by John Blaine
Dr. Parnell Winston turned and came up the stairs. “I’m never in that much of a rush, Rick. What’s up?”
Winston, a big, black-haired man with keen blue eyes and furry eyebrows, had gone deeply into the study of the human brain in his cybernetics work. He was an international authority on interactive control systems, like those that controlled intricate operations by computer networks. He was deep into the new field of bionics, which combined biology and electronics.
“Take my chair, sir,” Rick offered. “It’s pretty comfortable.” He motioned to the old leather chair he had wired for maximum comfort and convenience. Button switches on the arm controlled the angle of back and footrest, gave the exact illumination wanted for reading or TV watching, and operated the TV set in the opposite wall. Rick was forever adding or revising controls.
Winston tried the chair, adjusted it to suit, and warned, “I could go to sleep in this.”
Scotty smiled. “You won’t want to sleep when you hear about Jan.”
The scientist sat upright. “What?”
Rick knew the Winstons were very fond of Jan, as they were of Barby and of Scotty and him, for that matter.
“It isn’t anything bad,” Rick hastened to assure the scientist. “But it’s interesting, and we need your help.”
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With Scotty adding comments, he gave Winston a full report on Jan’s strange call to the Mirella estate by what seemed to be an old man who needed her, the growing realization that the data pointed mostly to Anthony Wayland, the famous magician, and details of the mysterious switch during the performance.
He added that the message, if it could be called that, grew stronger and clearer every time Jan went to the estate, and that Jan could feel it at a distance.
After describing the day’s events following the blood on the floor incident, Rick finished, “Jan had terrible nightmares last night while things were happening at the estate. She wasn’t at all surprised when we told her about the blood, even though she couldn’t remember details of the nightmares.”
Winston was clearly fascinated by the recital. As he started to speak, Rick said, “One more thing. Jan told us something about herself a couple of nights ago, and said she didn’t mind her friends knowing on a need-to-know basis, and she agreed that you need to know.” He reported in careful detail what Jan had told them about her unusual gift, or talent.
“It must be a kind of extra-sensory perception, don’t you think?” Scotty asked.
“Yes, clearly.But not one of the usual kinds.It isn’t telepathy, because it isn’t truly a message that carries symbols or images. It isn’t precognition...”
“Like Rick’s hunches,” Scotty suggested.
Winston chuckled.“Those famous hunches! Actually, I think most of them have a different cause. Rick is doing a subconscious integration of information of which he is not consciously aware. The result is a subconscious conclusion which reaches the conscious level as a hunch. But, I must admit, there may be times when actual precognition plays a part.”
“On the day when Jan felt the urge to go into the estate, I was here alone,” Rick told him. “I felt uneasy and couldn’t seem to get any work done. I walked over to the window and let my mind go as blank as it gets—it seems impossible for me to go really blank—and the first thought that came to mind was the girls. The phone rang a minute later with Barby calling for me to come in a hurry.”
“You certainly couldn’t have had any subconscious information about that,” Winston agreed. “But most people would reject it as coincidence. Maybe it was—and maybe it wasn’t.”
“You’re saying that ESP is very hard to prove,” Scotty commented.
“Yes, very. The reason is because it’s what the writer Charles Fort called a ‘wild talent,’ which not even the owner can control to any extent. So it’s not dependably reproducible in the laboratory, which is what science requires. The whole basis of proof of ESP is built on statistics. In working with cards, how many hits in so many runs, and so on. Mostly the statistics show results just barely better than chance average-that is, the average result of people guessing about the same things.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be easy to prove Jan’s kind,” Rick said thoughtfully. “It would be very difficult even to define anything statistical to measure.”
“We’re pretty ignorant about ESP,” Winston told them. “No one has come up with a useful hypothesis about the mechanism, and no one has tried to define the boundaries. What I mean is, we can’t say where ESP starts or stops or how it works, assuming there is such a thing.”
“It exists for Jan,” Rick said flatly.
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“Yes, and it wouldn’t occur to me to doubt her intelligence or her interpretation of what she feels any more than it would occur to you, Rick. Do you know what empathy is?”
“Yes, sir.It’s the ability to putyourself in the other person’s moccasins, so to speak. That is, to feel the way they feel...hey! That’s exactly what happens to Jan!”
Winston nodded. “That’s it.The ability to share in another person’s feelings. So far as I know, this kind of ESP hasn’t been documented to any extent, and I’ve only seen it named a few times. But we have an obvious example of it right here. Jan is an empath.”
“Empath,” Scotty repeated.“Someone who has extrasensory empathy, sharing feelings or emotions without direct contact. Is that it?”
“I think so. The transfer of messages isn’t symbols-pictures or words-as it would be with telepathy.
Instead it’s a transfer of emotions. Boys, this is fascinating. I wonder if Jan would work with me in a few experiments...but of course she would.”
“I’d wait until this business is settled,” Rick said. “She’s pretty upset.”
“Of course.I didn’t mean now.”
Rick asked, “Do you think there’s any danger to Jan in this?”
