The Lost Perception

by Daniel F. Galouye

  Each corridor and compartments of scores of laboring systems and their supportment, each scurrying charge in all the electronic instruments, every bolt and rivet and metal panel, the individual components of scores of laboring systems and their support machinery. So overwhelming was the deluge of sensory data that he could never hope to assimilate it.

  His perception shifted and then he was zylphing only the swirling air currents as they raced through the station’s ventilation systems. It was as though he had a schematic spread before him and was instantly aware of each filter and blower, every chemical recycling unit, all of the thousands of ducts and louvered panels.

  There were the hundreds of persons aboard the station—many still asleep, others darting about in frantic response to the emergency of the collapsed suppressor field.

  Gregson noted with relief that they were far too busy to notice that he was an attentive zylpher of their actions.

  It was then that he perceived the small, weak, pulsating field of stygumness that enveloped the nave and he knew he had at last located the super suppressor. It seemed only logical now that the stygumness generator should be at the very center of VJO, where minimum centrifugal force would simplify assembly and where security would be less of a problem.

  It wasn’t until that moment that he recognized his opportunity to learn whether Helen and her uncle were aboard.

  Anxiously, he zylphed from compartment to compartment, taking in whole sections of the peripheral ring in single hyperperceptive glances, covering the satellite thoroughly and then going back to search it a second and a third time.

  Meanwhile, the impenetrable field of stygumness that gripped the nave was expanding and collapsing like a monstrous marine creature which had been washed ashore and was gasping its dying breaths.

  Eventually he satisfied himself that Bill and Helen were nowhere within zylphing range. If they were aboard VJO at all, they could only be in the hub, where the rault suppressor itself was located.

  Abruptly, the field of stygumness swept forcefully outward, engulfing the entire station and leaving Gregson hypersensitively blind. Then, just as suddenly, it collapsed again.

  But now he was aware of someone questing for his attention—someone in an optically darkened compartment in the outer ring a quarter of the way around the peripheral corridor.

  He could sense the gentle tugs on his consciousness, like a tapping upon his shoulder.

  It was as though he might have been the only sighted person in a vast room filled with blind persons and had suddenly seen someone staring in his direction, beckoning to him.

  Apprehensively, he started to turn away from the disturbing sensation.

  But nevertheless he focused his glial attention on the obscure compartment filled with crates that were cleated to the deck. He sensed the locked door and, behind it, the Valorian girl Andelia.

  Despair and fright surrounded her like a nimbus, fluorescing in the hyperradiance. But she appeared outwardly calm, otherwise, as she leaned back against a crate and returned his direct attention.

  Then he seemed to be zylphing straight into her mind, sensing her attitude of restrained desperation, participating in the thought images that were forming there. And it was as though he could reach deep into her mind and intercept her thoughts as she brought them forth for his perception.

  You must not do what they tell you, Gregson, she appeared to be warning him desperately.

  And her emotions came to him with such clarity and sincerity that it was impossible to suspect her any longer. For hyperradiation was like an all-revealing light, a sanctifying fire which unmasked duplicity and bared the basic attributes of the soul in all its spiritual nakedness.

  The suppressor must not be used, she pleaded. We’ve got to refuse to help them!

  But I can’t! he felt himself thinking.

  / know it’s horrible to deny Earth the suppressor’s protection. Yet we’ve got to—for a while, at least!

  But within days millions will be screaming themselves to death!

  He felt the fierceness of her desire to convince him as she begged, Don’t you see we must hold off? We’re working on a plan—Wellford and two senior members of the Valorian expedition.

  What is the plan?

  Only the three of them know. That way there’s little chance the bureau can learn our strategy from anybody they capture.

  How can we help if we don’t even know what they’re going to do?

  Elsewhere aboard VJO, Security Bureau personnel scampered about, all bending their efforts to regeneration of the rault suppressor’s field of stygumness. All of them so completely preoccupied that they were unaware of the intimate contact Gregson and the Valorian girl had established. Who would notice a whispered conversation in an auditorium that was being evacuated to the frantic cry of “Fire! Fire!”?

  Isn’t it logical, Andelia thought, that—whatever action they are preparing must be timed for the immediate future?

  When the bureau tries to move VJO?

  Perhaps before then!

  So we have to hold things up until Wellford and the others can act?

  Exactly. And anything you and I can do to interfere with the bureau now may be a decisive contribution.

  Hypervisually, he studied Andelia for a moment. Her straightforwardness was compelling. And he could only feel a deep sense of guilt, of lost opportunity over having doubted Wellford and the Valorians.

  We understood, Andelia assured. We realized later that we ourselves were responsible for the suspicions you must have felt at the castle. But we didn’t know how thoroughly you had been conditioned against us.

  The Valorians—they don’t have a hypnotic faculty? he said, embarrassed by his former gullibility.

  No, Gregson. None whatever.

  What can I do?

  You can see to it that the station doesn’t leave this orbit before we are ready to act.

  But you don’t understand! I’m not free to do what I want! They’ve got…

  Abruptly his communicative thoughts were spending themselves within the confines of his own mind. For, again, the suppressor’s sphere of stygumness had exploded outward, this time with decisive force.

