Chapter VI

The moment that followed the flying robots’ departure stretched endlessly. Seconds ticked by with Stone barely aware that they were passing. He could only stand there in mute, helpless frustration, staring up at the sky where the cones had vanished.

Out of the night they had come; into that same night they had retreated.

Only there was more to it than that.

Because they’d taken Reva and MacDougal with them. That, obviously, had been the whole purpose of their raid.

Nor had their victims gone willingly. No one who had seen those blanched, fear-stricken faces could believe they had.

No. If there’d been a plot--if Reva had really helped the monsters by setting up the transmitter at her project building--then that plot had now reversed itself, gone sour.

It was a mad twist--shattering; mind-shaking.

And it forced a whole new orientation.

For Stone, it was suddenly more than he could take or grasp. He slumped against the wall; buried his face in his hands.

Then, from all directions, sound rose and swept in and impinged upon him--a hoarse babble of voices that echoed overtones of panic.

He let his hands fall; looked up and out.

The teeming mass of humanity crammed into Central Project Area seethed like churned water. Shouts of rage rang out ... roars of indignation, women’s high-voice protests, the fear-straught cries of frightened children.

While Stone watched, the troops drew in to form a tight, bayonet-bristling cordon about the Project Building, thrusting the civilians back.

Numb, drained, Stone turned from the scene and made his way to the main entrance.

A half-track stood drawn up close by it, with a lieutenant colonel barking orders into a radiophone. Pausing, Stone listened long enough to ascertain that the man was talking to the commander of an armored unit on maneuver somewhere out in the desert--calling it in to reinforce the troops stationed at the base in case of further robot raids or incursions by the monsters.

Chaos, Unlimited.

Shaking his head wearily, Stone went on into the building and headed for the first-floor snack bar.

The place was deserted, save for a little knot of research men who sat talking animatedly at a table beside a blaring radio at the far end of the room.

In spite of himself, Stone’s lips twisted wryly. Leave it to Research. Let Earth itself collapse, and its intellectual stalwarts would still forget panic in their eagerness to argue the dynamics of the breakup.

The girl at the coffee urn gave him a wan smile. “Coffee, Mr. Stone?”

“Jug of black,” Stone grunted. “I need something to help me do some thinking.”

* * * * *

Still talking, two of the research men came up behind him while he waited.

“... that confounded tower, that’s what gets me,” the first was saying. “With MacDougal gone, what do we do about it?”

“Then what Crawford said’s true? Nobody except MacDougal actually knows the purpose of it?”

“You’re so right. I was there when he gave the orders on it, a week-and-a-half ago. He was so excited he could hardly keep his pants on; but when Grimorski asked him what the idea was, he just stuck out his eyebrows and told Grim to mind his own business.”

The second man whistled. “It puts us on a spot, then, doesn’t it?”

“Spot’s hardly the name for it. That tower doesn’t tie in with The Project at all, except maybe for using some of the big equipment.”

The girl at the coffee urn handed Stone his cup and jug. Mechanically, he took them, paid her, and stepped back out of the way of the research men.

But his mind was racing, groping. He made no move to find a table.

“One with cream and one without,” the second research man told the girl. And then, speaking again to his companion: “I was talking to Santos about it. He says the only thing he can figure it for is some kind of king-size electrolytic cracker. Only it’s too big to make sense, and it’d have to work on some off-beat principle that doesn’t tie in with accepted theories on ionization.”

“Even if it did, what would the monstrosity decompose? The atmosphere?” This from the first man. “No; I can’t buy that, Dawes. If you ask me, it doesn’t do anything at all.”

“Oh, now, don’t push those snap judgments of yours too far, Quinn.” The second man looked half-worried, half-amused. “After all, why would MacDougal order the thing built, if it didn’t have some function?”

“What’s the obvious answer?” the man called Quinn snorted. “Our base director’s cracked, that’s all. The strain got too much for him. He saw how things were going on The Project--that it just wasn’t going to work out, even if it was his idea and his baby. He simply couldn’t take it. So, he compensated by coming up with a new super-secret brainstorm that’s as nutty as a Rube Goldberg invention.”

The other research man frowned. “You really think so?”

“What else is there to think? Can you come up with any other explanation?”

“But MacDougal--damn it, Quinn, he’s outstanding, brilliant--”

“The smarter they are, the wider they split. It’s happened before. A man stakes his career on a job; oversells an idea. Then it falls flat. He sees his whole scientific reputation flying out the window. Unless he’s mighty stable, the next stop’s Bellevue.”

Cups in hand, the two research men started to move away, back to their table.