Winston thought it over. “Not from the empathy itself, unless the emotions she’s sensing get so terribly intense that she can’t handle it. The solution then is to run. Put her in a car and put distance between her and the source. If there’s real physical danger, I assume you two will be prepared to handle it.”
The scientist rose. “Thanks for consulting me, Rick and Scotty, and please keep me informed of any development, day or night. This may be more than a confusing mystery. It may lead us into a pretty confusing branch of science.”
As they resumed work, Scotty murmured, “Empath. So that’s what Jan is. A pretty handy talent, I’d say, even if it does get rough sometimes.”
“You have it, too,” Rick pointed out. “Between the three of you I can’t keep anything to myself.”
Scotty grinned. “That’s different. Jan feels what you feel, but Barby and I just figure it out because we know how you react and think. That’s acute observation, not empathy. And don’t forget, Jan’s a very sharp observer, too, and she knows you as well as Barby and I do.”
“I guess that’s right. Hand me that hammer, will you?”
When Barby and Jan arrived, the boys reported their talk with Winston.
“Empath,” Jan repeated. “Well, at least we have a name for it. Please understand, I’ve been hiding it so long I’m not really comfortable talking about it. What can we do to help with the IR gadgets?”
Rick handed her the football helmet. “Screwdrivers and wrenches right here. If you’ll take the face mask off completely, I’ll start making the suspension.”
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Scotty handed Barby some marked sections of rod. “Here’s a hacksaw. We’re making a chest hanger for the light. If you cut these for me, I’ll measure for the straps.”
When the work was finished, just before dinner time, Scotty could hang the IR searchlight in the middle of his chest, secured with a strap around his neck and one around his chest to keep it from swaying. The battery pack hung below the light. To complete the system, Scotty needed only the special glasses.
Rick’s device
looked like something taken from an alien spaceman. The radiometer projected out nearly a foot in front of his face, suspended from the helmet by aluminum rods. The image tube was about six inches from his eyes. Across the top of the helmet a row of plastic battery holders ran like a weird futuristic Huron Indian scalp lock. The final touch was a skirt of fabric that would prevent the light of the tube from shining out so that it could be seen by others.
“Let’s try it,” Rick invited. The four crowded into his closet among an assortment of clothes, sports gear, electronic apparatus and parts, and a rack of audio tapes.
Rick put it on and snapped the toggle switch. When the greenish glow came he adjusted the power control and focus on the side of the collar. Three faces leaped into view, glowing green and slightly out of focus. It would do very well, for both him and Barby.
Jan was next. Rick fitted the helmet over her head, and she exclaimed. “Last time I saw something like this was in a horror movie. It’s great, Rick.”
Barby tried it. “Boy! I can hardly wait to borrow your still camera and go after those raccoons. Is that as sharp as the focus can be?”
“Afraid so,” Rick admitted. “I’ll try to improve it, but with this design, it’s about as good as I can get.”
“Tonight’s the night,” Scotty told them when he had tried the helmet. “The Infrared Indians ride right after the show!”
CHAPTER IX
Footsteps in the Night
Rick’s back itched. He longed to scratch it, but the itch had lodged in that aggravating spot just out of reach. He yearned for a sharp-edged door frame or something similar on which to rub, but no impromptu scratching post he could reach was at hand.
The Mirella house was alive. He could sense its tiny shifts, the settling of an older house that produces little snaps and squeaks in the dark hours as the house cools to night time temperature. More important, he could hear the house’s heart beat. The sound wasn’t loud, and he wasn’t sure whether it was an actual sound or just a vibration. He felt rather than heard it, a rhythmic thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP that had continued for about fifteen minutes.
Rick had tried to identify the throbbing thumping but had given up. It wasn’t the furnace, because heating Page 55
plants are on-and-off affairs, regulated by their thermostats. It wasn’t a water pump, because even in houses with wells, the pump went on only when the water level in the storage tank was lowered, and there was no sound of running water.
The thumping wasn’t especially disturbing. It didn’t seem to carry any menace, nor did the volume or speed increase. He couldn’t imagine what caused it. The sound-much like a heartbeat-had started about twenty minutes after the Camerons had closed the door and driven home.
The throbbing stopped. Rick suspected it would start again after the operators, or time clock, or built-in control finished doing whatever the pause allowed. He turned his head, swinging the helmet with its radiometer. He saw the upstairs entrance hall as a not-quite-sharply focused still-life of chairs, end tables, vases, unlit lamps, and flowers. The contrasts were actually pretty good. He could make out a lot of detail in a vase full of flowers, and in the carving on a chair back.
Operating according to a plan worked out by phone with Derek, Rick and Scotty had gone to the House of Illusion as though to see the show. In fact, they had seen the show, and afterwards had casually drifted up to the gentlemen’s lounge, where they waited until the show crowd had gone.
By pre-arrangement, Tom the Mongol had taken their big zipper bag-actually Scotty’s Marine parachute bag—and deposited it in a linen closet in the second floor hallway. One of the car hops had taken their car to a service station a few hundred yards down the highway and parked it, so a car left at the house would not attract attention. The watchman had been told that two friends of the Camerons would be in the house until very late.
