As for the others, he would try to warn them in time to avert or modify the approaching disaster; hut it would have to be done in a manner which could not affect his own safety. Though Mars Territory looked like the responsible agent for what was happening, it must have allies on Earth in positions where they could deal with interference . . . and with those who interfered. Hugh spent an hour outlining his conclusions about the Galcom Craze in every detail. He then made approximately fifty copies of the message and addressed them to various members of the government, to news agencies, and to a number of important people whose background indicated that they might give serious thought to such a warning. He was careful to mention nothing that could serve to identify him and left the messages unsigned. Andy Britton was dispatched to South Valley to drop them into the mailing system there. After the secretary returned, Hugh told him what he believed was occurring and what his plans were.
Andy kept his face carefully expressionless, but it was plain what his own theory was—old Hugh had cracked up at last. However, he had a highly paid job, and if Hugh wanted them to sit out the next few weeks in a bomb shelter, that would clearly be all right with Andy Britton. Before dawn, all preparations had been made. They closed up the town house in Antoinette again, and installed themselves unobtrusively in the forest shelter down the river.
The next two weeks passed . . . to all appearances . . . uneventfully. Andy Britton dutifully avoided the shelter’s TV room, and he and Hugh took turns observing the air traffic above the river and the road gliders passing along the highway from the shelter lookout panel. There were no signs of disturbance of any kind. Andy, an active individual by nature, began to show some degree of restiveness but made no attempts to argue Hugh out of his ideas.
Hugh saw no reason to rush matters. For the time being, he had secured himself from the Galcom attack, both as to possible personal effects and the dangers that could arise from a demented populace. His warning might or might not be heeded. Others might see the threat and take steps to end it. Whatever was to occur, he had withdrawn to a position where he could wait events out with the greatest degree of safety.
He began to give his attention to methods whereby he could . . . without exposing himself . . . regain a more complete contact with the outer world than simple observation from the shelter provided. Out of this came eventually the arrangement in the TV room with the mirror and the bull-roarer recording. The Galcom symbols, judging from the sample he had seen, were asymmetrical designs. If the specific visual image produced by them brought about some effect on the mind, the effect should be nullified by a reversal of the image. Hence the mirror through which he could observe the TV screen without looking directly at it. He was cancelling out the Gorgon’s head. The bull-roarer recording was to smother Galcom’s audible form of attack, the drowsiness-producing cross-ripplings of light sound. The switch which started the recording would be in Hugh’s left hand whenever he turned on the set, his thumb pressed down on its release. At any loss of alertness, he would let go automatically. The election of a bull-roarer with its own ritual implications hadn’t been necessary for this purpose; but the notion pleased Hugh and—the subconscious being the suggestible and superstitious entity it was—a little deliberate countermagic should strengthen the effect of sheer noise.
In spite of these supporting devices, Hugh had intended to proceed very prudently with his investigation. He couldn’t be sure they would actually give him more protection than his own resources could provide. He hadn’t forgotten the disconcerting feeling of having been caught off guard by a barely perceptible sound pattern, and there might, after all, be more Galcom tricks than the two he had encountered. The lack of anything in the least abnormal then in the TV programs he scanned through was rather disconcering in itself. Something, obviously, had happened—must have happened. The Galcom program hadn’t vanished without cause.
The appearance of it was that Galcom had been banned from the networks by World Government edict. The entire business of symbol trickery and its effects might have been turned over meanwhile to some scientific group for orderly investigation. Mars Territory could have been put under an embargo. And it was conceivable that Territorial raiders were known or suspected to be in space; and that while the Earth fleets hunted for them, the whole affair was being toned down deliberately in the networks to avoid a panic. There was, after all, no effective way of protecting the population from space attack except by stopping a raider before he got too close.
The appearance of it then was a little mystifying, but not necessarily alarming. It concurred with the undisturbed look of the countryside traffic outside the shelter.
But those reflections did not at all change Hugh’s feeling about the situation. The feeling told him with increasing clarity that there was some hidden menace in the lack of mention about Galcom. That the silence covered a uniting trap. And that specifically he . . . Hugh Grover . . . was being threatened.
He could acknowledge that, theoretically, that presented the picture of a paranoid personality. But the hunch was too strong to be ignored. He didn’t intend to ignore it. He could lose nothing . . . except for strengthening Andy’s notions about his loss of mental competence, which was hardly important . . . by acting on the assumption that the hunch was correct. If it was correct, if there was a trap waiting outside, the trap could be sprung. Not by him, but by Andy Britton.
Hugh rubbed his chin thoughtfully. There was another place in the northern Andes which could be turned into at least as secure a hide-out as Grandfather Grover’s bomb shelter. In some respects—the nearest neighbors would be many miles away—it should be a more dependable one. He could get there overnight with one of the pair of jet rigs hanging in the shelter storeroom. For the sake of obtaining definite information, which would either confirm or disprove his suspicions, he could, therefore, risk losing the bomb shelter.
And he could—though he hoped nothing would happen to Andy—risk losing Andy.
Andy Britton was in the kitchen section, having breakfast. He looked up rather blearily when Hugh came in. His red hair was still uncombed and he had obviously just come awake.
