“What happened, Paul?” asked Jocelyn. “You didn’t move—I was worried.”
“Well,” said Gaynor slowly, “it wasn’t as awful as it probably looked to outsiders. The hardest part was getting their thought patterns down clear. You know how hard it is to understand someone from a radically different speech area, even though he speaks what is technically the same language?”
“Yes,” his wife nodded.
“Did it seem to come clear in your head suddenly?” asked Ionic Intersection.
“Right—that’s how it was with our friends.”
“Oh,” said Jocelyn sarcastically, “so they’re our friends, now, huh?”
“Yep. I talked them out of some silly notion they had of popping us into iodoform bottles. They’re really not bad guys at all. As they explained it, they’re rather hard pressed. It’s the usual set-up that you come on in history after history.”
“Crisis?” asked Jocelyn, her eyes brightening. “Goody!”
“Exactly. Democracy against—the other thing. And exceptionally fierce in this case because our friends, the democrats, are far less in number than their enemies. Culturally and technologically they’re well balanced. Just a matter of population that keeps them from winning. Our friends thought we were spies from the other side—who happen to be giants, too. They took the poor little Prototype for a deadly bomb—how do you feel that?”
“I like it fine,” said Jocelyn.
“Did you find out anything about Arthur?” asked Io quietly.
Gaynor hesitated. “I don’t want to raise any false hopes,” he said slowly, “but they have rumors—only the vaguest kind of rumors—of someone showing up in the enemy ship. From all accounts of the enemy camp, that someone’s chances of long survival are none too good. That’s all they could tell me.”
“Too bad,” mused Jocelyn. “Too, too bad. Paul, can you get in touch with them again—can you stand it?”
“No mistaken consideration, Jos,” he replied. “What do you want me to ask the blighters?”
“I’d like to find out if there’s any chance of our getting to see what might be the multilated corpse of the late and lamented Mr. Claire.”
“Let’s join forces with them,” spoke up Io. “Being small as we are, we can easily look for Arthur and assist them at the same time.”
“I say yes—loudly and emphatically,” agreed Gaynor. “Now if I can get a little silence around here, I’ll go into my trance.” He squatted on the floor and shut his eyes, droning: “Calling Joe . . . calling Joe Gaynor calling Joe . . . Come in, Joe . . . what kept you?”
CHAPTER V
BACK in the relatively comfortable living quarters of the Prototype, which had been repaired during their absence, the voyagers were trying on their new thought-helmets. “As I understand it,” said Gaynor, “one big difference between, the good guys and the versa is this helmet business. I doubt very much whether the good guys realize just how much difference that makes. Thus:
“The common, every-day helmets, used by both good guys and bad are two-way, like a telephone circuit. Incoming and outgoing, both. Whereas these things we have, and which Joe and his friend have—albeit on a somewhat larger scale—are monodirectional. While wearing these helmets we can receive, but we can’t send unless we want to very much. Get it?”
“Then,” said Io thoughtfully, “they must have a two-way thought shield, not letting anything either in or out.”
“Precisely. Both sides have that of course. And precious little good it is to anybody, either. How’s yours, Jos?” Jocelyn fitted the snug, gleaming little cap on her head with an uneasy smile. “Wow!” she exclaimed, reddening. “It seems to drag things up out of the subconscious—my own subconscious.”
“Ah,” said Gaynor. “Yes, that’s because the things are so small. The theory that Joe’s boys have is that the conscious thoughts are sort of long-wave—though millimicrons smaller than anything measurable—and that subconscious thoughts are super shortwavelength. I asked them about the center band, but they didn’t have any opinions. Psychoanalysts and installation-engineers dance cheek to cheek, as it were, in this world. You can keep your ucs in line by voluntary means. That’ll come to you after a while. Now how is it?”
“Okay. What now?”
“I’ll send a test signal—without speaking, of course. You’re supposed to catch it and tell me what it is. Ready?” Gaynor, at his wife’s nod, frowned and shut his eyes. “That was it,” he said at length. “What did you get, if anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Did you catch anything, Io?” he asked worriedly.
