But his insanity was stronger than they suspected. The barriers he built were harder, more opaque, and more impenetrable than any they had ever seen. The five pushed on, anyway, but their advance slowed tremendously.
Then, mentally, there was a sudden silence.
Sager? they thought.
No answer.
"That's finished it," said Houston. "He's retreated so far behind those mental barriers that he's cut himself off completely."
"He's not dead, is he?" Dorrine asked.
"Dead?" said Juan Pedro. "Not in the sense you mean. But I think he is catatonic now; he has lost all touch with the outside. He is as though he were still drugged; he is physically helpless, and mentally blanked out."
"There's one difference," Matsukuo said analytically. "And that is that, although he has cut himself off from us and from the rest of the universe, he is still conscious in some little, walled-in compartment of his mind. He has no one there but himself—and that, I think, is damned poor company."
* * *
They waited then. When Pederson awoke, they were ready for him. His hatred took a slightly different form from Sager's, but the effect was the same.
And so were the results when the five bore down on him.
Again they waited. Lasser was next.
At first, it looked as though Lasser would go the way of Sager and Pederson, ending up as a hopelessly insane catatonic. Like his cohorts before him, Lasser retreated under the full pressure of the thought-probes of the five, building stronger and stronger walls.
But, quite suddenly, all his defenses crumbled. The mental barriers went down, shattered and dissolving. Lasser's whole mind lay bare. Instead of fighting and hating, Lasser was begging, pleading for help.
Lasser was not basically insane. His mind was twisted and warped, but beneath the outer shell was a personality that had enough internal strength to be able to admit that it was wrong and ask for help instead of retreating into oblivion.
"This one—I think we can do something with," Matsukuo's thought whispered.
* * *
Eight bodies, uncomfortable and pain-wracked, floated in space, chained to tiny asteroids that drifted slowly in their orbits under the constant pull of the sun. Two of them contained minds that were locked irrevocably within prisons of their own building, sealed off forever from external stimuli, but their suffering was the greater for all that.
The other six, chained though their limbs might be, had minds that were free—free, even, of any but the most necessary of internal limitations.
Eight bodies, chained to eight lumps of pitted rock, spun endlessly in endless space.
And then the ship came.
The flare of its atomic rocket could be seen for over an hour before it reached the Penal Cluster. The six eyed it speculatively. Although only two of them were facing the proper direction to see it with their physical eyes, the impressions of those two were easily transmitted to the other four.
"Another load of captives," whispered Juan Pedro de Cadiz. "How many this time, I wonder?"
"How long have we been here?" asked Houston, not expecting any answer.
"Who knows?" It was Lasser. "What we need out here is a clock to tell us when we'll die."
"Our oxygen tanks are our clocks," said Sonali. "And they'll notify us when the time comes."
"I do believe you morbid-minded people are developing a sense of humor," said Matsukuo, "but I'm not sure I care for the style too much."
The flare of the rocket grew brighter as the decelerating ship approached the small cluster of rocks. At last the ship itself took form, shining in the eternal blaze of the sun. When the whiteness of the rocket blaze died suddenly, the ship was only a few dozen yards from Houston's own asteroid.
And then a mental voice came into the minds of the six prisoners.
"How do you feel, Controllers?"
Only Houston recognized that thought-pattern, but his recognition was transmitted instantly to the others.
"Reinhardt!"
Hermann Reinhardt, Division Chief of the Psychodeviant Police, the one man most hated and feared by Controllers, was himself a telepath!
"Naturally," said Reinhardt. "Someone had to take control of the situation. I was the only one who was in a position to do it."
His thoughts were neither hard nor cold; it was almost as if he were one of them—except for one thing. Only the words of his thoughts came through; there were none of the fringe thoughts that the six were used to in each other.
"That's true," thought Reinhardt. "You see, we have been at this a good deal longer than you." Then he directed his thoughts at members of the crew of the spaceship, but they could still be heard by the six prisoners. "All right, men, get those people off those rocks. We have to make room for another batch."
The airlock in the side of the ship opened, and a dozen spacesuited men leaped out. The propulsion units in their hands guided them toward the prison asteroids.
"Give them all anaesthetic except Sager and Pederson," Reinhardt ordered. "They won't need it." Then, with a note of apology, "I'm sorry we'll have to anaesthetize you, but you've been in one position so long that moving you will be rather painful. We have to get you to a hospital quickly."
The minds of the six prisoners were frantically pounding questions at the PD chief, but he gave them no answer. "No; wait until you're better."
The spacesuited rescuers went to the "back" of each asteroid and injected sleep-gas into the oxygen line that ran from the tank to the spacesuit of the prisoner.
Houston could smell the sweetish, pungent odor in his helmet. Just before he blacked out, he hurled one last accusing thought at Reinhardt.
"You're the one who's been framing Controllers!"
"Naturally, Houston," came the answer. "How else could I get you out here?"
* * *
Houston woke up in a hospital bed. He was weak and hungry, but he felt no pain. As he came up from unconsciousness, he felt a fully awake mind guiding him out of the darkness.
It was Reinhardt.
"You're a tough man, Houston," he said mentally. "The others won't wake up for a while yet."
He was sitting on a chair next to the bed, holding a smouldering cigarette in one hand. He looked strange, somehow, and it took Houston a moment to realize that there was a smile on that broad, normally expressionless face.
Houston focussed his eyes on the man's face. "I want an explanation, Reinhardt," he said aloud. "And it better be a damned good one."
"I give you free access to my mind," Reinhardt said. "See for yourself if my method wasn't the best one."