“Mind coming along to the TV room a moment?” Hugh asked. “I’ve found something but I’m not quite sure what it means.”
“What have you found?”
“I’d sooner let you see for yourself.”
In the TV room, Andy looked at the mirror and recording with controlled distaste, asked, “Want me to use those?”
“It can’t do any harm,” Hugh said. “Here—I’ll hold the switch for the bull-roarer myself. Now go ahead.”
Andy studied his face quizzically, then turned on the TV set and clicked in a station at random. He watched the screen through the mirror, looked over at Hugh again.
“Try another one,” Hugh suggested.
Ten minutes later, Andy, face very thoughtful, switched off the set, asked, “Same thing, everywhere?”
“I’ve been going down through the list these last three hours,” Hugh said. “I don’t believe I missed a station of any significance. I didn’t hear a word about the Galcom Craze. Odd, isn’t it?”
Andy agreed it was very odd indeed.
“What do you make of it?” Hugh asked.
Andy’s lips quirked. “Isn’t it obvious? Everyone in the world . . . except you and I, of course . . . has learned by now how to communicate with the alien races of the Galactic Community. Last Monday, the Solar System was elevated to full membership. Why keep the thing going after that?” He pondered a moment, added, “I owe you an apology, of course, Hugh.”
“Why?”
“I thought you were tottering, and I guess I showed it. Now it looks as if you were right. Something stopped the Craze in midswing. And only our good old paternal World Government could have done it.”
“The Craze couldn’t have simply run itself out . . . naturally?”
Andy shook his head. “I followed a lot of them when I was still young and foolish. That Galcom deal was good
for another six weeks. It didn’t run out naturally. It was stopped. And unless there was something mighty wrong about those symbols—just like you said—it wouldn’t have been stopped.” He grinned suddenly, his face lightening. “Know something? When we walk out of here now—when they find out who it was that shot off those warning messages all over the world two weeks ago—I’ll be a hero’s secretary!”
Hugh hesitated, said, “I’m not so sure about that, Andy.”
“Huh?” The grin faded from Andy’s face, was replaced by a cautious “Now what?” expression. He asked, “What do you mean, Hugh?” Hugh said, “I don’t want to seem unduly apprehensive.” He indicated the TV screen. “But what we saw there does suggest something like a conspiracy to me.”
“A conspiracy?”
“Exactly. I told you I was sitting here for three hours checking through the various stations. Why in all that time did no one even mention the late Galcom Craze?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Andy said with a trace of exasperation. “But the obvious way to find out is to get out of here and start asking questions. We can’t spend the rest of our lives lurking in a bomb shelter, Hugh.”
Hugh smiled. “I don’t intend to, believe me. But I do think we should be a little careful about asking questions.” He considered, went on, “As a first step, let’s wheel out the flitter and look things over from the air for a while.”
Andy said with strained patience, “That isn’t going to tell us what happened to the Galcom Craze. Now suppose I put the midget road glider in the back of the flitter and . . .”
“Why not?” Hugh looked at his watch. “It’ll be getting dark in a few hours. If it seems safe to let you do a little reconnoitering on foot around South Valley, that would be the time to start out.”
Shortly after sunset, Hugh brought the flitter down to a quiet stretch of the road leading from Antoinette to South Valley. Andy swung the glider out of the Hitter’s rear compartment, straightened it, and climbed into the saddle. He grinned at Hugh, said, “I’ll be careful . . . don’t worry! See you at die bomb shelter early in the morning.”
Hugh nodded. “I’ll wait for you inside.”
He watched die road glider disappear around the bend towards South Valley, and took the flitter up again. From the air, nothing out of the ordinary appeared to have occurred, or to be occurring, in the South Valley district. In Antoinette and the other towns and villages over which they had passed, people plainly were going about their everyday activities with no suggestion of an emergency or of disturbances. But Hugh did not intend to change any part of his plans. His instincts still smelled a trap.
By nightfall, he had locked each section of the bomb shelter individually, then left it, locking the camouflaged entrance behind him. Carrying one of the jet rigs and a knapsack of camping equipment, and with a heavy automatic pistol fastened to his belt, he moved uphill through the trees surrounding the shelter until he reached a point some three hundred yards away from where he could watch both the approaches from the river road half a mile below and the air above the forest. Here he took out a pair of powerful night glasses, laid his other equipment beside a tree, and settled down to wait.
If Andy showed up unaccompanied in the morning, he would be there to receive him and find out what had happened during the past two weeks. But if Andy did not come alone, or if the shelter was approached by others in the interval, Hugh would vanish quietly among the big trees behind him. Once over the crest of the hill, he would be in the thick timber of a government preserve. He was an expert outdoorsman and felt no concern about his ability to remain out of sight there. Before the next morning, the jet rig would have carried him to his new retreat while any searchers would still be engaged in attempting to open the last locked sections of the bomb shelter where he was supposed to be.
Any searchers . . . Hugh admitted to himself that he could find no rational answer to the question of who should be searching for him or what their purpose might be.
His hunch didn’t tell him that. What it told him was to stay ready to run if he wanted to survive.
He intended to do just that.