The brunette nodded, and recited:
“There was a young fellow named Hannes
Who had the most horrible manners;
He would laugh and he’d laugh
Making gaffe after gaffe,
Spreading tuna-fish on his bananas.”
“Exactly,” said Gaynor. “But we’ll have to try again. I’ll send another one, Jos. See if you can get it this time.”
She closed her eyes in concentration, then, an instant later, recited:
“Willis, with a fiendish leer,
Poured hot lead in pappa’s ear;
Sister raised a terrible fuss:
‘Now you’ve made him miss his bus!’ ”
“Right,” said Gaynor with a sigh of relief. “Io, you seem to be doing all right, but let’s see, Jos, if you can send one to me.”
HIS wife leered and shut her eyes. A pause followed. “Well,” she said relaxing, “what was it?”
Without comment, he recited:
“In the cabin of Gottesman’s Proto Sherlock Holmes met the suave Mr. Moto; You could tell by their air They were looking for Clair, who had vanished, not leaving a photo.”
“You got it,” she approved.
“Yeah, but who’s this guy Gottesman? Never heard of him.”
“Just a guy I know,” she replied with an absent smile. “You wouldn’t be interested, Paul.”
“No doubt. But you’d better not emit any more loose talk about Reno when I happen to glance in Io’s direction, my sweet.
“Be that as it may—we have a job to do, sort of. As I told you, the bad guys are under the thumb of some sort of War Council which was established as a special emergency three centuries ago, and hasn’t been disbanded since. Because, the theory goes, the emergency still exists. Our job is to spy on these people—hence the helmets. Now, if you’ll honor me—?” He crooked a courtly elbow at her; she accepted with a gracious smile, and they stepped from the ship, followed by Ionic Intersection, who had a secretive sort of smile on her face.
“Okay, Joe,” Gaynor announced to the colossus towering above them. “We’re off!” A tremendous hand gently closed about them, lifting the three of them high into the air. “Paul,” said Io tremulously looking down, “you never said a truer word.”
THE trip had been a dizzy panorama of a colossal country-side glimpsed from the windows of a car of some kind, and views from the pocket of Joe as he wormed through the ever-so-carefully prepared breech-hole in the walls of the bad guys’ city. And he had kept up a running commentary of information for their benefit: “This car operates by a new kind of internal combustion. We re-burn water. Something that can’t be done on your world, I believe . . . That ruin as once a sky-scraping building. This whole area was once one of our cities. We had to retreat in one grand movement on all fronts—they’d developed something new in electro-static weapons, and manufacture of shields would have taken too long, longer than we had of time, at any rate . . .
“The crisis, I suppose, is nothing new to travelers such as you. Once—before the war—we had the energy and initiative to spare so that we sent out a few ships such as yours—not protomagnetic, much cruder. Percentage of failure was rather high. And reports of the returned voyagers were not very encouraging. You see, control was mostly psychological, so the ships were drawn to planets and dimensions whose make-up was most like our own.
Highly antithetic, invariably. We should have taken warning—it was too late. Everything seemed to slap down on us all at once. The culminative nastiness of all time seemed to pour out on our heads. Our nation—country—whatever you call it—isn’t a natural one. No common language, no common cultural stream, as the dear archaeologists like to say. We’re exiles, most of us. And though we can’t get together long enough to agree on most things, we’re united on the grounds of mutual defense—very nice in one way, but if we happen to win, by some weird fluke, there’s going to be one hell of a squabble afterwards about the technique of our government.”
“What’s the matter with the one you’re using now?” suggested Gaynor. “And what is it, by the way?”
“That? Just the certain knowledge that if one man does a wrong thing, the rest will go under. That leads to an instinctive rectitude of decision where necessary, and to the toleration of deliberation where that is indicated.”
“Virtually an early Wells Utopia,” murmured Gaynor. The car stopped and they felt themselves being transferred to another pocket of the monster.
“Now,” continued the monster, “we’re walking right through a wall into the fortalice of our enemies. I’m warning you now to be ready to be deposited on little or no notice. I hope you’ll be able to escape in the confusion and get under cover before they pay very cursory attention to the surroundings.”
