Siedel frowned. “This is a quarrel between you and Kent—is that right?”
Grosvenor said, “Substantially.” He could guess what was coming.
“And yet,” said Siedel, “it is not Kent you have hypnotized, but a group of innocent bystanders.”
Grosvenor remembered how the four chemist technicians had acted at his lecture. Some of them at least were not quite innocent. He said, “I’m not going to argue with you about that. I could say that, from the beginning of time, the unthinking majority has paid the price for obeying without question the commands of leaders whose motivations they didn’t trouble themselves to inquire into. But rather than go into that, I’d like to ask one question.”
“Yes?”
“Did you enter the technique room?”
Siedel nodded, but said nothing.
“You saw the records?” Grosvenor persisted.
“Yes.”
“You noticed what they dealt with?”
“Information on chemistry.”
“That’s all I’m giving them,” said Grosvenor. “That’s all I intend to give them. I regard my department as an educational center. People who force themselves in here receive an education whether they like it or not.”
“I confess,” said Siedel, “I don’t see how that will help you get rid of them. However, I shall be happy to tell Mr. Kent what you are doing. He shouldn’t have any objection to his men learning more chemistry.”
Grosvenor did not answer. He had his own opinion as to how much Kent would like having a group of his underlings know, as they shortly would, as much as he did about his own specialty.
He watched gloomily as Siedel disappeared into the corridor. The man would undoubtedly give Kent a full report, which meant a new plan would have to be worked out. Standing there, Grosvenor decided that it was too soon for drastic defense measures. It was hard to be certain that any sustained, positive action would not produce on board the ship the very situation he was supposed to prevent. Despite his own reservations about cyclic history, it was well to remember that civilizations did seem to be born, grow older, and die of old age. Before he did anything more, he’d better hive a talk with Korita and find out what pitfalls he might inadvertently be heading towards.
He located the Japanese scientist at Library B, which was on the far side of the ship, on the same floor as the Nexial department. Korita was leaving as he came up, and Grosvenor fell in step beside him. Without preamble, he outlined his problem. Korita did not reply immediately. They walked the length of the corridor before the tall historian spoke, doubtfully. “My friend,” he said, “I’m sure you realize the difficulty of solving specific problems on the basis of generalizations, which is virtually all that the theory of cyclic history has to offer.”
“Still,” Grosvenor said, “a few analogies might be very useful to me. From what I’ve read on this subject, I gather we’re in the late, or ‘winter’, period of our own civilization. In other words, right now we are making the mistakes that lead to decay. I have a few ideas about that, but I’d like more.”
Korita shrugged. “I’ll try to put it briefly.” He was silent for a while, then he said, “The outstanding common denominator of the ‘winter’ periods of civilization is the growing comprehension on the part of millions of individuals of how things work. People become impatient with superstitious or supernatural explanations of what goes on in their minds and bodies, and in the world around them. With the gradual accumulation of knowledge, even the simplest minds for the first time ‘see through’ and consciously reject the claims of a minority to hereditary superiority. And the grim battle for equality is on.”
Korita paused for a moment, then continued. “It is this widespread struggle for personal aggrandisement that constitutes the most significant parallel between all the ‘winter’ periods in the civilizations of recorded history. For better or worse, the fight usually takes place within the framework of a legal system that tends to protect the entrenched minority. The late-comer to the field, not understanding his motivations, plunges blindly into the battle for power. The result is a veritable melee of undisciplined intelligence. In their resentment and lust, men follow leaders as confused as themselves. Repeatedly, the resulting disorder has led by well-defined steps to the final static fellahin state.
“Sooner or later, one group gains the ascendancy. Once in office, the leaders restore ‘order’ in so savage a blood-letting that the millions are cowed. Swiftly, the power group begins to restrict activities. The licensing systems and other regulative measures necessary to any organized society become tools of suppression and monopoly. It becomes difficult, then impossible, for the individual to engage in new enterprise. And so we progress by swift stages to the familiar caste system of ancient India, and to other, less well-known but equally inflexible societies, such as that of Rome after about A.D. 300. The individual is born into his station of life and cannot rise above it . . . There, does that brief summary help you?”
Grosvenor said slowly, “As I’ve already said, I’m trying to solve the problem Mr. Kent has presented me without falling into the egotistical errors of the late-civilization man you have described. I want to know if I can reasonably hope to defend myself against him without aggravating the hostilities that already exist aboard the Beagle.”
Korita smiled wryly. “It will be a unique victory if you succeed. Historically, on a mass basis, the problem has never been solved. Well, good luck, young man!”
At that moment, it happened.
CHAPTER NINE
They had paused at the “glass” room on Grosvenor’s floor. It wasn’t glass, and it wasn’t, by strict definition, a room. It was an alcove of an outer wall corridor, and the “glass” was an enormous curving plate made from a crystallized form of one of the resistance metals. It was so limpidly transparent as to give the illusion that nothing at all was there. Beyond was the vacuum and darkness of space. Grosvenor had just noticed absently that the ship was almost through the small star cluster it had been traversing. Only a few of the five thousand-odd suns of the system were still visible. He parted his lips to say, “I’d like to talk with you again, Mr. Korita, when you have time.”
