The very ugliness was hypnotic. He tore his gaze away from them, took a step, looked again. The hands had four nailless fingers, which were delicately, almost transparently webbed.
He took another step, and pretended to stagger. Miss X moved to support him, but he shook her off and walked slowly to the far end of the room, stomping his feet as if to restore circulation, rubbing his hands together, pausing once to rub his legs. They made no move to interfere. When he neared the transmitter frame he turned, and his automatic was in his hand.
“Raise your hands above your heads!” he snapped.
For a long moment they stared uncomprehendingly at the gun. Then the male slowly raised his hands, and Madam Z followed. The others made no move at all. One of the things spoke, and Miss X replied.
“Speak English!” Darzek ordered.
“She was only asking if it is a weapon,” Miss X said.
“She?” Darzek said blankly.
“You would refer to her as—”
One of Miss X’s hands leaped, snatched at something in a fold of her clothing. Darzek coolly shot her in the arm. The report rang out thunderously in that bare room, and left his ears ringing. “Now will you raise your hands?” he asked.
Miss X spoke a single, matter-of-fact word. “Barbarian.” She raised her hands, and the two things followed her example. If her arm pained her she showed no sign of it. Darzek searched the five faces for some trace of emotion—fear, anger, perhaps disgust. He found none. They continued to look imperturbably in his direction, but even across the full length of the room they would not meet his eyes.
“I don’t think so highly of you, either,” Darzek said to Miss X. “Now I suppose you’ll have to be patched up. Is there any first-aid equipment in this place?”
One of the things suddenly became aware of Miss X’s wound. It—she—whirled and examined the arm carefully. Then, with a single leap, she soared to the other end of the room, and at her touch a door rippled open in the bulging metal.
Rippled. Darzek thought of Venetian blinds and zippers, but neither comparison was adequate. The solid metal rippled aside, and the thing darted through the opening and reappeared a moment later, flipping it shut behind her. Darzek followed the movement warily, and watched closely as she went to work on Miss X’s arm. She held it firmly with one hand, and dabbed a liquid with the other. Then she turned calmly, faced Darzek, and raised her hands.
Darzek backed slowly away from them, and hoisted himself onto the stool by the instrument board. From there he could keep the five of them under surveillance and also cover the transmitter. He had thinking to do, and he had to do it quickly.
And what he had just seen was enough to unsettle the thinking of any sane man. He’d hoped to inflict a minor flesh wound, but he had to shoot quickly, and the arm was moving, and the tiny slug had struck it dead center. It flattened on impact, which it shouldn’t have done, and ripped a dreadful hole completely through the arm.
But it did not strike bone, and the wound did not bleed.
And under the casual medical treatment he had just witnessed the wound had already closed, except for a gaping tear in what looked to be an exceptionally thick and tough epidermis.
Darzek found his thinking unequal to the situation. “All right,” he said finally. “One of you—talk.”
There was no response.
“You.” He pointed to Miss X. “Where are we?”
No answer.
“Who are you?”
No answer.
It was obvious to him that he would not be in full control until he had mastered these—whatever they were—psychologically as well as physically. He turned for a quick look at the instrument board. “I wonder where a shot would do the most damage,” he mused aloud. Ted Arnold would have given his eyeteeth, and perhaps a few molars as well, for a look at that board. The controls were cones, built up of variously colored perforated discs that were mounted upon a common center. Some kind of key, inserted in the perforations, could turn the discs individually or collectively—he thought. Other than that he could make nothing of it.
Miss X took a step forward. “We are on your Moon. If you damage our instrumentation you will never be able to return to Earth.”
“And just where would that leave you?” Darzek asked with a grin. “Cut off from your source of liver extract?”
“I do not understand you.”
“Aren’t you taking something for your anemia? You should. You’re the first person I ever shot who didn’t bleed.”
He scrutinized each face in turn, and found the blankness of expression infuriating. The threat to their instrument board brought verbal protest, but no flicker of emotional reaction. They did not even appear to be indifferent. Just—blank.
He continued to talk, still feeling his way with them, probing for an opening. “Do you believe that dreams predict the future?” he asked. “A short time ago I dreamed I was on the Moon, looking down at Earth. It seemed ridiculous at the time, but here we are. How would I go about looking down at Earth?”
He did not expect an answer. Inhuman, he thought, as he inventoried the faces again. Or nonhuman. “Where are you from?” he asked. “Mars? Venus? Or somewhere—” he waved a hand “—beyond the Solar System? You called me a barbarian. I may even be abysmally stupid, by your standards, but I’ve had extensive practice in adding up simple facts. Two of you have family trees that are among no known earthly flora. By fact and deduction the same applies to the other three—in spite of your devilish talent for human disguises. Want to talk about it? No?”
He looked levelly at Miss X, who turned her head away. “Then I’ll talk about it. If the action I took in self-defense was barbarous, I’d very much like to know how you classify your own acts. You’ve damaged thousands of dollars’ worth of property belonging to the Universal Transmitting Company; you’ve interfered with the technological development of a civilization that certainly has done you no harm; you’ve severely and permanently injured Universal Trans technicians; you’ve—”
He got the reaction he had hoped for, but he savored it not at all. Though they burst into agitated talk, he had no way of telling whether they were angry, remorseful, or amused. Their faces were as devoid of expression as before.
