He was looking into the control room of a small private space yacht!
The deception was so realistic that Saxon gasped before he noticed the three beams of light converging from lenses in the wall, focusing at a point directly behind him to form the solid appearing image. A three-dimensional televisor complete with sound!
Then all speculation was driven from his mind as he recognized the figure who was speaking.
Mustapha IX, Supreme Autocrat of the Terran Empire!
The image of Mustapha sat stiffly in an acceleration chair before the control panel of the space yacht. His voice, rattling away in the strange language, was high, tense, frightened.
Saxon, unable to understand, looked over his shoulder at the seven old men. They were all on their feet, staring in disbelief at the three dimensional image. The Moderator's hands began to tremble. He sat down as if his knees had turned to water.
The voice rattled on and on.
At last Mustapha IX quit talking. The Moderator pressed the button. The image dissolved.
A stunned silence followed, as one by one the old men sank back to their seats. Saxon, devoured with curiosity, asked, "What was it?"
The Moderator gave him a level glance. "That was the man you know as Mustapha IX, Supreme Autocrat of the Terran Empire. He was reporting from his private yacht which has just emerged from the time field and is decelerating. It'll be a week before he lands on Vark."
"Mustapha IX?" Saxon burst out. "Here on Vark? But that's impossible. What's he doing—"
"There's been civil war," the Moderator interrupted savagely. "General Atomic has overthrown Government. General Atomic is the Terran Government now!"
"But I don't see ..." protested Saxon.
"Bah! I spoke of controls. Naturally our first necessity has been to control the humanoid's government. The Supreme Autocrats have all been Varkans, our governors, which we sent to Earth!
"Now Mustapha IX has had to flee for his life. Most of our agents on Earth have been murdered. Only a handful escaped with him!"
The Moderator pressed another button, began to speak rapidly, tonelessly in the alien language into a microphone. The thoughts of the seven old men were flashing back and forth like streaks of light behind their mental barrier. The crisis, Saxon realized, had arrived with a vengeance!
Suddenly the guard came running through the door in answer to a summons by the Moderator. For the first time Saxon intercepted a thought as the Moderator directed the guard to take the prisoners away.
"Send the girl to Zara," he commanded the guard. "Confine the man here until we can check results!"
"Come along," said the guard in a tight voice to Saxon and Ileth. He took hold of Ileth's arm. The girl shrank away from him, frightened by the swift and ominous change which had come over their captors.
Saxon's eyes went bleak. The guard jerked back as he caught a glimpse of Saxon's intentions, but he wasn't quick enough.
Saxon's balled fist caught him on his left cheek bone, sent him sprawling to the checkered pavement. Saxon was on him like a wolf. Wrenching the cylinder from the stunned guard's belt, he backed off swinging the unfamiliar weapon in a menacing arc.
He backed off, swinging the unfamiliar weapon.
He backed off, swinging the unfamiliar weapon.
He backed off, swinging the unfamiliar weapon.
He saw the withered faces of the Elders blanch. They pressed stiffly against the back of their chairs, jaws sagging. The guard scrambled to his feet. He shook his head groggily but made no move to attack Saxon.
Triumph welled up inside Jon Saxon. He said, "The shoe's on the other foot. I don't know how this damned thing works, but there's a button. Unless you start answering my questions straight we'll see what happens if I press it."
He paused. The seven old men glared at him but said nothing.
"How did General Atomic discover your agents? Why didn't their invisibility protect them?"
The Moderator moistened his lips. "The humanoids devised a machine that detects us. An adaption of the thought projector, which enabled them to detect our telepathic potential. Once they could isolate our thought waves, they were able to trace them to their source by a process similar to locating the source of a radio beam."
Saxon narrowed his eyes, recalling the thought projector which the radiation branch of Government's Bureau of Research had been experimenting with. So that's how General Atomic had uncovered the Aliens.
"General Atomic," the Moderator was saying, "suspected the existence of mutants, telepaths, ever since an agent of theirs by the name of Emil turned in a report on you!"
Saxon started.
The Moderator's first fright was over, he realized. The old man was regarding him with a faint smile.
Saxon glanced behind him in alarm; but there was nothing there. He clenched his fist until the knuckles whitened. "What other methods did you use to keep the humanoids in check?"
There was a subtle change in the voice of the Moderator when he answered. It was ringing, hard. "As I said, we foresaw this crisis. To discourage stellar travel we planted a pathologic fear of deep space in the humanoid subconscious.
"Certain of their discoveries we have suppressed. Notably, the space-time stellar drive. The Little Death, as you call it, has been discovered three separate times in the past thousand years."
"What?"
"Yes. Are you surprised? Once by an unknown scientist, once by a physicist, Dr. Walter, and lastly by Dr. Villainowski."
Although Saxon still held the alien weapon, he had the uncomfortable sensation that a trap had been sprung and the Moderator was only waiting for it to close on him.
