by Eando Binder
But they did not have to wait that long. The very next night, the dice of chance rolled their way. It was Miribel who first yawned, watching the “satellite” arch its way across the sky. Her yawn changed to a gasp as the starlike object abruptly made a ninety-degree turn and spun downward.
“UFO ahoy,” she hissed to Thane.
Chapter 4
Thane took one glance, then grabbed her hand, running for their invisible saucer. A touch on the hidden switch in a tree’s knothole and their craft melted into view. Leaping in, Thane took the controls and in a moment their silver disk shot up into the vault of stars.
The moving “star” was still in sight, angling toward the hills. Piling on speed that neither of them felt in the slightest, Thane locked onto its trajectory. When they drew close, he switched on the anti-visio unit again. Then, invisibly they followed the other spacecraft to the ground.
“Our big chance,” Thane said tensely, “to land near them and watch their mysterious stone-collecting routine, assuming they’re Vexxans.”
They were. Peering from a round window of their invisible saucer, Thane and Miribel saw a hatchway open in the domed saucer nearby. A staircase ramp then slid down and three small figures emerged.
They were clad in what looked like the diving suits often described in other sightings. Transparent helmets revealed their owl eyes, slit mouths, and the hairiness that covered their skin except for their bald heads. All this was dimly visible in the light of a half-moon.
Decidedly ugly little devils, Thane thought. He could see where the legends of evil dwarfs had arisen in the past, if the Vexxans had landed occasionally then—before their big unknown plot of today. As the leader waved an arm around at a heap of stones, Thane could see his three-fingered hand with talon-like nails.
“Search through these rocks,” went the telepathic command to the others—and to Thane and Miribel, both tuning in.
The three humanoids began systematically pawing through the stones of all shapes and sizes, sometimes splitting them open with a mere squeeze of their hands. It was a demonstration of their great strength, as reported in those South American sightings.
“You were right, Miribel,” Thane whispered. “They are seeking something that is found among stones—but what exactly?”
“But are they doing a blind search,” wondered the girl, “in every pile of rocks on Earth? It seems like a haphazard way of doing the job…”
She paused as her answer came by telepathic impulses that the leader radiated to his men. “Keep searching. We know it’s here. Our Vibroscope reading definitely narrowed it down to this spot.”
“Hmm, a Vibroscope,” Miribel murmured, searching her memory for Vigilante data about Vexxan technology. “That’s an instrument for detecting crystalline matter.”
“You mean jewels?”
“That and perhaps other odd or rare mineral specimens. We’ll have to wait and see if they find it before we know what it is.”
Time sped by as the three hairy humanoids thoroughly examined the stone rubble in a radius of fifty feet from their craft. Suddenly, as one Vexxan kicked some stones apart, a fiery spark was revealed. The little man pounced on it with a quivering cry of triumph, calling his companions.
The leader took it and held it up between his fingers. Thane could see that it was no bigger than a grain but it glowed and pulsed with rainbow colors, at times giving off a brilliant flash of light.
“One of the rare Seeds,” the leader exulted mentally. “So rare the backward humans don’t even suspect it’s here.”
“That’s a new one,” Thane mumbled. “I thought we had catalogued every possible kind of element or crystal on Earth’s surface.”
Miribel squeezed his arm. “You forget how Madame Curie had to sift through hundreds of tons of pitchblende ore to finally extract a tiny amount of radium,” she said, displaying how thoroughly the Vigilantes had studied Earthly history. “Imagine something a thousand times rarer than radium, a speck of it found only here and there, miles apart, with mountains of stone in between.”
“Okay,” Thane conceded. “I can see how an ultra-rare bit of something could escape detection by earth scientists. But just what is that stuff? Hope blabbermind goes on about it…”
The leader had been telepathizing to his men in glowing terms which Thane only partly took note of—“for the glory of Vexxa” … “mighty triumph” … “honors and rewards for us” … and such exalted drivel.