For the fraction of a second, Stone hesitated. Then, abruptly, he stepped forward. “Pardon me....”

The pair halted. The first man half-turned. “What--?”

Stone said, “I’m Carl Stone. Security. I couldn’t help overhearing--”

The second man flinched visibly, slopping his coffee. His thin face paled a trifle.

His companion stood steady. “Go ahead.” His voice was cool, not too friendly.

Stone made a placatory gesture. “Believe me, I’m not trying to give you trouble. There’ll be no nonsense about reporting anybody, no matter what. But some strange things have happened on this base lately. I need information--and maybe you two are the ones who can give it to me.” He nodded to the nearest table. “How about letting me have five minutes, over coffee?”

“I’ve got nothing to hide. What I said’s for the record.” The first man stepped to the table, dropped into a chair. The second followed, less enthusiastically.

* * * * *

Stone filled his cup from the jug and leaned back, hunting for the right words. “You think there’s a possibility that The Project’s a failure?” he asked finally.

“Possibility, my eye. It’s a thousand per cent certain.” The first man, the one called Quinn, stirred in sugar. “Has been, for nearly a month now. But MacDougal won’t give up. Because he doesn’t know it? No; it’s because he’s scared to.”

Stone frowned at Dawes. “You agree?”

The man stared down into his coffee. “I’m afraid so.”

“Then why hasn’t it been reported--to Washington, I mean?”

“That’s--that’s the base director’s responsibility.”

“And this other business? The tower?” Stone spoke to Quinn, this time.

“You’ve got me there, mister.” The man made a business of shrugging. “I’ve screamed loud enough about it, but no one would listen. I guess they think griping’s just a habit with me, on account of my encephalitis.”

Stone stiffened. “_Encephalitis_--?”

“A brain disease. I picked it up in the flu epidemic of 1918, when I was a kid. Doesn’t bother my thinking, but I’ll admit it shortcircuits my disposition sometimes.”

“So--”--with difficulty, Stone held his voice level--“so, you didn’t think much of the tower?”

“That’s right. I didn’t. But everyone else was so hipped on it they wouldn’t listen--even Dawes, here, had the bug. For better than a week, they all went around acting like it was the hottest thing since blondes were invented, and the most important, even when in the next breath they’d have to admit they didn’t know what it was supposed to do or how it worked. I was the only one in the place who wouldn’t join their club. I think they’d have fired me, if they’d had a replacement. As it was, the supervisor just swore I was crazy and let it go at that.”

“I see.” Stone gripped his cup between his palms, trying to hide his hands’ sudden trembling.

Slowly, slowly, the pieces were falling into place.

Two weeks ago, more or less, Reva Adams had been assigned to research a mysterious project at this base.

Shortly thereafter, the transmitter at her building had gone into action.

Immediately, the thinking of the entire body of personnel had grown distorted--as witness MacDougal’s order to build an apparently useless tower in the face of The Project’s alleged failure.

Then he, Carl Stone, had returned--and the transmitter hadn’t affected him, save to make him abnormally tense and irritable and nervous.

Reva had diagnosed him as an encephalitis victim.

And now, in Quinn, he’d discovered another encephalitic--and apparently Quinn’s thinking hadn’t been distorted by the transmitter, either! He’d retained his judgment, his ability to analyze and reason, in spite of admitted irritability and tension.

In other words, whatever else the transmitter might have done, it hadn’t been able to influence encephalitic intellects.

Why?

Staring at his cup, Stone pondered.

“_There’s tissue damage_,” Reva had said, “_and, later, of course, residual lesions. Ganglion cells and neurons degenerate or disappear_.”

That meant that the functioning of the brain was changed, impaired.

The transmitter at Reva’s project building pulsed out waves that distorted the thinking of normal brains.

But encephalitics didn’t have normal brains. The disease destroyed cells, burned out synapses.

So, in them, the transmitter merely heightened tension. Scar tissue slashed gaps its impulses couldn’t bridge.

* * * * *

Of a sudden Stone felt better than he had in days. This discovery--it was a step forward; a long, long step.

The only trouble was, he still had so far to go.

For instance, where did the monsters fit into the picture?

The robots?

How did they link to the transmitter?

And--the thought came in spite of all his efforts to shut it out--to Reva?

Because there _was_ a link. There had to be. The problem was only to establish the chain of logic.

He took another sip of coffee; spoke as much to himself as to his companions: “First, I smashed the transmitter. Then, the monsters came--”

“The monsters--?” The thinfaced Dawes hunched forward eagerly, seeming glad for the sudden change of subject. “I haven’t heard anything about a transmitter. But these monsters--now there’s something I can get my teeth in!”

