'Rather neat, don't you think?' said MacLean. 'But of course the point is the long-range use, should you wish to inflict serious damage on specific objects at a distance. I personally don't-- blast doesn't interest me--but the Services would find it effective on occasion. It's just a case of a special method of transmission. But my particular concern is high-frequency response between individuals, and between people and animals. I'm keeping this quiet from my masters, who give me a grant.' He put his fingers on another control on the second installation. 'You won't see anything with this one,' he said. 'It's the call-note with which I control Cerberus. Human beings can't pick it up.'
We waited in silence, and a few minutes later I heard the sound of a dog scratching at the further door. MacLean let him in. 'All right. Good boy. Lie down.' He turned to me, smiling. 'Nothing really in that--he was only the other side of the building--but we've got him to obey orders from long distances. It could be quite useful in an emergency.' He glanced at his watch. 'I wonder if Mrs J. will forgive me,' he murmured. 'It's only a quarter-past nine after all. And I do so enjoy showing off.' His schoolboy grin was suddenly infectious.
'What are you going to do?' I asked.
Bring her small daughter to the telephone, or wake her up if she's asleep.'
He made another adjustment to the apparatus, and once again we waited. In about two minutes the telephone rang. MacLean crossed the room to answer it. 'Hullo'?' he said. 'Sorry, Mrs J. Just an experiment. I'm sorry if I've woken her up. Yes, put her on. Hullo, Niki. No, it's all right. You can go back to bed. Sleep tight.' He replaced the receiver, then bent down to pat Cerberus stretched at his feet.
'Children, like dogs, are particularly easy to train,' he said. 'Or put it this way--their sixth sense, the one that picks up these signals, is highly developed. Niki has her own call-note, just as Cerberus does, and the fact that she suffers from retarded development makes her an excellent subject.'
He patted his box of tricks in much the same fashion that he had patted his dog. Then he glanced up at me and smiled.
'Any questions?'
'Obviously,' I replied. 'The first being, what is the exact object of the exercise? Are you trying to prove that certain high-frequency signals have potentialities not only for destruction but also for controlling the receptive mechanism in an animal, and also the human brain?'
I forced a composure I was far from feeling. If these were the sort of experiments that were going on at Saxmere, small wonder the place had been shrugged aside as a crackpot's paradise.
MacLean looked at me thoughtfully. 'Of course Charon 2 could be said to prove exactly that,' he said, 'though this is not my intention. The Ministry may possibly be very disappointed in consequence. No, I personally am trying to tackle something more far-reaching.' He paused, then put his hand on my shoulder. 'We'll leave Charons 1 and 2 for tonight. Come outside for a breath of air.'
We left by the door which the dog had scratched at. It led to another corridor, and finally to an entrance at the back of the building. MacLean unbolted the door and I followed him through. The rain had ceased and the air was clean and cold, the sky brilliant with stars. In the distance, beyond the line of sand-dunes, I could hear the roar of sea breaking upon shingle.
MacLean inhaled deeply, his face turned seaward. Then he looked upward at the stars. I lit a cigarette and waited for him to speak.
'Have you any experience of poltergeists?' he asked.
'Things that go bump in the night?' I said. 'No, I can't say I have.' I offered him a cigarette, but he shook his head.
'What you watched just now,' said MacLean, 'the glass shivering to pieces, is the same thing. Electrical force, released. Mrs J. had trouble with crashing objects long before I developed Charon. Saucepans, and so on, hurling themselves about at the coastguard's cottage where they live. It was Niki, of course.'
I stared at him, incredulous. 'You mean the child?'
'Yes.'
He thrust his hands in his pockets and began pacing up and down. 'Naturally, she was quite unaware of the fact,' he continued. 'So were her parents. It was only psychic energy exploding, extra strong in her case because her brain is undeveloped, and since she is the only survivor of identical twins the force was doubled.'
This was rather too much to swallow, and I laughed. He swung round and faced me.
'Have you a better solution?' he asked.
'No,' I admitted, 'but surely ...'
