface vessels capable of launching missiles." Another man appeared.
This job took a little longer, since the crew of each vessel had to be teleported back to their bases. An immense scrap-pile, probably visible with a telescope of even moderate power, built up rapidly on the third moon.
"Now a complete list of your uranium-refining plants, your military reactors, heavy-water and heavy-hydrogen plants, and so on." Another man appeared, but the starship did not move.
"Here is a list of plants," and Garlock named them, coldly. "You will remember them. I will return you to your office, and you may—or may not, as you please—order them evacuated. Look at your watch. We start destroying them in exactly seventy-two of your hours from this moment. Any and all persons on the properties will be killed; any within a radius of ten of your miles may be killed. Our explosives are extremely powerful, but there is no radioactivity and no danger from the fall-out. The danger is from flash-blindness, flash-burn, sheer heat, shock-wave, concussion, and flying debris of all kinds."
The officer vanished and Garlock turned back to the Prime Minister.
"You have an ally, a nation known as the 'Brotherhood of People's Republics.' Where is its capital? Slide us over there, Jim. Now, Prime Minister Sovig, you and your ally, the second and first most populous nations of your world, are combining to destroy—a pincers movement, let us say?—the third largest nation, or rather, group of nations—the Nations of the North.... Oh, I see. Third only in population, but first in productive capacity and technology. They should be destroyed because their ideology does not agree with yours. They are too idealistic to strike first, so you will. After you strike, they will not be able to. Whereupon you, personally, will rule the world. I will add to that something you are not thinking, but should: You will rule it until one of your friends puts his pistol to the back of your neck and blows your brains out."
They were now over the ally's capitol; which launched five missiles instead of one. Garlock collected four more men and studied them.
"Just as bad—if possible, worse. Who, Lingonor, is the leader of your opposition, if any?" Another man, very evidently of the same race, appeared.
"Idealistic, in a way, but spineless and corrupt," Garlock announced to all. "His administration was one of the most corrupt ever known on this world. We'll disarm them, too."
They did. The operation did not take very long; as this nation—or group, it was not very clear exactly what it was—while very high in manpower, was very low in technology.
The starship moved to a station high above the Capitol Building of the Nations of the North and moved slowly downward until it hung poised one scant mile over the building. Missiles, jets, and heavy guns were set and ready, but no attack was made. Therefore Garlock introduced himself to various personages and invited them aboard instead of snatching them; nor did he immobilize them after they had been teleported aboard.
"The president, the chief of staff, the Chief Justice, the most eminent scientist, the head of a church, the leaders of the legislative body and four political bosses, the biggest business man, biggest labor leader, and biggest gangster. Fourteen men." As Garlock studied them his face hardened. "I thought to leave your Nations armed, to entrust this world's future to you, but no. Only two of you are really concerned about the welfare of your peoples, and one of those two is very weak. Most of you are of no higher motivation than are the two dictators and your gangster Clyden. You are much better than those we have already disarmed, but you are not good enough."
Garlock's hard eyes swept over the group for two minutes before he went on:
"I am opening all of your minds, friend and foe alike, to each other, so that you may all see for yourselves what depths of rottenness exist there and just how unfit your world is to associate with the decent worlds of this or any other galaxy. It would take God Himself to do anything with such material, and I am not God. Therefore, when we have rid this world of atomics we will leave and you will start all over again. If you really try, you can not only kill all animal life on your planet, but make it absolutely uninhabitable for...."
"Stop it, Clee!" Lola jumped up, her eyes flashing. Garlock dropped the tuned group, but Belle took it over. Everyone there understood every thought. "Don't yousee, you've done enough? That now you're going too far? That these twenty-odd men, having had their minds opened and having been given insight into what is possible, will go forward instead of backward?"
"Forward? With such people as the Prime Ministers, the labor and business leaders, the bosses and the gangsters to cope with? Do you think they've got spines stiff enough for the job?"
"I'm sure of it. Our world did it with no better. Millions and millions of other worlds did it. Why can't this one do it? Of course it can."
"May I ask a couple of questions?" This thought came from the tall, trim, soldierly Chief of Staff.
"Of course, General Cordeen."
"We have all been taking it for granted that you four belong to some super-human race; some kind or other ofHomo Superior. Do I understand correctly your thought that your race isHomo Sapiens, the same as ours?"
"Why, of course it is," Lola answered in surprise. "The only difference is that we are a few thousand years older than you are."
