The Secret Galactics

by A. E. van Vogt

  Questions.

  Her mind, each question, went off somewhere. When, between kisses, he asked more questions, what he asked was not what she talked about.

  She didn’t remember what he said. And, presently, he seemed amused by that. After that it was man-woman.

  … Marie watched as Nicer, fully dressed, emerged from the bathroom. He came over to her, and he did something wonderfully significant. He bent down and drew the sheet up over her nude body, which she had left exposed.

  Marie was delighted … He’s embarrassed by the way I responded—

  The man continued to gaze down at her, which was an effectively handsome thing for him to do. Impressed, Marie trilled at him in her now shamelessly musical voice, ‘A penny for your thoughts, Colonel?’

  He smiled, sort of sadly. ‘I guess we’ll just have to play this, blind,’ he said. ‘You’re like a bird on the wing. This is not the moment to ask you what it would be like if your wings were clipped. Or—’ he rephrased it—Vital it was like?’

  ‘The way I feel is, you’d better get back into this bed.’

  He thought, awed:—The hormones are really dancing …

  Aloud, he said, ‘Marie, listen. You should know some facts. This condition will continue for six days. During that time I will be around. So, no matter where you find yourself, no matter how strange, remember I’ll be nearby somewhere. Got that?’ He smiled to take the implied threat out of what he was saying. Threat not by him, but to her.

  Again, if she heard, if the words went in and made any contact at all—it didn’t show. But she gave him an answering smile. And she said, ‘You’re cute.’

  Oddly, her voice, though it was still musical, rang in her ears with a peculiar hollow echoing. And she felt—felt—felt—

  … The shadow …

  Chapter Fourteen

  VICTIM OF THE GAS GUN

  … Jolson Road was in the hills at the south end of the city. Marie turned into a driveway between two high posterns, and followed a paved road for several hundred yards. It came abruptly into a courtyard of the kind of house that Marie had seen at the ancestral homes of the Old South, and—on her two visits to England—the mansions of the old nobility.

  Long, wide, three stories high, built of brick and stone, perfectly kept, inframed in a garden—the residence of a very rich man.

  She arrived at the front entrance, and stopped. There were—she could see—lights on in the house, and there were lights on the front porch. But she did not actually sight a living person. No shadowy figures pulled aside drapes to peer out of windows. Nobody came to the door.

  It suggested that the sound of an arriving car did not arouse the suspicion of whoever was inside.

  Marie got out of the car, walked to the door, and rang. Then rang again. Then again, more insistently.

  The door did not open. Somebody spoke at her through a speaker system. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Silver is hurt,’ said Marie.

  The man who had inquired did not trouble to turn off the speaker, as he called off at somebody else: ‘It’s a woman. She’s got Silver with her. She says Silver is hurt.’

  The other voice must have come nearer, for it was suddenly audible. ‘Hurt?’ it said. It sounded shocked.

  ‘Better be careful,’ cautioned the first voice. ‘Remember what’s going on here tonight.’

  The door opened a crack, and came to a stop against a chain. A face peered out. It was the face of a man of about fifty.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked in a firm, determined voice.

  ‘I’m a friend of Silver’s,’ said Marie. ‘Before she fainted, she told me to bring her here.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s on the floor in the back seat of the car.’

  The door shut. There was silence. Marie deduced that the speaker system had been shut off, arid that the two men were consulting. What they were doing seemed incredibly normal. Night. A strange visitor. An outlying residence. They were being careful. Could these people really be alienoid invaders?

  There was another wispy thought:—What am I doing here? Am I out of my mind? … The blankness closed down on those questions, blotting them.

  The door opened, revealing a wide, bright hallway, and seven well-dressed men. Four of the men came out. As Marie stepped aside, the four went by her down to her car. They opened the rear door, and looked in. At which point one of them turned and called, ‘It’s Silver all right.’

  At that the fifty-ish man came out onto the porch. He ignored Marie. A feminine something inside her resented that. Impelled by that feeling, she half-turned, and moved a little, so that if he glanced in her direction he would see her profile—which, from comments made by men, she had decided was her best physical asset.

