“I can work you in a good deal closer,” Alicar said.
“How much closer? I suppose your Romango computer has defensive armament?”
“Of course. That’s standard in a region like this. There’s an automatic defense zone with a three-mile radius. Normal sensor range is three times that, and can be extended.”
“Nine miles,” said Telzey. “That’s still hardly an ideal condition.”
“One and a half miles,” Alicar said. “We’ll use the aircar and the arrangement will be the same. You’ll be outside, and I’ll be in the car and behind a psi-block. The car’s gun, incidentally, will be pointing at you in case something goes wrong. So try to make sure nothing does.”
“How are we going to get within one and a half miles of the mine?” He grinned. “There’re blind spots in the defense system because of the surrounding dunes. I checked them out when we first set up the installation. A car that’s hugging the ground can avoid the sensors. I’ll take you there. The rest will be up to you.”
III
To Telzey’s right, the section of sky beyond the gray-black mountain range where Alicar had left his spacecruiser was beginning to lighten. Morning wasn’t far away. The top of the sloping hill of sand which hid the Ralke Mine from her, as it hid her from the mine computer’s sensors, was thirty feet above her head. She sat, shivering, knees drawn up under her coat, arms wrapped around them, looking back down the slope at the small aircar which had brought them here. It hovered eight feet above a straggly patch of dune vegetation, shifting back and forth in occasional surges of wind. Concentrated on what she was doing, she wasn’t aware of it.
Then Alicar’s voice came suddenly from the speaker in her respirator. She gave a slight start.
“Anything new?” There was an edge of impatience in his voice.
She cleared her throat. “Nothing that seems important. Gulhas is in the computer control room now. He was thinking about you a minute or two ago.”
“In what connection?”
“That blip the Romango picked up and identified as an aircar before you ducked behind the dunes. Gulhas thought of it and wondered then when you’d be coming back to Mannafra. That’s all. It slipped from his mind again immediately.”
There was a moment of dissatisfied silence before Alicar said, “You’re sure you didn’t miss anything? There should have been further reflections associated with that.”
“There should have been,” Telzey agreed. “But there weren’t. I wouldn’t have missed them. You’re apparently one of the subjects they don’t have reflections about there now! Gulhas simply has his mind on what he’s doing. Routine start-of-day checks. Nothing else.”
“What about the rest?”
“No change. Ceveldt and his assistant are at their operational stations. They don’t think about what’s being brought up, so it’s probably djeel ore. Hille’s fast asleep now, and the remaining three are still sleeping. When they dream, the dreams have nothing to do with the Ralke Mine. And there’s still no mind or life trace of the other five people who should be there. Unless they’re behind the psi-block around your office area—”
Alicar interrupted. “I told you it’s out of the question that anyone could be in there! To open the office in my absence would take something like a blast almost heavy enough to flatten the mine.”
“Well, in that case,” Telzey said, “those five are either dead, or they’re gone. And whichever it is, nobody thinks about them either.”
Alicar swore in exasperation. Telzey shrugged.
“That’s the way it is,” she said. “The controls have been extended since I did the first probe from the mountain. The men are more limited in their thoughts, apparently including even their dreaming thoughts. Whether that’s a temporary precaution, connected with the fact that the Romango recorded a passing aircar, I can’t tell. It might be a reaction to my earlier scanning—say, a prearranged defense pattern against a telepathic encounter. The men think of nothing, remember nothing, that has to do either with djeel or with anything abnormal in the situation at the mine. That goes on down through the unconscious levels. The mechanisms block out the prohibited material.”
“A reaction like that could be an automatic one,” Alicar remarked.
“It could be. But at a guess, there’s a psi around, and he’s on guard.”
“If there is one around, he couldn’t be physically at the mine?”
“No, definitely not. With established controls, he wouldn’t have to be there, of course. I should have picked up some trace of him by now if he were even within ordinary scanning range.”
There was a pause until Alicar said, “Could you take one of those control mechanisms apart?”
“Taking them apart shouldn’t be difficult in itself,” Telzey told him. “They’re only mechanisms, after all, and they don’t hold much energy. But I’m rather sure we’d get a drastic reaction if I started doing it. There must be a kind of shared sentience between them to explain what’s going on. So it would be noticed.”
“What if you and your subject were behind a psi-block?”
“Then it wouldn’t be noticed,” Telzey said. “What psi-block?”
“My offices at the mine. I’m beginning to believe I can get us inside without undue risk.”
“Well,” Telzey said after a moment, “I suppose they might let us in. And, frankly, I wouldn’t mind getting out of the cold. But I think you’d be stepping into a trap.”
“No, it should be the other way around. When I first got the Romango, I arranged to have it accept voice override from me against any other instructions given it. Once we’re there, I can take over the internal and external defense system at any time. Nobody at the mine knows about that. I’ll have you work the psi controls off one or two of the men in the office area, and we should soon know exactly what the situation is and what we can do about it.”
