The Secret Galactics

by A. E. van Vogt

  The thought wouldn’t hold. Swiftly, his attention went back to Marie … Damn it, he decided abruptly, it’s now or never—He absolutely had to take one more chance of trying to connect up with his apartment. And hope that this time, if she came in, she would be alert enough to become aware of him.

  He wanted to warn her. Tell her about the secret entrance. How to bolt and lock it. Obviously, there was no other way that she could be captured.

  He didn’t want her along, now that MacKerrie was definitely going, also. The thought—the precise thought—was that Marie, left to herself, would remain her frigid self. After all, she was a married woman. She knew where he was, and where he would be going, and that he was not dead but on a journey. The fact that it was a lifetime journey was something that a woman who was in the timeless uncriticizable condition of being ‘good’ could never, somehow, solve inside herself; of that Carl was convinced.

  Theoretically, this might also be true aboard ship. But Carl had a feeling that it would work out better if she were left to her work and her house and to the lulling effects of being in and on the familiar surroundings of earth.

  ‘I have to remember,’ Carl told himself, ‘that I’m dealing here with a female who married me in Reno. And when we had sex the second night, I noticed she had a little difficulty in responding, but I put it down to the hectic day we had had and went peacefully to sleep. The next morning, when I awakened, she was not in bed, not in the room. I found a note on the dresser, which read:

  ‘ “My darling: You were sleeping so beautifully, I decided not to awaken you. Though I didn’t mention it, all day yesterday and during the night, I felt physically so odd that I surmise I have become pregnant. I phoned the hotel doctor last night, and I’m going to see him now. See you when I get through.

  Love,

  Marie”

  Impatiently, Carl reminded himself:

  ‘I had a most unhappy feeling as I read the note. In the first place, I had told her, no children. And since she had successfully avoided pregnancy during our first affair, it struck me, in the second place, as peculiar that on almost the exact hour of our wedding, she was with child. In the third place, what a strange action, going off to a doctor without telling me in advance.

  ‘At nine o’clock the phone rang. It was Marie. She spoke in a very stimulated voice, “I’m in the lobby. It’s so exciting down here. Please meet me as soon as you can, and we’ll have breakfast in the Garden Room. I’ll be at one of the gaming tables waiting for you.”

  ‘I had remained in bed, expecting that when she came back she would join me. So now I said, “Hey, wait a minute—”

  ‘But she had already hung up.

  ‘Right there, I had what I considered to be a part of the picture. So I got dressed, packed my bag, went downstairs, paid for our room for a week, and drove back to Los Angeles. I sent her a wire enroute, saying that I had been called home by the navy and would rejoin her later that week.

  ‘I returned to Reno late the following Saturday night. I phoned our room from the lobby and suggested she join me down there and that we go to a floor show, to which she agreed. She was very subdued and looked pale, and she told me that the doctor had said it was too soon to be sure but that she was sure, and that we would have to be careful not to hurt the child, which after all was innocent and dependent on our goodwill for its future well-being. When we got back to our room, we had sex in a strange position the doctor had recommended—

  ‘And then, of course, somewhere about a month after our marriage, it developed she wasn’t pregnant at all, but just a typical female of the good woman type, which I didn’t know about at the time, going into her frigid state, and thereafter limiting sex to once a week, or even less.’

  So, thought Carl as he sat there in the corridor of the Deean spaceship, surely the woman who had done that, and yet afterwards remembered the honeymoon as something we had both enjoyed—surely, that woman will not lightly abandon her uncriticizable condition when I’m away …

  (The thing that did not strike the man-brain was, why was it important to him that Marie remain faithful to him forever?)

  But he had reassured himself. So he did a sort of mental bracing—and tried for the connection with his apartment.

  Made it instantly.

  Waited tensely, then, for the ship to interfere. Surely, it would cut him off, block his attempt to communicate beyond and outside and away.

  Nothing like that happened. The seconds ticked by, and there was his bedroom, sharply delineated, everything as before … Wait a minute! The bed looked rumpled.

  Carl stared at the crinkled bed spread, and strove to analyze how and what and why. The hope even came suddenly that it was a good indicator. Whoever had done it would be back—maybe.

  His desire to have that be so was so strong that, when he heard the sound, he momentarily misinterpreted it. He wanted it to be Marie.

  Instead, the worst—

  As Carl watched, dismayed, five men came one after the other out of the clothes closet that hid the secret entrance. What was so incredible, and stunning, was that he had had the secret entrance built for two women. For Silver—and one other. That other knew of his death, and of the surgical removal of his brain; so she would surely never come again.

  What was so deadly was that, even as he was having it constructed, he had realized that such a hidden opening penetrated the security of the Hazzard Laboratories. And, of course, sex drive had dismissed the risk at the time. Seeing the men brought the awful realization, the guilt, the self-condemnation. But it was too late.

  Carl watched, helpless. Two of the men trotted past his camera eye, and out the corridor door where Marie and Silver had disappeared, earlier. Two headed for and entered the study. The fifth man, a slender, handsome individual, who seemed to be in his early thirties, and had a gold sheen in his eyes—which were the most insolent Carl had ever seen—stepped a dozen feet in front of Carl. He then slowly turned a full 360°, apparently sizing up the bedroom.