Nothing else came through except, “And now we will deliver the Seed to the Collection Center.”
“Why do they call it the Seed?” Miribel puzzled. “Any form of inanimate mineral would hardly grow.”
“Never mind,” Thane hissed, turning to his controls. “The important thing is to follow them to their ‘Collection Center.’ Obviously, the Seeds found here and there around Earth are delivered to one central place. If we can point that out to Thalkon, the case will just about be over.”
The Vexxan leader was now placing the glowing speck in a small metallic box that hung around his neck. Then the three humanoids reentered their craft and shot away. An invisible saucer shot away also, following the trail through the stratosphere as the Vexxan saucer kept climbing.
“Fifty miles high,” said Thane. “They must be heading for space. Their Collection Center could be an orbiting station. We’ll follow them like an invisible bloodhound and…”
Thane broke off as he saw the ghostly outline of Miribel and the cabin apparatus begin to glow with tiny dancing flames. Outside, he could see their whole saucer covered with the same sparkling phenomenon.
“What in thunder…?”
“Ionization,” explained Miribel in dismay. “We’re sixty miles high in the ionized layers of air that reflect radio waves on earth. It’s the one thing that can nullify our anti-visio system. It’s a sort of St. Elmo’s Fire, outlining our whole ship visibly…”
Miribel made a lunge and shoved Thane away from the controls. Grasping the brass ball, she yanked it aside. Their saucer slewed sideways violently, just before a livid purple beam from the Vexxan ship sizzled across the space between them.
“The Vexxans saw us,” Miribel panted, gyrating their saucer all over in a crazy-quilt pattern, as bolt after bolt from the Vexxans stabbed toward them, barely missing each time.
“No use fighting back,” snapped Thane, taking in the situation. “Destroying them would end the trail to the Collection Center.”
Miribel was already using an intricate falling-leaf maneuver to leave the vicinity rapidly.
“Damn,” Thane swore, disappointed. “We have to give up the chase.”
“Not yet,” Miribel cried. “Use the beta-radar.”
“You dumb Earthman,” Thane chided himself, flipping the toggle and watching a big round screen spangle with flickering lights that steadied down into a bright blip above them.
“Got them,” he said exultantly, then grunted, “Wait, what goes on?”
The screen suddenly showed a dozen blips all streaking crazily in every direction.
“I should have known,” sighed Miribel. “They’re throwing out radar chaff to confuse us.”
“Bits of aluminum foil just like we do on Earth?”
“No, Thane. Radiotronic chaff. They create and toss out what you might call self-focus TV-images of their ship. The net result, on our radarscope, is a hopeless bunch of electronic dummies. We can’t sort out the real ship.”
Thane sat staring at the blips flashing across the screen, knowing that their quarry was escaping under this camouflage. Soon, all the blips faded and there was nothing.
“That leaves us with two mysteries hanging,” he sighed. “What are the ‘Seeds?’ And where is that ‘Collection Center?’ But at least we’ve got that much to report to Thalkon.”
* * * *
“What still beats me,” Thane finished, “is how the Vexxans can be gathering a type of mineral, no matter how rare it is, that’s unknown to modern science. Why, we’ve got mineralogists scampering all over Earth, loaded with ore-detection devices, in the search for new and exotic materials. How could we miss those Seeds, whatever they are?”
Thalkon smiled. Waving a hand, his psy-forces caused a file drawer to open and out of it floated a dozen chunks of rock, each tagged.
“None of these minerals are listed in your ore books,” he informed Thane, who was startled. “In fact, two or three new minerals are discovered every year by your own scientists.”
“Also,” Miribel added, “every year your naturalists find new species of life—at least one mammal, several birds, reptiles and fishes, and dozens of insects, crustaceans and worms. You have only begun to explore your own world. It may not be for a thousand years yet of relentless and systematic search that your scientists will have catalogued every possible specimen of all things on earth, inanimate or living.”