“What confusion?” asked Io.
“Why, this—approaching in the form of several guards, friends. We’re very near the council room. We’re in it, now—” The abrupt end of the thoughts of their carrier brought sudden shock to the three cowering in the dark of his pocket. They could hear confused roarings and explosions, then a hand yanked them out, none too gently, and they fell far to the floor.
“Come on,” snapped Gaynor, “damn our size—can’t see a thing!” He yanked Jocelyn and shoved Io under the ledge of a colossal piece of furniture; they crouched in a passage no more than three feet high to their senses.
“My guess,” said Io, “is that Joe is a suicide, practically. He must have known he wouldn’t get out of this alive. These people deserve to win, Paul.”
Gaynor was still fretting. “Now,” he growled, “I know what a fly feels like—can’t see more than a couple feet before its proboscis and even then doesn’t comprehend what’s going on. Jos, it makes me feel stupid and unimportant. Let’s all tune in on the War Council. Relax, and open your minds.”
“PAUL, I CAN’T understand the setup,” said Jocelyn worriedly. “Everything’s confused. Who’s that mind receiving and rebroadcasting without a thought of his own? I don’t get it.”
“That mind,” said Io thoughtfully, “seems to be an idiot of some kind.”
“Of course!” cried Gaynor. “The War Council hasn’t got one-way helmets; this is their dodge. The idiot is under some sort of hypnotic control, I’d say offhand.”
“Being lice, and double—or, if necessary, triple-crossers, they don’t trust each other with the two-way helmets. They don’t do things the easiest way—by language—hmm, that’s rather odd, too.”
“Maybe they don’t all speak the same language,” suggested Io.
“That would explain it. Then this system, even though roundabout, is quick enough. They telepath to the idiot, who telepaths it to the others, and so it goes. Simple in a complicated sort of way. Now maybe you’ll be able to follow them.”
He relapsed into brooding silence and tuned in. The thin, dry mind-voice of a councillor was discussing something utterly unintelligible in the way of high-order chemistry. All Gaynor got was, in a gloating tone at the very end: “—phenol coefficient of two hundred and ninety-eight, gentlemen!”
A murmur of mental congratulations, then, from another. “How do you produce the poison?”
“Hot poison, corrosive.”
“Corrosive, then. How do you make it?” More alien technical terms, then the second voice. “Thought so. Lovely idea, but not practical yet. Work on it, man—work on it! This is a war of money as well as spraying liquids. If we could wipe them out in one advance with your stuff, it would be okay. Otherwise, it isn’t worth the money we’d have to put out for it. But work on it, nonetheless. Phenol coefficient two nine eight, you say? Very good . . .”
Then a sharp mind-voice of command. “Tactically, what is there to report? You—nothing? You—nothing? You?”
“Something, chief. Not much, but something. How’d you like to hear that the new air-field’s caved in the center?”
“Speak up, rot you! Has it or hasn’t it?”
“It has. Somebody’s error in Engineering No. Eight, Chief. That ought to affect plans considerably, eh, sir?”
“I’LL decide that, young one. And somebody swings for that error; make a note of it. See who initialed the final plans for the beaming and poured metal.”
“Right, Chief. Now—what’s the big news, sir? What’s the time for it to pop?” There was something like a pleased smile from the mind-pattern of the commander, they thought. Gaynor concentrated furiously to catch the precious next words. “The advance? In three days. Three days exactly. I shouldn’t call it crucial at all—simply the operation on which we’ve been planning for a full long time. Naturally it will be successful. We shall go now. See that the idea is taken care of, someone. You.”
“I’ll be back for him in a moment.” There was a tremendous shuffling of feet, and when Gaynor cautiously poked his head out of the shelter, the room was empty except for the idiot, who, face high up, was blank as a dumbbell.
“C’mon out, all,” he called, giving Jocelyn a hand. ”We can case the joint.”