After the last guest departed, the boys got out of their suit jackets and put on turtleneck sweaters. Scotty hooked up his infrared light and Rick put on the helmet. Scotty took up station in a dark comer at the bottom of the staircase, from which he could command the front door, the entrance hall, and the doorways into the various rooms. Rick was just outside the door of the men’s lounge. He could see the entire second floor hallway and doorways to the rooms.
The radiometer was working quite well. The house thermostat had automatically turned down to its low night position, so the furnace wasn’t operating at the moment. Rick could see the changes as various objects gave off heat accumulated during the day. It was as though he saw his surroundings through a slight greenish haze.
He waited as patiently as he could, knowing that Scotty was probably doing much better. The big ex-Marine was a compact bundle of energy, but when the time came to wait he could discipline himself into perfect quiet, and wait with the enduring patience of an Indian.
A flicker of light attracted Rick’s attention and he tensed, his hand stealing to his belt and his only weapon, a length of heavy, solid wood cut from a broken axe handle. A tiny ball of light ran halfway across his field of vision and stopped. What was it? How could a light move by itself?
His hand moved slowly up to the focusing knob. He reached it and adjusted the vision tube, and had to smother a chuckle. A mouse was preening his whiskers in the hallway. Rick had become adjusted to the relatively faint images of the objects around him and had forgotten that, in contrast, a warm living thing would shine like a lit bulb.
The mouse moved on, pursuing his own mousy business, and Rick relaxed as much as he could with his back itching almost unbearably. The thump-THUMP began again.Machinery of some sort, but what kind, and where, and for what? If Mysto was the presence in the house, did he have a machine for some Page 56
strange purpose in his secret hideaway? Was he making something? Creating something wild and wonderful? Did he need Jan for something to do with the machine? The whole strange business of some strange person-even a master magician-summoning Jan, puzzled and disturbed Rick a lot. He tensed.
Had he heard a sound somewhere down the hall toward the office? He held his breath, listening with every bit of concentration. The sound was not repeated, and even the thumping ceased.
A half hour passed. There were sounds, but he knew they were normal ones, of the kind he could hear at home in the dark night watches, an intermittent symphony of small crackings and poppings made by boards, flooring, and other structural members as they cooled. He was cooling, too, because of inactivity.
His warm sweater was no longer enough.
From off to his right he heard a faint scrape and stood very still. Something told him this was neither mouse nor house noise. If it was a person, he must be coming up the stairs. That meant he had passed Scotty.
Rick slid his hand to the club in his belt and tensed, ready to move. He didn’t intend to tackle whoever it was. That wasn’t the plan. He wanted to find out where the unknown occupant went, then he and Scotty together would confront him in his hideaway.
There was the tiniest of whispers as a foot scuffed on the carpeting, then brightness flooded the image tube as a figure moved across his line of vision, heading for the office. Rick moved, too, keeping on the balls of his feet. The figure opened the office door, stepped inside, and closed it again. Rick turned swiftly. Another bright figure was coming up the stairs, and the brilliant gleam of light on its chest told him it was Scotty. They met on the landing and moved toward the office, careful to make no sound.
Someone else was less careful! From within the office they heard the thump of running feet. They were at the door in quick strides and Rick turned the knob. The door wouldn’t open!
From inside came a yell. “If I get my hands on him, I’ll kill him!”
Feet pounded, then there was silence.
Scotty put his shoulder to the door and pushed as Rick turned the knob. The door opened so quickly Rick almost fell inside. He stepped in and surveyed the interior with a quick turn of his head. There was no one in the room!
For the next half hour the two surveyed every inch of the room, searching for the secret passageway.
Because they hoped to keep their presence a secret, they worked in silence. At last they had to give up.
By unspoken agreement, they retrieved their coats from the linen closet, made their way downstairs and out the main entrance, which locked behind them.
“A presence in the house, huh?”The two hiked rapidly down the long driveway. “It was more like a squad. How many people? I’d say at least three.”
Scotty agreed.“Same here. I saw only one. Did you see the others?”
“No, but I heard someone running, and then the yell. That’s two, because the yeller was standing still, but the thump of the footsteps was fading. Now, you don’t yell something like I’ll kill him’ to yourself.
That’s why I figure three.”
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“Could be.Did you get a good look at the man who came up the stairs?”
“No. He was too bright in the tube and I didn’t take time to adjust because I was moving.How about you?”
“He walked right into my beam coming out a door just past the Buddhist Monk’s doorway. He wasn’t Jan’s old man, that’s for sure. He was young, about six feet three or four, weight too much for his height.
I’d guess about two-fifty pounds. He looked mean.”
“Maybe he’s the hater Jan felt.”
“He sure looked like he could be. And maybe the one he was yelling about was Jan’s old man.”
“If there were three, two had to come into the office through a secret passage, right? Does this mean Jan’s old man has a friend who uses the passage with him? Or did the old man and the third man meet from opposite directions? And where did the big guy come from and how did he get into the house?”
Scotty thought about it. “I’ll tell you a likely possibility. The guy I saw and the third man were trying to trap the old man between them, but he was too fast for them. The strangers must have come through the back door.”
