Chapter IV

"You mean, then," said the alien to Jerry, "that all the experiences you undergo in Contact are held back under the surface of your mind, waiting there until you let up on the incoming Contact experiences?"

"That's it," said Jerry, miserably. "In some of my Contacts, I've undergone pretty painful experiences. I've had an eye twisted out, an arm eaten and digested, been poisoned, nearly strangled--you name a near-death; I've been through it."

"And your reaction?" thought the mind.

"Nil," said Jerry, ruefully. "When I awakened from a Contact, my memory of my experiences was strictly a mental one. Like something I'd read in a book. There was no emotional reaction whatsoever. My heart beat its normal amount, my glands excreted normal perspiration, my muscles were relaxed. Not a trace of shock or any other after effect."

"And later?" the mind asked gently.

"Back on Earth," said Jerry, "the Space Zoologists have a thing we call the Comprehension Chamber. It's a room filled with couches and helmets, in which we can listen--through replayed microtapes--to all the Contacts our confreres have ever made. Perhaps 'listen' is a weak word. For all practical purposes, we are in Contact, so long as the tape runs. I thought this room was a wonderful adjunct to my education, but nothing more. I went there a lot at first. It was even more fun than the real thing because there was no danger of perishing. Tapes of zoologists who died while in Contact are never used in the Chamber."

The mind waited, listening patiently.

"So one week--" Jerry's mind gave a mental twinge akin to a physical shudder--"one week I got bored. I decided not to go to the Comprehensive Chamber. I went out on a few dates, instead. Tennis, the movies, like that. And on the third day, I woke in the morning with a heart trying to pound its way through my ribs, with my bedsheets dripping with cold perspiration, and lancing agony in my eye, my hand knotted into a fist of pain, lungs burning for air...."

"Delayed reaction," said the mind.

"Yes," said Jerry. "That was it. I recognized the pains right away, having been through them personally in Contact only a month before them. I had a horrible inkling of what was occurring. I called the medics at Space Corps Headquarters before I passed out. They came, shot me full of morphine and stuck me into a helmet for twenty-four hours straight, to cram my reactive agonies back beneath an overload of vicarious Contacts. It worked pretty well. The pain was gone when I awakened. But my nerves weren't the same afterward. I used to look forward to Contacts because I enjoyed them. Now I look forward to them because I dread what will happen if I don't have another one in time."

"In time?"

* * * * *

"I find that I _must_ get to a Contact--real or vicarious--at least once in forty-eight hours. I've been trapped by my job. I'm doomed to do this job or die horribly. Some men, desperate for escape from this treadmill, have quit the Corps, tried to battle this kickback-effect. None of them have made it. They were found, all of them, in various states of agony. Dead, broken, burnt, torn...."

"Psychosomatic pressures?" asked the mind.

"Yes. Their minds, overborne by their emotions, self-hypnotized them into re-undergoing their experiences. And their bodies, duped by their minds, reacted. On a normal man, a hypnotically suggested burn can raise an actual blister. On a man who's opened his mind to the Contact-power--his body can break, burn, dissolve or even evaporate."

"Poor Jerry," said the alien mind, soothingly. A tingle formed slowly in Jerry's mind, a growing warmth, a vibration of utter affection. He was being consoled, being loved by the alien. It knew his troubles. It understood the sorrow of his life. It wanted only to keep him close, to tell him not to be afraid, to make him happy, comfortable, safe.... Safe, and secure, and--

The glare of silent lightning leaped through Jerry's consciousness, jerking him back from the unnervingly delightful torpor he'd been letting overcome his thoughts.

Something hard bumped against his forehead. He realized that he'd just sat up on the couch, knocking the helmet from his head with the shock of the breaking Contact.

"Sir!" said the tech, pausing only to snap off the circuit switch before dashing to his side. "What the hell happened? I never saw you break Contact like that! Did you see the alien? Can it be destroyed?"

Jerry groaned, tried to speak, then fell back onto the thick padding, unconscious.

"What's the matter with him?" cried Jana, sensing the fright in the tech's attitude.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I've never seen him act this way before. Whatever's out there, it's unlike anything we've ever encountered before! Here, you get some of your medics up here to see to him. I'm going to process this damned tape and see what's what!"

Her face pale, Jana hurried off to do his bidding. The tech began to reset the machine so that the coded information on the tape might be translated into legible words.

And Jerry Norcriss lay on the couch, sobbing and groaning like a man on the rack, although his mind was blanked by merciful unconsciousness.

* * * * *

"A baby?" choked the tech. "That thing out there is a _baby_?"

"Does the tape ever lie?" sighed Jerry, relaxing against the plump white pillows Jana had arranged under his back and shoulders.

"Well, no," faltered the tech. "But a baby! Five hundred feet high--and invisible--and able to carry on an intelligent conversation?"

"Which reminds me," said Jerry, sternly. "I am going to ask you to edit both the tape and that typewritten translation of that conversation. It's just as well too many people don't get the inside story on my job, and its rather rugged drawback. And as for yourself.... Well, I can't order you to forget what you've read there."

