Space Beagle- the Complete Adventures

by A. E. van Vogt

  “Have you ever tried to snatch food from a carnivore?” Grosvenor asked. “It tries to hold on to it, doesn’t it? It will even fight for it. My idea is that when this being realizes we’re trying to drive him off, he’ll hang on as long as he can to what he’s got.”

  “I see.” McCann nodded. “Besides, you’ll have to admit your chance of winning an election on your platform is pretty close to zero.”

  Grosvenor shook his head vigorously. “I’d win. You may not believe that on my say-so. But the fact is that people who are wrapped up in pleasure, excitement, or ambition are easily controlled. I didn’t devise the tactics I’d use. They’ve been around for centuries. But historical attempts to analyst them just didn’t get at the roots of the process. Until recently the relation of physiology to psychology was on a fairly theoretical basis. Nexial training reduced it to definite techniques.”

  McCann was silent, studying him. He said finally, “What kind of future do you envisage for man? Do you expect us all to become Nexialists?”

  “On board this ship it’s a necessity. For the race as a whole, it’s still impractical. In the long run, however, there can be no excuse for any individual not knowing what it is possible for him to know. Why shouldn’t he? Why should he stand under the sky of his planet and look up at it with the stupid eyes of superstition and ignorance, deciding vital issues on the basis of somebody’s fooling him? The smashed civilizations of Earth’s antiquity are evidence of what happens to a man’s descendants when he reacts blindly to situations, or if he depends on authoritarian doctrines.”

  He shrugged. “At the moment a lesser goal is possible. We must make men sceptical. The shrewd though illiterate peasant who has to be shown concrete evidence is the spiritual forebear of the scientist. On every level of understanding, the sceptic partly makes up for his lack of specific knowledge by his attitude of ‘Show me! I’ve got an open mind, but what you say cannot by itself convince me.’”

  McCann was thoughtful. “You Nexialists are going to break through the cyclic-history pattern, is that what you have in mind?”

  Grosvenor hesitated, then said, “I confess I was not too conscious of its importance till I met Korita. I’ve been impressed. I imagine the theory can stand a great deal of revision. Such words as ‘race’ and ‘blood’ are particularly meaningless, but the general pattern seems to fit the facts.”

  McCann had returned his attention to the attackers. He said, puzzled, “They seem to be taking a long time getting started. You’d think they’d have made their plans before they came this far.”

  Grosvenor said nothing. McCann glanced at him sharply, “Just a moment,” he said. “They haven’t run up against your defenses, have they?”

  When Grosvenor still made no reply, McCann jumped to his feet, walked nearer to the plate, and peered into it at close range. He stared intently at two men who were down on their knees.

  “But what are they doing?” he asked helplessly. “What is stopping them?”

  Grosvenor hesitated, then explained, “They’re trying to keep from falling through the floor.” Despite his effort to remain calm, excitement put a tremor into his voice.

  The other didn’t realize that what he was doing was new to him. He had had the knowledge, of course, for a long time. But this was practical application. He was taking action that had never been taken before, anywhere, in quite the same way. He had used phenomena from many sciences, improvising to fit his purpose and to suit the exact environment in which he was operating.

  It was working—as he had expected it would. His understanding, so sharp, so broadly based, left little room for error.

  But the physical reality exhilarated him in spite of his pre-knowledge.

  McCann came back and sat down. “Will the floor actually collapse?”

  Grosvenor shook his head. “You’re not getting it. The floor is unchanged. They are sinking into it. If they proceed much farther, they’ll fall through.” He laughed in sudden glee. “I’d like to have a good look at Gourlay’s face when his assistants report the phenomenon. This is his ‘balloon’, teleportation, hyperspace notion, with an idea added from oil geology and two techniques of plant chemistry.”

  “What’s the geology notion?” McCann began. He stopped. “Well, I’ll be damned. You mean the way to get oil these days without drilling. We just create a condition on the surface to which all oil in the vicinity has to come.” He frowned. “But, just a minute. There’s a factor that—”

  “There are a dozen factors, my friend,” said Grosvenor. He went on soberly, “I repeat, this is laboratory stuff. A lot of things work at close quarters on very little power.”

  McCann said, “Why didn’t you use a little of this trickery against pussy and the scarlet monster?”

  “I’ve told you. I’ve rigged this situation. I worked through many a sleep hour installing my equipment, something which I never had a chance to do against our alien enemies. Believe me, if I had had control of the ship, we wouldn’t have lost so many lives in either of those incidents.”

  “Why didn’t you take control?”

  “It was too late. There wasn’t time. Besides, this ship was built several years before there was a Nexial Foundation. We were lucky to get a department aboard.”

  McCann said presently, “I don’t see how you’re going to take over the ship tomorrow, since that’ll involve coming out of your laboratory.” He stopped and stared at the plate. Then he said breathlessly, “They’ve brought up de-gravity rafts. They’re going to float over your floor.”