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Earthman,” Thane said wryly. “That puts a different slant on it. O.K., so it’s reasonable that the Vexxans could be gathering a mineral unknown to Earthly science, but is it unknown to you too, Thalkon?”
The Vigilante chief nodded reluctantly. “I had my staff check our file of Earth Rocks and Minerals. It is one we missed too in two million years of earth surveillance.” He sounded ashamed, and apologetic. Thane realized how much the Galactic Vigilante organization prided itself on having maximum data about every one of the worlds they guarded, more than a million all told.
“Well,” Thalkon shrugged philosophically, “we can’t know everything about every world. Describe it again, the specimen the Vexxans call a Seed.”
“It glows in all rainbow colors,” Thane responded, vividly remembering the mineral spark held by the Vexxan. “It also pulsates, the glow dimming and brightening in a rhythmic pattern. Then, every ten seconds or so, it flashes a brilliant burst of light.”
Thalkon turned and nodded to Miribel.
“The Seed’s glow covers not only the visible spectrum but the ultra-violet,” she said, “as I determined with a psy-scan. The pulsations correspond to beta radiation in radioactive substances. The flash of light seems to be a neutronic burst of excess energy.”
“Strange,” Thalkon mused. “It obeys the third order of nuclear energy.” He began pacing the floor. “We must find one of the Seed specimens ourselves. It may be the key to the Vexxan plot against earth.”
“That’s simple,” Thane said. “Send out a ship equipped with a Vibroscope…”
“We have no Vibroscope,” Thalkon broke in quickly.
Thane stared. “But Miribel immediately knew what it was, when she heard the thought-word.”
“Knowing that they have such an instrument,” Miribel put in, “does not mean we know how it operates.” Thalkon turned to Thane. “You see, every advanced world has developed certain technological devices that no other world possesses.” He spread his hands helplessly. “We do not know the principle of the Vibroscope. And without that, we cannot scour Earth ourselves for a Seed specimen.”
“Impasse,” Miribel murmured for them all.
Thane drummed his fingers on the magnesium-topped table, thoughts racing. A queer smile tugged at his lips.
“Tell me, can you somehow duplicate—or approximate—a Seed? That is, make a phony specimen that would temporarily pass for the real thing?”
Thalkon pondered a moment, then nodded. “The characteristics of radioactivity and third-order nuclear reactions are quite well known. Our labs can probably produce a false Seed that glows and pulsates and will superficially pass for a genuine specimen.”
“Then whip it up,” said Thane. “My idea is this. We can plant the bogus Seed in a rock pile, then wait for a Vexxan ship to stumble across it. Then we pounce on them and capture their Vibroscope.”
“Excellent idea, Thane Smith,” said Thalkon. “Then, with a Vibroscope we can search for a real Seed.”
Thane grinned. “How long will it take your labs to make the fake Seed?”
“Let’s see… hmm… it’s like making diamonds out of raw carbon and won’t be easy. We’ll have to take raw neutrons, protons, electrons and build them up into the proper structure with sequenced radiation in the parameters described. Well, let us say no longer than a month.”
“Month?” Thane said, surprised. “No sooner? With Earth in danger?”
Thalkon laughed. “Remember that the Vexxans have been operating for some twenty years already. Their final coup against earth might take another twenty years. A month will certainly not be life or death for your world.”
“Come, my impetuous Earth husband,” Miribel said in the mock tones of a mother reproving her child. “That will give us time to carry on the next job we planned on Earth, in our campaign to denigrate flying saucers believers: interviewing famous people and top authorities who will deny ever seeing UFO’s as others claim to do.”
As Thane stepped on the flying platform, Thalkon inclined his head in a little bow. “Good work, Special Agent Thane Smith,” he said gravely. “You ferreted out the pattern of the rock-search from the massed UFO reports, where we missed it. And your scheme to obtain a Seed is clever. You are proving you well deserve the Vigilante medallion.”
