Menace of the Saucers

by Eando Binder

  “This kind of search bores me,” said Thane impatiently. “I’d rather take my chances and go back to earth as your spy. I’d have a better chance of finding out where their main base is.”

  “You would have no chance at all,” contradicted the girl. She punched a button and a sibilant voice filled the cabin. “This is a tape we made of a Morlian beamed broadcast, just after those seven bases that you had pinpointed for us were destroyed. I’ll switch on the automatic translator, converting it into your language.”

  The voice changed to English. “…and it has now been determined that the earthman, Thane Smith, must have operated as a Vigilante agent and used psychomethods to extract information from Morlian minds. The result was seven bases destroyed, more than the Vigilantes accomplished by themselves in 50 years. Thane Smith is hereby declared a prime target for capture, by the Supreme High.”

  “See?” said Miribel, shuddering. “To the Morlians, you are the most wanted man in the universe.”

  “Wait,” said Thane. “Who’s the Supreme High?”

  “The chief commander of all Morlian forces in the earth Sector.”

  “Would his headquarters be at the main base?” demanded Thane.

  “Yes.”

  “And notice they said ‘captured,’ not killed.” Thane was now excited. “Don’t you see, Miribel? If I’m captured alive—deliberately—I would be taken to the main base, the very place we’re combing space for. Then, if I could somehow signal Thalkon…”

  Miribel’s eyes opened wide. “It could be our great breakthrough,” she whispered. “It just could be.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” snapped Thane, taking over the controls and slewing the ship around. “We’re heading back for earth and Thalkon.”

  * * * *

  Thalkon pursed his lips, staring at Thane. “But we don’t know for sure that you would be taken directly before the Supreme High at the Morlian main base.”

  “Why not?” returned Thane. “It seems I represent the greatest and most dangerous spy-agent they ever knew. Wouldn’t the top commander of the Morlians want to see me in person—and sentence me?”

  Miribel winced, but Thalkon nodded. “It makes sense. They might even have some plan to mentally dissect you—I am sorry to be so brutally blunt, Thane—and thus pick up secrets about us Vigilantes. You have been among us and learned much. Every scrap of information about us they gain would be worthwhile to them.”

  Miribel stepped between them, her eyes terrified. “You must not go, Thane. Mental dissection is…is horrible.”

  “That is true,” said Thalkon honestly. “It means slicing your brain apart, bit by bit, extracting every last memory circuit. A psycho-scalpel is used, not a knife. You would live on through it, in torment, and end up drained of all mentality. An idiot.”

  Thane’s face had gone white at the flesh-crawling words. He stood stiff and unmoving for a long moment. Then he grinned wryly. “I’m going to be an idiot now, despite your warning, and take on that challenge.”

  “No…no,” Miribel half-moaned.

  Thane took her hand tenderly. “Look, my star love. I’m not as idiotic as I seem. Remember that my thought-processes and actions are far more alien to the Morlians than yours are. Or more primitive, if you wish. They won’t even know I’m trying to outfox them, nor will they ever believe I can. The advantage will be on my side.”

  Thane went on, half-humorously. “It will be like the man who captures an ape and locks him in a cage with a padlock, not knowing that meanwhile, the ape stole the key.”

  “Don’t belittle yourself,” said Thalkon, sincerely. “We told you the earth mind has the full potential of ours, if not the training. And you have just proved it. Now what we will do is return you to your cabin, where you will pretend to go about revealing to the world all about the Morlians and the Vigilantes….”

  “I get it,” said Thane. “As if I had broken with you in anger and just-wanted to inform my own people of what goes on. Then the Morlians won’t suspect I’m still acting as your agent I can still put up my psycho-shield and fool them.”

  “Only now they will suspect psycho-tampering by us,” warned Thalkon. “It will take infinite finesse.”

  “No, just human wits,” said Thane, “which to them will be like animal cunning they don’t understand. The ape can win, with luck—about a carload of it.”

