‘I see.’ Metnov was nodding. The story, as he had reason to believe, was incomplete. But he had merely wanted to hear the husband’s delusion. So now he said, ‘Thank you. I again suggest you call Nicer’s line and talk to somebody there. Find out what the Luind attitude is.’
‘I’ll do it right away,’ said Gannott.
The viewplate went blank. It flickered again as he spoke the word that ‘called’ the Nicer ‘line.’ Gannott was slightly amazed when, after briefly talking to Bendley, the Luind leader himself suddenly showed on the plate.
He said as much frankly, ‘I gathered from Metnov that you had been incapacitated for a few days.’
Nicer was calm. ‘We actually got sufficient warning from a machine. But I decided to play along with the game while I thought about it. What’s your problem?’
The Deean leader told of his fear that his wife might have been kidnapped to put pressure on him. ‘And, well, frankly, did your people do it?’
Nicer’s lean face broke into a smile. ‘That sounds much too melodramatic to be a Luind action. Surely, you must know that, with us, it would be all or nothing. A complete stop or total neutrality. That last is what you’ve got.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ said Gannott. ‘Thanks.’
‘Let me understand you. One of the two women who is missing is Dr. Marie Hazzard? Is that correct?’
‘Correct,’
When that connection was broken the Deean sat for a long time and stared with sick eyes at the wall of his study. His thought was all about a certain incredibly beautiful blonde woman who—he suspected in a hopeless fashion—had been unfaithful to him. The possibility left him empty, and made the great event that was about to create him dictator of earth, an almost nothing. For his Deean self was inextricably entangled with a human male’s need to have the woman he loved belong exclusively to him. And if she didn’t—
It was a possibility he dared not contemplate.
After many many minutes he stirred. And stood up. Muttered to himself, ‘Really, I have no conclusive evidence. Let’s be logical.’
Unfortunately, there was a logic in his groin that, by this time, was producing a continuous ache somewhere in the region of his heart. It was like a thrall on him that he finally had to break with a conscious effort.
Shortly thereafter, he also drove away from the rapidly emptying house. On the jet to Texas, feeling heavy and not well, he took a sleeping pill.
Sleep did come, mercifully.
Chapter Twenty
THE PROGRAMMED WOMAN
The phone had rung a minute after she entered her apartment.
The familiar man’s baritone answered her hello: ‘Marie, this is Philip Nicer. And I’ve just found out where you were this evening.’
At the first sound of him, her heart leaped. The very next instant the inversion in its perverse fashion took over. ‘And why,’ asked Marie coldly, ‘has your answering service been saying all day that you wouldn’t be available for several days?’
The impulse to blame included both Nicer and MacKerrie. Outrageous that they had not shown up to help her … None of this need have happened—that was the thought.
‘Oh, that!’ said Nicer.
‘That!’ snapped Marie.
There was a small silence at the other end. Then he said in an urgent tone: ‘Marie, I have just this minute while we were talking, programmed you, using the phone as a carrier. It’s a time phenomenon, and will cover certain past moments. It’d take too long to explain it right now. Do you have a weapon?’
The intense feeling of blame suffered a major diminishment as those earnest words made their impact.
‘Yes—’ she began. A sudden pride came. She could not restrain herself from revealing the truth; not that she had been asked to … She said, ‘I have a plint.’
Another pause, as he apparently considered that enormous fact for a moment. But the pause was brief. ‘I want you to search your room,’ he said. ‘Make absolutely sure there’s no one in the apartment. Meanwhile, lock both your doors!—’
Marie found herself with an odd, disconnected remembrance as those words come into her ears. She was recalling his very first phone contact with her: the same intense implication of imminent danger.
The awareness spurred what was probably the last flicker of anti-male feeling which had been at such a peak during this entire fantastic day. She thought:—This guy operates the best transaction voice-box in the business … ‘I presume,’ she said aloud, critically, ‘all this will end up somewhere cozily in bed.’
Incredibly, that brought an amused chuckle. ‘Maybe we’ll come to that,’ he said, ‘but not right away. And only—’ his voice smiled at her—‘in a sort of way with your full permission.’
‘What do you mean in a sort of a way?’
He didn’t reply to that. When he spoke, the urgent tone was back: ‘Marie, don’t hang up while you make the search. Now, remember, just your own apartment. Don’t go outside. Don’t explore Carl’s rooms. If Silver is there, leave her be. Look everywhere, even under the bed!’
Marie went, resisting, but also shrinking inside. The thought:—Really, Silver and I took all the necessary precautions. And after all Hazzard Laboratories was a fort in itself.
Nevertheless, she did as he had commanded. She had previously locked her hall door. Now, she bolted it. And, as a special measure, she locked the door between her bedroom and sitting room.
She returned to the phone, and made her report in a voice that trembled slightly.
Nicer barely waited until she had finished, then speaking with deliberate slowness: ‘Marie, I want you to think carefully. When you fired the plint at the man in the guest cottage, did he also succeed in firing at you?’
For just a moment she sent her thought back there; and it was simply a neutral effort, a sincere attempt to do as he wished. When after those moments it proved almost impossible to remember … He’s a little late, she thought. After all, I’ve spent the whole hour trying to blot it out.