  Grosvenor made no reply. He had already seen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  De-gravity rafts operated on the same principle as the anti-acceleration drive. The reaction that occurred in an object when inertia was overcome had been found on examination to be a molecular process but it was not inherent in the structure of matter. An anti-acceleration field shifted electrons in their orbits slightly. This, in turn, created a molecular tension, resulting in a small though all-embracing rearrangement.

  Matter so altered, acted as if it were immune to the normal effects of speeding up or slowing down. A ship proceeding on anti-acceleration could stop short in mid-flight, even if it had been travelling at millions of miles a second.

  The group attacking Grosvenor’s department merely loaded their weapons on to the long, narrow rafts, climbed aboard themselves, and activated them to a suitable field intensity. Then, using magnetic attraction, they drew themselves forward toward the open door two hundred feet away.

  They proceeded about fifty feet, then slowed, came to a full stop, and began to back. Then they stopped again.

  Grosvenor, who had been busy at his instrument board, came back and sat down beside the puzzled McCann.

  The geologist asked, “What did you do?”

  Grosvenor answered without hesitation. “As you saw, they propelled themselves forward by pointing directional magnets at the steel walls ahead. I set up a repeller field, which is nothing new in itself. But actually this version of it is a part of a temperature process more related to the way you and I maintain our body heat than it is to heat physics. Now they’ll have to use jet propulsion, or ordinary screw propellers, or even”—he laughed—“oars.”

  McCann, his gaze on the viewing plate, said grimly, “They’re not going to bother. They’re going to turn their heater loose. Better shut the door!”

  “Wait!”

  McCann swallowed visibly. “But the heat will come in here. We’ll roast.”

  Grosvenor shook his head. “I’ve told you; what I did was part of a process involving temperature. Fed new energy, the whole metal environment will seek to maintain its equilibrium on a somewhat lower level. There—look.”

  The mobile heat blaster was turning white. It was a white that made McCann curse softly under his breath. “Frost,” he mumbled. “But how . . .”

  As they watched, ice formed on the walls and the floors. The heater gleamed in its frozen casing, and a chill bl
ast of air came through the door. McCann shivered.

  “Temperature,” he said vaguely. “A somewhat lower equilibrium.”

  Grosvenor stood up. “I think it’s time they went home. After all, I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

  He walked to an instrument that stood against one wall of the auditorium room, and sank into a chair in front of a compact keyboard. The keys were small and of different colors. There were twenty-five to a row, and twenty-five rows.

  McCann came over and stared down at the instrument.

  “What is it?” he asked. “I don’t recall seeing it before.”

  With a quick, rippling, almost casual movement, Grosvenor depressed seven of the keys, then reached over and touched a main release switch. There was a clear, yet soft, musical note. Its overtones seemed to stay in the air for several seconds after the basic note had died away.

  Grosvenor looked up. “What association did that bring to your mind?”

  McCann hesitated. There was an odd expression on his face. “I had a picture of an organ playing in a church. Then that changed, and I was at a political rally where the candidate had provided fast, stimulating music to make everybody happy.” He broke off, and said breathlessly, “So that is how you could win an election.”

  “One of the methods.”

  McCann was tense. “Man, what terrific power you have.”

  Grosvenor said, “It doesn’t affect me.”

  “But you’re conditioned. You can’t expect to condition the whole human race.”

  “A baby is conditioned when it learns to walk, move its arms, speak. Why not extend the conditioning to hypnotism, chemical responses, the effects of food? It was possible hundreds of years ago.

  It would prevent a lot of disease, heartache, and the kind of catastrophe that derives from misunderstanding of one’s own body and mind.”

  McCann was turning back to the mounted, spindle-shaped instrument. “How does it work?”

  “It’s an arrangement of crystals with electrical circuits. You know how electricity can distort certain crystalline structures. By setting up a pattern, an ultrasonic vibration is emitted, which by-passes the ear and directly stimulates the brain. I can play on that the way a musician plays on his instrument, creating emotional moods that strike too deep for any untrained person to resist.”

  McCann returned to his chair and sat down. He looked suddenly pale. “You frighten me,” he said in a low voice. “I regard that as unethical. I can’t help it.”

  Grosvenor studied him; then, turning, he bent down and made an adjustment on the instrument. He pressed the button. The sound was sadder, sweeter, this time. It had a cloying quality, as if endless vibrations continued to throb in the air around them, though the sound itself was gone. Grosvenor said, “What did you get that time?”

  McCann hesitated again, then said suddenly, “I thought of my mother. I had a sudden desire to be back home. I wanted—”

  Grosvenor frowned, “That’s too dangerous,” he said. “If I intensified that enough, some of the men might curl up again in the womb position.” He paused. “How about this?”

  Rapidly, he set up a new pattern, and then touched the activating switch. He drew a bell-like sound, with a soft, soft tinkling in the distant background.

  “I was a baby,” said McCann, “and it was bedtime. Gosh, I’m sleepy.” He seemed not to notice that he had reverted to the present tense. Involuntarily, he yawned.

  Grosvenor opened a drawer in a table beside the machine, and took out two plastic headpieces. He handed one to McCann. “Better put that on.”