  And two hours later he was still sitting on the edge of the bed while the Dutch girl Karen Rakaar slept on beside him. There was so much he had wanted to ask Andelia. Perhaps she even knew whether Helen and Bill were in the station’s hub.

  But eventually it became evident that the trouble with the suppressor had been corrected and that he would get more information from Andelia only by talking orally with her.

  When the station 0800 buzzer sounded softly in the corridor, he went to the snack bar for coffee before returning to Karen’s suite for the sleep he had missed during the night.

  Four hours later he was having lunch with an exceptionally effusive Karen in the main dining hall. Her auburn hair was upswept and sprayed firmly into place, as a safeguard against the tousling it might otherwise undergo from accelerative and centrifugal fluctuations while VJO changed orbits. Her eyes, always provocative, were especially engaging as she glanced up occasionally.

  “Go along with them, Greg,” she pleaded. “As I said before, you can name your own price.”

  Using his fork, he toyed, as though in indecision, with the food on his plate. He had to see Andelia. But how?

  Karen laid a slender, well manicured hand on his forearm. “Don’t you understand that Radcliff needs you? By supervising VJO under conditions of total stygumness, you’ll be providing a service he couldn’t buy—anywhere.”

  He pretended to be giving serious thought to her proposal, thankful all the while for the suppressor’s complete cancellation of rault that was shielding his thoughts. At the same time, though, he resented the stygumness because it prevented his zylphing Andelia.

  “I could perhaps arrange to stay aboard permanently, you know,” she suggested, staring earnestly at him.

  But Gregson was mentally reconstructing the system of v
entilation shafts he had zylphed during the suppressor’s breakdown. As he recalled, there was a large intake grating in the park, hidden behind a clump of shrubbery close to the pool. Less than two hundred feet away the same shaft was connected to another louvered panel in the storeroom where the Valorian girl was imprisoned.

  “And VJO is going to be more than just a housing for the rault suppressor,” Karen went on. “It’ll be a seat of authority. Gradually, they’ll enlarge it, transform it into the most luxurious…”

  Radcliff drew up unexpectedly before the table. “Not interrupting anything, I hope,” he said approvingly.

  Karen smiled over at Gregson, then back at the director.

  Radcliff took a chair. “I let you sack in this morning,” he told Gregson, “so you could stockpile your energy. Tomorrow night we start dropping down to our two thousand-mile orbit. You’ll be pretty busy between now and then.”

  Gregson was surprised. “You’re still going to take it down after…” He bit off the sentence, but not soon enough.

  Radcliff raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you know about the suppressor trouble? Did you zylph what happened?”

  “Trouble?” Karen asked, puzzled.

  “No,” Gregson lied. “I heard about it this morning. We slept through it.”

  “We slept through what?” Karen demanded.

  “Our suppressor was out for almost three hours early this morning,” the director explained.

  “Anything serious?”

  “Oh, no. We finally got all our stygumness generators hooked in and promptly overloaded the circuit. The field collapsed.”

  “But it’s all right now?”

  “It’s perfect. We installed two supplemental power units with emergency cut-ins. Won’t have that trouble again. By the time we’re ready for our transorbital maneuver it’ll have had a thirty-hour test.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Honeymoon’s over,” he said facetiously. “Tune for you to get busy running your checks on our propulsion system, Greg. I have a crew standing by in Command Central.”

  * * *

  Since he had to work constantly with his technical personnel throughout the remainder of the day, it wasn’t until late in the evening that Gregson finally found a few minutes for himself.

  Twice during the afternoon he had passed along the peripheral corridor by the storeroom in which Andelia was being held. And, since he had been accompanied by a crew each time, he had refrained from even glancing at the locked door.

  In Central Park early in the evening, however, while directing a maintenance detail in draining the pool, preparatory to orbital maneuvers, he had managed to step behind the shrubbery and check on the intake louver. It was as he had zylphed it. The simple removal of four screws would unfasten the grating and provide access to the ventilation duct.

  Afterward he supervised refueling of the fore-and-aft spin-control jets, then assigned two gangs to the task of securing loose gear aboard the station and equipping all bunks with full-wrap anti-inertial sheaths.

  Finally, after instructing the eight o’clock shift, he sloughed off Radcliff’s compliments on an “apparently good job so far” and reported that he was taking off for supper.

  En route to the dining hall, however, he paused to make certain no one was in the corridor watching, then stepped quickly into the now deserted park.

  The louvered panel came off with little resistance and presently he was crawling through the ventilation duct, negotiating its occasional turns and remarking to himself on the accuracy with which he had retained his hyperimpressions of the tunnel system.

  He located the storeroom’s intake panel and called out softly to Andelia before kicking the screen from its moorings. Then he made his way through the maze of cleated crates and found the Valorian girl where he had last zylphed her the night before.

  “I knew you would come through the air ducts,” she said. “I sensed the plan in your mind.”

  “But I hadn’t even thought of it then!”

  “Not consciously, perhaps.” She sat upon a crate by the door.

  “We’re supposed to start moving Vega Jumpoff towards its two thousand-mile orbit tomorrow,” he disclosed.