Alicar added, “You’ll have to put up with the cold a little longer. I still intend to reduce the risks as much as I can, so we won’t leave this place until shortly before daybreak. You’re to remain alert for any changes in the situation at the mine—and in particular, of course, for any indications of activity on the part of a psi.”
The starblaze was fading by the time Telzey finally climbed back into the car. She’d had nothing of significance to report in the interval; and as the door closed behind her, her residual contacts with the mentalities at the mine were shut off abruptly by the car’s psi-block. She took off her coat, grateful for the warmth, sat down, pulled off the respirator and massaged her chilled face.
Neither of them spoke while Alicar maneuvered the car back along the low ground between the dunes until they were well beyond the range of the Romango computer’s sensors. Then they lifted into the air and headed west, away from the mountains.
“Nothing showing in the screens,” Alicar observed presently.
Telzey glanced at him. “Did you think somebody would follow us?”
“Somebody might—if they suspected I was around.”
“What would you do if we did get trailed?”
“Lead them toward the Federation’s Mannafra Station. If that didn’t discourage them, I’d feel we were dealing with the Psychology Service, after all, and I can’t afford to play around with that outfit! I’d cut back to the cruiser in that case, and get out.”
“Supposing we’re overtaken?”
He grunted. “This is a modified racing car. There’s not likely to be anything on Mannafra that could overtake it, but for emergencies it has a very powerful little gun. Besides”—he indicated a distant brown-tinted cloud bank—“you never have to look far here to find some sizable dust storm to lose yourself in. Enough of the dust’s metallic to blind sensors. Don’t worry about that part of it. Now let’s get that mind shield of yours open and make sure you’re still the completely dependable little helper you’re supposed to be . . .”
He remained silent for the next few minutes, blinking in concentration now a
nd then. Telzey couldn’t sense the scan; so that specific awareness had been sealed away, too. Presently her shield locked again.
“Well, you’ve done your best to carry out your assignment so far, and the opinions you’ve given me were honest ones,” Alicar acknowledged. “I think I have you safe enough!” There didn’t seem to be much question about it. Telzey said after a while, “It wouldn’t really explain anything, but those five men who’ve disappeared from the Ralke Mine—you said they didn’t have anything to do with the djeel operation.”
Alicar nodded. “They didn’t. At the time I left, at any rate, it was still simply a serine crystal mine as far as they were concerned.”
“Supposing,” Telzey said, “they found out about the djeel and decided they didn’t want to be involved in something like that? Couldn’t they have gone to the authorities?”
“Meaning that’s why the mine is staked out now?” Alicar shook his head. “No. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t, as you say, explain the present situation, it’s unlikely in itself. The system we developed was automatic and foolproof. The only way those five could have got information about the djeel would be accidentally through one of the three men in the know.” He added, “And if that had happened, they wouldn’t have gone bearing tales to the authorities! Hille and Gulhas control the computer, and you can be sure Hille would have rigged up some plausible mining accident. I was careful to choose the right kind of man to be manager here.”
The screen scanners picked up several dozen air vehicles in the next few hours, but none were moving in the same direction, none came near them, and certainly none seemed interested in following their car. Alicar appeared to be going out of his way to advertise their presence. They flew past a number of installations, coming close enough to one to alert its defense zone and draw a standardized communicator warning from the guard computer, followed by discourtesies from the computer’s operator. The car’s cooling system had switched on shortly after Mannafra’s yellow-white sun lifted above the horizon—the days evidently were as hot in this region of the planet as the night had been cold. Alicar said finally, “Close to noon! We’ve given any interested parties plenty of time to take action, and they haven’t. So now we’ll tackle the Ralke Mine! If there’s no hitch on the approach, we’ll go in, and once we’re inside, we’ll move fast. I’ll take over the Romango at once from my offices, in case we run into difficulties.”
Telzey said nothing. She felt uneasy about the prospect; but from Alicar’s point of view, regaining control of the djeel oil operation was worth taking some personal risks. There was nothing she could do about it. Something less than two hours later, the car began to slant down toward the Ralke installation. The pink glow of a semiglobular force field appeared abruptly in the forward viewscreen, centered above the mine structures. The communicator went on simultaneously.
An uninflected voice said, “Warning! You are approaching the defense zone of the Ralke Mine, which is visible at present in your screens. You are required by law to provide verbal or code identification, or to change your course and bypass the zone. Failure to comply promptly will result in the destruction of your vehicle.”
Alicar tapped out a signal on the communicator. The pink glow vanished, and the voice resumed. “Your identification is acknowledged. The defense zone has been neutralized. Your approach to the vehicle storage section is clear.”
The communicator shut off. Alicar said in a taut voice, “That part of it is normal anyway! Let’s waste no time . . .”
The car swept down, skimming the tops of surrounding dunes, toward the central building of the Ralke Mine. A circular door opened at the building’s base—a door easily large enough to have let Alicar’s spacecruiser pass through. He snapped over a switch, said to Telzey, “Psi-block’s off! Start checking!” and she felt the block fade about her.