  He turned to Miribel. “Well, sweet. Maybe this is goodbye…”

  “Why?” she said. “I’m going along.”

  Thane and Thalkon stared at her.

  “But Miribel—” they both began.

  “Save your breath,” the girl said firmly. “If Thane goes, I go. Besides, that will add to the deception, if I pretend—and I won’t have to pretend—that I am madly in love with him and have deserted my people, and also want to expose the Morlian-Vigilante struggle to earth-people.”

  Thalkon’s eyes gleamed. “Hmm. Twice in the past, Vigilantes who were agents on earth and mingled with earthpeople, fell in love. We had to kidnap the couple, in both cases, and return them to our world before they exposed us. The Morlians know the full story, so your act will seem quite true, Miribel. In a sense, it will cover up for Thane.”

  He turned and spoke into an intercom device. “Attention. Thane Smith and Miribel will be delivered to earth on Mission Main Base. Prepare a scout craft.”

  Before they left, Thalkon kissed Miribel lightly. “Good luck, daughter,” he said.

  “Daughter?” Thane stood stunned. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” He recovered and went on, “And you’re willing to risk your own daughter’s life to help our world and defeat the Morlians.”

  It was not a question. Thane knew the answer already. The whole campaign of the Vigilantes was beyond the call of duty, protecting another world from some hideous fate.

  Thane shook Thalkon’s hand wordlessly, then stepped into the scout ship after Miribel. A computer might, in rigid objectivity, give zero odds that the three would ever meet again.

  * * * *

  “What are you doing?” asked Miribel curiously.

  Thane looked up from his desk in the cabin, smiling. “I’m making out checks. One does have to pay bills, you know. Also I’ve got some correspondence to answer. If I don’t somebody might get alarmed and tell the police I’m a missing man. That would mess up our plans but good.”

  Taking care of such routine affairs, Thane knew, was important, making it seem as if his life on earth was going on as usual. Otherwise, busybodies who suspected something was wrong might well raise a hue and cry and put him under an unwelcome spotlight.

  Finally, heaving away from his desk with a sigh, Thane pointed at the typewriter and the girl sat down, poising her hands over the keys.

  “Take this down, Miribel,” said Thane, pacing up and down his cabin like a business executive. “I, Thane Smith, have absolute proof that extraterrestrial people have been visiting earth for at least 75 years. The proof? One of the extraterrestrials themselves, a girl named Miribel.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Thane saw a domed saucer sliding down out of the sky and landing beyond a clump of trees. He knew the Morlian MIB’s would quickly be on the job, keeping a sensor screen on the cabin day and night.

  He went on dictating. “Miribel is the daughter of the Vigilante leader. His forces, in brief, are attempting to keep the Morlians—another alien race—from dominating earth.”

  Thane grinned to himself. Why they wanted to dominate earth, he did not know. The Vigilantes had never told him the it-is-not-permitted-to-tell secret. His ears now detected the soft pad of shoes outside.

  “Miribel and I disagree with the Vigilante policy of secrecy and want the world to know the full story of why they and the Morlians are here….”

  The door swung open.
Three MIB’s stalked in, tubular weapons in hand. “We would not like that,” said their spokesman in typical mild tones.

  “The Morlians,” gasped Miribel in pretended surprise. “But you said your cabin would be safe, Thane.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Thane, acting rueful.

  “After I vanished so completely, I figured they would never check back here.”

  “You underestimate our thoroughness,” said one MIB. “Now you will….”

  They aimed their tubular weapons. Thane’s heart froze. They were to be summarily killed after all, not captured. He had lost the big gamble at the start.

  But only a soft hiss came from the devices and Thane felt his muscles go lax.

  “…be paralyzed,” finished the MIB, “and taken to our Supreme High, commander of all Morlians.”

  No, the gamble had won, exulted Thane. So far, at least.

  The limp forms of Thane and Miribel were carried outside to the domed saucer, which moments later shot silently into the sky.

  Destination—the unknown main base of Morli.