Andy Britton appeared riding the road glider along the route from Antoinette around nine in the morning. Hugh watched him approach through the glasses. Nothing had happened during the night. Near morning, when he began to feel traces of drowsiness, he had taken wake-up pills and come alert again.
The glider could not be used in the rough natural terrain of the estate grounds. Hugh saw Andy bring it to a stop near the edge of the estate, push it out of sight among some bushes and start up towards the shelter. They had agreed that he should come on foot, rather than have Hugh bring the flitter down to the road to pick him up. Hugh remained where he was, continuing to scan the sky, the road in both directions and the woods below him as Andy came climbing higher, disappearing for minutes at a time among the trees, then emerging into open ground again.
There was no one with him, following him, or watching him from the air. Hugh stood up finally, settled knapsack and jet rig over his shoulders, and started downhill towards the shelter, still careful to remain out of sight himself.
He was standing concealed among the bushes above the shelter entrance when Andy appeared directly below him.
“Up here, Andy!” Hugh said.
Andy stopped in his tracks, stood peering about, as if in bewilderment.
Hugh repeated, “Up here. Right above you . . . see me? That’s right. Now come on up.”
Watching the secretary scramble awkwardly through the shrubbery towards him, Hugh felt a sharp thrill of renewed apprehension, for Andy was stumbling like a man who was either drunk or on the very edge of exhaustion. Then, as he came closer, Hugh could see that his face was pale and drawn. A dazed face, Hugh told himself . . . a shocked face. Caution!
He said sharply, the sense of danger pounding through him, “That’s close enough to talk! Stop there.”
Andy stopped obediently twelve feet away, stood staring at Hugh, then at the knapsack and jet rig Hugh had let slide to die ground, and at the pistol belted to Hugh’s side. A look of growing comprehension came into his face.
“Yes,” Hugh said coldly, “I’m ready to move out if necessary. Is it?”
Andy seemed to be struggling for words. Then he said, his voice thick and harsh, “I don’t think that will do any good, Hugh. You were wrong, you know.”
“About what?”
“Mars Territory. They weren’t behind the Galcom Craze . . .” His voice faltered.
“Go ahead. Then who was behind it?”
“Hugh, don’t you see? The Galcom Teachers were aliens. They took over Mars Territory two months ago, before they ever showed up on Earth.”
Staring at Andy’s sweating, anguished face, Hugh felt a dryness come into his throat. He asked, “Are you trying to tell me there is such a thing as die Galactic Community—that those Teachers were its missionaries, just as they claimed to be?”
Andy shook his head. “No. It’s worse than that. It’s a lot worse than that. You were right about the symbols. They were doing things to people’s minds through them. But it wasn’t to teach us how to communicate with others. It’s almost the other way around.”
“The other . . . try to make sense, Andy!”
“I’m trying to. Those Teachers are the servants or slaves of another race. They were sent here because they can be made to look and sound like humans. The others are telepaths and the way they handle their servants is by telepathic orders. They’re in control of whole planets, whole races. They couldn’t ordinarily have got control of Earth because there were hardly any human beings with enough telepathic sensitivity to receive their orders and respond to them. So that’s what was to be done through the Galcom Craze and the symbols . . . soften us up mentally to the point where we could understand the master race’s orders.”
“And it succeeded?”
“Of course, it succeeded. They’re already here. They arrived on Earth almost a week a
go.”
“Then why . . .”
“Why does everything look so peaceful?” Andy asked bitterly. “Why shouldn’t it? When they give a human an order, the human obeys. He can’t help it. They don’t want our economy to break down. They don’t want panics and anarchy. This is a valuable planet and their property. Everybody’s been told to keep on with their regular activities, just as if nothing had happened. So that’s exactly what they do.
“But they can tell you what’s happened if you start asking them questions. Oh, Lord, can they tell you about it!” Andy’s face wrinkled up and tears ran down his cheeks. “They’ve started taking people away in their ships now. Our surplus population, they say. Nobody knows what happens to . . .”
Hugh said, shocked, “But they couldn’t have got control of everybody. Not so easily! Not so fast!”
“No, not everybody. There were the people like ourselves who just hadn’t watched the programs. And what they call ‘immunes’—anyone who doesn’t react to a telepathic command and won’t respond to conditioning. What’s the difference? There weren’t enough of either. The immunes are being rounded up and killed. The others get the treatment.”
Take Andy or leave him? Andy could still be very useful . . .
“Andy,” he said, “we’ll have to act quickly. If we stay here until they get everything organized, we won’t be able to move without being spotted. Here are the shelter keys . . . catch them! That’s right. Now get in there and get out your jet rig. We’ll lock up the shelter and leave at once.”
Andy nodded. “And then, Hugh?”
“There’s another place I know of. Down south, up in the mountains. Nobody else around for miles . . . we’ll be safe there a long time. It’s stocked up for years.” Hugh bent for knapsack and rig, added, “After we get there, we’ll see. It’s quite probable that I’m an immune myself. We may locate others. I . . .”
There was a sudden noise behind him. Hugh turned sharply. Andy stood four feet away, the small gun in his hand pointing straight at Hugh’s head.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 111