'Exactly,' he interrupted. 'Nobody ever has. There are hundreds, thousands of cases of these so-called phenomena, and almost every time they are reported there is evidence to show that a child, or someone who is regarded as of sub-standard intelligence, was in the locality at the time.' He resumed his walk and I beside him, the dog at our heels.
'So what?' I said.
'So that,' he went on, 'it suggests we all possess an untapped source of energy within us that awaits release. Call it, if you like, Force Six. It works in the same way as the high-frequency impulse which I released just now from Charon. Here is the explanation of telepathy, precognition, and all the so-called psychic mysteries. The power we develop in any electronic device is the same as the power that the Janus child possesses--with one difference, to date : we can control the one but not the other.'
I saw his meaning, but not where the discussion was leading us. God knows life is complicated enough without seeking to probe the unconscious forces that may lie dormant within man, especially if the connecting link must first be an animal, or an idiot child.
'All right,' I said, 'so you tap this Force Six, as you call it. Not only in Janus's daughter, but in all animals, in backward children, and finally in the human race. You have us breaking glasses, sending saucepans flying, exchanging messages by telepathic communication, and so on and so forth; but wouldn't it add immeasurably to our difficulties, so that we ended up in the complete chaos from which we presumably sprang?'
This time it was MacLean who laughed. Our walk had taken us to a ridge of high ground, and we were looking across the sand-dunes to the sea beyond. The long shingle beach seemed to stretch into eternity, as drear and featureless as the marsh behind it. The sea broke with a monotonous roar, sucking at the dragging stones, only to renew the effort and spend itself once more.
'No doubt it would,' he said, but that's not what I'm after. Man will find a proper use for Force Six in his own good time. I want to make it work for him after the body dies.'
I threw my cigarette on to the ground and watched it glow an instant before it flickered to a wet stub.
'What on earth do you mean?' I asked him.
He was looking at me, trying to size up my reaction to his words. I could not make up my mind if he was mad or not, but there was something vaguely endearing about him as he stood there, hunched, speculative, like an overgrown schoolboy in his corduroy bags and his old turtle-necked sweater.
'I'm quite serious,' he said. 'The energy is there, you know, when it leaves the body on the point of death. Think of the appalling wastage through the centuries; all that energy escaping as we die, when it might be used for the benefit of mankind. It's the oldest of theories, of course, that the soul escapes through the nostrils or the mouth--the Greeks believed in it, so do certain African tribes today. You and I are not concerned with souls, and we know that our intelligence dies with our body. But not the vital spark. The life-force continues as energy, uncontrolled, and up to the present ... useless. It's above us and around us as we stand talking here.'
Once again he threw back his head and looked at the stars, and I wondered what deep inner loneliness had driven him to this vain quest after the intangible. Then I remembered that his wife had died. Doubtless this theoretical bunk had saved him.
'I'm afraid it will take you a lifetime to prove,' I said to him.
'No,' he answered. 'At the most a couple of months. You see, Charon 3, which I didn't show you, has a built-in storage unit, to receive and contain power, or, to be exact, to receive and contain Force Six wh
en it is available.' He paused. The glance he threw at me was curious, speculative. I waited for him to continue. 'The ground work has all been done,' he said. 'We are geared and ready for the great experiment, when Charons 1 and 3 will be used in conjunction, but I need an assistant, fully trained to work both installations, when the moment comes. I'll be perfectly frank with you. Your predecessor here at Saxmere wouldn't cooperate. Oh yes, you had one. I asked your chief at A.E.L. not to tell you--I preferred to tell you myself. Your predecessor refused his co-operation for reasons of conscience which I respect.'
I stared. I was not surprised at the other fellow refusing to cooperate, but I did not see where ethics came into it.
'He was a Catholic,' explained MacLean. 'Believing as he did in the survival of the soul and its sojourn in purgatory, he couldn't stomach any idea of imprisoning the life force and making it work for us here on earth. Which, as I have told you, is my intention.'
