Wellford settled back in his seat and swung the telescreen on its axis so they could both look at it. He returned it until finally the other two shuttle craft swam like silvery slivers on the face of the tube. Sunlight glinted on their hulls as they arrogantly rejected concealment in Earth’s umbra for an apparently fanatic attack on the station.
“Wouldn’t you suppose,” the Englishman asked, “that by now the satellite’s radar and teleserisors have picked up our diversionary force?”
“I don’t see how they could miss.”
Wellford shoved the telescreen aside. “At this point things become a bit ticklish. Our success hinges entirely upon our other two shuttles. They must attract total attention and create enough commotion so that every eye, every sensor aboard the station will be upon them rather than us.”
“Seems to me you have this ship pretty well insured against visual and radar detection.”
“Only during free fall. When we decelerate, we’re going to make a somewhat garish splash with our forward tubes, you know.”
Gregson hadn’t thought of that. But he reminded, “You got away with it last night when you made sketches of the station’s suppressor.”
“Indeed we did. And without employing diversionary tactics. But we can’t hope for another serving of such good fortune. That’s why we arranged the frontal attack concurrent with this mission.”
* * *
Ten minutes from the station, Wellford engaged the servo-mechanism that swung their seats a hundred and eighty degrees around. Then he injected fuel into the forward tubes and the crushing force of deceleration at maximum G-load subsequently dropped a veil of oblivion over their senses.
Timed circuits, however, cut off the fuel flow after a given interval and Gregson regained consciousness first. He turned the seats forward again and Vega Jumpoff, now eclipsed by Earth, drifted into the port—a huge, shadowy ring fitfully lighted by the laser beams that sliced out into the darkness from its peripheral gun stations.
Wellford came around and muttered: “That was somewhat rough, wasn’t it?” But it was obvious he had referred to the minute-long glare of their forward tubes, rather than to the physical ordeal of compressed deceleration.
He hunched forward to stare at the satellite. “At least there are no laser gunners cutting loose in this direction, so I suppose we may assume we’ve thus far gone undetected.”
Gregson could see the diversionary force now—one ship on either side of the wheel and within its plane of rotation. Forward and after tubes aboard both shuttles were firing frantically as they maneuvered to evade the whiplash of heavy laser artillery. But Gregson found it significant that the shuttles’ beams were invariably wide of their mark. Apparently it was not intended that the satellite should receive any further damage.
Vega Jumpoff expanded perceptibly in the view port as Wellford allowed his craft, with its residue of momentum after deceleration, to drift in upon the station. Gingerly, he made a course correction, then another. Forward tubes belched once more, briefly, and Gregson strained against his harness. Finally they were aimed directly at the irismatic air lock in the center of the station’s nave.
Wellford grinned. “We now find ourselves down to the meat of the chestnut. After we picked you up in Paris, I zylphed an interesting experience you had had with Madame Carnot. Remember?”
Gregson shook his head.
“She played a despicable little trick on you. When you weren’t expecting it, she turned up her personal rault caster to full output. What was it like?”
“Like a hundred flash bulbs going off in my brain.”
In the corner of his vision Gregson watched one of the attacking ships take a pencil-thin laser beam broadside. It was sliced in half. The other, he noticed, began drawing farther away, while it fired even more furiously.
“Precisely,” Wellford said in response to the other s simile. “Since then we’ve learned from the Valorians that an intense concentration of hyperradiance can be as injurious to the glial cells as a brilliant arc light is to the eyes—immensely more so, as a matter of fact.”
When Gregson said nothing, the Englishman went on: “Such an exposure can completely and permanently destroy glial receptivity, to begin with. But we mustn’t forget that the glial structure is everywhere within the brain, enveloping each neuron. Thus the damage is not confined to rault receptors alone. Injury spills over and stifles every habit pattern, every acquired function.”
Gregson tried to reason ahead, but failed. “So?”
“So what do you suppose would happen if a rault suppressor, so powerful that it’s generating a sphere of stygumness thousands of miles in diameter, should abruptly start putting out an equivalent amount of hyperradiance instead?”
Gregson instantly grasped the significance of the operation. “And with all the hierarchy of the conspiracy within a half mile of dead center!”
“You have the picture. The trick will be tapping into their suppressor and installing a parallel circuit that will transform it into a rault caster. Actually, we shall have only to hook in the crystal modulators.”
“And we’re going to make the modifications now?”
Wellford nodded. “The parallel circuit will be activated by a time switch. We shall allow ourselves forty-five minutes to clear out before the generator shifts from one function to another. It’ll be a very briefly sustained raultburst—just thirty seconds. Then the suppressor will come on again. Afterward it will be interesting to see what conditions prevail aboard Vega Jumpoff.”
The Englishman handed him a schematic diagram. “This shows what we must do.”