  Chapter 19

  Locked in a small chamber within the flying saucer, paralyzed but mentally alert, the captured pair had no idea of just where they were heading.

  “It’s not on earth,” came Miribel’s beamed psychowords, picked up by the psycho-wafer next to Thane’s brain. “The departure mode was not an earthly trajectory but one out into space.”

  “At least we’ve eliminated one place where it is not,” returned Thane, whimsically. “That leaves only eight other planets and thirty-odd moons. Not to mention 50,000 asteroids or so.”

  “Or maybe,” speculated Miribel, “some artificial base in midspace, at any one of an infinite number of points near earth.”

  “Obviously,” telepathed Thane, “we’ll have to wait till we get there and then see where we are.”

  Their sense of time seemed dulled, too, by the induced paralysis. They had no idea if it was minutes or hours or days later when the saucercraft spun down for a landing.

  A Morlian guard came in their prison chamber and shone the tubular device’s ray at them, but this time with a different effect. Their muscles suddenly began working again.

  “Follow me,” he said tersely. Other guards fell in behind. They stepped from the saucer onto a railed catwalk within a giant dome.

  Thane immediately knew, by how light he felt, that they were on some small body. The guard handed them each a pair of heavy metallic boots. “Put them on. They will hold you down. Otherwise you could not walk without bouncing around uncomfortably.”

  The boots, though not outsized, were extremely heavy. When Thane stood up, he felt as if only 50% earth-scale gravity were at work, which meant that this body was really small.

  That eliminated all the planets and left their tiniest moons. Or an asteroid. But which one? The solid dome above had no skylight window to see the stairs. Thane ached to flash the big message to Thalkon, telling precisely where the Morlian headquarters were. When would they get the chance—if ever?

  A flying platform, similar to those of the Vigilantes, took them through an arched entrance into an inner sanctum that was heavily guarded. Thane knew they were to confront the Supreme High, commander of multithousands of Morlian saucercraft and their crews.

  In an austere chamber, a Morlian in a dead-black uniform sat in a throne-like onyx chair. He smiled genially as the two prisoners stood before him.

  “Greetings, Thane Smith of earth,” he said in a gentle voice that seemed to hold no hate or threat. “And Miribel of the Zyl Vigilantes.”

  The Supreme High picked up a document. “Thane Smith,” he said in the same unreproachful tones, “you have proved our worst enemy, acting as a secret agent of the Vigilantes and causing the loss to us of ten bases in all. Do you deny it?”

  It was hopeless to try. The Morlians were no fools and could add two and two. Thane shook his head. “Why were we brought here?” he asked, wanting to sound them out. “For execution?”

  “No, not that,” said the Morlian leader. “No, nothing as easy as that.” His voice was not sadistic.

  Thane and Miribel both squirmed inwardly.

  “You are to undergo a certain mental procedure which will instantly leave you both idiots, drained of all mind-powers.”

  Mind dissection! Thalkon had guessed rightly. He glanced at Miribel. The horror in her eyes was of great magnitude.

  “I will personally attend the test,” said the Supreme High to his guards. “Yes, the great test!”

  Test? Of what? Thane’s wonder and dread grew as they were escorted into another great chamber. Most of it was taken up by a gigantic plastic box filled with countless rows of what looked like microminiaturized circuitry hung on vertical plates. All of it was immersed in some transparent viscous fluid.

  “It reminds me of a computer,” Thane said to Miribel.

  “Or a giant battery,” murmured the girl.

  “You are both right,” nodded the Supreme High, Who had come up behind them. “But a new kind of battery and computer never known before, with awesome powers—when it is done.”

  Miribel shuddered.

  “I think the Zyl girl knows what is coming,” said the Morlian chief, “Their spies gathered enough information in the past 75 earth years to piece together our final plan. And how earth fits into that plan.”

  Thane tensed. Was he about to hear from the Morlians themselves what Thalkon had refused to reveal?

  But the Supreme High turned and beckoned to two chairs facing the huge machine. An inch-thick cable or tube led from each chair within the giant box.