* * *
Houston probed. The explanation, if not the best, was better than any Houston could have thought of.
When the hatred of the normal-minded people of Earth had been turned against the Controllers because of the actions of a few megalomaniacs, it had become obvious that legal steps had to be taken to prevent mob violence.
It had been Reinhardt himself who had suggested the Penal method to the UN government. At first, he had simply thought of it as a method to keep the Controllers alive until he could think of something better. But when he had discovered, by accident, what a small group of Controllers, alone in space, could do, he had set up the present machinery.
As soon as a Controller was spotted, a careful frame-up was arranged. Then, when several had been found, they were arrested in quick succession and sent to the asteroids.
Always and invariably, they had done what Houston's group had done—the sane or potentially sane ones had improved themselves tremendously, while the megalomaniacs had lapsed into catatonia.
"Why couldn't it be done on Earth?" Houston asked.
"We tried it," Reinhardt said. "It didn't work. Safe, on Earth, surrounded by Normals, a Controller still feels the hatred around him. He can't open his mind completely. Only the certain knowledge of impending death, and a complete freedom from the hatr
ed of Normals can free the mind.
"And that's why you couldn't be told beforehand; if you knew you were going to be rescued, you wouldn't open up."
Houston nodded. It made sense. "Where are we now?" he asked.
"Antarctica," said Reinhardt. "We've built an outpost here—almost self-sufficient. When you're in better shape physically, I'll show you around."
"Do you mean that everyone who's been arrested is here, in Antarctica?"
* * *
Reinhardt laughed. "No, not by a long shot. Most of us are back out in civilization, searching for new, undiscovered Controllers, so that we can frame them. And, of course, some of us—the insane ones—have died. They will themselves to die when the going gets too tough."
"Searching for recruits? Then the Group that Dorrine was working for was—"
Reinhardt shook his head. "No. They were going about it the wrong way, just as you thought. We picked up the whole lot of them last week; they're occupying the asteroids now."
"What do you do with the insane catatonics?"
"Put them under hibernene and keep them alive. We hope, someday, to figure out a method of restoring their sanity. Until then, let them sleep."
Houston narrowed his eyes. "How long have you known I was a Controller, Reinhardt?"
The Prussian smiled. "Ever since you first tried to probe me. Fortunately, my training enabled me to put up a shield that you couldn't penetrate; I seemed like a Normal to you.
"I kept you on because I knew you'd be useful in cracking Lasser and his gang when the time came. No one else could have done what you did that night."
"Thanks," Houston said sincerely. "What's going to happen now? After I get well, I mean."
"You'll do what the others have done. A little plastic surgery to change your face a trifle, a little record-juggling to give you a new identity, and you'll be ready to go back to work for the PD Police.
"If anyone recognizes you, it's easy to take over their minds just long enough to make them forget. We allow that much Controlling."
"And then what?" Houston wanted to know. "What happens in the long run?"
"In a way," said Reinhardt, "your friend Sager was right. The Controllers will eventually become the rulers of Earth. But not by force or trickery. We must just bide our time. More and more of us are being born all the time; the Normals are becoming fewer and fewer. Within a century, we will outnumber them—we will be the Normals, not they.
"But they'll never know what's going on. The last Normal will die without ever knowing that he is in a world of telepaths.
"By the time that comes about, we'll no longer need the Penal Cluster, since Controllers will be born into a world where there is no fear of non-telepaths."
"I wonder," Houston mused, "I wonder how this ability came about. Why is the human race acquiring telepathy so suddenly?"
Reinhardt shrugged. "I can give you many explanations—atomic radiation, cosmic rays, natural evolution. But none of them really explains it. They just make it easier to live with.
"I think something similar must have happened a few hundred thousand years ago, when Cro-Magnon man, our own ancestors, first developed true intelligence instead of the pseudo-intelligence, the highly developed instincts, of the Neanderthals and other para-men.
"Within a relatively short time, the para-men had died out, leaving the Cro-Magnon, with his true intelligence, to rule Earth."
Reinhardt stood up. "Why is it happening? We don't know. Maybe we never will know, any more than we know why Man developed intelligence." He shrugged. "Perhaps the only explanation we'll ever have is to call it the Will of God and let it go at that."
"Maybe that's the best explanation, after all," Houston said.
"Perhaps. Who knows?" Reinhardt crushed his cigarette out in a tray. "I'll go now, and let you get some rest. And don't worry; I'll have you notified as soon as Dorrine starts to come out of it."
"Thanks—Chief," Houston said as Reinhardt left the room.
David Houston lay back in his bed and closed his eyes.
For the first time in his life, he felt completely at peace—with himself, and with the Universe.
THE END
PSICHOPATH
The man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks and round nose from the icy wind.
No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face. But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental, fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any way with his intended destination.
It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually, government business took him there more often than would have been safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost subconscious.
Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were marked: The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc.
Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front office.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive golden hue."
Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "Dear Swami Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking very well your-self."
The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East. "My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly what kind of hokum would please her most.
"Oh, I do hope you will find time to tell me all about it," she said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"
"The first photographed sighting," the Swami corrected condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were photographed."
Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always, Swami."
"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian Taggert, who is expecting me."
Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention an appointment to me. However—" She punched a button on the intercom. "Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an appointment."
Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send him right up."
"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched i
n awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.
* * *
One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government was to label it truthfully—The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr. Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the actual core of the Society.
The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland, overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.
"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.
Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black, slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.
He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who can get the feel of the situation first hand."
"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or Reeves—"
Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know that."
"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"
"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we—"
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