"I won't talk about it, sir, if that's what you mean," said the tech. "It's not such a hard secret to keep. All the crewmen on the ship know there's _something_ pretty awful about your job. I just happen to know _what_. All I'd get for spilling the inside dope would be, 'Oh, is _that_ what it is!' Hardly worth it."

"That's hardly a noble reason to keep a secret," Jerry murmured, looking narrow-eyed at the tech.

The man grinned, then shrugged. "Makes my life easy, too. Now when you flare up at me, I'll know why, and skip it."

"Thanks a hell of a lot," Jerry muttered.

The tech laughed aloud.

"But," the zoologist added soberly, "we did learn one surprising lesson today. The forty-minute Contact period can be broken, under certain stresses."

The smile left the tech's face, and he looked earnestly puzzled. "I don't follow you, sir. There was nothing on the tape about--"

"Tape?" said Jerry. "You _saw_ how quickly I came out, didn't you? What's that got to do with the tape?"

"Sir," the tech said hesitantly, "you were under the helmet for the full forty."

Jerry flopped back upon the pillows, staring at the other man as if he'd suddenly gone berserk. "That can't _be_," he said slowly. "I was in a long-life host. The clouds weren't even moving. That baby was living many subjective days in the forty-minute period."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the tech, "but you must be mistaken. You were gone the full forty."

"That's impossible," said Jerry.

Jana, who'd been standing back from the two men, stepped forward cautiously, apprehensive at butting into something that was not really her affair.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant Norcriss," she said softly, "but Bob's right. You were gone as long as he says."

"You don't understand, either of you!" Jerry snapped. "My time-awareness in a host is subject to the host's time-awareness. So far as this host was concerned, a day was a confoundedly long period. But I could tell the elapsed time by watching the clouds, the height of the sun. They didn't move, either of them, visibly...."

"How's that again, sir?" asked the tech. "How long did you _seem_ to spend?"

"Possibly an hour."

"Well, then." The tech shrugged.

"But this had nothing to do with the host's subjective sense of _time_, Ensign. It was my own knowledge of _objective_ time through watching the sun, the trees, the clouds. None of them moved during my subjective hour in the host-alien. So no time--or very little time; barely a few minutes--could have passed while I was enhosted, do you see?"

"Lieutenant Norcriss," said Jana, abruptly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you say clouds?"

"Yes," said Jerry, puzzled by her intensity. "Why?"

"There hasn't been a cloud in the sky today," she said awkwardly. "I mean--Well, look for yourself!"

Jerry turned his gaze upward through the quartz ceiling of the solarium. The sky, a rich turquoise, was smooth and unbroken save for the glaring gold orb of the sun, Sirius. He sat up then, looking out through the likewise transparent walls. As far as he could see, over storetops, cottage roofs, and distant green glades, the sky was that same unbroken blue.

"But that's crazy!" he said, sinking back against the pillows. "It couldn't have been like that all the time I was in Contact. Could it?"

Jana and Bob exchanged an uncomfortable look.

"Well, sir," the tech said, "we weren't exactly _watching_ the sky, if you know what I mean. But it was clear when you went into Contact. And it's clear _now_."

His voice trailed off, uncertainly, but Jerry gave a slow thoughtful nod. "You're right, Ensign. It is, and it was. The likelihood of its clouding up for forty minutes, and then clearing again is so ridiculous I can't even consider it.... And yet, I _saw_--"

Jerry stopped speaking, and shook his head. Then he waved a hand at the tech, abstractedly. "Get me some coffee, Ensign. I have to think, hard."

* * * * *

When nightfall had cloaked the planet in dark purple folds, Jerry was still gazing intently at nothingness, racking his brain for an answer. Bob, meantime, had checked the card against the ship's files on dealing with alien menaces, and had found--much as both he and Jerry had suspected--that there was no recommendation available. The menace was new. It would have to be approached strictly _ad libidum_. Whatever method served to rid the planet of the menace would then, not before, be incorporated into the electronic memory of the brain on the ship, to serve future colonies who might meet a similar alien species.

"Any ideas, sir?" asked the tech, after a long silence from his superior.

"None," Jerry admitted, not turning his head. "It's pretty damned difficult to find a solution to a problem until you're sure what the problem _is_."

"Well," said the tech, "we played the radar all over the area where the tape said the thing was located. We got nothing. Maybe the kid's mother came back."

"Just a second--" said Jerry. "Ensign, could you rig the machine to give us, not a written transcript of that alien's description, but a drawing of it?"

"Jeepers, sir!" choked the tech, taken aback. "I don't know. I'd have to talk with the engineers."

"It should be possible. Hell, it's got to be. When I was enhosted, my mind transmitted back every bit of info on that body. A man who only knew mechanical drawing could sketch that shape, simply by following the measurement specifications as my mind recorded them. Go on, Ensign, get with it. One way or the other, I want a look at what we're dealing with."