He turned away from the sea and began walking back the way we had come. The lights were all extinguished in the low line of pre-fabs where presumably we were to eat, work, sleep, and have our being during the eight weeks that lay ahead. Behind them loomed the square tower of the disused radar station, a monument to the ingenuity of man.
'They told me at A.E.L. you had no religious scruples,' went on MacLean. 'Neither have the rest of us at Saxmere, though we like to think of ourselves as dedicated men. As young Ken puts it himself, it comes to the same thing as giving your eyes to a hospital, or your kidneys to cold storage. The problem is ours, not his.'
I had a sudden recollection of the youngster at the bar, pouring out the orange juice and calling himself a guinea-pig.
'What's Ken's part in all this, then?' I asked.
MacLean paused in his walk and looked straight at me.
'The boy has leukaemia,' he said. 'Robbie gives him three months at the outside. There'll be no pain. He has tremendous guts, and believes wholeheartedly in the experiment. It's very possible the attempt may fail. If it fails, we lose nothing--his life is forfeit anyway. If we succeed ...' He broke off, catching his breath as though swept by a sudden deep emotion. 'If we succeed, you see what it will mean?' he said. 'We shall have the answer at last to the intolerable futility of death.'
When I awoke next morning to a brilliant day and looked from my bedroom window along the asphalt road to the disused radar tower, brooding like a sentinel over empty sheds and rusted metal towards the marsh beyond, I made my decision then and there to go.
I shaved, bathed, and went along to breakfast determined to be courteous to all, and to ask for five minutes alone with MacLean immediately afterwards. I would catch the first available train, and with luck be in London by one o'clock. If there was any unpleasantness with A.E.L. my chief would take the rap for it, not I.
The dining-room was empty except for Robbie, who was attacking an enormous plateful of soused herrings. I bade him a brief good day and helped myself to bacon. I looked round for a morning paper but there was none. Conversation would be forced upon me.
'Fine morning,' I observed.
He did not answer me immediately. He was engaged in dissecting his herring with the finesse of an expert. Then his falsetto voice came at me across the table.
'Are you proposing to back out?' he asked.
His question took me by surprise, and I disliked the note of derision.
'I'm an electronics engineer,' I answered, 'I'm not interested in psychical research.'
'No more were Lister's colleagues concerned with discovering antisepsis,' he rejoined. 'What fools they were made to look later.'
He forked a half-herring into his mouth and proceeded to chew it, watching me from behind his bi-focal specs.
'So you believe all this stuff about Force Six?' I said. 'Don't you?' he parried.
I pushed aside my plate in protest.
'Look here,' I said. 'I can accept this work MacLean has done on sound. He has found the answer to voice production which we failed to do at A.E.L. He has developed a system by which high-frequency waves can be picked up by animals, and also, it seems, by one idiot child. I give him full marks for the first, am doubtful about the potential value of the second, and as to his third project--capturing the life-force, or whatever he calls it, as it leaves the body--if anyone talked to the Ministry about that one, your boss would find himself inside.'
I resumed my bacon feeling I had put Robbie in his place. He finished his herrings, then started on the toast and marmalade. 'Ever watched anyone die?' he asked suddenly.
'As a matter of fact, no,' I answered.
'I'm a doctor, and it's part of my job,' he said, 'in hospitals, in homes, in refugee camps after the war. I suppose I've witnessed scores of deaths during my professional life. It's not a pleasant experience. Here at Saxmere it's become my business to stand by a very plucky, likeable lad, not only during his last hours, but during the few weeks that remain to him. I could do with some help.'
I got up and took my plate to the sideboard. Then I returned and helped myself to coffee.
'I'm sorry,' I said.
He pushed the toast-rack towards me but I shook my head. Breakfast is not my favourite meal, and this morning I lacked appetite. There was a sound of footsteps outside, on the asphalt, and a head looked in at the window. It was Ken.
'Hullo,' he said, with a grin, 'what a wonderful morning. If Mac doesn't need you in the control room I'll show you round. We could take a walk up to the coastguard cottages and over Saxmere cliff. Are you game?' He took my hesitation for assent. 'Splendid! It's no use asking Robbie. He'll spend the morning in the lab gloating over specimens of my blood.'