“You can have ’em,” Quinn grunted sourly. “Me, I wouldn’t get my teeth in a monster if I was starving.”

“No kidding, Quinn! I just wish I’d have seen one!” Dawes’ brown eyes sparkled. “They’re aliens, obviously--extraterrestrials from some other planet. Also, they’ve mastered space travel--which means they’re superior to humans, no matter what they look like. Look how they handled the business with the robots--kidnapping our base director as a hostage, along with a psychiatrist to give ’em a hand at figuring out our mental mechanisms. Personally, I don’t think there’d have been any trouble with them whatever, if people hadn’t panicked. But when those women out in the prefabs saw ’em--all tentacles and whatnot--everybody stopped thinking. The troops didn’t do any good, either. The aliens didn’t have any choice but to fight back, once the lead started flying....”

The monsters. The tentacles.

The dead woman. Glines. Bjornberg.

Without avail, Stone tried to black out the picture. In spite of himself, he shuddered.

He knew, then, that for him there could never be any compromise with the strange creatures. No matter what he should learn, regardless of any answers the future might uncover, he could never hope to throw off his horror. His memories were too black, too bitter.

Dawes was still talking: “... and I wonder how many of us have ever stopped to consider the functional aspects of multiple tentacles. Just think how handy it’d be to have suction cups on the ends of your fingers! It’s as great an evolutionary development as the thumb! And there’s the business of having the tentacles on both ends of the body, too--your feet get tired, so you turn upside down and walk on the other end. The stripe around the middle is probably a sensor band--a continuous nerve unit that sees, hears, tastes, smells; that is, assuming they have our senses. Or maybe they ingest their food from the air, by osmosis, the way a frog does water--”

The flow of words showed no signs of stopping. All at once, Stone could take no more. He had to be alone, to think.

Abruptly, he rose. “Quinn--Dawes--I want to thank you both,” he interrupted. “You’ve been a big help--more than you know.”

He started to turn.

As he did so, the blaring radio down by the other occupied table went into a sudden, crackling spasm, then fell silent.

A coffee-drinker rose, reached for the dials.

But before he could touch them, the radio blared again. A voice spoke--a strange, metallic voice like none that Stone had ever heard:

“Base! Development base called Las Crescentes! I speaking to you!”

Stone went rigid. Chairs scraped at the other table.

“Listen, Base! I speaking!”

* * * * *

The man who had risen from the far table twisted the volume dial.

“Listen, Base! Listen, Base! Listen, Base....” The level of the strange voice stayed constant.

The man moved the selector.

The voice came in on all bands.

The man stumbled back, white-faced and shaking.

An icy finger ran up and down Stone’s spine.

The clanging, harsh, metallic voice went on: “Listen, Base! I here at World Earth from world you not know. I get element you call krypton. Must have. Take out you air. Not hurt.”

Stone groped. “Krypton--?”

Quinn speaking: “Inert gas, one part in six or seven hundred thousand in normal atmosphere.”

The voice again: “Must have! Take! You help, I not hurt.”

“Aliens!” Dawes’ nails scraped the table. “I was right! I was right!”

The voice: “Tower take. You run. Must have!”

“‘Tower take’?” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “My God! You don’t suppose--”

“Listen, Base--!”

A pause.

Then, a new voice on the speaker, deep and familiar. MacDougal’s voice, thick with tension.

“John MacDougal speaking.”

Stone gripped the back of his chair so hard his knuckles ached.

MacDougal: “As you’ve probably guessed, our visitors tonight are from--elsewhere. Another planet. Maybe even another solar system. I’m not quite sure. There’s a problem in communication. They don’t have anything like what we’d term normal speech apparatus. They’d tried to get around it with the mechanical substitute you just heard, but it’s pretty limited.”

A pause, vibrant with nerve-shattering silence.

“Anyhow, they want krypton. Why, I don’t know. They just keep saying ‘Must have!’”

Another pause, longer this time.

Stone’s muscles were knotting.

“This krypton--we’re to get it for them.” MacDougal sounded old and frightened now. “They’ve even equipped us to do the job. It seems they’ve--been around quite a while. A couple of weeks, anyhow. So they did a little mind control work on one of our people, Doctor Reva Adams. Again, I don’t quite know how; probably they’re telepaths--maybe that’s how they communicate with each other. In any case, they maneuvered things so she set up a transmitter that induced what amounted to a mild paranoia in all base personnel.” A short laugh, more panic than mirth. “Including me, the base director....”

