Chapter III: Kidnaped!

Dr. Pollard finished telling his story to John Majors and said, "The whole thing jells, John. Everything fits perfectly."

"I don't see it," objected Majors. "How can a man driven into a psychosis by overwork turn up concocting such a wild-eyed yarn as this hallucination?"

"Easily. Supposing that Carroll had come upon something basically unsound. Suppose all the rest had done the same, the other three or four. The tinkering with the notes is a normal justification for him--if someone hadn't been tinkering with the notes, the problem might have been solved long ago.

"Mrs. Bagby called me just before you came in, remember. I've taken time to inspect all the compiled notes prepared by the typing bureau from a couple of days before Carroll's illness to the present date. They're all present. I've also inspected the originals. There are none missing. Carroll's note must be a psychotic attempt to prove his sanity."

"How could he prepare such?" wondered Majors.

"Easily. It was done under a psychic block and the patient remembers only the true--_his_ true--facts of how he found it on the street."

"Then you believe that Carroll was not on that corner on the day he first saw Sally get hauled into that black sedan?"

"He may not have been there at all. We all knew Sally's habits and that corner very well. That Carroll returned on the following days is a part of his justification pattern. The whole thing is very logical. And it is too bad. I was hoping that Carroll's interest in Sally was a glimmer of returning interest in life and work."

"The child is half his age," snorted Majors in derision.

"All right. So she's about seventeen. I don't expect any real attraction to develop--I'd feel much the same way about them if Sally happened to have been Tommy, the co-op student. All I want is for Carroll to have an interest in something or somebody. I'd gladly offer my wife up as an item for his interest because I know that no fixations would come of it."

Majors scowled. "I couldn't say the same," he observed.

"That's because you do not know Carroll's underlying personality. I do."

"But you admit he's not the same man."

"He isn't--but his sense of loyalty is not changed. So long as he's that way there's hope for him."

"But what do you intend to do about him?"

Dr. Pollard laughed. "Me? I'm going to admit that maybe he has something there, but that this thing is problematical. Oh-oh. He's here," said Pollard, pointing to a winking pilot light above the door. An instant later his nurse entered and was told to send Mr. Carroll in.

"Can you prove the identity of anything?" demanded Carroll once the opening greetings and informalities were finished.

"It depends," said Pollard cautiously.

"Well, I have a sheet of paper here that came from that first day when I saw Sally confronted by the black sedan. Is this valid or is it false?"

"Since I can show you the original of that report, it must be false," replied Pollard. "You see, Jim, regardless of whether you admit it or not, you've been so close to the Lawson Radiation that you could easily fake up what might be a quite valid report if you hoped to show some proof."

"But, good heavens, would I fake a report that I know will be matched by the original?"

"In your right mind, no. I don't know how much this last couple of weeks of problem did to sharpen you up, Carroll. But remember that you were hitting an I.Q. of about seventy after your--accident. A seventy I.Q. might be that dense and can be that dense.

"And, of course, the subconscious mind, hoping to salve your conscious mind, might do it. Now that you know it is false, perhaps your subconscious mind will bring forth something of a more convincing nature."

"If what I think is true," said Carroll slowly, "the same men who intercept Sally every day are quite capable of producing as good a counterfeit as I am!"

"I claim that there are no men in a black sedan."

"Oh?"

"Tell me, Carroll, how do you rationalize the fact of two Sallys?"

"I think there is something to all this that is far deeper than our five senses will admit," said Carroll flatly. "Some agency is doing all it can to prevent us from finding out about the Lawson Radiation!"

Pollard scribbled "persecution complex, too," on his scratchpad in a brand of his own unreadable shorthand. Then he said, "You're convinced to the contrary?"

"I am."

"Tell you what I'll do," said Pollard. "Since you think this affair is what you claim, I'm going to give you a chance to prove it. I'm going to advance Sally into the mailing department and let you take over the job of delivering those reports yourself. You feel that they might not be able to pull the wool over your eyes?"

"You know what I think?" said Carroll sharply. "I think that the days that I joined Sally for her sandwich I took a ride with her in that car, instead!"

"How do you come to that conclusion?" asked the psychologist, scribbling on his scratchpad.

"Because every day that I watched I saw her enter the car. Every day I was with her we saw no car. Could it be mass-hypnosis?"

"It might--but why weren't you hypnotized?"

"I don't know. Why have I got this amnesia?"

"It isn't amnesia anymore," said the psychologist ruefully. "It is now a definite psychic block against your former line of work, coupled with self-justified hallucination."

"I hate to puncture that bubble," said Pollard. "But I must. Take that job and find out for yourself!"

"I will," said James Carroll flatly. "You watch!"

"Good!"

"And I will not be stopping for sandwiches, either!" snapped Carroll. "Or, I might add, anything else!"

* * * * *

James Carroll tucked the box underneath his arm and set out along the street. He walked warily, keeping a sharp lookout for the black sedan. A few hundred feet ahead of him he saw Sally turn into the drug store for her habitual snack but he suppressed very quickly the impulse to follow her and talk to her about the job.

He stood on the corner of the square, waiting for traffic. It was a reasonably long-time light for the crosstown road, and Carroll reached for a cigarette. His pack was empty, so he crumpled it and tossed it in the nearby waste-chute and looked about him questingly.

The corner upon which he stood held a cigar store and James Carroll entered the shop to buy cigarettes. The store was rather full and he was forced to wait.

And it came to him, then. During that wait it came to his feebly-groping mind that this was the same sort of pattern that he had seen before. Was this truth--or reality? He smiled, and as the storekeeper came towards him, he looked the man in the eye and said:

"When did you split me off?"

There was a look of amazement on the proprietor's face--wonder, puzzlement and a scowl of slight anger.

"You heard me," said Carroll flatly. "What are you doing to my reports?"

"You're nuts," said the storekeeper.

"Am I?" replied Carroll lightly. "Then I'll tell you why. The Lawson Radiation comes from a system of interstellar travel, used by some race out in the Boötes region of the sky. The insoluble dilemma is how to go out to learn the secret of interstellar travel when I need interstellar travel to go out and ask the questions--"

The man's face faded, distorted like a cheap oil-clay image under too warm a light.

The store flowed down, too, and swirled around in a grand melee of semiplastic matter. The light inside the store darkened and the only illumination within the rolling, churning store came from a light that swung back and forth madly in front of the door.

Carroll fell backwards into a cushion of soft-plastic floor which bounced slightly under him from time to time. A low roaring mutter came to his ears. The light continued to swing but it was swinging past a window now and only in one direction.

He opened his eyes wide and faced the man in the seat beside him.

"Well?" he asked.

"It isn't, very," growled the man.

The driver turned, swore in a strange tongue and then turned the car back. The driver's companion picked up a small phone and spoke rapidly into it. The car rounded the block, re-passed the corner long enough to pick up a man dressed as Carroll was.

Halfway down the next block the man got out and took the box of reports. Then the car drove away and, as it pulled away, Carroll felt the jab of a needle in his thigh.