With a suffocating tenseness, he asked, "What am I?"
"You," said the Moderator, "are a test experiment!"
"What?"
"A test experiment. On your psychological reactions will depend the ultimate fate of the humanoids!"
"A test experiment," he repeated dazedly. "What do you mean?"
"Simply this. For some time we've realized that steps must be taken to curb the rapaciousness of the humanoids."
"But me...."
The Moderator held up his hand.
"I'm coming to you. If the ruthless savagery of the humanoids was instinctive, part of their heredity, there was little that could be done except destroy them.
"But if, on the other hand, their natures resulted from the pressure of their environment, we might be able to modify that environment and salvage our experiment."
"But what the hell am I? What did you mean when you said I was a test experiment?"
The Moderator seemed to have forgotten the existence of Saxon's weapon. He tugged at his lower lip with thumb and forefinger. "You are not a humanoid. You are one of us, a Varkan. We placed you as a baby on Earth to be raised as a humanoid."
"I was eleven," protested Saxon.
"A mere baby still, with psychological plasticity." The Moderator waved the objection aside. "If your disposition hardened into humanoid characteristics, then we would be safe in assuming that the humanoids, too, were a product of their environment.
"Of course, there were factors we couldn't control. The natural unfolding of your sixth and seventh senses in early childhood—"
Saxon burst out, "But I was twenty-seven when I developed a sixth sense and thirty-one—"
"My son, that's quite true. But you're only in your adolescence now."
"At thirty-eight," said Saxon in disbelief, "I'm an adolescent?"
The Moderator nodded. "And precocious at that!"
Ileth giggled again nervously.
Saxon gave a short laugh. He had a feeling that he had been stuffed too full of information. He couldn't digest it. In spite of the suspicions he had entertained concerning his birth, he was unable to really believe that he was an Alien!
He glanced suddenly at Ileth. The girl had shrunk away from him as if he were a leper. Her hazel-green eyes were horrified. All at once, she began to cry.
Saxon tried to pat her shoulder, but she wrenched away. The action drove a needle of pain into his heart. He realized in a numbed fashion how fond he had grown of the girl.
"Fond, hell!" he thought savagely, "I'm in love with her."
"My son," came the hated voice of the Moderator, "she is not for you."
"What do you mean?" Saxon shouted.
The Moderator regarded him a moment, his eyes veiled. Then, "The psychologist is ready to give you his report. As a true human, you have the right to hear it."
A shriveled, wrinkled man at the end of the table began to address Saxon in a dry voice.
"I've been probing your reactions as the truth was revealed to you. You can understand the importance of an accurate judgment, when you know that the fate of our experiment rests on the manner in which you conformed to a humanoid environment."
"Experiment be damned!" Saxon flung out "What about me?"
The psychologist permitted himself a vague smile. "Your reactions have been typically humanoid.
"You have been bewildered, frightened, angry.
"You tried to think first of some way by which you could destroy us. Failing that, you cast about in your mind for some compromise which would cause us to hold our hand until we could be either conquered or wiped out—preferably wiped out. These are typically humanoid reactions to a dangerous foe.
"Under the circumstances we can preserve our experiment if we can modify the humanoids' environment."
Saxon felt relief. Whatever the Aliens planned, they weren't going to destroy mankind.
The psychologist having delivered his report, the Moderator resumed, "It is unfortunate in a way for you, my son, that the test has been so favorable to the humanoids.
"They live and die so fast that in a few generations we can correct their savage dispositions.
"But you have solidified in the humanoid mould. You will have to undergo a dangerous operation. Our psychologist must induce infantile retrogression in you. When you have been reduced mentally, to the age of eleven, then your re-education can begin.
"I'll be perfectly frank. You have about one chance in ten of retaining your sanity. The danger lies in that retrogression once activated in your brain cells. It cannot always be halted."
Saxon's laugh was a croak. "You forget I've still the weapon."
The Moderator said, "It's time that this nonsense stopped. We've allowed you to retain the cylinder in order to observe your reactions. Look around you!"
Saxon spun around.
Materializing like gray wraiths, a dozen figures were taking substance behind him. They were all armed with shining cylinders.
"Drop it!" commanded the Moderator.
Saxon's weapon clanged against the pavement.
Ileth suppressed a scream, swayed, half fainting. Saxon caught her before she fell. The girl recovered, flung her arms about his neck.
"You can't do it!" she stormed at the Elders. "You can't. I love him. I don't care what he is, I love him, I tell you!"
"Take them away!" the Moderator said imperiously.
The wraiths had grown solid. They began to close in.
Saxon's spine stiffened. He said, "Wait a moment!" in a breathless voice. "Have you overlooked the five sets of plans for Villainowski's stellar drive? The ones that were stolen from Government's Research Building?"
The Moderator's face went gray. For the second time Saxon intercepted a thought flowing between the seven old men.
