Thus he saw when the other car turned in through the gates leading to the drive before a rather small, but excellent cottage. The tricycle stopped at the doorway, and Egon got out and entered the house. The chauffeur drove into a shed behind the house, left the machine and then, himself, went into the main house through a back door.
Making the bird peer in through the windows, Hanlon was able to see that this house, while small, was richly and comfortably furnished according to Estrellan standards. By the time he arrived in the vicinity in person, ready to take over the inspection himself, Hanlon had a fairly good idea of the ground-floor layout. The upper story was still in darkness, none of the rooms yet lighted.
Hanlon's first act was to direct the bird to a comfortable perch in a nearby tree, close to a semi-rotted spot where there were dozens of grubs for its breakfast, and let it go back to sleep. He was always so thankful to his various animal and bird assistants that lie was careful to be thoughtful of their ease and well-being.
Now, after parking his machine in the shadows of a large flowertree, Hanlon dodged from shadow to shadow, scouting the house and neighborhood carefully.
As best he could judge the estate must be about three acres in extent. There were quite an unusual number of flower beds, and a few quite large flowertrees that should give him considerable cover if he wanted to get closer—which he did not care to risk at this time.
"Mmmm, must be about seven rooms," he mused as he examined the little house. As was usual with Estrellan buildings, it was pentagonal in shape, and with a green-tile roof. Behind it, in addition to the shed where the tricycle was kept, there was another small stone building. But it was dark, and Hanlon could not tell what it was used for.
After seeing all he could from a distance of the outside of Egon's place, Hanlon looked about the neighborhood. It was not too closely built up, but some distance down the street he saw what appeared to be a shopping district. One building was lighted up even at this hour, and he shrewdly guessed it might be a place where men drank. So it proved, and Hanlon entered. While sipping a glass of mykkyl, he did some discreet investigating, both by talking to the serving girl, and by searching the minds of the customers in the cafe.
He was almost rocked back on his heels when he found that the house he had scouted was the home of Adwal Irad—the Second In Line.
"Ow!" he yelped mentally. "So Egon and Irad are the same? Where does that put me?"
He again investigated the minds of the few men and women there in the drinking place, looking for thoughts about Irad. Then he left, and slowly rode home, thinking seriously. This was really startling news—and yet, it was half-expected at that. So many clues had pointed that way. So this really meant that Irad was in back of all the pernicious activities that were going on.
But in the name of Snyder, why?
That question had him stopped . . . for the present. Oh, he could think of a dozen reasons, yes. But there was no way—at the moment—of knowing which if any of them was correct. Also, it didn't square with Irad's position, nor with what he had so far learned about the man—not even what his neighbors thought of him, as Hanlon had learned there in the cafe. It was distinctly not in character, and was certainly not what one would expect of the heir to the planetary Rulership.
The next day Hanlon devoted to wandering about the city, hunting for information and thoughts about Adwal Irad. Many times he got into conversation with people of high and low degree, asking questions that forced them to think about the Second In Line, so he could read the real thoughts about the man in the minds of these selected people.
Twice he rode his trike to the house where Manning lived, to tell what he had learned and to discuss it with him, but neither time was his fellow-operative at home.
Now, the more Hanlon investigated—the more people he talked to and the more minds he studied—the more puzzled he became. Irad just wasn't that kind of a man—at least, he had never been associated in the minds of his future subjects with that sort of thing. He was really well liked. In fact, the general attitude was almost that of hero-worship. And Hanlon knew that where there is hero-worship there first has to be someone worthy of being thought a hero. Something was screwy somewhere. With what Hanlon was beginning to learn about Irad. . . .
Brash and self-confident as he was, Hanlon knew this was something that must be brought to the attention of his father and the other SS men here. How could he most quickly contact the admiral?
"Manning probably knows exactly how to get in touch with dad," he thought. "He talked with him only a few days ago."