  “You will please be seated.”

  They both sat down. Thane suddenly felt himself gripped by an invisible force that emanated from the chair. Once seated, you could not get out though no bonds were visible. Some devilish Morlian device for holding you prisoner in front of the immense battery-computer.

  “The test will be applied to the girl first,” said the Supreme High. “Begin.”

  As the attendants used pushbuttons, a mirrored device descended from the ceiling until it hung just over Miribel’s head. She glanced up, in frozen terror.

  “Goodbye, Thane,” she choked out.

  It was all nightmarish after that, for Thane. He saw a purling blue ray shine down from the mirror, bathing Miribel’s head. Her face distorted as if something were being torn from her. Thane strained against the invisible grip of his chair but could not move a muscle. He could only watch, in slowly growing horror.

  “I will explain, earthman,” came the voice of the Supreme High. “First of all, remember that a person s mind—the mentality or psyche—exists as an electromagnetic pattern independently of the physical brain. The brain, you see, is only an instrumented sensor of the true mind, lending it the senses of sight, hearing, tactility, and the rest.”

  Thane could dimly understand. At one time he had researched psychic phenomena which seemed to authenticate this fundamental separateness of mind and brain. Especially the so-called out-of-body experiences, in which a sensitive’s ‘astral’ form left the physical body and wandered on its own, sometimes far across the world. It was the astral-form that held all the person’s memory and awareness, while the deserted body lay inert, the brain uncomprehending. It was as if the mind had been ‘drained’ out of the brain, leaving it merely a blank mass of protoplasm.

  “And Miribel’s mind-psyche,” said the Morlian chief with brutal directness, “is being forced out of her brain and is being drained away through that psychomagnetic cable.”

  Thane sickened as he saw the tubular cable form a bulge that slowly traversed its length and reached the giant box.

  “Now,” said the Supreme High, with a new tense note in his voice, “will her mind-psyche be successfully assim
ilated in that mind-battery?”

  Mind-battery? A battery was something you poured energy into. Thane’s mind screamed at the next thought that came to him.

  Miribel’s mind was being ‘poured’ into the giant box!

  Thane forced his eyes back to her face. He knew what he would see. It was a face of utter idiocy, grinning foolishly. Her eyes were vacant with no slightest sign of intelligence shining forth.

  “Her brain,” screeched Thane, squirming helplessly in his chair’s grip. “You emptied her brain. Stop…stop…”

  His voice broke to a bubbling moan.

  “If the power needle swings up one notch,” said the Supreme High, peering at a dial on the plastic box, “it will mean…ah!” His triumphant exclamation was almost a shout. “It worked. Miribel’s full mentality is now available to the computer connected to the mind-battery.”

  “Horrible,” Thane could only rasp, his whole being revolted at the ghoulish feat. “Miribel’s mind gone, like a candle snuffed out. You turned her into a mindless nothing…mere living flesh…horrible, horrible. I loved her and she’s gone…gone…”

  “Oh, the process is reversible,” said the Supreme High airily, waving a hand. Attendants worked controls and the bulge reappeared at the other end of the tube, leaving the mind-battery. When the bulge traveled to her chair, Miribel’s drooling face began to change.

  In a few moments, she turned and smiled faintly at Thane. “It wasn’t goodbye after all,” she breathed, but there was lurking horror in her eyes. “I felt myself…my mind…me…being drawn through the tube and into the plastic box. It felt like…no, I can’t describe it.” She broke off and shivered. Then she glanced in stark pity at Thane. “Now can you see what their plan is for earth?”

  “No, I can’t,” mumbled Thane, still shaken by what had happened to her. “I don’t want to know.” He was fighting off any conjectures, afraid to face the mind-blasting denouement.

  “But it was the finely tuned mind of Miribel of Zyl that we tested,” the Morlian Chief was saying, turning his eyes balefully on Thane. “Now we must test the coarser mind of the earthling. Begin.”