The young male spoke in English. “None of those men were seriously injured.”
“Two technicians got splinters of glass in their eyes,” Darzek said. “One of them may lose his sight. Perhaps you don’t consider that a serious injury.”
“We are sorry to hear this. We shall be severely reprimanded.”
“What are you sorry about? The injuries or the reprimand?”
There was no answer.
“Considering the damage you’ve inflicted on persons and property, I’d like to have a definition of that word ‘barbarian’.”
“The word was perhaps badly chosen,” the male said.
“All of your other words seem to be very carefully chosen, and your pronunciation and grammar are flawless. Where did you learn your English?”
He did not answer.
Darzek was beginning to feel angry with himself. His verbal jousting had accomplished nothing of satisfaction, and he could not hold them at gun point indefinitely. Even if he tied them up he had no way of knowing when reinforcements might step through the transmitter, and eventually he would have to sleep.
Again he turned his attention to the instrument board, and attempted to manipulate the discs. All of them were locked into place. “Too bad I didn’t bring a few tools,” he said. “A hammer and a crowbar, for example.”
He slipped from the stool and moved to have a look at the other side of the board. The thing was at least a foot thick, fashioned of some nonmetallic substance, with corners and edges rounded and no visible seams. Darzek felt the back, thumped on it, ran his hand along the edge. Suddenly the entire back rippled into the base, and he stood gazing at an electronic engineer’s dream world. Sheer, transparent, multicolored threads formed a web of in
credible complexity.
“Now that’s really clever,” Darzek drawled. “An intelligent spider would die of envy.”
He curbed his impulse to poke the automatic into those complicated vitals. Instead he raised his foot, slipped off a shoe, and with one lightning motion he raked the heel through the delicate electronic web. The slender threads broke easily. Splinters flew in all directions. Sparks snapped and crackled, and wisps of smoke floated from the cabinet.
One of the things started towards him. Darzek forced a retreat with a wave of the automatic, and swung the shoe a second time, with equally satisfactory results.
The thing babbled incomprehensibly.
“Speak English!” Darzek ordered.
“She can’t speak English,” Miss X said. “She says it will take—take hours to repair the damage.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Darzek said, surveying the ravaged interior with satisfaction. “I’d say it’ll almost have to be rebuilt from scratch. Odd that there aren’t any wires leading into it. I suppose the controls work by radio, and it uses broadcast power, and that sort of thing. What is the power supply? Solar batteries?”
“Could we put our hands down?” the young male asked. “This is very tiring.”
“Sorry. Until I’ve finished here, you’ll just have to stay tired. In the meantime you might remember that I’m allergic to sudden movements, and I shoot accurately with either hand. Could these knobs on the bottom have anything to do with the power input?”
On the wall behind the transmitting frame he found eight matching crystals. He nudged the wall, rapped on it, kicked it, leaned against it.
“There must be a door here somewhere,” he said.
It rippled open so abruptly that he nearly fell through. He leaped back to regain his balance, and stood gazing into the room beyond. It contained fantastic things—a labyrinth of thick, crisscrossing crystal woven about a darkly looming cylinder that might have been the magic spider herself.
“Ah!” he said triumphantly. “The power plant?”
He kicked off a long piece of crystal as thick as his arm and tossed it aside. And another. And a third. The last he flung harder than the others, and it bounced twistingly, bounced again, and suddenly there was a flash and a roar, and searing heat. Darzek, knocked across the room by the blast, lay among the aliens, twisted in agony from his burns and totally indifferent to the pulverized fragments of wall that poured down on him.
CHAPTER 10
Saturday morning Jean Morris and Ed Rucks came knocking triumphantly at Arnold’s office. Perrin, who had been glumly describing the utter failure of an investigation of his own, retired to the sofa, and Rucks eagerly dealt a long row of photographs onto Arnold’s desk.
“This is Miss X, leaving New York for Brussels early Thursday morning,” he said. “Forty-seven minutes later she disappeared while supposedly transmitting from Brussels to Rome. Here she is an hour after that, leaving New York for Brussels in a different disguise. On that trip we spotted her in Brussels. Here’s Madam Z, in two disguises, leaving New York for Brussels. On Wednesday—”
“Just a moment,” Arnold said. “This Miss X disappeared from Brussels, and an hour later she was leaving New York again?”
“Right. Ditto for Madam Z, an hour and twenty minutes later.”
“Why would they come back to New York?”
“To change their disguises,” Rucks said. “Madam Z doesn’t change as fast as Miss X. Wednesday’s photos are just as interesting. For the two days we have eight disappearances that were either observed or photographed, and five of those disappearances didn’t take on the first attempt. On one of them it didn’t even take on the second attempt.”
“Meaning what?” Arnold asked, watching Jean Morris.
“Meaning that Darzek was right. Their technique isn’t one hundred per cent efficient. It isn’t even fifty per cent efficient.”