But again Manning was not at home, and Hanlon could not banish the thoughts of worry and frustration from his mind as he rode slowly back to his own rooms. He again set the wake-up on his time-teller for an early hour, and went to sleep. When the call came he hurriedly rose, dressed and breakfasted. Then he went out of his room and the house.
Just as he reached the street and turned toward the part of the city where Manning lived, he swiveled about sharply as he heard the splat, splat of running feet coming up behind him. Running— staggering, rather—down the narrow, rutty road was a native, his great feet raising clouds of dust.
Something in the fellow's wild manner held Hanlon's attention. As the runner drew nearer, his wildly waving arms, his blood-shot, almost unseeing eyes, told all too plainly that he was badly frightened. Yet, so far as Hanlon could see, nothing or no one was pursuing him.
As the native drew closer, Hanlon gave a start. Why, he knew . . . but it couldn't be—he was on the Eastern Continent, thousands of miles away. Hanlon's mind must be playing tricks on him. But he scanned the fellow more closely, touching his mind, and at last was sure. It was! Disguised as a native humanoid though he was, Hanlon knew this was Curt Hooper, another of the secret servicemen who was working on this planet.
Hanlon stepped into the road to intercept the runner. He spoke as the man came abreast him, but Hooper paid no attention—seemed not even to see him.
More puzzled than ever, the young SS man ran alongside and reached out to grasp the runner's arm, forcing him to a halt. "Hey, Curt, it's me, Hanlon," he said. "What's the matter?" He was now deeply concerned.
"Don't stop me; gotta run; gotta get away," came gasping Terran words, even as the other tried to loosen himself from Hanlon's grasp.
Hanlon probed quickly into the man's mind but, as usual, he could read only the surface thoughts. These told of some terrible danger threatening—that only running, always running away, could possibly save him.
What the danger was; who or what was threatening him, was not in those surface thoughts.
"Snyder help me," Hanlon begged bitterly beneath his breath. Why couldn't he learn how to penetrate deeper into human minds, as he could with animals, and read everything that was there, instead of merely whatever thoughts were passing across the surface?
But Hooper was fighting as only a madman can fight, and Hanlon was barely able to hold him. Yet he must. He had to learn what this was all about—why Hooper was here in the Town of the Ruler, instead of back where he had been stationed. What the danger was, and if it threatened the work of the secret servicemen, and possibly the other Terrans. It was clear that Hooper was either drugged or that his mind had become unsane in some manner—whether permanently or temporarily, Hanlon could not as yet figure out.
Acting on sudden impulse, Hanlon switched his grasp to a neo-judo hold he had been taught, that made Hooper powerless in his hands. He dragged his companion back inside.
Once in his room Hanlon forced Hooper's unwilling body down on the bed, and pressed certain nerve-ends that temporarily paralyzed his body. In this way Hanlon could be more free to study that sick mind, which was not paralyzed, without having to watch every minute lest the deranged man escape him.
While Hanlon was able only to read the surface thoughts, he had learned from experience that by asking leading questions he could often make the other think of things he wanted to know, and this method he now p
ut into practice.
What he learned now, in spite of all the leading questions he could think of to ask, was pitifully meager. Hooper had been made a prisoner and brought to this continent and confined, but had escaped. But he did not know—or could not be made to reveal—why he was on this Western Continent at all, nor how he had been captured or by whom. Hanlon guessed that the man had been held in a small house somewhere fairly near, since he had been running away from there a fairly short time, even though it had seemed an eternity to the frightened man.
Suddenly a stray wisp of thought brought Hanlon upright in his chair.
"Give me that again, Curt!" he demanded, and under his questioning brought out the fact that his father, Admiral Newton, was also a prisoner of these unknowns, as was the fourth member of the SS who had been assigned to Estrella—Morris Manning.