She’d been waiting for it; and her mind reached out instantly toward the minds she’d previously contacted here, picking them up one by one, aware that Alicar’s mental screens had tightened into a dense shield. The car slid into the vehicle section. Telzey was opening the door on her side as it stopped. She slipped out, glancing around. A big loading crane stood in one corner; otherwise the section was empty. Alicar was beckoning to her from the other side of the car; she joined him and trotted along beside him as he walked rapidly toward a door in the back wall. It opened as they came up. Simultaneously, the entry door snapped shut.
They went through into a passage. A man was coming along it toward them, moving with a quick, purposeful stride. Ceveldt, Telzey told herself, the mine’s geologist, one of the three involved with Alicar in the original djeel conspiracy.
“Mr. Ralke!” Ceveldt said, smiling. “We’d been wondering when you’d return.” He looked questioningly at Telzey. “This young lady—”
“Nessine, my assistant.” Alicar’s right hand was in his pocket, and Telzey knew the hand rested on a gun. He went on. “She’s part of our private operation. Everything still going smoothly there?”
Ceveldt’s smile widened. “It couldn’t be going better!”
Alicar nodded. “There’ve been some highly promising developments outside in the meantime. I want to see you and Hille in my office in about five minutes.”
“I’ll inform Hille,” Ceveldt said.
He went toward a door leading off the passage. Alicar glanced briefly at Telzey. “Come along, Nessine!”
They didn’t speak on the way to his offices. It took Alicar some seconds to open the massive door, which evidently was designed to respond to the keys he produced only after it had registered his body pattern. As it swung shut behind them, the psi-block installed about the area closed and cut off Telzey’s contacts with the mine group again. They passed through an outer office into a larger inner one. There Alicar motioned to Telzey to remain silent, then spoke aloud.
“Code Alicar!” he said.
The Romango computer’s voice responded promptly from a concealed speaker. “Code Alicar in effect. Verbal override acknowledged. Instructions?”
“Scan my companion for future reference,” Alicar said.
“The companion has been scanned.”
“Her name is Nessine. You’ll recognize her?”
“I will.”
“No further instructions at present,” said Alicar. “I’ll repeat the code before giving you new ones.” He drew in a breath, looked at Telzey. “Well, that’s in order!” he remarked. “I control the Romango. Now, what’s happened here since this morning? Ceveldt acted as if nothing had changed after I left.”
Telzey nodded. “And that’s how it seems to him now! The mechanisms have modified their control patterns again. Not just for Ceveldt—as far as I could make out, the same thing seems to have happened to everyone else here. Of course, they all still have the impression that everything is normal at the Ralke Mine. But the three who should know about djeel now know about it; the others have no suspicion it’s being hauled up and processed. I believe the shift was made as soon as you identified yourself from the aircar.”
“To give me the initial impression that everything was normal here,” Alicar said. “That much could be preplanned and automatically activated by my arrival. But, obviously, I wouldn’t retain the impression very long. For one thing, I’d soon be asking what happened to the five missing members of the staff. So this setup is intended simply to gain a little time! For someone who isn’t at present at the Ralke Mine.”
“Enough time for the next move,” Telzey said.
“A move,” said Alicar, “which I should have already forestalled by shifting ultimate control of the computer to myself . . .”
A bell sounded as he spoke. He turned to a desk, switched on a small viewscreen. It showed the passage outside the offices, Ceveldt and another man standing before the door. “Ceveldt and Hille.” Alicar switched off the screen. “We’ll soon know now!” He pressed a button, releasing the outer door.
“Gentlemen, come in—be seated!” he said
as Hille and Ceveldt appeared in the door of the inner office. “Nessine, get the files I indicated.”
He hadn’t indicated any, but she went back into the outer office, stood there waiting. After some seconds, Alicar called, “All right, you can come back in!”
Hille and Ceveldt were slumped in chairs when she rejoined him. Alicar had placed a face mask and a short plastic rod on the table beside him. “They both got a good whiff of the vapor and should be fairly limp for a while,” he told her. “If necessary, I’ll repeat the process. Now get them unhooked from those mechanisms enough so they can tell me what’s been going on.”
Telzey said, “I could do it easier and faster, and perhaps safer, if you’d knock a few of your controls off me! At least, until I finish with these two.”
He grinned, shook his head. “Not a chance! I like you better on a short leash. You’re doing fine as you are. Get to work!”
She sat down in another chair, went to work. Alicar remained standing, gaze shifting alertly between her and the men. Two or three minutes went by. Telzey closed her eyes, carefully wiped sweat from her face.
“Getting results?” she heard Alicar inquire.
She opened her eyes, looked at him.
“Yes!” she whispered.
“Well?”
She shook her head.
“I can tell you one thing right now,” she said. “We should get away from here as fast as we can!”
“I’d need to hear a very good reason for that,” Alicar said.
“Ask them!” she said. “They can talk to you now. Perhaps they’ll convince you.”
Alicar stared at her an instant, swung to Hille. “Hille?”
Hille sighed. “Yes, Mr. Ralke?”
“What’s happened here since I went away?”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 247