* * *
Another minor burst of propulsion brought them exactly in line with the dock. The shuttle’s nose engaged an actuating stud. Irismatic leaves folded open around the hull’s forward section as the ship inched into the hub’s air lock. Magnetic fasteners grabbed hold and the craft jarred lightly as it shuddered into coupled position.
They propelled themselves out through the cargo compartment and then into the interior of the hub, among the confusing framework of girders that glowed in the pale light of the super rault suppressor’s tubes.
“Here.” Wellford handed over a laser pistol. “Narrow-beam anything that moves—before it has the chance to sound an alarm.”
Gregson anchored himself to a structural member and his alert stare leaped from one peripheral corridor entrance to the next, checking and rechecking each of the eight access hatchways.
Meanwhile, Wellford had reentered the shuttle. After a moment he drifted out again, the first of the compact crystal-modulator components clamped under his arm. He seized one of the guy wires and drew himself along toward the huge suppressor.
As he pulled away from the air lock, twin insulated leads, connecting the first component to the second, stretched taut and drew the latter from the shuttle’s hold. After a moment he was towing an apparently endless chain of small, metal boxes, each equipped with a suction cup, toward the center of the nave compartment.
When he reached the rault suppressor, he selected the nearest radial I-beam and shoved the first of the crystal components into the girder’s recess, attaching it by its cup.
Now he hauled the chain swiftly out of the shuttle, forcing each box into position along the beam as he progressed outward. When the last of the train was in place he went back to the ship and began with a second, then a third series of components.
He made a final trip into the shuttle and returned with a pouch of electrician’s tools, a small switch box that trailed six leads, and the schematic of the suppressor. As he headed for the hulking generator, he motioned Gregson over.
“If you’ll take the switch,” he suggested, “I shall start hooking things up.”
Gregson, attaching himself to a guy wire by the crook of an elbow, managed to hold on to both the switch and his laser pistol. Alternately, he watched Wellford and the eight hatchways.
“There!” the Englishman said, relieved. “We’ve
located the two leads we have to shunt.”
He pointed them out between a pair of the suppressor’s larger louvered boxes.
Then he skinned the insulation in two places on each cable. “By making our connections first,” he explained, “suppressor current will continue flowing through our timer when we interrupt the circuit.”
He secured four of the switch box leads to the exposed cables. Then he began attaching the crystal-modulator chains to the remaining two wires dangling from the timer.
When he had finished, he fished his snips out of the kit. “Now we have only to cut the cables and set our timer.”
But just then Gregson was blinded by a crimson laser beam that speared into the compartment. He ducked instinctively and threshed about, firing as he turned.
An International Guardsman was holding on to a stanchion in the nearest hatchway.
Gregson managed to narrow-beam the man before he could get off a second shot. Then he shoved himself toward the peripheral corridor, nudging the lifeless guard out of his way.
He made a quick circuit of the passageway, checking all the elevator indicators. But none of the cages was in motion.
Back in the hub compartment, however, he found Wellford drifting about in a semiconscious condition. Part of his scalp had apparently been beamed off.
Gregson tore strips off his shut and fashioned a makeshift compress to stem the flow of blood.
“I… I’ve set the switch,” the Englishman muttered. “Cut the cables and let’s get out of here.”
Gregson left him there and went back to the suppressor. But the snips were nowhere to be found.
He readjusted his laser pistol and sliced through the twin leads with a slender beam.
Then he hauled Wellford back into the shuttle.
* * *
After an initial burst of reverse propulsion, he allowed the craft to drift perhaps a hundred yards. Then he gave the forward tubes a ten-second injection of fuel.
“Enough,” Wellford cautioned, his features twisted with pain. “If they discover us, they’ll inspect the hub compartment.”
Ever so slowly, it seemed, they drifted away from Vega Jumpoff. The outer doughnut’s laser batteries had quit firing and the second diversionary shuttle craft was nowhere in sight.
Some twenty minutes later, Wellford suggested, “Very well, let’s turn about. At top acceleration we should be a few thousand miles away before raultburst.”
While Gregson brought the ship’s nose around, the other added, “Let’s make certain all our rault suppressors are on full power. It might blunt some of the metabrilliance of that flash.”
It was somewhat less than—fifteen minutes later when Gregson jolted in the seat as his glial receptors were swamped by the most intense assault of hyperradiance he had ever zylphed.
The overwhelming sensation was a searing physical pain, as severe as any of the Screamie assaults he had suffered during isolation. He had tried desperately to lock out the raultburst by doggedly remaining nonsensitive. But so overpowering was the scorching blast that his endocrinal defenses were instantly shattered. And when the flaring torture finally ended he was exhausted and limp in his harness as he watched Wellford regain consciousness.
After a moment, the Englishman mumbled, “Unmitigated hell, wasn’t it? Let’s decelerate and start back for Vega Jumpoff.”