  Realization of what she was doing came moments after that. Instant shame … Did it again—She recognized it as an attempt to solicit a man’s protective interest, incited by her attractive appearance.

  Marie stood beside the big man, and watched as three of the men carried Silver up the steps and into the house. They laid her on a gleaming bench in that big hall. One of the men inside went over, picked up her wrist, and checked her pulse against his wrist watch. Then he reached and pulled back an eyelid.

  A doctor? Evidently. For he turned, and said, ‘Her pulse is too normal for a faint. It could be certain types of drugs. But my guess is a gas gun was used on her. Heart beat is regular, so I’d deduce it was one of the—’ He named a group of chemicals. ‘The effect doesn’t last much over an hour, so she should be coming to shortly.’

  Marie had been listening intently to the swift, accurate analysis. Momentarily, she forgot the older man who had come out onto the porch. She remembered him with a start as strong fingers caught her wrist, and tugged at her. The firm voice said into her left ear, ‘You’d better come inside, Ms.’

  He didn’t wait for her to walk in by herself. She felt herself drawn forward into the house. As she stepped across the threshold, one of the three men who had helped carry Silver into the house said, ‘Do you think she knows what happened to Silver?’

  There was no problem about that. Marie had during the past few moments been thinking hard about that very thing. She said now, simply, ‘The doorbell rang. When I answered it, this strange woman staggered in, and fell. Before she passed out, she told me not to take her to the doctor’s, but to bring her down here.’ She paused, and then spoke the lie she had made up on the way down, ‘I’m Betty Fardell.’ It was the name of a college classmate.

  The M.D. type laughed curtly at her explanation, and said in a ridiculing tone, ‘Paul, with a gas capsule she wouldn’t have got to that door, or had a chance to give an address. Besides—’ coldly—‘it’s time you face up to what Silver is—’

  The big man cut off the words with an impatient gesture. He said, ‘Let’s get her up to her bedroom.’ To Marie, he said courteously, ‘Thank you, Miss Fardell. Will you come up with us and temporarily baby-sit Silver? We’re very busy here tonight, but I’ll come in soon.’

  … And there, bare minutes later, Marie was in a bedroom, with the door closed.

  Alone with Silver.

  It was really an unacceptable situation; so it seemed to Marie. For over fourteen years, she had avoided to the best of her knowledge ever being in the same room with a Carl Hazzard mistress. In fact she had once made an aphorism of her own on that very subject:

  ‘One way you can tell a Real Man is by the fact that he believes it is mature for his First Wife and his Second Wife to accept being brought into each other’s homes. And he

  would just love to have a roomful of his mistresses all babbling away to each other; and he sitting there smugly with The Knowledge: I-got-’em-all-by-God-and-that-proves-something.’

  Marie had her own idea of what it proved. But that was not part of the written-down aphorism. In fact, her view on that godly state of the conquering male was one of her few unprintable judgments.

  For a while, feeling es
sentially blank, she sat in an armchair beside the fancy bed. But she finally had a thought:—I’d better search this room before Silver comes to …

  With that, she was up at once. The search was disappointing. Another wealthy woman’s room, much like her own—that was the outcome. Spacious. High-ceilinged. Furnished with expensive modern furniture, exquisitely beautiful like its owner.

  Before returning to her armchair, Marie went to the door and tried to open it. It was locked.

  Sitting down again, her situation unimproved, except now she knew she was a prisoner.

  I still, she told herself, have my gas capsule discharger … And she had noticed a pistol in one of the drawers of a bureau—I suppose I ought to get that before Silver awakens and plops me with it.

  But—with a sigh—she didn’t really believe that would happen. So she didn’t move.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE ROBOT REMEMBERS

  Gannott entered the room where Carl was sitting, so to say, on his motionless wheels. The Deean leader nodded at the guard. ‘Take a break, if you wish, Don.’ The other man evidently found this an attractive idea, for he got up and made his exit.