As the flying platform whisked away, Thane noticed that his wife’s indigo eyes were shining with pride.
Chapter 5
New York City was still the same with its steel canyons and forest of spires. Life went on as usual, with no hint that a fantastic drama was unfolding, spawned in outer space. Few eyes ever saw the spinning disks and other weird craft of the Vexxans and Vigilantes. And none of the people below—not one—suspected the mind-staggering truth.
Thane Smith was the only man on Earth who knew that their world had no future if the Vigilantes failed to win their grim game of galactic wits with the Vexxans.
And he, Thane, was part of an intragalactic struggle far more complex and danger-ridden than any international spy plot on Earth. Thane had to play the part of a super-Sherlock, an interplanetary agent, a space counterspy. All the rules of the game were elevated to an ultra-scientific level where the lowest rank of participation was mastermind against mastermind.
Thane realized that his contact with these technological giants had somehow galvanized his slumbering Earth mind, had sharpened it beyond its original scope into the range of near-genius. Miribel had always firmly stated that, though undeveloped, the Earth mind’s potential was equal to any around the universe. Already Thane was thinking in some expanded, dimension-multiplied way he had never done before.
But right now, for a month, it would be a boring routine. His thoughts came to the present as he listened to the pompous politician whose belly quivered as he spoke vehemently.
“I can categorically state that UFO’s are poppycock. When my constituents report such misguided sightings to my office, I quickly tell them they saw a flying figment of imagination.”
“Then you don’t believe, Senator,” Thane queried, jotting down notes dutifully, “that intelligent beings have visited our world in flying saucers?”
“Correct, and you can quote me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Some ten minutes later, as an invisible saucer sailed away from the flat roof of a tall building, Thane’s chuckle came from his ghostly figure at the unseen controls. “I’m almost afraid this flying saucer will fall, since the senator proved they don’t exist.”
Miribel did not respond to his bantering tone. “This is serious business, Thane, as Frank Edwards said in the title of his book. Our mission on earth is to foster the authoritative attitude that UFO’s belong with unicorns. It’s the smoke screen the Vigilantes need vitally
to carry on their guardianship of Earth.”
“I realize that,” Thane growled, somewhat nettled at being reminded. “Who’s next on the list?” He unswitched the anti-visio unit as they were now high in the sky and safe from detection.
“Dr. Jonas Elkheim, the noted physicist,” Miribel read oil from a list, now visible. “After that come a top clergyman and a military general. Then, to broaden our scope and include glamorous people that the public will listen to as gods, we have a movie star, a baseball champ, a big-time jockey, and a playboy.
“Playboy?” Thane echoed blankly. “Oh yes, Daryl B. Seatonburry III, complete with palatial mansion, yacht, wild parties and a hundred million dollars to spend. He ought to impress the blue-bloods and society.”
After the self-important babblings of the others, it was refreshing to come to the playboy, who had an appealing blitheness. “Why pick me?” he said, sipping his cocktail. “I’m no authority—except in spending money faster than anyone else on earth. What do I know about flying saucers?”
“It isn’t that,” Thane said patiently. “We just want your candid opinion as to whether they exist or not.”
“Flying saucers,” laughed Daryl B. Seatonburry HI. “Sure, I see them often—after the third bottle of champagne.”
Thane and Miribel did not join in his merriment. The playboy was tall, debonair, sleek, wearing a blinding red jacket and sharp blue trousers. They were in the patio of his seashore place, overlooking a grand view of the Jersey shore below Atlantic City.
Suddenly, Seatonburry’s face sobered. He leaned forward. “All right, I’ll give you my answer. I’m not the rich buffoon the public thinks I am. I’ve studied philosophy and psychology in depth. Flying saucers, in essence, represent the wish for a better world, to be handed to us on a platter by all-wise men from outer space.” Thane nodded as if agreeing. He had often read a similar opinion given by various psychologists.