A fear thought! Pure funk!
Saxon's heart leaped like an arrow as the realization burst on him that the seven old men were terrified of the humanoids. They were so badly frightened that for a moment their guard had relaxed and the fear thought had escaped past their mental barriers.
If only there was a way to exploit their fear. He felt hope surging back through his veins.
"Already," he shouted, "General Atomic must be manufacturing the ships. And you can't stop it. The secret of stellar travel is loose among the humanoids!"
"We know of the loss of the plans. General Atomicislaying the keels of thousands of the new-type ships. But that doesn't affect your fate in the least."
"Doesn't it?" said Saxon harshly. "I'm the only Varkan who can compete with the humanoids. I'm the only one who's been conditioned to the speed of their reflexes."
"You're a dangerous anti-social!" the Moderator snapped. "Your auto-reactions approach the humanoid level because you're still a child with a child's adaptiveness. When you mature you'll appreciate the difference. We wouldn't dare use you even if you could do anything. If worst comes to worst we can destroy our experiment!"
Saxon laughed at him. "And how many generations of humanoids would have passed away before you could wipe out a culture that's spread to all the planets of its solar system? Why, they'll be swarming over Vark from pole to pole before you can prepare to repel them."
The Moderator winced, tried to interrupt, but Saxon was inexorable.
"You might have been able to destroy them while you had them isolated in their own Solar System. But they're free now. Free to expand through the Galaxy!"
Saxon paused. The idea sprouting some time ago had begun to bear fruit. He pushed it resolutely out of his mind lest they intercept it.
The Moderator asked with narrowed eyes, "You have an idea, haven't you?"
Saxon could feel the Aliens probing at his thoughts like a scalpel laying bare his skull.
"Two times two is four. Three times two is six," he thought hastily and realized the seven old men were on the verge of apoplexy.
There was a tense moment of silence as their wills clashed. Then the Moderator asked, "What's your price?"
"Freedom for myself and the crew. Hands-off policy for the humanoids."
The silence deepened.
Again Saxon became aware of those flickering baffling thoughts as the seven old men conferred behind their mental shields.
At last, grudgingly, the Moderator spoke, "That depends on your success."
Saxon didn't relax. He had won only if he had guessed the right answer to a question that had been obsessing him. If he was right, he would need no guarantee to hold the Aliens to their promise.
"You said that when the metabolism of the humanoids was slowed they returned to their normal life span. Does that mean that you can actually lengthen their lives to equal yours?"
The Moderator looked puzzled, nodded. "A comparatively simple operation, but...."
"But nothing!" Saxon almost shouted. "If their life span is the same as yours, then they'll be on the same time scale. Their fecundity is the direct result of their shortened life cycle. They'll no longer constitute a menace!"
Hope blazed temporarily in the Moderator's eyes, then went out. When he spoke next his voice was cold, dead.
"But that takes time. Before we could effect the change several generations of humanoids would have lived and died. We'd be conquered!"
Saxon laughed outright. "Of course, you people couldn't effect the change quick enough, but other humanoids could. You have Ileth here. She's a General Atomic agent. You have the crew and some of the best brains on Earth isolated on Zara. They could do it!"
The Moderator drew in his breath sharply. "But would they be willing to cooperate?"
"What a question!" roared Saxon. "Would mankind be willing to increase their life span ten thousand years? They'll jump at it!"
Zara was a diminutive green little world, held in thrall by the third planet of Alpha Centauri A. A miniature heaven of soft breezes and crystal streams and gravity so slight that Saxon felt buoyant as a bubble.
He said in rare good humor, "So there it is. The Varkans can't slow the metabolic rate of billions of humanoids by force or by themselves in time."
He was surrounded by the members of the expedition, to whom he had just explained the proposal of the Aliens to extend mankind's normal life span to an unthinkable age.
With his arm around Ileth's slim waist, he had watched suspicion give way to hope and hope to wild enthusiasm. Only Villainowski appeared disgruntled.
"It's more than I can stomach," growled the Chief, "to think of perpetuating General Atomic in power practically forever."
Saxon leaned close, said in a lowered voice, "You don't believe that if the people have ten thousand years to contemplate the iniquity of General Atomic, they'll continue to be duped. It'll be the death blow to all the big corporations."
He straightened, returning his arm to Ileth's waist. "There's no reason for you to return to Earth with the rest of them, Villainowski. There's a lot to see here, a lot to learn. Ileth and I are going to spend...."
He frowned, called, "Hey, Mercedes. You're the anthropologist. What was that barbaric custom practiced by newly-married couples during the pre-Atom age?"
"The honeymoon." Mercedes chuckled, turned to the faintly pink Ileth, pinched her cheek. "Don't look so frightened, child. The first ten thousand years are the hardest."
[Transcriber's Note: Original text had two section VII. Second one renumbered to VIII.]