"You said also that there were 'millions and millions' of worlds that have solved the problems facing us. Were all these worlds also peopled byHomo Sapiens? It seems incredible."
"True, nevertheless. On any and every world of this type humanity is identical physically; and the mental differences are due only to their being in different stages of development. In fact, every planet we have visited except this one makes a regular custom of breeding its best blood with the best blood of other solar systems. And as to the 'millions and millions,' I meant only a very large but indefinite number. As far as I know, not even a rough estimate has ever been made—has there, Clee?"
"No, but it will probably turn out to be millionsofmillions, instead of millionsandmillions; and squared and then cubed at that. My guess is that it'll take another ten thousand years of preliminary surveying such as we're doing, by all the crews the various Galaxian Societies can put out, before even the roughest kind of an estimate can be made as to how many planets are inhabited by mutually fertile human peoples."
For a moment the group was stunned. Then:
"Do you mean to say," asked the merchant prince, "that you Galaxians are not the only ones who have interstellar travel?"
"Far from it. In fact, yours is the only world we have seen that does not have it, in one form or another."
"Oh? More than one way? That makes it still worse. Would you be willing to sell us plans, or lease us ships...?"
"So that you could exploit other planets? We will not. You would get nowhere, even if you had an interstellar drive right now. You, personally, are a perfect example of what is wrong with this planet. Rapacious, insatiable; you violate every concept of ethics, common decency, and social responsibility. Your world's technology is so far ahead of its sociology that you not only should be, but actually are being, held in quarantine."
"What?"
"Exactly. One race I know of has been inspecting you regularly for several hundreds of your years. They will not make contact with you, or allow you to leave your own world, until you grow up to something beyond the irresponsible-baby stage. Thus, about two and one-half of your years ago, a starship of that race sent down a sensing element—unmanned, of course—to check your state of development. Brother Sovig volatilized it with an atomic missile."
"We did not do it," the dictator declared. "It was the war-mongering capitalists."
"You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot," Garlock sneered. "Are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds linked to your own and to mine?"
"We did do it, then, but it was only a flying saucer."
"Just as this ship was, to you, only a flying saucer, I suppose. So here's something else for you to think about, Brother Sovig, with whatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. When you shot down that sensor, the starship did not retaliate, but went on without taking any notice of you. When you tried to shootusdown, we took some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the situation. Listen carefully now, and remember—it is very possible that the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without any more warning than you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball of incandescent gas."
"Can that actually be done?" the scientist asked. For the first time, he became really interested in the proceedings.
"Very easily, Doctor Cheswick," Garlock replied. "We could do it ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. You are familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?"
"Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very satisfactory mathematics."
"Well, we have at our disposal a field some...."
"Hold it, Clee," James warned. "Do you want to put out that kind of stuff around here?"
"Um ... m ... m. What do you think?"
James studied Cheswick's mind. "Better than I thought," he decided. "He has made two really worthwhile intuitions—a genius type. He's been working on what amounts almost to the Coupler Theory for ten years. He's almost got it, but you know intuitions of that caliber can't be scheduled. He might get it tomorrow—or never. I'd say push him over the hump."
"Okay with me. We'll take a vote—one blackball kills it. Brownie? Just the link, of course. A few hints, perhaps, at application, but no technological data."
"I say give it to him. He's earned it. Besides, he isn't young and may die before he gets it, and that would lose them two or three hundred years."
"Belle?"
"In favor. Shall I drop the linkage? No," she answered her own question. "No other minds here will have any idea of what it means, and it may do some of them a bit of good to see one of their own minds firing on more than one barrel."
"Thank you, Galaxians." The scientist's mind had been quivering with eagerness. "I am inexpressibly glad that you have found me worthy of so much help."
Garlock entered Cheswick's mind. First he impressed, indelibly, six symbols and their meanings. Second, a long and intricate equation; which the scientist studied avidly.
During the ensuing pause, Garlock cut the President and Chief of Staff out of the linkage. "We have just given Cheswick a basic formula. In a couple of hundred years it will give you full telepathy, and then you will begin really to go up. There's nothing secret about it—in fact, I'd advise full publication—but even so it might be a smart idea to give him both protection and good working conditions. Brains like his are apt to be centuries apart on any world."
"But this is ... it could be ... itmustbe!" Cheswick exclaimed. "Ineverwould have formulatedthat! It isn't quite implicit, of course, but from this there derives the existence of, and the necessity for, electrogravitics! An entirely new field of reality and experiment in science!"