  “I know. They told me.”

  “I’ve been making preparations.”

  “Then you’ve decided to accommodate them?”

  “I have to.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Bucking Radcliff isn’t a simple thing with a yes-no answer. You see, he has two hostages…”

  She lowered her eyes. “One of whom means very much to you.”

  “Both do.”

  “But don’t you realize that…” She cut herself short and looked away. “I was going to say that they’re only two persons.”

  “I can count,” he shot back angrily. “Are they here—on VJO?”

  “I don’t know. If they are, they must be in the hub. I don’t suppose I can blame you if you decide to protect them.”

  “I haven’t decided that yet—not finally. I know what the stakes are. And VJO isn’t going to leave this orbit on schedule.”

  A smile of approval softened her sober features. “Then you’re going to delay them?”

  “I’ll foul up something at the last minute—make it look authentic so I’ll have a good excuse.”

  She paced in the small, cleared area near the door. “If you could only escape! Then they wouldn’t be able to move the station.”

  “I couldn’t leave—not while they have Helen and Bill.”

  She turned anxiously toward him. “There’s a shuttle berth in the hub! If there’s a ship in dock, and if your friends are there too…”

  Andelia started as a key grated in the door’s lock.

  Gregson lunged behind a crate.

  The door opened and a Guardsman stepped in and closed it behind him.

  His back to Gregson, he confronted the Valorian girl. “Radcliff says you’re excess gear and I’m to do something about it.”

  The crimson flash of his pencil-beam laser pistol stabbed into the dimly lit room and Andelia fell clutching the wound in her chest where the fatal ray had sliced through both of her hearts.

  Enraged with himself because he had not expected the brutal slaying and had been unprepared to stop it, Gregson leaped out at the Guardsman and dropped him with a vicious chop across the nape.

  * * *

  While the man writhed from the paralyzing effects of the blow, Gregson recovered the weapon and directed its beam back and forth across the guard’s body. It wasn’t until the lethal ray weakened considerably that he realized he was wasting its charge.

  Then, pocketing the gun, he stepped into the corridor.

  Time for accommodating the bureau was over. The issue had been forced. For there would be no one to suspect except himself when the two bodies were eventually discovered.

  He had to act now. And his first move must be to determine whether Bill and Helen were in the hub, how closely they were being guarded, whether a shuttle craft was docked there.

  He struck out for the nearest radial-shaft elevator.

  Ascending along the spoke toward the nave, he checked the pistol’s charge indicator and saw that the beam would no longer be of lethal intensity.

  Slowly his weight decreased until it was only the calculated, gradual acceleration of the elevator that kept his feet on the floor. When the red light flashed, he gripped the horizontal changeover bar. The cage decelerated gently and his body pivoted around the bar in a half somersault until he was standing on the ceiling.

  The elevator nestled against its stops and the door slid open. He shoved off into the hub’s peripheral corridor and floated toward the nearest nave entrance. Around the curve, however, he flailed to bring himself to a halt before colliding with the floating body of a Guardsman who had evidently been broad-beamed to death.

  Cautiously, he propelled himself from stanchion to stanchion until he reached the entrance. Inside, illumination was sparse. Structural girders cast broad shadows against c
ylindrical walls. In the axial bulkhead an air lock was irised open around the sleek nose of a coal-black shuttle craft whose hatch was ajar and whose hull was studded with radar impulse-deflection discs.

  And then he spotted the station’s rault suppressor—a huge concentration of electronic components anchored by guy wires and trailing off cables to a power box in the bulkhead.

  But there were three men drifting around the stygumness generator, pads and inscribers in hand. They paused occasionally, glanced at components and made either notations or sketches.

  Gregson pulled himself along an I-beam, approaching for a closer look. But his shoulder came in contact with a floating laser pistol which he hadn’t seen. The weapon rebounded and clanked against a structural member. Instantly the three men twisted around.

  The closest was Wellford.

  Reflexively, he loosed a laser discharge that was accurately aimed despite his awkward attitude.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Sirens squealed throughout Vega Jumpoff as thick-gasketed hatches thudded shut, sealing off the section whose major air leakage had tripped the alarm. Moments earlier a tremor had jarred the entire station. And spin control jets had labored to reestablish the centrifugal constant.

  But it was half an hour before reports began filtering through. Meanwhile, Radcliff scrutinized the screens. In orbit a mile from VJO, one of the telesensors was sending back pictures of a gaping hole in the outer ring.

  Eventually the intercom squawked: “Damage restricted to Shuttle Traffic Control. The whole section’s wiped out.”

  “Meteor?” the Security Bureau director asked.

  “Hardly. The object’s velocity was slow enough to leave a peelback in the outer skin at the points of entry and exit.”

  Radcliff suspected it had been a missile—until another station reported: “Shuttle craft SC-142 missing from its mooring.”

  Then, shortly thereafter: “The suppressor sentry’s been killed!”

  “Locate Gregson,” Radcliff ordered all stations. “Bring him here.”

  But, in turn, each station acknowledged Gregson was nowhere to be found. By then, Karen had arrived to report he was not with her.