  Belatedly, Carl noticed that the intruder had either a crystal or metal something in one hand. Whatever it was gleamed slightly. Holding it, he finally walked toward Carl. Stopped. And said to no one in particular, ‘There’s a …’ The word was not clear—‘covering a portion of this room. Whoever is watching through it sees me. But it’s a one-way mechanism being stimulated at this moment from a point about twenty-three thousand miles up in a south-easterly direction.

  It was a zeroing-in so perfect that Carl had a sudden feeling of total frustration … Damn it, Marie could have done something like that—He could scarcely contain his rage. If she had even looked, he told himself ferociously, they could have worked out a two-way communication system. Abruptly, it was as if Marie and not he was responsible for everything that had gone wrong … By some kind of signal system, he told himself in those seconds of injured innocence, he could have told her to call Police Lieutenant Barry Turcott—and let that sincere young officer take it from there.

  His thought, and his fury, ended as abruptly as it had begun. For the gleaming object brightened. The man said with the same incredible accuracy, ‘I’m going to guess that I’m addressing Dr. Carl Hazzard. Dr. Carl, feel free to speak. What I hold in my hand will pick up your words.’

  It took only seconds to make up his mind. He, surely, had nothing to lose. ‘This is Dr. Carl Hazzard,’ said Carl, testing.

  The words issued clear and loud from the thing in the intruder’s hand. And there was nothing to feel about that except amazement.

  ‘You are watching this scene from aboard the Deean supership, Takeover—is that correct?’

  That was not an admission that Carl was prepared to make. But before he could say yea or nay, the man went on, ‘I’m going to assume that is so. What concerns me, you’re on that ship for a reason that is not clear to anyone—so I have gathered from Paul Gannott.’

  There seemed to be no comment to make about that either. But, more important, Carl sensed for the w
ay certain resistors were acting that an attempt was being made to by-pass the immense electronic circuitry between himself and the outside world, and to reach directly to his brain.

  Aloud, he said, ‘That won’t work—whoever you are. It was considered vital to protect me from any possible power feedback; so there are entire banks of special resistors, with circuit breakers behind them.’

  ‘I’m Metnov,’ said Metnov. The Sleele leader added, ‘I’m disappointed that it didn’t work. If it had, I would have read your mind and discovered why Takeover’s computer wants you along. Now, listen, we’d like to enlist you on our side. At a key moment it may be worth our while to have somebody aboard this Deean ship who will do what we want. In exchange for your assistance, and promise, we’ll pay you in any manner that you wish. Name your price, and if we can do it, we will.’

  Flickering images flitted in Carl’s mind, as that promise was made in that absolutely positive voice. He had a basic thought that these people could do anything. The possibility even flashed by his mind’s eye that they might have the skill to perform a miraculous operation that could transplant his brain into another body—

  That magic hope yielded to a practical reality that … After all, I am a prisoner here on the Deean ship. If these people could get aboard they wouldn’t be trying to make a deal—So it had to be simpler than that for the present. The one truth that remained was, so long as MacKerrie was aboard, he didn’t want Marie along.

  That was what he requested.

  After he had said it, Metnov said, ‘We’ll have to put some woman aboard to satisfy the expectations of the computer.’

  Carl said, ‘The world swarms with prostitutes who would regard a ship like this as a sort of retirement home. Fine food, perfect shelter, comfort, and lots more. I’ll be willing to act as if whoever you bring is Marie. Now, what do you want me to do?’

  Metnov had no definite thought. ‘Our basic purpose,’ he said, ‘is to force another group to use up what might be called leftover shock waves, so that eventually there will be none left. At which time in an emergency they will have to bring over one of their ships into this area.’

  He broke off, ‘I want you, Dr. Carl, to contact this room every hour on the hour until further notice, beginning at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Since I have now established a connection with the equipment, I don’t actually have to come to this house. I can talk to you from anywhere, and show up here only for a certain crisis I foresee. Every hour! Got that?’

  ‘Got it,’ said Carl. ‘I think I should disconnect now. Dr. MacKerrie is trying to attract my attention.’

  ‘Okay. Goodbye for now.’

  As the distant Carl did disconnect, and it was obvious that the viewing device had shut off, Metnov stood with a faint smile on his face. Several of his ‘brothers’ had returned during his dialogue with the human brain.

  ‘I think,’ the Sleele leader said finally, aloud, to no one in particular, ‘that will work out even better. I detect in this situation a whole series of strong emotional attachments that may even include, and entrap, our delightful enemy, Philip Nicer.’

  He concluded grimly, ‘Under the circumstances—all of them—Silver should serve very nicely as a substitute Dr. Marie Hazzard. What was it Dr. Carl suggested?—a prostitute. Surely, no one satisfies that description better than Mrs. Paul Gannott. And, surely, my old pal, Henry, will oblige us by closing his eyes, when he observes who he is being asked to transport up to the ship—’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ULTIMATUM FROM THE VOID

  In the morning that now came smokily into view, the millions surged to their daily routines. And no one in all those streams of moving humanity is known to have said to himself, herself, or anyone: Man is a tiny unit of life in a cosmos of heroic vastness and uriplumbed potentialities. Can he, with all his automatic behaviors and his ignorance of them, survive another day?