“Let me see if I understand this. Five times these women transmitted normally, came back to New York—”
“To New York or Brussels.”
“—came back to their starting point, bought tickets to the same destination, and disappeared on the second trip?”
“In one case there were two dry runs. She came back twice, and disappeared on the third trip. That makes six failures for eight successes.”
“Actually, it makes eight successes out of fourteen attempts, which is better than fifty per cent efficiency. But that’s only if we assume that the normal trips were attempts to disappear. We can’t do that—”
“Who says we can’t?” Rucks demanded hotly.
“—except as a working hypothesis, which may or may not be helpful.”
“Do you have any better explanation?”
Arnold shook his head. “Darzek said it could be important. Right now I don’t see how, but I’ll think about it. You’ve done an excellent piece of work, and I hope we’ll be able to make something of it. Do you have anything else?”
“Nothing much,” Rucks said. “I called off the investigation of the directors. You can have the file if you want it, but I can tell you there’s nothing in it worth reading. Directors lead awfully dull lives. There isn’t even anything about Grossman that would suggest he’s been selling you out. Do you want these photos?”
“You keep them. I’d like to have a written report, with the photos and all the pertinent information. When it’s ready take it up to Watkins’s office and hand it to him personally, to be locked in his safe. Don’t make any carbons, and don’t keep any notes. Do you have a typewriter down there? Take mine. I never use it anyway.”
“Sure. What do we do when we’ve finished? Sit around waiting for another disappearance to investigate?”
“No,” Arnold said. “When you’ve finished you start looking for Darzek.”
“Are you kidding? If I had any idea where to start I’d have gone looking for him long ago.”
“I’ve already discussed this with Watkins. He agrees with me that we’ll never find a final solution to this problem until we know what’s happened to Darzek. He’ll see that you get money or anything else you need. Ask him when you take the report, and then get to work.”
“That’s generous of both of you,” Jean Morris said bitterly. “You aren’t especially worried about Jan, but you’re going to look for him because you won’t know what’s been bugging Universal Trans until he’s found.”
“What makes you think we’re not worried?”
“You seem cheerful enough about it.”
“I do most of my crying in private,” Arnold said. “Please don’t look at me as though I were something you’re about to swat. I didn’t do away with Darzek.”
She smiled. “No. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s his. Brussels would be the best place to start looking, wouldn’t it? Who would have a map of Brussels on short notice?”
“I can think of something more useful,” Ed Rucks said, picking up Arnold’s typewriter.
“What’s that?”
“A globe. Let’s go write our report.”
Jean hurried to open the door for Rucks, flashed another smile, and was gone. Perrin said from the sofa, “Lovely young lady.”
“Where were we?” Arnold asked.
“How should I know? You can’t parade visions of loveliness in front of me and expect me to go on working. I’ve just been thinking that I’ve made I don’t know how many thousand trips by transmitter, before and after we started operations, and I didn’t disappear once. Try applying logic to that, and tell me what you come up with.”
“It’s an idea,” Arnold said.
“What’s an idea?”
“Apply logic. Forget your scientific theory and your engineering, and reason the thing out. We’ve been talking about people disappearing, but we know darned well that they didn’t disappear. They just didn’t go where we expected them to go. First question: Where did they go?”
“That’s your idea of reasoning the thing out?”
“If we had an ounce of brains between us, we’d have done this the first time it happened. I’ll rephrase the question. They went into a transmitter. Where did they come out?”
Perrin stared at him dumbly.
“Where did they jolly well have to come out?” Arnold demanded.
“Out of a receiving transmitter. But look here—”
“One step at a time. We know they didn’t come out of one of our receivers. Now where does your logic take you?”
“Right where I was when you started all this reasoning. They had to come out, but they didn’t.”
Arnold slapped his desk disgustedly. “That’s the bind we’ve been in since the beginning. Our minds wouldn’t take the next logical step. Look. They went into a transmitter. They had to come out of a receiving transmitter. They didn’t come out of one of our receivers. Go on—what’s the next step?”
“You mean—they came out of someone else’s receiver?”
“Right. It sounds incredible, but any other explanation is flatly impossible.”
“But no one else has any transmitters!”
“Go on.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Follow that up,” Arnold said, “and see where your logic takes you. No one else has any transmitters. Therefore, the missing passengers didn’t come out of anyone else’s transmitters. Therefore—since we know they didn’t come out of ours—there were no missing passengers. I prefer it my way. The disappearing passengers had to come out of someone else’s receiving transmitter. Therefore someone else must have one.”
“Who?” Perrin demanded.
“Right now I’m less interested in that than in where they got it. It would take a far better engineer than I am to build a transmitter from our patents. The only other explanation—”
“One of the boys sold us out,” Perrin said. “But I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I. You heard about Grossman, didn’t you?”
“Sure. It’s in all the papers this morning. Stole a quarter of a million bucks, it said.”
“I’m wondering if he stole anything else, or maybe borrowed a set of plans long enough to photograph them. A lot of well-heeled business interests would love to put us out of business. A set of plans, shrewdly handled, could have been worth another quarter of a million to him.”
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