She even began, automatically, ‘No, I don’t believe—’
She stopped. At that precise instant she realized that his question had a terrifying meaning. ‘Oh, my God,’ she sobbed, ‘you mean, he may have?
‘Marie, think!’ Total earnestness. ‘Was there a small period of blankness after you fired?’
Suddenly, she was crying. ‘I think so, I think so,’ she whispered.
What she didn’t remember—she was realizing in a build-up of terror—were the specific, deadly moments between the time she pressed the button of the plint and the time Silver and she actually went past the fallen body.
They were by him, and looking back—that was her only memory, she realized. And she told Nicer so in a hopeless tone.
‘Marie,’ commanded Nicer, ‘it’ll take me about twenty minutes to get over to you. During that time don’t answer the door until you hear my voice. Understand?’
She gave him as submissive an acquiescence as a woman ever surely uttered. Hung up Staggered over to the bed. And slumped heavily down on it in a state of internal disaster.
The thought, the impossible but demolishing thought, was:—But how could Silver and I have been killed back there, and yet still be alive here? …
Chapter Twenty-One
SETTING THE TRAP
As he turned up the side street to Hazzard Laboratories, Nicer noticed casually when, a hundred feet ahead, a man started across the street. The light of his car picked out the pedestrian in the uncertain way a person is seen at night. So for fateful seconds Nicer had no sense of recognition.
The jaywalker stepped back to let Nicer pass: waited, evidently not suspecting who was in the car.
As Nicer’s car door came opposite Metnov, the Sleele spy was only three feet away. Through the turned-down window, his gaze met Nicer’s. For what seemed a cosmic moment, the two enemies were like so many wild animals meeting suddenly in the jungle.
What instantly bothered Nicer was tha
t he would never be able to convince a Sleele that he, a Luind, was totally surprised by the encounter. Even Metnov apparently believed that Luinds were better, smarter, quicker. As a result he would probably make all kinds of unnecessary maneuvers during the next few minutes.
His (Nicer’s) task had to be to turn the incipient battle into a conversation … He was past. And beginning to recover. As a precaution he ran his fingers over the row of protective buttons on the dash. But truth was, alienoids usually did not murder each other. They were just careful.
He was careful. From inside his bulletproof car, inside his energy screen, inside all those ‘electronic feelers that were probing into the darkness ready to react instantly against an attack, he examined his situation.
He had stopped his machine. Now, he backed slowly, and spoke through his speaker system. ‘Anton, this might be a good time to have that conversation you keep asking me for.’
Except for his headlights it was amazingly dark. The sky was heavily overcast; but the decisive factor was the total absence of street lights. He deduced that the street lights were out by design. He spoke again, urgently, ‘Anton, whatever you’re up to here tonight, we should talk.’
There was a pause. Metnov, waiting behind a tree, cursed silently under his breath. The impossible. The Luind leader himself, and operating from the safety of one of those protected cars.
Crouching there, Metnov visualized the awful possibility that, unless he could hold Nicer here for decisive minutes, his offer to Paul Gannott to capture Dr. Marie Hazzard for the Deeans, would be nullified.
He and his men, he realized grimly, had allowed the coming of Silver to delay them. And then, a short time ago, the blonde woman had phoned him and made her threat. And of course now he had that to take account of also.
Plus Nicer.
The whole situation was suddenly very complex.
Metnov spoke urgently, ‘Phil, why not consider the deal that was offered you at the Lost Souls Restaurant? We could meet occasionally, have conversations, decide on mutually beneficial policies, maybe even work out a way of defeating this Deean takeover.’
Meaningless offer to Nicer; so it seemed to him. Improbable, first, that it would ever happen. And without real interest, second and third and so on, because he could never believe Metnov, anyway. Still, he had his own purposes.
He came directly to his point. ‘What are you doing here tonight, or, for that matter, any night?’
If the question bothered Metnov, it didn’t show. ‘We’re trying to find out what’s happening.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Suddenly, last night,’ said Metnov, ‘the top Deeans show up here and capture Dr. Carl. Simultaneously, Luinds, including you, appear on the scene. I tell you I got on a plane in the middle of last night and flew here to find out what was going on. So if you will do a little enlightening, and reassure me, maybe I’ll feel free to go home.’
It was a long speech; and Metnov was glad to have the chance to make it. He had managed to attach a combination speaker-microphone to the tree; and it was now broadcasting his voice as if he were still there. And of course it was ready to pick up anything Nicer had to say, also. During the entire delivery, he walked rapidly away from Nicer’s car, keeping the tree bole between himself and the car probes that were watching him.
From the greater safety of a second tree more than a hundred feet farther distant, Metnov continued accusingly, ‘You’ve got to admit, Phil, it looks suspiciously as if you’re up to something in connection with the coming of this Deean ship.’
Nicer, whose instruments had detected the other’s retreat—and who wanted Metnov beyond Sleele ESP range—said chidingly, ‘Anton, you’re doing a reversal on me. It’s your association with Paul Gannott, your seeking out his wife, Silver, and many other actions, starting two years ago, that are suspicious. I merely reacted to that. Now, tell me, what are you up to?’