He didn’t say it. A slightly blurred double image of a woman wearing a feathered hat was taking form in the glass directly in front of him. The image flickered and shimmered. Grosvenor felt an abnormal tensing of the muscles of his eyes. For a moment, his mind went blank. That was followed rapidly by sounds, flashes of light, a sharp sensation of pain. Hypnotic hallucinations! The awareness was like an electric shock.
The recognition saved him. His own conditioning enabled him instantly to reject the mechanical suggestion of the light pattern. He whirled and shouted into the nearest communicator, “Don’t look at the images! They’re hypnotic. We’re being attacked!”
As he turned away, he stumbled over Korita’s unconscious body. He stopped and knelt.
“Korita!” he said in a piercing tone, “you can hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Only my instructions influence you. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“You’re beginning to relax, to forget. Your mind is calm. The effect of the images is fading. Now it’s gone. Gone completely. Do you understand? Gone completely.”
“I understand.”
“They cannot affect you again. In fact, every time you see an image, you’re reminded of some pleasant scene from home. Is that clear?”
“Very.”
“Now you’re beginning to wake up. I’m going to count to three. When I say ‘three’, you’re wide awake. One . . . two . . . three—wake up!”
Korita opened his eyes. “What happened?” he said in a puzzled tone.
Grosvenor explained swiftly, and then said, “But now, quick, come along! The light pattern keeps pulling at my eyes in spite of counter suggestion.”
He hurried the bewildered archaeologist along the corridor toward the Nexial department. At the first corner, they
came to a human body lying on the floor.
Grosvenor kicked the man, not too lightly. He wanted a shock response. “Do you hear me?” he demanded.
The man stirred, “Yes.”
“Then listen. The light images have no further effect on you. Now get up. You’re wide awake.”
The man climbed to his feet and lunged at him, swinging wildly. Grosvenor ducked, and his assailant staggered past him blindly.
Grosvenor ordered him to halt, but he kept on going without a backward glance. Grosvenor grabbed Korita’s arm. “I seem to have got to him too late.”
Korita shook his head dazedly. His eyes turned toward the wall, and it was clear from his next words that Grosvenor’s suggestion had not taken full effect, or else was already being undermined. “But what are they?” he asked.
“Don’t look at them?”
It was incredibly hard not to. Grosvenor had to keep blinking to break the pattern of light flashes that came at his eyes from other images on the walls. At first it seemed to him that the images were everywhere. Then he noticed that the womanish shapes—some oddly double, some single—occupied transparent or translucent wall sections. There were hundreds of such reflecting wall areas, but at least it was a limitation.
They saw more men. The victims lay at uneven intervals along the corridors. Twice they came upon conscious men. One stood in their path with unseeing eyes, and did not move or turn as Grosvenor and Korita hurried by. The other man let out a yell, grabbed his vibrator, and fired it. The tracer beam flashed on the wall beside Grosvenor. And then he had tackled the other and knocked him down. The man—a Kent supporter—glared at him malignantly. “You damned spy!” he said harshly. “We’ll get you yet.”
Grosvenor didn’t pause to discover the reason for the man’s astounding behavior. But he grew tense as he guided Korita to the door of the Nexial department. If one chemist could so quickly be stimulated to open hatred of him, then what about the fifteen who had taken over his rooms?
To his relief, they were all unconscious. Hurriedly, he secured two pairs of dark glasses, one for Korita and one for himself, then turned a barrage of flashing lights against the walls, the ceilings, and the floors. Instantly, the images were eclipsed by the strong light.
Grosvenor headed for his technique room and there broadcast commands intended to free those he had hypnotized. Through the open door, he watched two unconscious bodies for response. After five minutes, there was still no sign that they were paying any attention. He guessed that the hypnotic patterns of the attacker had bypassed, or even taken advantage of, the conditioned state of their minds, nullifying any words he might use. The possibility was that they might awaken spontaneously after a while and turn on him.
With Korita’s help, he dragged them into the washroom, and then locked the door. One fact was already evident. This was mechanical-visual hypnosis of such power that he had saved himself only by prompt action. But what had happened was not limited to vision. The image had tried to control him by stimulating his brain through his eyes. He was up to date on most of the work that men had done in that field. And so he knew—though the attackers apparently did not—that control by an alien of a human nervous system was not possible except with an encephalo-adjuster or its equivalent.
He could only guess, from what had almost happened to him, that the other men had been precipitated into deep trance sleeps, or else they were confused by hallucinations and were not responsible for their actions.
His job was to get to the control room and turn on the ship’s energy screen. No matter where the attack was coming from—whether from another ship or actually from a planet—that should effectively cut off any carrier beams the enemy might be sending.
With frantic fingers, Grosvenor worked to set up a mobile unit of lights. He needed something that would interfere with the images on his way to the control room. He was making the final connection when he felt an unmistakable sensation—a slight giddy feeling—that passed almost instantly. It was a feeling that usually occurred during a considerable change of course, a result of readjustment of the anti-accelerators.
