by John Brunner
"And what exactly does that amount to?"
So she described what she had seen at the test site—the metal tube with its prong of fire, the huge floaters designed to lift it to the limits of the atmosphere, the instruments which reported on its behavior even when it was traveling faster than sound. At each new revelation the company uttered fresh gusts of horror, until by the end Chybee was dreadfully ashamed of her own words.
"You said they're close to success?" Aglabec demanded at last.
"Very close indeed!"
"That breeds with what I've been hearing recently." The dream-leader pleated his mantle into a frown. "We must move against them before it's too late. Chybee, have you been in contact with Ugant or any of her associates since—well, since our meeting before last?"
There was a reason for his awkward turn of phrase; she was aware of the fact, but the reason itself eluded her. She uttered a vehement denial, and Olgo confirmed that at no time had she been away from the supervision of someone utterly trustworthy.
"Very well, then," Aglabec decided. "We must rely on you for a delicate mission. Presumably Ugant will be expecting you to make a report. You are to go back to the test site, but this time on our behalf, to lull the suspicions of those who work there. To make assurance doubly sure, I'll send you with a companion, supposedly someone you've converted to the scientists' views. Creez, I offer you a chance to redeem yourself!"
And Creez was he who had braggartly been known as Startoucher ... and who voiced a question Chybee meant to.
"But how can we possibly conceal our true opinions?"
"I will give you a—a medicine," Aglabec said after a fractional hesitation. "It will suffice for a short time."
That too should have been significant, Chybee thought. Once again, though, the notion was elusive.
"Now pass the news," said Aglabec, rising. "At dawn tomorrow we shall strike a blow against the scientists such as it will take them a laq of years to recover from! By then, I trust, no one will any longer pay attention to their foolishness! You, Creez and Chybee, come with me, and receive your full instructions."
All the next dark the word spread among the psychoplanetarists, and the pool of pheromones in their quarter of Slah became tinged with violent excitement. Around dawn they started to emerge from their homes and move towards the test site, not in a concerted mass but in small groups, so as not to alert the authorities. The morning breeze today was very light, and few outsiders caught wind of what was happening.
Aglabec was not with them. He had declared that he was too well known and too easily recognizable.
Chybee and Creez, fortified with the "medicine" which disguised pheromones, went in advance of the others. They were to announce an urgent report for Ugant or Hyge, which would require everyone working at the site to be called together. For so long the psychoplanetarists had merely talked instead of acting, Aglabec was convinced this simple stratagem would suffice to postpone any warning of the actual attack. And the nature of the latter was the plainest possible. The huge bladders being filled to raise the rocket contained fiercely inflammable gas; let but one firebrand fall among them, and the site would be a desert.
"Though of course," Aglabec had declared, "we only want them to yield to our threats, and—like you, Chybee—acknowledge that the popular will is against them."
With a nervous chuckle Creez had said, "I'm glad of that!"
And now he and Chybee were cresting the range of hills separating the city from the site, formerly a bank of the salt lake where Voosla had taken root. On the way she had repeatedly described for him what he must expect to see. But the moment she had a clear view from the top of the rise she stopped dead, trembling.
"What's wrong?" Creez demanded.
"It's changed," she quavered, looking hither and yon in search of something familiar. Where was the row of distorted trees along which Hyge's pride and joy had become a shining streak to the accompaniment of sudden thunder? Where was the monstrous cylinder itself, built of such a deal of costly metal, with its clever means of guidance warranted to thrive in outer space? Where was the control-house, which surely should have been visible from here?
Nothing of what she remembered was to be seen, save a mass of gigantic bladders swelling like live things in the day's new warmth, rising at the midpoint of the valley into a slowly writhing column tethered by ropes and nets.
"It looks as though they're actually going to try a shot into space!"
Chybee whispered, striving to concentrate on her errand. The clean morning air was stirring buried memories, and they were discomforting.
"Then we have to hurry!"
"Yes—yes, of course! But where is everybody?"
"We must go and look," Creez declared, and urged her down the slope.
A moment later they were in the weirdest environment she had ever imagined, under a roof of colossal swollen globes that looked massive enough to crush them, yet swayed at every slightest touch of the breeze, straining at their leashes and lending the light an eerie, fearful quality, now brighter, now darker, according to the way it was reflected from each bladder to its neighbor.
"It's like being underwater!" Creez muttered.
"My weather-sense disagrees," Chybee answered curtly, fighting to maintain her self-control. "Listen! Don't I sense somebody?"
"Over there! Something's agitating the bladders!"
And, moments later, they came upon a work-team wielding nets and choppers, harvesting more and ever more full bladders to be added to the soaring column. One of them had incautiously collected so many, she risked being hoisted off her pads by a puff of wind.
Keeping up her pretense with all her might, Chybee hailed them.
"Is Ugant here, or Hyge? We have an urgent message!"
Resigning half her anti-burden to a colleague, the one who had so nearly soared into the sky looked her over.
"I remember you!" she said suddenly. "Weren't you here with Ugant a moonlong past?"