  This morning, it was actually a valid question. Because the ship had arrived, and its purpose was to dominate all living things truly human. Though a question might well be: could a machine ever do that, really?

  Out of the vastness of interstellar space it had flashed at mere yards per second under the speed of light. Its 50-plus year journey was now ended. Its destination achieved. Its programmed goal in coming at all was about to be implemented.

  At nine o’clock, Pacific Standard Time, using the ship as a relay, Paul Gannott had it pre-empt all TV and radio channels in the western hemisphere.

  Whereupon, sitting in his Houston study, he read the Deean takeover speech. Translation machines converted the words for Latin America (into Spanish and Portuguese) and for Europe into ninety-eight local dialects. Each of these was beamed down upon its correct area.

  Gannott identified himself. He was plainly visible on TV screens everywhere. He told of Deea, and of how its superior civilization would guide earth out of its confusion of differing nationalities, which, like so many diseases, afflicted planets of earth’s level of development.

  He outlined a program of meetings by his subordinates with heads of the principal governments.

  In conclusion, he made it clear that, while every effort would be made to avoid damage and bloodshed, the ship was capable of reacting against resistance on any scale.

  Naturally, when the speech ended, people immediately started to phone. They had heard what everyone else had, but they phoned TV and radio stations, and asked for additional information. They phoned police and fire-departments, and government offices including, in farm areas, the local agriculture agencies. Newspapers were, of course, deluged with calls. But so were the earthquake and weather bureaus, college and high school administrative offices, and the Red Cross.

  After people everywhere in the western world had proved beyond all doubt that they needed somebody to look after them, take them in firm hand, guide them, soothe them, the ship moved over to the Asian side of the planet, and pre-empted all those channels. And spoke in 346 principal dialects to that mass of people.

  In vast China and huge Russia, nobody called the government or the newspapers. But it was well understood by observers, as that failure to communicate was noted, that they also definitely needed somebody to tell them what to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SHADOWS OF A JUMP-SHIP

  Marie opened her eyes. Automatically, she “Started to cringe, taking it for granted that she was still in her bedroom, and that there were sounds of somebody at the outer door, and, when she grabbed the phone to call the gate guard, silence, deadness, a disconnected line …

  Pause. Brief blankness. Then—

  She sat up, and looked around.

  It was a room all right. And obviously a bedroom because she was in a bed. In sitting up, she became aware that she was naked.

  Abrupt confusion … Oh, she thought, this is after that. The hotel—She looked hastily for Nicer. No sign. No movement.

  Somehow, both her final moments in her own apartment, waiting for Nicer, and the experience with him in the hotel room were arranged in her memory as having occurred simultaneously. That had to be rationally impossible. So she put it away in another part of her being.

  Instantly, as if she had been holding them away by her momentary uncertainty, other impressions zoomed in on her.

  Some of the song was gone from her. So she sighed a little as she realized the one hundred per cent nude condition; even though a part of her was covered by a thin, light, pink fabric spread.

  The room—she saw—had three doors and no windows.

  The phone! Where’s the phone? I’d better call him …

  There was no phone.

  She got up and wandered around, and tested all three visible doors. One led to a bathroom. The second revealed a tastefully furnished living room, which had a connecting kitchen. The third door was locked.

  There were two doors in the living room. One led to a second bedroom. The other opened onto a broad corridor.

  Marie dosed that one hastily, and returned
to her bedroom to look for clothes. She discovered that the bedroom walls consisted of drawers from floor to ceiling. And there were clothes in them for men, women, and children.

  The alone-ness, the silence, the wonder about … Where am I?—The remembrance of what Nicer had asked, that terrifying, fateful question about the Deean M.D.: had he discharged his weapon, also? … That memory was in the background of everything she did, every move, every thought.

  What she did: She showered, and decided firmly that the water felt as if it was, indeed, affecting a live body … Fixed her hair, and winced in a very live way as she accidentally plucked a hair. Arrayed herself in a pair of slacks—and they really looked good on her … Maybe I’m getting to be beautiful, now that all this excitement is making me feel more alive. Slipped into a blouse, and stepped into high heels, and stared at the total image in a full-length mirror … A real live doll—she spoke the words aloud.

  With that she headed for the kitchen, stepping lively.

  And felt the shadow.

  She was beginning to get a mental picture of a ‘ship’ that bore little resemblance to any of the ship stereotypes in her head.

  As she visualized it, there were several gyroscopic masses spinning at different speeds one inside the other. It was the interaction of these whirling colossi that built up the fantastic field inside which the vessel performed its miracles of distance traversing.

  And, of course, the passenger and load carrying sections were shaped to fit the peculiar writhing motions of that space-spanning field.

  Lying in the bed beside her, Nicer said, ‘I should warn you that this conversation may be interrupted at any moment. So if you have any relevant questions, ask them.’

  ‘Where did you come from this last time?’

  ‘Straight from the moment Gannott finished his speech.’ ‘What speech?’