The Lost Perception

by Daniel F. Galouye

  And the intercom rasped, “Twisted wreckage two thousand miles planetward—in reentry trajectory. Looks like it might be the SC-142.”

  Radcliff was reasonably certain of what had happened: Gregson had found a spacesuit, slain a guard, propelled himself to the shuttle and sent it crashing through Vega Jumpoff in a suicidal plunge.

  * * *

  When Gregson regained consciousness, he raised an enfeebled hand to his throbbing head.

  “Really, Greg, this is becoming rather tiresome—broad-beaming you and having to wait for you to come around.”

  Wellford was straddling a chair, his arms curved around its back rest.

  Lying on the floor, Gregson surveyed walls of unfinished wood, with light seeping through slots where sheathing failed to meet.

  “If you’re trying to zylph…” Wellford began.

  “I know,” Gregson scoffed. “You’ve already zylphed me. But, since then, the area’s been shielded by a rault suppressor.”

  “Quite true. Or rather, almost. We have individual suppressors for each person, each structure, each piece of equipment Yours is in your coat pocket.”

  Gregson stared out the window. There were trees everywhere, with but few clearings.

  Beyond, distant mountain spurs. A shack here and there. Camouflage netting was provided in spots where overhead foliage was thin. He could see three Space Division shuttles—two gleaming like silver, the other coal-black and profusely equipped with radar impulse-deflection antennae. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “I don’t suppose it would be too hazardous to answer that one. In the Austrian Alps.”

  Gregson stood up and swore. “I’ve been a damned fool. At the castle I thought you were conditioned by the Valorians and…”

  “I can appreciate how you felt. And I’m quite sorry for all those ambiguous circumstances. I regret my oversight, of course. And I zylphed that you’ve realized your errors.”

  “Mine cost us Andelia.”

  “Yes, I know. But we were all responsible, in a sense.”

  Gregson went over to the window. “Andelia thought you were working on a major attack plan.”

  “Of course we are. And, by making it possible for us to pluck you off VJO, you’ve helped us along considerably.”

  “How so?”

  “They were going to start bringing the station down tonight. That didn’t give us enough time to act. But now that they don’t have you to pull off then—orbital maneuver, they’ll be delayed. And we shall have time for our move.” “What move?”

  The Englishman hunched his shoulders. “Sorry, but I can’t divulge it. Andelia explained why not.”

  Gregson could understand his elimination from strategy planning. After all, he did seem to have a propensity for winding up first on one side, then on the other.

  But Wellford placed a hand on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t feel excluded. Let me say this: Now that we have you with us, you’ll be expected to play a vital part in the execution of our plan.”

  A Valorian appeared in the doorway, motioning toward a peak. “Remanu has just zylphed that Space Division ship in low orbit.”

  “Very well,” the Englishman said. “Tell him to keep his zylphing at a minimum. And make certain everything is fully shielded.”

  After the Valorian had gone, Gregson motioned toward the three space craft. “You’re probably planning an attack on VJO. But don’t you think Radcliff’ll be prepared after your raid last night?”

  “I’d be most surprised if he even knew we were there. We did nothing to the suppressor except study it. And, as for your being spirited away, we managed excellent coverup work on that, seizing one of their moored ships and setting it to home in on Shuttle Control.”

  Wellford explained how it had been done and concluded with, “So you see, as far as Radcliff is concerned, you are both the murderer of two of his guards and a martyr to your own cause.”

  Gregson had to admire the other’s ingenuity and thoroughness. “Did you get your message off at the castle?”

  “We finished the transmitter and watched its subspace antenna sniff out the precise direction in terms of equinormal space orientation. Then the bureau hopper swooped down. We fed in the taped message and ruddy well got out of there. But there was time for the message to be dispatched before the castle was destroyed.”

  “Then there’ll be an armed Valorian force here to help out?”