"Mannie couldn't stand the pain, he died," Hooper's thought was strangely calm and apparently heartless—which Hanlon knew could not be the man's true feelings, for Hooper and Manning had been close friends of long standing. "What kind of pain? Who was hurting him?" Hanlon demanded, sick with dread. "Were all of you being tortured? Was dad?" Oh, God, why couldn't he get in there and read the true answers?
As best he could figure it out, they had never seen their captor, but had felt his mind probing theirs, asking questions, interrogating them—in the Estrellan language. Whoever was doing it apparently did not intend it to be torture, for when Manning died the other two received a curiously surprised yet apologetic thought, "Your nerve sensitivity is greater than ours. It was not intended to force this entity's life-force out of physical embodiment. Greater care shall be used in the future."
"Tell me more about dad," Hanlon commanded, agonizedly. "Where is he held? Who has him? What's it all about?"
But the dazed Hooper relapsed back to the only words he seemed able to say aloud, "Gotta run; gotta get away."
"But you're safe here, Curt. No one's following you, and I won't let anyone or anything hurt you. Relax."
"Gotta run; gotta get away." And so powerful was the urge that the supine body twitched restlessly, as it began breaking out of that paralysis Hanlon had imposed on it.
Frantically, Hanlon continued his mind-scanning, asking innumerable questions that he hoped would penetrate the other's consciousness and force his mind to think along the lines Hanlon wanted to know.
And slowly, sketchily, he began to piece together a picture of sorts—like a jigsaw puzzle of which many of the pieces were missing.
The three SS men had been brought together in some little stone building. There the unknown, whom they never saw nor heard, had interrogated them mentally, a process that was extremely painful in a way that Hooper could not, or did not, specify, save that his mind seemed to wince and recoil from any thought of the method, despite Hanlon's utmost attempts to learn it.
There seemed to have been days and nights of this painful questioning, although Hooper could not tell exactly how long—and Hanlon knew it could not have been very many days, since he had seen Manning so recently.
Then, early this morning, shortly after Manning's death, and while Hooper was being questioned, it seemed to him the mental voice had gone away abruptly, leaving him in full command of his senses. He had immediately begun to examine the room, and soon found that the low door was unfastened. Cautiously he opened it, and discovered that it opened to the outside of the building. The admiral had not been in the room with him at the time, nor could Hooper find a way into the other parts of the building—if there were any other parts to it.
Therefore, he had lost no time in leaving by that providentially open door. He started running across a lawn toward the nearest road. Down this he ran, knowing only a terrified compulsion to run, to hide, to get away from that horrible inquisition.
"How long have you been running?" Hanlon asked sympathetically, yet in hopes it might give him a clue.
"Gotta run; gotta get away," Hooper's words said, but the thought flashed across his mind, "since after dawn."
"Then dad's not too far away," Hanlon thought, and began trying to guess where or in what direction the prison might be, and how he could locate it most quickly.
He was awakened to reality to see Hooper rise from the bed, the paralysis broken by that inner compulsion to flee. Before Hanlon could jump up to stop him, Hooper was out of the room.
Hanlon let him go. He hated to do it, but there was no apparent way he could save Hooper now . . . and he had to get to his father just as fast as he could. Not only because the admiral was his adored dad, but because he was second in command of the whole I-S C's secret service, and in charge of this mission, and thus the more important at the moment.
"But where is he?" Hanlon's thoughts were an agonized wail. For the first time in months he felt very young, and inexperienced, and unsure.
He jumped to his feet to leave the house and start searching, but restrained himself before he got to the door.
"Whoa, boy, not so fast. I haven't got the faintest idea where dad is. Must think this out first, and not waste a lot of time during which he might die or be killed."
He sank back into his chair again, and his mind swiftly reviewed the pitifully small bits of information he had been able to glean from the deranged mind of his friend Hooper.