The head vanished, and I heard him call to Janus through the kitchen window alongside. Neither Robbie nor I spoke. The sound of munching toast became unbearable. I stood up.
'Where will. I find MacLean?' I asked.
'In the control room,' he answered, and went on eating.
It was best done at once. I went the way I had been shown the night before, through the swing door to the lab. Somehow the operating table under the centre light held more significance this morning, and I avoided looking at it. I went through the door at the far end, and saw MacLean standing by Charon 1. He beckoned me over.
'There's a slight fault in the processing unit,' he said. 'I noticed it last night. I'm sure you'll be able to fix it.'
This was the moment to express my regrets and tell him I had decided against joining his team and intended to return to London immediately. I did no such thing. Instead I crossed the floor to the computer and stood by while he explained the circuits. Professional pride, professional jealousy, if you will, coupled with intense curiosity to know why this particular apparatus was superior to the one we had built at A.E.L., proved too much for me.
'There are some overalls on the wall,' said MacLean. 'Put 'em on, and we'll fix the fault between us.'
From then onward I was lost, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that I was won. Not to his lunatic theories, not to any future experiment with life and death; I was conquered by the supreme beauty and efficiency of Charon 1 itself. Beauty may be an odd word to use where electronics are concerned. I did not find it so. Herein lay all my passion, all my feelings; from my boyhood I had been involved with the creation of these things. This was my life's work. I was not interested in the uses to which the machines I had helped to develop and perfect were ultimately put. My part was to see that they fulfilled the function for which they were designed. Until arriving at Saxmere I had had no other object, no other aim in life, but to do what I was fitted to do, and do it well.
Charon 1 awakened something else in me, an awareness of power. I had only to handle those controls to know that what I wanted now was to have detailed knowledge of all the working parts, and then be given charge of the whole lay-out. Nothing else mattered. But the end of that first morning I had not only located the fault, a minor one, but had set it right. MacLean had become Mac, the shortening of my name to Steve
was something that no longer jarred, and the whole fantastic set-up had ceased to irritate or to dismay; I had become one of the team.
Robbie showed no surprise when I turned up at lunchtime, nor did he allude to our conversation at breakfast. In the late afternoon, with Mac's permission, I took my suggested walk with Ken. It was impossible to connect approaching death with this irrepressible youngster, and I put it from my mind. It could be that both Mac and Robbie were wrong about it. Anyway, it was not, thank God, my problem.
He showed no sign of fatigue and led the way, laughing and chatting, across the sand-dunes to the sea. The sun was shining, the air felt cold and clean, even the long stretch of shore that had seemed dreary the night before had now a latent charm. The heavy shingle gave place to sand, crisp under our feet; Cerberus, who accompanied us, bounded ahead. We threw sticks for him to retrieve from the pallid, almost effortless, sea, which gently, without menace, broke beside us as we walked. We did not discuss Saxmere, or anything connected with it; instead Ken regaled me with amusing gossip about the U.S. base at Thiriwall, where he had apparently worked as one of the ground staff before Mac arranged his transfer ten months before.
Suddenly Cerberus, barking puppy-fashion for another stick, turned and stood motionless, ears pricked, head to wind. Then he started loping back the way we had come, his lithe black-and-tan form soon lost to sight against the darker shingle and the dunes beyond.
'He's had a signal from Charon,' said Ken.
The night before, watching Mac at the controls, the dog's scratching at the door seemed natural. Here, some three miles distant on the lonely shore, his swift departure was uncanny.
'Effective, isn't it?' said Ken.
I nodded; but somehow, because of what I'd seen, my spirits left me. Enthusiasm for the walk had waned. It would have been different had I been alone. Now, with the boy beside me, I was, as it were, confronted with the future, the project Mac had in mind, the months ahead.
'Want to turn back?' he asked me.
His words reminded me of Robbie's at breakfast, though he meant them otherwise. 'Just as you like,' I said indifferently.
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