  “Indeed not. They wouldn’t step in and upset an established government—no matter how it had established itself. That’s our own business, although they’re not above giving us counsel.”

  “Then what was the purpose of the message?”

  “If we, as humans, can smash the conspiracy, we may expect all the technical personnel and equipment we shall need for setting up clinics and ushering our people into rault sensitivity—painlessly.”

  After a moment Wellford added, “And, on that score, it appears you are still somewhat skeptical over the Valorians’ ability to bring an average person through the Screamies in three weeks.”

  Gregson shook his head. “It isn’t easy to believe—not after what you and I went through for two years in isolation. Besides, you said you hadn’t heard of anyone who’d been successfully treated.”

  “I hadn’t, at the time. But I’d been out of touch with our other bases for weeks.”

  “Then there are people who’ve come through the barrier in that short a period?”

  “Quite a number.”

  * * *

  Its roar muffled by foliage, the long-range hopper verticaled down through a break in the trees and came to rest less than a hundred yards from the window. The pilot and two passengers started down the ramp. One, stout and elderly, groped along the rail, a hand extended before him and resting upon the shoulder of a young woman who led the way.

  Gregson strained forward. Helen and her uncle!

  Wellford chuckled in amusement. “You see, Radcliff never had them. He knew you had no information on their whereabouts, so he could well afford to pretend they were his prisoners.”

  “But how…?”

  “The Valorians, too, have made a point of searching for anyone capable of orderly self-introduction to hyperperception. They rounded up Forsythe and his niece less than a month ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know about it myself until after we left the castle.”

  Gregson shouted and waved to Helen, then bolted for the door.

  But Wellford trapped his arm. “It occurs to me that you should welcome our general prohibition against zylphing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The other shrugged. “Really, your behavior was quite normal. Can’t say I shouldn’t have reacted in the same manner myself. But sometimes the male perspective isn’t quite understood outside the sex.”

  “I still don’t…”

  “Night before last—on VJO—Karen. I shouldn’t imagine Helen would appreciate zylphing what went on.”

  “Oh.” Gregson started out again, but less enthusiastically.

  Then he stopped in the doorway and spun around. “Helen—zylphing?”

  “But of course. She’s proof that Valorians can administer the treatment in three weeks. She’s not nearly a perfect zylpher. But she can do as well as you or I.”

  Moments later Helen’s arms were around Gregson’s neck and he whirled her about in order to clasp Bill’s blindly extended hand.

  “We were so excited when we heard about you this morning!” she exclaimed, anxiously scanning his face.

  “So you were a prisoner aboard Vega Jumpoff,” Forsythe observed. “Must have had a rough time.”

  While Gregson muttered an inadequate reply, Wellford offered guardedly, “Greg endured—ah, experiences above and beyond the call of duty. To say more would contribute only to his embarrassment.”

  “Oh, Greg!” Helen sympathized. “It must have been awful!”

  “But,” Wellford continued, “I�
�m sure he bore up bravely, sustained by the misapprehension that you were hostages and that whatever he—ah, endured was in your interest.”

  They walked toward the shack while Helen clung to Gregson’s arm. She had on synthetic slacks and her light hair seemed even softer than the cashmere pullover she now wore. She was attractive too, but in a different, more enduring and subtler manner than Karen.

  Just then a Valorian came out of the shack, carrying a compact radio transceiver.

  “Remanu has just zylphed three Security Bureau hoppers high in the atmosphere. They seem to be combing the Alps.”

  * * *

  After supper, Gregson and Helen sat on the steps of the shack while Forsythe stood in the doorway smoking his pipe.

  In the twilight there was much bustle around the carbon-black shuttle craft. Personnel swarmed over its hull, using sparking electrical instruments to restore the sootlike coating.

  Activity about the other two shuttles was swift-paced too. Recesses in their slender, shining hulls were being fitted with heavy laser weapons.

  “What’s going on out there now, Greg?” Forsythe asked.