Someone, or something, or some group, who were the main support of this opposition, had a mental ability Hanlon thought he knew the Estrellans did not have. At least, he had not found any traces of it anywhere here. Or, wait now. Did the Rulers have it? Was this one of the traits and abilities especially bred into them in the course of making them capable of handling their tremendous task of being Planetary Ruler? Could be. He had not yet had the chance to scan mentally Elus Amir, the present Ruler, except for that one night at the theatre, and then he had not really tried to see what the man had in the way of mental equipment. Hanlon had been so relieved to find he and the audience were applauding, instead of booing, that he had not tried to do so.
If Elus Amir as Ruler had it, did Adwal Irad as Second-In-Line also have those mental powers?
Whoever or whatever it was—and that would have to be studied more thoroughly later—some mind or minds had forced the other three secret servicemen to go to a certain place . . . at present unknown to Hanlon . . . and had there imprisoned them and tried to extract information from their minds.
Information about what . . . and why? What could these unknowns want to know that couldn't be learned by asking direct questions? For the Federation statesmen and Survey men had been glad and anxious to answer fully and truthfully every question that had been asked of them.
And that puzzling thought Hooper had said they received when Manning died. "Your nerve sensitivity is greater than ours—we had not realized it would kill you to be thus interrogated." Or words to that effect. As far as Hanlon knew, the native Estrellans did not have unusual resistance to pain. He had had several encounters with them so far, and had known cases where they were hurt or wounded, and had not noticed any great immunity to pain. Was this, then, another special attribute of the Rulers? But Egon, or Irad, had certainly felt pain when Ebony scratched his chin, and had made quite a fuss about it. Was it real—or was he "putting on an act" to conceal his immunity? Somehow, Hanlon was not willing to accept that last.
Dimly, in the back of his mind, there seemed to be another puzzling thought. What was it? Hanlon worried at it like one of the roches might worry a bone and finally it struck him—hard.
If the other three had been captured, why hadn't he?
At its multiphased scanner in the spaceship high above, the being stiffened suddenly. For long minutes the mind concentrated on this new problem. The plan put into operation that morning had been partially successful. The "location" of that unreadable mind before noticed, found once and then lost—was now known again.
But still, despite every effort, contact with that mind could not be made.
After a time, therefore, with the utmost precision
a thought was insinuated into the Estrellan mind constantly being held captive. The thought was seen to take hold, then its strength and urgency was increased.
Soon, although the native was at a loss to account for the reason why such a thought should come to him at that particular time, he nevertheless sent a note to a certain person, giving forceful orders that were to be obeyed immediately.
CHAPTER 11
AT THAT THOUGHT, FEAR STRUCK AT GEORGE Hanlon's vitals, almost like a physical blow. What was planned for him?
For certainly if these unknowns were onto what the Terrans—or the Corps and the secret service—were trying to do here, and had already captured and tortured three of the four, they would not leave him free to continue working against them.
Cold sweat starting from all his pores, Hanlon sank into a chair, nails digging into palms. His bravado, his cockiness, his belief in his own superiority—all ebbed away like a swift-falling tide.
He had been used to working alone in the service. He had been mostly by himself on Simonides, and altogether alone on Algon. Yet he had not felt such an aloneness, such an absolute withdrawal of all support, as he knew in this awful moment.
For at the other places he could contact the SS through the safety deposit boxes, or by the "Andromeda Seven" password, and get almost instant response, and the entire resources of the Corps to back him up. And here on Estrella, while he had been working alone, he met the others occasionally, and the men with the Corps' sneakboat every fortnight. He had known they were there.
But now they were gone. And Hanlon was to be the next victim . . . and he had no idea who, when, what, where, or why.
For long minutes he sat, shaking with dread, his mind a chaos of nothingness but a swirling, roiling, panic fear.
This was far, far different from that terrible fear he had known back on the Hellene when he had first realized he was tangling with trained, unprincipled and viciously-conscienceless killers. Or the time he had been chained in the Prime Minister's dungeon on Simonides. For then he had been facing known problems. This one was totally unknown . . . and man has always felt far more fear of the terrors he cannot see, than of those he can face.
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