Had the course actually been changed? It was something he’d have to check—later.
He said to Korita, “I intend to make an experiment. Please remain here.”
Grosvenor carried his arrangement of lights to a near-by corridor, and placed it in the rear compartment of a power-driven loading vehicle. Then he climbed on and headed for the elevators.
He guessed that, altogether, ten minutes had gone by since he had first seen the image.
He took the turn into the elevator corridor at twenty-five miles an hour, which was fast for these comparatively narrow spaces. In the alcove opposite the elevators, two men were wrestling each other with a life-and-death concentration. They paid no attention to Grosvenor but swayed and strained and cursed. The sound of their breathing was loud. Their single-minded hatred of each other was not affected by Grosvenor’s arrangements of lights. Whatever world of hallucination they were in, it had taken profoundly.
Grosvenor whirled his machine into the nearest elevator and started down. He was beginning to let himself hope that he might find the control room deserted.
The hope died as he came to the main corridor. It swarmed with men. Barricades had been flung up, and there was an unmistakable odor of ozone. Vibrators fumed and fussed. Grosvenor peered cautiously out of the elevator, trying to size up the situation. It was visibly bad. The two approaches to the control room were blocked by scores of overturned loading mules. Behind them crouched men in military uniform. Grosvenor caught a glimpse of Captain Leeth among the defenders and, on the far side, he saw Director Morton behind the barricade of one of the attacking groups.
That clarified the picture. Suppressed hostility had been stimulated by the images. The scientists were fighting the military, whom they had always unconsciously hated. The military, in turn, was suddenly freed to vent its contempt and fury upon the despised scientists.
It was, Grosvenor knew, not a true picture of their feeling for each other. The human mind normally balanced innumerable opposing impulses so that the average individual might live his life span without letting one feeling gain important ascendance over the others. That intricate balance had now been upset. The result threatened disaster to an entire expedition of human beings, and promised victory to an enemy whose purpose could only be conjectured.
Whatever the reason, the way to the control room was blocked. Reluctantly, Grosvenor retreated again to his own department.
Korita met him at the door. “Look!” he said. He motioned to a wall-communicator plate, which was tuned to the finely balanced steering devices in the fore part of the Space Beagle. The sending plate there was focused directly along a series of hairline sights. The arrangement looked more intricate than it was. Grosvenor brought his eyes to the sights and saw that the ship was describing a slow curve which, at its climax, would bring it to bear directly on a bright white star. A servo mechanism had been set up to make periodic adjustments that would hold it on its course.
“Could the enemy do that?” Korita asked.
Grosvenor shook his head, more puzzled than alarmed. He shifted the viewer over to the bank of supplementary instruments. Accordingly to the star’s spectral type, magnitude, and luminosity, it was just over four light years distant. The ship’s speed was up to a light-year every five hours. Since it was still accelerating, that would increase on a calculable curve. He estimated roughly that the vessel would reach the vicinity of the sun in approximately eleven hours.
With a jerky movement, Grosvenor shut off the communicator. He stood there, shocked but not incredulous. Destruction could be the purpose of the deluded person who had altered the ship’s course. If so, there were just ten hours in which to prevent catastrophe.
Even at that moment, when he had no clear plan, it seemed to Grosvenor that only an attack on the enemy, using hypnotic techniques, would effectively do the job. Meanwhile . . .
He needed something that would directly stimulate brain cells. There were several devices that could do that. Most of them were usable for medical purposes only. The exception was the encephalo-adjuster, an instrument that could be used to transmit impulses from one mind to another.
Even with Korita’s help, it took Grosvenor several minutes to set up one of his adjusters. Testing it consumed still more time; and, because it was such a delicate machine, he had to fasten it to his loading vehicle with a cushion of springs around it. Altogether, the preparation required thirty-seven minutes. He had a brief, though rather sharp, argument then with the archaeologist, who wanted to accompany him. In the end, however, Korita agreed to remain behind and guard their base of operations.
Carrying the encephalo-adjuster made it necessary for him to keep down the speed of his vehicle as he headed for the control room. The enforced slowdown irked him, but it also gave him an opportunity to observe the changes that had taken place since the first moment of attack.
He saw only an occasional unconscious body. Grosvenor guessed that most of the men who had fallen into deep trance sleeps had awakened spontaneously. Such awakenings were common hypnotic phenomena. Now they were responding to other stimuli on the same basis. Unfortunately—although it also was to be expected—that seemed to mean that long-suppressed impulses controlled their actions.
And so men who, under normal circumstances, merely disliked each other mildly had, in an instant, had their dislike change to murderous hatred.
The deadly factor was that they would be unaware of the change. For the mind could be taught without the individual’s knowing it. It could be tangled by bad environmental association, or by the attack that was now being made against a shipload of men. In either case, each person carried on as if his new beliefs were as soundly based as his old ones.
Space Beagle- the Complete Adventures Page 19