  The big man had no fear of his captive. Engineers had gingerly removed the cannon-rifle on top of Carl, and of course no one had reconnected him to the vehicle control. For nearly twenty-four hours, earth’s only bodiless brain had been literally as helpless as it was possible for anything, or anybody, to be.

  As Gannott approached, he grabbed a chair in his pathway, and presently placed it in front of the brain machine. But he remained standing.

  These preliminaries, brief though they were, gave Carl time to disconnect from the viewing camera in the Hazzard house. And to orient again to his prison.

  ‘Hello, Dr. Carl,’ Gannott said.

  ‘Hello,’ replied the machine voice.

  The two beings—Paul Gannott, the Deean alienoid who looked human, and Carl Hazzard, the human being whose brain was encased in a machine, stared at each other, one with eyes and the other by way of a TV-type camera.

  Apparently satisfied, Gannott sat down, and said, ‘If you don’t mind I’d like to light a cigarette and talk to you.’

  Carl, who of course had all the time in the world, and was only, perversely, worried over what Marie was doing with her time, expressed his willingness. But he was wary. From the beginning, Gannott had shown as an unusually impressive person and as a remorseless leader.

  Something new here; that was his observation. Another purpose, different from what had developed from their conversation after he was first captured.

  He found himself remembering his lifetime adult view: that even when men were discussing business they were really reflecting their woman situation. The tone of voice, the freedom—or lack of it—with which they could momentarily consider such a drab matter as the sale of goods or a scientific research program, the tensions in the body, gestures, movements, twistings—everything was always an exact image of a man’s only true obsession: sex … Carl believed.

  Gannott said, ‘Something about your role in this matter puzzles me.’

  ‘Which something?’

  The heavy face was intent. ‘Have you any explanation for why our ship would want to take you along to Deea?’

  Unexpected question. Brief blankness. Then the first thought stirring that was not a part of the fantasy state into which he had been precipitated at the prospect of isolating Marie away from all other men forever.

  Finally: ‘I haven’t the faintest—’ Carl began, and then as a startled thought came, he finished weakly—‘idea.’

  The stunning thought was:—I was briefly in direct communication with the ship’s robotic center when I plugged into it. It remembers me …

  It seemed to him that something about that contact was motivating the machine out there in some automatic way related to its programming.

  Gannott was fumbling in his pocket. His hand emerged with what looked like a photograph. ‘I have the picture of a woman here,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you’d look at her and tell me if you recognize her.’

  He stood up and walked forward until he stood directly in front of the electronic ‘eye’ through which Carl viewed the world from that side.

  The first photo that Gannott held out was of Marie. It had been taken by an automatic camera as she walked through the front door of the Gannott mansion half an hour before. Carl recognized her at once, naturally. And since he hoped that Marie would join him in about twenty-four hours, he promptly identified her.

  The second photo was of Silver lying unconscious on the hall bench. Her face was half-turned toward the camera, and so was sufficiently visible for identification. Carl recognized her at once as the woman he had seen for the first time in his apartment about an hour before. Since his previous relationship had been so intimate, though always in the darkness of a bedroom at night, he naturally had no intention of admitting any knowledge whatsoever. Thus, after a suitable pause, he made his total denial.

  With that, it was Gannott’s turn to react. His impulse was to say, ‘If that is true, Dr. Carl, then how would you explain the fact that your wife brought her here a little while ago?’

  He didn’t say it. The exact moment of such a confrontation, it seemed to Gannott, should be carefully prepared for, so that all relevant information would automatically be evoked. After what seemed only moments, he replaced the photographs in his breast pocket. He stood, then, struggling to suppress a smile of triumph.

  Finally: ‘If you will wait here,’ he said, ‘I’ll bring in someone else.’

  He walked to the corridor door, opened it, and went out, leaving the door ajar. A minute went by. Then he came back, followed after moments only by three men. Of these latter, two were guards of the third, who had his hands tied behind his back.