In effect, Metnov’s voice shrugged that aside. ‘Just normal precautions, Phil. After all, we’ve been expecting this ship. I simply got close to the Deean group—in case there were any developments that we needed to react to.’ He concluded suavely, ‘Any time you want the endlessly trivial details of that operation, join me at one of those meetings that I keep urging on you; and I’ll tell you. As for Mrs. Gannott, what you did to her made her available. I probably understood the result better than you do, because I’ve made a rather thorough study of earth women.’
Another one, thought Nicer.
Another study of earth women!
Good God!
He had a sudden, amazed realization that he had a strong impulse to learn Metnov’s views on the females of this planet. But, of course—wryly—this was really not the time.
Metnov’s voice came again: ‘Anything else you want to know in summary?’
As Nicer watched, the ever more remote, and still retreating figure (on his dashboard screen) of the Sleele leader darted from his umpteenth tree into the shelter this time of that end of the Hazzard Laboratories fence.
Nicer recalled vaguely that there was a side street at that point. Presumably, it would take Metnov to a place of security such as his own car.
He was willing, except—
Because of where all this was taking place—at the Hazzard Laboratories—there was no time to discover the facts.
With that thought, Nicer did the Luind interconnecting ritual that would join the already programmed Marie to another of the shadows.
… And the shadow came—
The outward appearance in the immediate vicinity of Metnov remained the same. The same darkness. The same tree-lined type of street. However, as Nicer had divined, Metnov had indeed attained the comparative safety of his own protective car.
He now, quickly, made a soft-voiced contract with his principal aide inside the Hazzard house. And discovered that they had found Silver fully dressed lying asleep on Carl’s bed. But that there was no sign of Dr. Marie Hazzard in either Carl’s apartment or her own.
Metnov’s informant said, ‘We had to break into Dr. Marie’s apartment. While we were doing that, one of our instruments recorded a time distortion. The intensity, brother, was patterned in the way that we have come to associate with one or two persons only being affected.’
Metnov was immediately delighted. ‘That plays into our hands, and only delays the confrontation until as long as he wants to use up shadows. Seems as if we’d better take another look at this Dr. Marie Hazzard. Sounds like some strong emotion, hey, brother!’
He was doubly relieved because such a distortion could mean that Nicer himself was no longer nearby.
‘Capture Silver!’ he commanded. ‘I think that at this time we’ll simply solve the problem of her threat against me, and try to pick up the Hazzard woman when she comes out of the shadow.’
‘Where do you think Nicer will take her?’
‘That depends on his real purpose. Which we actually don’t know. Goodbye brother.’
He broke contact. Being a pragmatist, he drove around the entire perimeter of the Hazzard Laboratories. As he had so swiftly surmised, there was no sign of either Nicer or his car.
Later, thought Metnov, after Silver has been disposed of, I’ll go inside the Hazzard house, and see if I can’t set a trap for Dr. Marie …
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE BRAIN-MAN SELLS OUT
MacKerrie in his thorough fashion had been doing all those endless tests.
Carl’s pink and grey brain was visible again. The same colored tubes were attached to the brain but they were cleaner.
The lower section of Carl—where MacKerrie had completed his check and was now replacing the metal—was also the same computer and other equipment through which Carl’s disembodied brain operated the exteroceptor motors and his electronic eyes, ears, and voice box. However, it all worked better. The transparent dome with its brain, and six-wheeled truck, which—at this point in the proceedings—Carl tested.
First, there was the
faintest of hissing sounds as the compressed air engine which drove the unit was activated. Then the entire structure rolled forward on its rubber wheels.
What it rolled forward into and along was a corridor. The corridor was made of some kind of translucent plastic material. The effect was exotic. Except for that, it could have been the interior of any large, unusually modern building.
Because of what had happened, Carl had reason to believe that it was part of the inside of a Deean spaceship. And, in fact, he accepted that that was the truth of his situation.
Carl moved along the wide—about twenty feet—and high (fifteen feet) hallway. And after going a short distance, turned around and came back, and stopped in front of MacKerrie. He said, ‘Seems all right, Mac, eh?’
MacKerrie said, ‘How’s your vision?’
‘Perfect.’
‘How does my voice come through?’ asked MacKerrie,
‘It seems exactly normal.’
‘Try your arms and hands,’ MacKerrie urged.
Under Carl’s guidance, two layered metal rods glided out from grooves in the six-wheeled vehicle. Each rod had a movable jaw pincer at its end. He opened and closed the pincers.
‘Okay,’ said Carl.
He realized that he was beginning to feel impatient, and hoped it didn’t show in his voice. Obviously, these tests had to be thorough. There had to be a complete check-out. He was grateful to MacKerrie for his sustained interest, and minute attention to every detail.
The surgeon had started his task of giving him back his mobility within minutes after they were put aboard. ‘All right,’ said MacKerrie. ‘Now take a short drive.’
The corridor stretched before and behind him, gleaming, deserted, extending into the distance. Carl rolled tentatively along it on his rubber tires, and tried to imagine what might lie behind those endless, enigmatic plastic walls and under the floors.
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