  Gregson described the scene. When he had finished, Helen laughed and admonished her uncle, “If you’re thinking of turning off your suppressor again, I’ll call Wellford right over.”

  “I won’t,” he said forlornly after a moment.

  And Gregson understood then what zylphing meant to Forsythe. Being doomed to blindness was no particular inconvenience—not when hypersensitivity was like a super light.

  This new form of perception was a godsend to him. But what about everybody else?

  Helen hooked her arm in his. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Whether we need hyperperception. We got along all right without it.”

  “We got along, maybe,” Forsythe rejoined, “but only if you consider an endless history of war and crime, hatred and oppression as being desirable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Helen explored his eyes. “Don’t you see what rault sensitivity really means? No one will ever again be an island. Each mind will be open. No harmful thought can ever be assured privacy. There’ll be no duplicity, no treachery, or lying, or secrets.”

  Gregson recalled that even an instructor at Versailles had philosophically explored “a society in which everyone zylphed,” and had concluded there would be no sanctuary in private thought.

  “It will be a different world, won’t it,” he said. “Well have to learn to accommodate one another, be tolerant, understanding, helpful.”

  Wellford came over from the blackened shuttle craft and propped a foot on the bottom step. “I didn’t notice when I zylphed you last night, Greg, but—tell me about Vega Jumpoff’s Earth Communications. Is it still in operating condition?”

  Gregson nodded. “I checked it out last week.”

  “Then it’s evidently a vital part of Radcliff’s strategy.”

  “Very vital. First—the end of the Screamies. Second—world-wide military consolidation. Third—the conspiracy comes out into the open, using Earth Communications as its voice of authority.”

  Suddenly there was the distant sound of a long-range hopper cleaving low, dense atmosphere.

  “One of ours?” Forsythe asked anxiously.

  “No,” Wellford said, listening. The roar trailed off into the murky silence of nightfall.

  Later, because the evening was quiet and pleasant and because the ah—carried only a negligible chill, Gregson walked hand in hand with Helen toward a clearing south of the shuttle ships.

  At the edge of the glade she sat upon a low, broad outcropping, leaning back on straightened arms and tilting her face upward. Crisp starlight seemed to sparkle in her hair, just as snowflakes had once done on a cold Pennsylvania day.

  Gregson lighted a cigarette. To the southwest, halfway to the zenith, a pale point of light wheeled solemnly among the stars—VJO. He checked the illuminated dial of his watch.

  Within a few hours the station would be sweeping into Earth’s umbra.

  He thrust his hand into his pocket and encountered the metal casing of his rault suppressor, feeling the warmth of its glowing red bulb. Suddenly convinced that the night was too tranquil to conceal lurking peril, he turned the instrument’s knob all the way off.

  And at once he was conscious of the great flood of hyper-radiance that bathed everything in the vicinity. Only Helen was indiscernible. Even though he could still see her sitting upon the rock, she was nowhere to be zylphed. For her suppressor left an almost imperceptible vacuum in his area of glial perception.

  All around, optical darkness persisted but, hypervisually, the emanations from Chandeen were undiminished in intensity. He zylphed the details of the forest. And he was aware of each individual tree and every leaf upon all the branches, the roosting birdlife and dormant insects, the larger animals that slept hidden in the underbrush.

  He let his perception sweep outward to celestial range and took in, simultaneously, all the stars of the Galaxy and the great nebulae and clusters and immense suns that were gorging themselves on the free hydrogen of the regions through which they drifted.

  And now he zylphed the edge of Chandeen—just below the visual horizon. There was a magnificence, an overwhelming splendor, a glial-numbing hyperbrilliance about the wellspring of rault that forced him to turn his direct perception aside.

  “Your suppressor’s off, isn’t it?” Helen asked.

  But, preoccupied with the beauty and supreme order of the rault-limned cosmos, he was hardly aware she had spoken.

  She drew closer. “We’ve never zylphed each other, have we?”