With an effort, Stone twisted the chair about and sat down. Within him, the tension kept climbing. If it went on--wildly, he wondered if a man could feel his own sanity slipping away....

MacDougal again, sounding more like himself this time: “Sorry, friends. I’m all right, and so is Doctor Adams. Just chalk up any breaks I make to nerves....” He spoke less jerkily now. His voice came through the radio’s amplifier strong and steady.

* * * * *

Stone’s tension ebbed a fraction. He leaned forward, concentrating on the base director’s every word:

“... I spoke of paranoia. As you may know, the disorder’s marked by systematized delusions and hallucinations. In my own case, these centered on a conviction that I’d developed a new and revolutionary approach to The Project. Backing it up, I ordered construction of the equipment that now occupies the tower on top of the Central Project Building. In turn, the rest of you fell into a pattern that blocked off any questioning of my judgment, and built up resistance--extreme hostility, in fact--to any thought or suggestion that might threaten the work or the aliens.

“Actually, of course, my ‘new development’ had nothing whatever to do with The Project. On the contrary. The only function the device has is to extract krypton from the atmosphere as fast and efficiently as possible. How it works, I can’t say; the design’s so different from anything we know that I’m inclined to think it’s based on scientific principles completely outside our experience.

“Some of you may wonder why these aliens picked our base as a place to set up their operation. Apparently there were two reasons: First, The Project involved materials and a good deal of hard-to-fabricate equipment that they needed for their krypton extraction process. Second, Las Crescentes is isolated. Their mind-control transmitter blanketed us without overlapping into any other inhabited areas, so they didn’t have to worry about outside interference.

“That brings up another point: These creatures have a wave-shielding device that tops anything we know. That’s how they cut in on your radios with this broadcast. It also blocks off your transmitters and telephone equipment, so don’t waste time trying to get outside help.

“Getting back to the other aspects of the situation, this is the way it stacks up: If everything had gone according to plan, we’d have finished the extraction unit in the tower, drained Earth’s atmosphere of krypton, and delivered it to these aliens. Probably we wouldn’t even have realized what we’d done till after they’d left the planet.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, though, something went wrong. One of our base security men, Carl Stone, was in Washington when these creatures moved in. Last night he got back. For some reason neither the aliens nor I can quite figure out, the paranoia transmitter didn’t affect him. He recognized that something was wrong on the base, and he wouldn’t be pressured into letting it slide. In less time than seems possible, he located the transmitter and smashed it.

“The moment the transmitter went off, the aliens knew something was wrong. They moved in on the base.

“Our troops stopped that, fast. The aliens saw they’d have to fight a pitched battle to take over. They drew back instead. Maybe they’re humanitarians. Or maybe they were afraid the tower might be wrecked if shooting started. I don’t know.

“Anyhow, they sent the flying robots for Doctor Adams and me. We’re hostage-interpreters, I gather.

“That brings up the reason I’m talking. I’m supposed to tell you what they want you to do.

“It’s simple enough: Just finish the krypton extractor according to plan just as fast as possible--they figure twenty-four hours ought to do the job.

“Then, put it into operation. They’ll supply cylinders to store the krypton.

“Once it’s aboard their ship, they’ll turn Doctor Adams and me loose and be on their way to wherever they’re going.

“They want me to hit it hard that this won’t cost us anything. To us, krypton’s just an inert gas with no practical value. To them, for some reason, it’s vital. They say they’ll even pay us off for it by giving us whatever scraps of scientific information they’ve got that we’re capable of absorbing.

“On the other hand--”--now MacDougal’s voice developed the faintest of tremors--“if we don’t go along a hundred per cent, they promise immediate, utter and complete destruction of the base, and extermination of all personnel--after which, they’ll pick another site for their plant and try again.”

The base director paused, then; hesitated, fumbled while the silence echoed.

In the snack bar, tension climbed and eddied like a thermal updraft. Stone could hear the harsh rasp of his companions’ breathing.

For his own part, he dared not even suck in air, for fear his self-control would crack.

“I guess that’s all,” MacDougal said at last. Again, as at the beginning, his voice suddenly sounded old and frightened. “I’m in no position to try to influence your decision. I don’t have the right to tell you what to do, or how to do it. Make up your own minds and--and good luck--”

He broke off. Once more, the silence echoed.

Then, like a thunder-clap, the alien’s clanging, metallic voice cut in--harsh, savage: “Listen, Base! I speaking! Get krypton! Must have!

“Get krypton--or die!”

The radio went dead....