All that time ago? Chybee struggled more valiantly than ever to remember her promise to Aglabec.
"Is she here now? I have to talk to her!"
"Well, of course! Didn't you know? Today's the day for the trial launch—that is, if we turn out to have enough floaters for a really high lift, which is what we're working out right now. We got our first consignment of modified spores of the kind which ought to reproduce on Swiftyouth, and the line-up of the planets is ideal for them to be carried there by light-pressure! Of course, we can't be certain things will all go off okay, but we're doing our utmost. Only there have been some nasty rumors going around, about crazy psychoplanetarists who'd like to wreck the shot."
"That's exactly what I've come to warn you about!" Chybee exclaimed, seizing her opening. "I've been among them for—well, ever since I last saw Ugant! Call everybody together, please, right away! I have important news!"
"Say, I recall Ugant mentioning that you'd agreed to go undercover for us," said another of the work-team. "But what about him?"—gesturing at Creez.
"It's thanks to him that I know what I do!" Chybee improvised frantically. Something was wrong. Something was changing her mind against her will. She was still thinner and lower than when she set off on Ugant's mission, but with regained well-being those buried memories were growing stronger ... particularly now that she was clear of psychoplanetarist pheromones.
"Hurry!" she moaned. "Hurry, please!"
But they wouldn't. They didn't. With maddening slowness they debated what to do, and at last agreed to guide her and Creez to the control-house, whence messages could be sent faster by nervograp.
She was going to be too late after all, Chybee thought despairingly as she plodded after them under the canopy of translucent globes. Oh, to think that so much effort, so many hopes and ambitions must go to waste because—
Because Aglabec knows how to disguise the pheromones which otherwise would betray his true convictions.
Enlightenment overcame her. Suddenly she real
ized what was meant by being stardazzled.
She looked about her with a clear eye. They had reached the entrance platform of the control-house, whence Ugant was emerging with cries of excitement. Chybee ignored her. From here she could plainly see the way the bladders were humped, netful by netful, in a carefully planned spiral. Without being told she deduced that the first batch due for release must be that over there; then those; then those—and lastly those through which could now and then be glimpsed the shining metal of Hyge's cylinder.
And on the hills which she and Creez had lately crossed: Aglabec's disciples, surging this way like a sullen flood. They were passing flame from each to the next under a smear of smoke, igniting firebrands turn and turn about, seeking a vantage point from which to hurl them.
"But Aglabec promised—!" Creez exclaimed. Chybee cut him short.
"He lied! He's always lied to all his followers! He has a means to hide his lying, and he gave some to us for this mission! Ugant, forgive me, but they starved and tortured me until I couldn't help myself!"
Taken aback, the scientist said, "Starved? Tortured? Oh, it can't be true! I knew they were crazy, but surely even they—"
"No time!" Chybee shouted as Hyge too emerged from the control-house. "Everybody slack down to tornado status! I mean now!"
This drill was known to all the personnel from their test-firings. A single glance at the threat posed by the psychoplanetarists and their multiplying firebrands caused them to respond as though by mindless reflex, dragging Creez inside with them.
But, seizing one of the work-team's choppers, Chybee flung herself over the side of the platform and rushed back the way she had come.
Without realizing until she had an overview of the complete spiral, she had noticed how the bladders were lashed to pumplekins by clusters, each connected by only a single bond for the sake of lightness, and if she could sever just one of those ropes, one that was all-important, there was a thin, faint, tenuous chance that when Aglabec's crazed disciples began to fling their torches, then...
But which one? Where? She had imagined she fully understood the layout, yet she came to an abrupt halt, baffled and terrified. Had she wandered off course in her panic? All these groups of bladders looked alike, and all the ropes that tethered them—
A chance gust parted the dense globes and showed her the horde of attackers moving down the slope with grim determination, poising to toss their firebrands, heedless of any hurt that might come to them. Well, she had long craved vengeance on behalf of her friend Isarg; how could she do less than match their foolhardiness?
With sudden frantic energy she began to slash at every restraining rope in reach, and cluster after cluster of the bladders hurtled upward as though desperate to join the clouds.
To the psychoplanetarists perhaps it seemed that their prey was about to escape. At any rate, instead of padding purposefully onward they broke into a rush, and some of those at the rear, craving futile glory, threw their brands so that they landed among the others in the front ranks. A reek of fury greeted the burns they inflicted, and many of the foremost spun around, yelling with pain. Later, Chybee found herself able to believe that that fortunate accident must have saved her life. At the moment, however, she had no time to reason, but frenziedly went on cutting rope after rope after rope...
Abruptly she realized the sky above was clear, but the attackers had recovered from their setback, and were once more advancing on the remaining floaters.
Flinging aside her chopper, she fled towards the control-house, her mind failing again as she exhausted her ultimate resources. Suddenly there was a dull roaring noise, and a brilliant flare, and heat ravaged her mantle and dreadful overpressure strained her tubules.
She slumped forward to seek what shelter was offered by a dip in the ground, welcoming her agony.