It was nearly midnight when Bob shook Jerry gently awake and handed him a small glossy rectangle of paper.

Jerry, blinking his eyes against the sudden onslaught of light in the room as the tech threw the wall switch, stared blearily at the paper for a moment, blank and disoriented.

"It's the picture, sir," Bob said, recognizing the bafflement on his superior's face for what it was. "I finally had the bright idea of turning the problem over to the brain, aboard the ship. It followed the specifications from the tape by drawing the picture in periods."

"In what periods?" Jerry mumbled, still trying to come awake.

"Not time-periods, sir. Punctuation. Then, when it had the thing done, on a ten-by-fourteen-inch sheet of feed-paper from its roller, I had the ship's photographer take a snapshot and reduce it in size, so it looks at least as good as the average newspaper half-tone job."

Jerry nodded, absorbing the information even as his eyes crept over the image in his hands. "Looks strangely familiar," he said, studying it closely.

"If you'll pardon what sounds like a gag, sir," began the tech, "I think that the picture--in fact, we all think--"

"Yes?" said Jerry, looking at the man.

"Well, the consensus among the crew was that this baby here looks a hell of a lot like _you_, sir."

Jerry sat where he was, his eyes on Bob's face, for a long moment, as fingers of ice took hold of his spine. Then, with unreasoning apprehension, he turned his gaze back upon the near-photographic likeness he held. "Ensign," he said, after a minute. "This _is_ a picture of me."

"But sir, it can't be," said the tech.

"You're wrong," said Jerry, letting the paper drop to the floor. "It can be, because it is. And all at once I think I know why."

Without warning, Jerry swung his legs over the side of the couch and jumped to his feet.

"Listen," he said urgently, "there's no time to lose. Get the hospital staff together, fast, and bring me back their best psyche-man. I need a hypnotist."

"A h-hyp--?" the tech blurted, confused, then gave an obedient nod and hurried out, shaking his head all the way to the switch-board.

* * * * *

"Never mind _why_, Doctor. Can you _do_ it? That's all I care to know," Jerry's voice crackled, his eyes flashing with authority.

"Y-Yes, I think so," quavered the other man. "If you _can_ be hypnotized, I mean."

"All Space Zoologists have the brainpower necessary to be perfect subjects," Jerry snapped. "Quickly, now, Doctor. I've wasted one Contact already."

"Very well, sir," said the man. "If you'll lie back, now, and make your mind blank--"

"I know, I know! Get _on_ with it, will you!"

Bob and Jana stood back in the shadows beside the towering metal control board, listening in silence as the hypnotist put Jerry under, deeper and deeper, until his mind was readily suggestible. Then he made the statements Jerry had told him to make, and with a snap of his fingers brought the zoologist out of hypnosis.

"You heard, Ensign?" asked Jerry. "Did he do exactly as I told him to?"

"Sir!" protested the doctor.

"I mean no offense," said Jerry. "But if your words left my mind too free, too human somehow, the alien would sense it. And a ruse like this one might not work on a second attempt, once the alien had been apprised of our intent."

"He did, sir," said Bob. "Word for word, as you told it to him."

"Good," Jerry said. "Thank you, Doctor. And good night."

"Uh--yes," said the man, finally realizing he was being peremptorily dismissed after coming all the way across the town from his warm bed in the black morning hours. "Good night to you, sir."

* * * * *

He fumbled his way out the door, and Jana, after a glance at Bob, shut it after him. Bob stood beside the control board, waiting as Jerry once more adjusted the helmet upon his head and lay back on the couch.

"All right?" he called to the tech, as Jana, now walking nervously on tiptoe, though there'd been no injunction against noise, hurried to Bob's side and took his arm.

"Ready, sir," Bob said, keeping his voice steady.

"You've set the stopwatch?" warned Jerry.

"I depress the starter the same instant I turn on the machine," said Bob.

"All right, then," said Jerry.

Bob's right hand threw a switch.

Even as it snapped home, his left thumb had jabbed down upon the stopwatch button. The long red sweephand began clicking with relentless eagerness about the dial.

On the couch Jerry stiffened, then relaxed.

"You'd better stay with him," Bob cautioned Jana. "The machine's on automatic. If I'm not back on time, it'll take care of itself."

"Back on time?" she gasped. "But you can't be, Bob. If what he said about the timing--"

Bob shut his eyes and gripped his forehead between thumb and fingers. "Yes, of course. I'm being an idiot. This maneuver is something new. But--" he withdrew his hand from his face and smiled at the girl--"you stay with him anyhow. I'd feel better--safer--if you weren't with me and the others."

"Yes, Bob," she said, in a faint shadow of her normal voice. "Be careful."

Bob grinned with more confidence than he felt, turned and hurried from the room.

Jana moved slowly across the floor to the couch where Jerry Norcriss lay in unnatural slumber, and stood staring down at his strange, young-old face, and her eyes were bright with quiet wonder....