  And suddenly the stygumness which enveloped her shrank in upon itself as she, too, turned off her suppressor.

  His glial attention thus drawn back to his immediate surroundings, he zylphed the girl and realized at once that she was, in turn, zylphing his experience with Karen aboard Vega Jumpoff. It was all there in his conscious thoughts now, because he wanted her to know. Yet he couldn’t hide his embarrassment.

  But there had been no need for queasiness. Not only was she altogether tolerant, but she also understood that he would never have had the opportunity to escape VJO if he had not earned Karen’s and Radcliff’s confidence.

  He gripped her shoulder and her hair brushed across his hand and he sensed each of the thousands of silken strands as…

  Abruptly dismayed, he zylphed skyward. There was a hopper coming in low over the mountain crest to the east.

  And suddenly, he realized the pilot had zylphed him and Helen long before they had become aware of him.

  * * *

  Instantly Gregson turned up his suppressor to full output But it was too late. The secrecy of the base had been compromised.

  He caught the girl’s hand and they raced toward the shack.

  The hopper now was a roaring rumble in the sky as it headed directly for the glade.

  Then the darkness of the forest was cleaved by the lashing of heavy laser beams and Gregson imagined the craft had already unleashed its assault But eventually he saw that the attacking beams had, rather, been directed from surface to air.

  The drone of the hopper’s impellers sputtered, then died, releasing the night back to ebon stillness. A moment later there was a jarring crash and the forest was bathed in a flickering, crimson glow.

  Even as they reached the base site, scores of persons were running about in the darkness. Just then, however, floodlights came on, harshly illuminating the shacks and hoppers and shuttle craft.

  “Greg!” Wellford called out. “Over here!”

  The Englishman was poised on the ramp of the soot-black shuttle, signaling crews aboard the other two space craft.

  Helen hung back while Gregson approached. “I’m afraid all this is my fault,” he began.

  “You see…”

  “Doesn’t matter now. Perhaps it’s just as well. By waiting any longer we might have been denied the chance of pulling the string.�
�

  He cupped his hands and shouted, “Everybody scatter! There may be a follow-up attack!”

  Gregson turned to join the exodus.

  But Wellford called down, “No, Greg! In here with me! You’re needed on this mission!”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Halfway to rendezvous with Vega Jumpoff, Well ford made a final trajectory correction and checked the shuttle’s rault suppressor to insure maximum output.

  In the bucket seat beside him, Gregson said, “We don’t need that thing now. We’re within the station’s stygumness field.”

  “But should they decide to turn off their suppressor, we must be certain that they’ll zylph only our other two shuttles.”

  “You’re using them to divert VJO’s attention?”

  “Exactly. While we go about more important tasks. Tend the shop a minute, will you? I’ve something to see to up forward.”

  Wellford squirmed out of the seat’s harness and propelled himself into the cargo compartment.

  Energizing the telescreen, Gregson directed its sensors rearward. But nowhere could he detect any Security Bureau craft. Eventually he understood why: With Shuttle Traffic Control out of commission, all docking would have to be done manually, visually. Thus, operations would be suspended while Vega Jumpoff was in Earth’s umbra. Had the Englishman planned it that way? Had he purposely destroyed Traffic Control so that there would be no ships in the vicinity at this time?

  Wellford returned and noticed the energized screen. “I shouldn’t imagine you’ll find anything out here at the moment. We’ve arranged for the bureau to be much too busy Earthside.”

  “Doing what?”

  Wellford glanced at his watch. “As of fifteen minutes ago, our ground forces began a massive assault on Space Division Command Central. The ultimate objective, of course, is to seize the base so that we may have use of it later. But if our attack merely manages to spread confusion and prevent shuttle craft operation for several hours, we shall be more than satisfied.”

  Through the forward port, Vega Jumpoff was still merely a point of light. Floating almost unnoticed against its stellar background, it hadn’t yet entered Earth’s shadow.