  The third man was about as grim an individual as any man could ever be. But he took one look at the six-wheeled machine that stood in the corner across from the door. And he cried out involuntarily, ‘Carl!’

  ‘Mad’ said the machine, sounding equally startled.

  The prisoner was Angus MacKerrie, M.D.

  MacKerrie’s voice was darkly angry. ‘I was kidnapped as I was leaving the Brain Foundation, and brought over here.’

  ‘But why?—what?—’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. The whole thing is utterly mad.’

  Paul Gannott watched the confrontation, and could not restrain a smile of triumph. He walked forward, and said:

  ‘I’m sure you will agree, Doctor, that for such a long journey, a disembodied brain should have expert care. Who better than Dr. Angus MacKerrie, the man who performed the operation and knows what must be done. We shall be happy to furnish any equipment which the two of you in consultation agree that you will need. Food and other supplies suitable for human beings are already aboard. I understand from our earlier conversation that you were accidentally rendered immobile. Dr. MacKerrie has my authority to reconnect you to this six-wheeled vehicle. Thus you will be mobile again and be able to traverse the numerous corridors of the large vessel which will transport you to Deea.’

  He was smiling by the time he had finished. He said, ‘As you can see, we Deeans aren’t all bad, despite our reputations.’

  He stepped back. As he turned away, he said, ‘If you’ll excuse me again.’

  He left the room hastily.

  Gannott went upstairs. With a twisted smile, he presently unlocked the door of Silver’s bedroom. ‘Miss Fardell,’ he began in a silken tone, as he entered, ‘I would like you to come—’

  At this point his voice faltered. The smile vanished. Gulping, he charged all the way inside. Plunged wildly to the right wall, then to the left. Peered under the bed, behind settees, into clothes closets.

  But in the end there was no doubt. The two women had disappeared. The stunned Deean leader hastened back to Carl and MacKerrie. ‘It has become necessary,’ he said, ‘to have you both taken up to the ship right away.’ He gestu
red at his aides. ‘Take them away!’ he commanded.

  Carl was wheeled out into the night by half a dozen men through a brightly lighted patio, across a courtyard, and into a dark area. MacKerrie and his guards followed.

  What they came to was not easy to see, since it was in an unlighted space. A shape somewhat like a beehive, the top of which was more pointed than a hive. This structure was roughly twenty feet in diameter and fifteen feet high. There in the darkness it sat on the soil of earth.

  A ramp slanted from the ground to a shadowy entrance five feet up. Up this ramp walked MacKerrie and up it the men pushed Carl.

  Some of the men came down the ramp again. Those that stayed aboard—four in all—firmly lashed Carl to some sturdy stanchions. Then, along with MacKerrie, they sat down in cushioned seats that looked quite ordinary, and fastened seat belts.

  A faint wheezing sound was the next ordinary thing. Now, the object did a totally extraordinary, colossal process. It lifted into the night sky. It had no wings, no rockets. But up it went.

  The night sky was clouded, but there was some visibility. Presumably, a passerby, or a nearby resident could have glanced up and noticed the shadowy, silent module as it raised itself. But if anyone did see, it was not apparent in the first decisive minute. After that it was of course too late.

  Chapter Sixteen

  AN 8-P ACCOMPLISHED

  Unnoticing Carl.

  He virtually ignored the entire lift process.

  Suddenly, the reality underlying his fantasy surfaced from that nether depth where, of course, it had been pulsating and palpitating all these hours since the initial excitement about it had hit him the previous night.

  Alone with Marie for every conscious moment of fifty years. That was the promise from Gannott that had just about loosed his brain from its mechanical container. The excitement that came at that moment had no relation to reality at all.

  Even now that he was ‘better’, he didn’t notice that. It did not occur that the Marie whose presence he craved was the woman to whom he had once, contemptuously, offered all his Wednesday evenings—after 10 p.m. And that maybe she remembered that and wouldn’t appreciate his company. In those days, when he was to all outward appearances a whole man, he had been driven by erotic impulses so feverish that he had never” for a minute asked himself why, or how, or what.