They essayed a little stroll along the baseboard, feeling futile as a jackrabbit. The shuffling of two enormous feet gave a pause; he looked up with some trepidation. “Awk!” he groaned. “The idiot, a bright beaming smile of interest on his face, dove two hands like twin Stukas at them. The hands closed about the struggling humans, and they were swooped up and violently deposited in a dark, dismal spot.
“So this,” said Jocelyn finally, “is what an idiot’s vestpocket is like.”
CHAPTER VI
“TOTAL BLANK,” said Gaynor H despairingly. “He doesn’t radiate thoughts at all. Just a something like the noise of an electric razor, implying hunger and fatigue.”
“Doesn’t he have any opinions of us?” asked Jocelyn timidly.
“Not a one. Just picked us up out of some kind of reflex. No intention behind it at all; if he knew what he was doing, he’s already forgotten about it. Oops!” Gaynor started. “They just took off his helmet, I suppose. Anyway the buzzing came to an abrupt end. Here we go!”
They jounced around wildly in the pocket of the idiot as he moved slowly and with great dignity out of the room. The three miniatures were too busy clutching onto the coarse fabric of the pocket’s lining to wonder where they were going, in general. The motion stopped; they heard the gigantic thud of a door closing on an unprecedentedly b i g scale.
“Locked in, I surmise,” mused Gaynor. The pocket dropped like an elevator. “Hmm, he sat down.”
“Shall we make a break now?” asked Io.
“Now or never; come on, it’s over the top.” Taking firm hold of the stuff of the pocket, he climbed carefully, hand over hand, popping his head finally over the pocket’s top. Jocelyn and Io appeared beside him.
“Can’t get the scale of things here,” he complained bitterly. “Can’t tell where we are—whether that’s a chair or the floor. Anyway—” He let go and fell heavily to the plane below. The great bulk of the idiot’s body was beside him like a cliff. From the noises, one hazarded that it was eating—not very daintily. His wife and Ionic Intersection hit the ground beside him.
“Easy does it,” he cautioned, clasping a chair-leg with every limb he had. Braking carefully, he slid far down to the floor, then picked Jocelyn and Io off the huge trunk as they followed.
“Thanks,” said Jocelyn, brushing herself. “What now?”
“Under the door, I suspect,” said Gaynor. “We make one very quick run for it. If the dope sees is moving, we’re probably through for good.”
“For good?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “The thing’s likely as not to step on us.” Abruptly he kissed the two of them. “Now!” he whispered, and they scampered across the floor in a mad spring for the door, hundreds of feet away. The crack beneath it would be ample for escape.
Behind them was a stir and the crash _ of breaking pottery, like the crack in Krakatoa. “Oh Golly!” moaned Gaynor, catching his wife’s arm and hurrying her on.
“Leggo!” she panted. “Keep running—I’ll—What she would have remained unsaid. Blocking their way were the immense feet of the idiot. They stopped short and stood like statues. “Here it comes,” murmured Jocelyn.
The idiot was going through some mighty complicated manouvers, the sum total of which was to bring his face to the ground, about eight feet away from the miniatures. He was grinning happily.
“Paul,” gasped Io, almost hysterically. “Look at his face!”
Gaynor and Jocelyn stared fascinatedly. “No,” whispered Jocelyn, “no! It can’t be. It just couldn’t possibly be!”
“But it is!” said Gaynor. “That thing, idiot or no idiot, fifty feet high or not, is my partner, Arthur Clair!”
GAYNOR clasped the little brunette’s shoulders. “It’s all right, Io, believe me, it’s all right!”
“But—Pavlik—my Arthur couldn’t be—”
“I always knew he was an idiot,” marvelled Jocelyn, “but never in this sense—that is, precisely in this sense. Will he find us, Paul?”
Gaynor shook his head. “I think he’ll forget us in short order and get back to his dinner. Then I act and act fast.”
“How, Paul?”
“Clair’s under hypnotic control. I don’t know how he got to that size, Io, but he’s very obviously been ordered to forget everything and act as a sounding board for the ginks in the War Council. Now if I can yell loud enough for him to hear me—”
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