"There does indeed," Garlock admitted, "and it is far indeed from being implicit. You leaped a tremendous gap. And yes, the resultant is more humanistic than technological."
Belle's ear-splitting whistle resounded throughout the Main. "How do you likethemtid-bits, Clee?" she asked. "Two hundred years in seventy-eight seconds? You folks will have telepathy by the time your present crop of babies grows up. Clee, aren't you sorry you got mad and blew your top and wanted to pick up your marbles and go home?Threesuch intuitions in one man's lifetime beats par, even for the genius course."
"It sure does," Garlock admitted, ruefully. "I should have studied these minds—particularly his—before jumping at conclusions."
"May I say a few words?" the president asked.
"You may indeed, sir. I was hoping you would."
"We have been discouraged; faced with an insoluble problem. Sovig and Lingonor, knowing that their own lives were forfeit anyway, were perfectly willing to destroy all the life on this world to make us yield. Now, however, with the insight and the encouragement you Galaxians have given us, the situation has changed. Reduced to ordinary high explosives, they cannot conquer us...."
"Especially without an airforce," Lola put in. "I, personally, will see to it that every bomber and fighter plane they now have goes to the third moon. It will be your responsibility to see to it that they do not rebuild."
"Thank you, Miss Montandon. We will see to it. As for our internal difficulties—I think, under certain conditions, they can be handled. Our lawless element," he glanced at the gangster, "can be made impotent. The corrupt practices of both capital and labor can be stopped. We have laws," here he looked at the members of Congress and the judge, "which can be enforced. The conditions I mentioned would be difficult at the moment, since so few of us are here and it is manifest that few if any of our people will believe that such people as you Galaxians really exist. Would it be possible for you, Miss Montandon, to spend a few days—or whatever time you can spare—in showing our Congress, and as many other groups as possible, what humanity may hope to become?"
"Of course, sir. I was planning on it."
"I'm afraid that is impossible," the Chief of Staff said.
"Why, General Cardeen?" Lola asked.
"Because you'd be shot," Cardeen said, bluntly. "We have a very good Secret Service, it is true, and we would give you every protection possible; but such an all-out effort as would be made to assassinate you would almost certainly succeed."
"Shot?" Garlock asked in surprise. "What with? You haven't anything that could even begin to crack an Operator's Shield."
"With this, sir." Cardeen held out his automatic pistol for inspection.
"Oh, I hadn't studied it ... a pellet-projector...."
"Pellet!Do you call a four-seventy-five slug a pellet?"
"Not much of that, really ... it shoots eight times—shoot all eight of them at her. None of them will touch her."
"What?Iwillnot! One of those slugs will go through three women like her, front to back in line."
"I will, then." The pistol leaped into Garlock's hand. "Hold up one hand, Brownie, and catch 'em. Don't let 'em splash—no deformation, so he can recognize his own pellets."
Holding the unfamiliar weapon in a clumsy, highly unorthodox grip—something like a schoolgirl's first attempt—Garlock glanced once at Lola's upraised palm and eight shots roared out as fast as the gases of explosion could operate the mechanism. The pistol's barrel remained rigidly motionless under all the stress of ultra-rapid fire. Lola's slim, deeply-tanned arm did not even quiver under the impact of that storm of heavy bullets against her apparently unsupported hand. No one saw those bullets strike that gently-curved right palm, but everyone saw them drop into her cupped left hand, like drops of water dripping rapidly from the end of an icicle into a bowl.
"Here are your pellets, General Cardeen." Lola handed them to him with a smile.
"Holy—Jumping—Snakes!" the general said, and:
"Wotta torpedo!" came the gangster's envious thought.
"You see, I am perfectly safe from being 'shot,' as you call it," Lola said. "So I'll come down and work with you. You might have your news services put out a bulletin, though. I never have killed anyone, and am not going to here, but anyone who tries to shoot me or bomb me or anything will lose both hands at the wrists just before he fires. That would keep them from killing anyone standing near me, don't you think?"
"I shouldthinkit would," General Cordeen thought, and a pall of awe covered the linked minds. The implications of the naively frank remark just uttered by this apparently inoffensive and defenseless young woman were simply too overwhelming to be discussed.
"Anything else on the agenda, Clee?" Lola asked.
There was not, and the starship's guests were returned, each to his own home place.
And not one of them, it may be said, was exactly the same as he had been.
The deepest Gunther block was at last penetrated and Belle became conscious of a heretofore unknown mental alignment with the ship.