He paused, then added, “Incidentally, we were relatively close to that raultburst too, you know. Our glial receptors also took somewhat of a searing. I shouldn’t expect to be able to zylph anything at all for a year or two, at least”
* * *
Back at the station they found the Space Division director in Command Central.
General Forrester was crawling across the deck, leaving a trail of drool in his wake. It was not an unusual sight aboard VJO. Some of the personnel lay on their backs, kicking and murmuring. Others slept with their arms and legs drawn up close to their bodies.
Wellford struck out for Earth Communications. “If our ground assault paid maximum dividends too, our shuttles will start bringing help shortly so that we may roll up our sleeves and begin cleaning up this mess.”
Along the ring’s peripheral corridor they found a pair of electric carts and mounted them, continuing on their way.
“Of course,” the Englishman went on, “our first objective will be to drop the station to its two thousand-mile orbit and bring a halt to the Screamies. Then there’ll be informational telecasts. Next will come crash construction of a tight-beam raultronic transmitter so that we may establish contact with the Valorians. And then…”
But Gregson wasn’t listening. Rather, his attention was focused down the broad corridor on a forlorn figure crumpled against the bulkhead and entangled in the wreckage of an electric cart.
It was Weldon Radcliff. The Security Bureau director’s head lay at an awkward angle on his shoulders and his eyes, glazed over in death, stared off. into infinity.
EPILOGUE
Waiting for Helen and the children to finish dressing for church, Gregson was relaxing on a patio chair, hat drawn down over his eyes. Glially nonreceptive at the moment, he was lulled into near sleep by the subtle, remote sounds of a quiet Pennsylvania morning.
In the field, Forsythe was whiling away the Sunday hours at target practice. Each zip of the laser pistol brought startled silence to the chatter of birds bathing in the dust of the barnyard.
A slamming door jarred Gregson fully awake and he zylphed Ted racing across the lawn in his best suit. He was a boy of whom he and Helen, could indeed be proud. Five years old now (five and a half! he would quickly insist if you were zylphing him) and already reigning over the farm as though it were his personal province.
He studied the child hypervisually. But the hitter’s glial attention was on his mother as he raced toward the pond. Swimming around in his mind were gleeful visions of himself tossing rocks into the water and leaping nimbly away from the splashes.
Amused, Gregson sensed Helen’s desperation as she tried to force a shoe onto little William’s thrashing foot. She directed a helpless appeal toward her husband. And, in the intimacy of mutual zylphing, she wondered whether he intended doing anything about Ted.
But Gregson perceived that Forsythe had become aware of the situation and was now admonishing the older boy. Nor was it difficult to catch Ted’s unspoken “Gosh, can’t a fellow have any fun?”
Lying there in his euphoria, Gregson zylphed without fully perceiving everything about him, enjoying the pleasant omniscience that extended to every element of his environment His attention wandered and he found himself sensing the fiery, sluggish flow of magma deep beneath the surface. He had never ceased to be intrigued by the new impressions his glial receptors were continually gathering.
Halfway back to the surface, he detected the impatient, persistent pressures along a fault and recognized the direction and intensity of the shearing force. He traced the stresses to their origin and zylphed that there would eventually be an earthquake—a moderate one. But not within the next hundred years.
“Greg! Oh, Greg!” Helen’s clear voice attracted his hyper-visual attention. Finally she had William ready and was putting the finishing touches on herself—not that there was any fault in her appearance as it was.
He intercepted her flattered acknowledgment of the compliment. But really, Greg—after six years? And… was he ready for church? Or did he intend to nap the morning away?
He rose and stretched and his eyes swept across the distant, blossom-blanketed ridge while his hyperperception focused reflexively in that direction. Beyond the ridge—far beyond and below the horizon—he sensed the direct approach of the long-range hopper. It was a while, though, before he could either hear or see the craft.
By then Helen and William were beside him and Forsythe, •with Ted in hand, was closing in across the lawn. Together they watched the hopper maneuver into position to vertical down beside the house. But long before the craft landed, Gregson was zylphing
its pilot.
It’s always a delightful experience, Wellford greeted, to come back to this scene of connubial bliss.
And, Gregson returned his banter, it’s always a pleasure to welcome a partly scalped Englishman.
The results of the scalping are zylphable, but at least not visible, thanks to London’s best toupee supplier.
By now, Wellford had landed and leaped out onto the lawn. He kissed Helen, gripped Forsythe’s extended hand and mussed the children’s neatly-combed hair.
Gregson sensed the other was merely procrastinating. But before he could dig down to the primary motive for the visit, Wellford said:
“The Valorians have turned up another emergent race—farther out toward the rim of the Galaxy. It appears they are approaching the edge of the Stygumbra straightaway. It’s felt that with our recent experience along those lines we ought to be able to lend a quite helpful hand.”
THE END
The Lost Perception Page 19