  He slipped the other over his own head, while his companion, with evident reluctance, did the same. McCann said gloomily, “I guess I’m just not made to be Machiavellian. I suppose you’ll try to tell me that meaningless sounds have been used before to evoke emotions and influence people.”

  Grosvenor, who had been setting a dial pointer, paused to answer. He said earnestly, “People think a thing ethical or unethical depending on the associations that come to their minds at the moment, or while they’re considering the problem in retrospect. That doesn’t mean that no system of ethics has any validity. I personally subscribe to the principle that our ethical measuring rod should be that which benefits the greatest number, provided that it doesn’t include extermination or torture of, or denial of rights to, individuals who do not conform. Society has to learn to salvage the man who is ill or ignorant.”

  He was intent now. “Please note that I have never used this device before. I have never used hypnosis except when Kent invaded my department—though of course I intend to do so now. From the moment the trip began, I could have lured people up here by stimulating them in a dozen unsuspected ways. Why didn’t I? Because the Nexial Foundation laid down a code of ethics for itself and its graduates, which is conditioned right into my system. I can break through that conditioning, but only with great difficulty.”

  “Are you breaking through it now?”

  “No.”

  “It seems to me, then, that it’s pretty elastic.”

  “That’s exactly right. When I firmly believe, as I do now, that my actions are justified, there is no internal nervous or emotional problem.”

  McCann was silent. Grosvenor went on. “I think you’ve got a picture in your mind of a dictator—myself—taking over a democracy by force. That picture is false, because a ship on a cruise can be run only by quasi-democratic methods. And the greatest difference of all is that at the end of the voyage I can be brought to account.”

  McCann sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. He glanced at the plate. Grosvenor followed his gaze, and saw that the space-suited men were trying to propel themselves forward by pushing against the wall. Their hands tended to go right into the walls, but there was some resistance. They were making slow progress. McCann was speaking again. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I intend to put them to sleep—like this.” He touched the activating switch.

  The bell sound seemed no louder than before. Yet in the corridor the men slumped over.

  Grosvenor got up. “That will repeat every ten minutes, and I’ve got resonators spread all through the ship to pick up the vibrations and echo them. Come along.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want to install a circuit breaker in the main electric-switch system of the ship.”

  He secured the breaker from the film room, and a moment later was leading the way into the corridor.

  Everywhere they went, men lay sleeping. At first McCann marvelled out loud. Then he grew silent and looked troubled. He said finally, “It’s hard to believe that human beings are basically so helpless.”

  Grosvenor shook his head. “It’s worse than you think.”

  They were in the engine room now, and he crawled on to a lower tier of the electric switchboard. It required less than ten minutes to fit in his circuit breaker. He came down silently, nor did he subsequently explain what he had done or what he intended to do.

  “Don’t mention that,” he said to McCann. “If they find out about it, I’ll just have to come down and put in another one.”

  “You’re going to wake them now?”

  “Yes. As soon as I get back to my rooms. But first I’d like you to help me cart Von Grossen and the others to their bedrooms. I want to make him disgusted with himself.”

  “You think they’ll give in?”

  “No.”

  His estimate was right. And so, at 1000 hours the following day, he pressed home a switch that rechannelled the main electric current through the circuit breaker he had installed.

  All over the ship, the constantly burning lights flickered ever so slightly in a Nexial version of the Riim hypnotic pattern. Instantly, without knowing it, every man aboard was deeply hypnotized.

  Grosvenor began to play on his emotion-educing machine. He concentrated on thoughts of courage and sacrifice, duty to the race in the face of danger. He even evolved a complex emo
tional pattern that would stimulate the feeling that time was passing at double, even treble, what had been normal before.

  The basis laid, he activated the “General Call” of the ship’s communicator, and gave exact commands. The main instructions stated, he then told the men that each and every one would thereafter respond instantly to a cue word without ever knowing what the cue word was, or remembering it after it was given.

  Then he gave them amnesia for the entire hypnotic experience.

  He went down to the engine room and removed the circuit breaker.

  He returned to his own room, wakened everybody, and called Kent. He said, “I withdraw my ultimatum. I’m ready to give myself up. I’ve suddenly realized that I cannot bring myself to go against the wishes of the other members of the ship. I would like another meeting, at which I will appear in person. Naturally, I intend to urge once more that we wage all-out warfare against the alien intelligence of this galaxy.”

  He was not surprised when the ship’s executive, strangely unanimous in their change of heart, agreed that after consideration they could see that the evidence was clear, and that the danger was compellingly urgent.

  Acting Director Kent was instructed to pursue the enemy relentlessly, and without regard for the comfort of the members of the ship.

  Grosvenor, who had not interfered with the overall personality of any individual, observed with grim amusement the reluctance with which Kent himself acknowledged that the action should be taken.

  The great battle between man and alien was about to begin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Anabis existed in an immense, suffused, formless state, spread through all the space of the second galaxy. It writhed a little, feebly, in a billion portions of its body, shrinking with automatic adjustment away from the destroying heat and radiation of two hundred billion blazing suns. But it pressed tightly down against the myriad planets, and strained with a feverish, insatiable hunger around the quadrillion tingling points in which were dying the creatures that gave it life.