For one who had been a double traitor, it felt like just and proper punishment.
X
Piece by painful piece Chybee reconstructed her knowledge of the world. While being carried to a healing-house she heard a voice say, "She cut loose just enough of the bladders to create a fire-break. Naturally it's a setback, but it'll only mean a couple of moonlongs' extra work."
Later, while her burns were being tended: "A lot of the poor fools inhaled flame, or leaked to death because their tubules ruptured, or ulcerations on their mantles burst. But of course the updraft swept away the mutual reinforcement of their pheromones. Once they realized what a state they'd been reduced to, the survivors scattered, begging for help. Apparently they're ashamed of what they tried to do. It doesn't square with the perfect morality of these imaginary other worlds of theirs. So there's hope for them yet—or a good proportion, at any rate."
Chybee wanted to ask about their dream-leader, but for a long tune she lacked the necessary energy to squeeze air past the edge of her mantle. By the time she could talk again, she found she was in the presence of distinguished well-wishers: Ugant, Wam, Glig, Airm, Hyge...
"What about Aglabec?" she husked. As one, they exuded anger and disappointment. At length Ugant replied.
"He's found a score of witnesses to certify that you came to him pleading for enlightenment, and that what he subjected you to was no more than the normal course of instruction all his disciples willingly undergo."
"It's a he!" Chybee burst out, struggling to raise herself from the mosh-padded crotch she rested in.
"Sure it is," Glig the biologist said soothingly. "So are all the fables he's spun to entrap his dupes. But he defeated himself after a fashion. The 'medicine' he provided to disguise your exudates when you returned to the test site has been known to us for scores of years; it's based on the juice of the plant whose leaves I gave you. His version, though, doesn't only suppress one's own pheromones and protect against the effect of others'. It eventually breaks down the barrier between imagination and direct perception. No one can survive long after that stage sets in, and he's been using the stuff for years. Very probably he was already insane when he called out his followers to attack the test site—"
"He must have been," Airm put in. "Even though the shot was almost ready, his disciples weren't. If he'd waited a little longer, their madness might have been contagious!"
She ended with a shrug of relief.
"Insane or not, he mustn't be allowed to get away with what he did!" Chybee cried.
"Somehow I don't believe he will," said Wam with a mysterious air. "And I've come back specially from Hulgrapuk to witness the event that ought to prove his downfall."
"It's expected to occur not next dark, but the dark after that," Ugant said, rising. "By then you should be well enough to leave here. I'll send my scudder to collect you at sundown and bring you to my place. I rather think you're going to enjoy the show we have for you."
Turning to leave, she added, "By the way, you do know how grateful we all are, don't you?"
"And not just us," Airm confirmed. "The whole of Slah is in your debt, for giving us an excuse to clear out the pestilential lair of the psychoplanetarists. We've been flushing it with clean air for days now, and by the time we're done there won't be a trace of that alluring stench."
"But if Aglabec is still free—" Chybee said, confused.
"It isn't going to make the slightest difference."
At the crest of Ugant's home was an open bower where a good-quality telescope was mounted. Thither, on a balmy night under a sky clear but for stars and the normal complement of meteors, they conveyed Chybee, weak, perhaps scarred for life, but in possession of her wits again.
Not until they had plied her with the finest food and liquor that the house could boast did they consent to turn to the subject preying on her pith: the promised doom of Aglabec.
With infuriating leisureliness, after consulting a time-pulser hung beside the telescope, Ugant finally invited her to take her place at its ocular and stare at Swiftyouth.
"That's where we're going to send our spores," she said. "Before the end of summer, certainly, we
shall have grown enough floaters, we shall have retested our star-seeker, we shall have enlarged and improved our driver. Once beyond the atmosphere, at a precisely calculated moment, the raw heat of the sun will expand and eventually explode a carefully aligned container, so that it will broadcast spores into the path Swiftyouth will follow as it reaches perihelion ... Why, you're shaking! What in the world for?"
"I don't know!" came the helpless answer. "But ... Well, just suppose we're wrong after all. Just suppose not all of what Aglabec teaches is complete invention! Do we have the right to put at risk creatures on another world?"
There was a pause. At length Ugant said grayly, "If there are any life forms on Swiftyouth—and I admit that, without voyaging there, we can never be certain—then they are due for suffering worse than any we have been through. Be patient. Watch."
Not knowing precisely why, Chybee obeyed, and waited. And then, just as she was about to abandon the telescope with a cry of annoyance...
That tiny reddish disc changed to white, and shone out more brilliantly than half the stars.
"Congratulate your colleagues at the Hulgrapuk Observatory, Wam," said Ugant dryly. "They were most precise in their calculations."
"But what are you showing me?" demanded Chybee.
"The kind of proof we needed to destroy Aglabec," the scientist replied composedly. "We maintain a constant watch for massive bodies drifting into the system. Recently we spotted one larger than any on record, or more precisely a whole cluster of them, perhaps the nucleus of a giant comet which was stripped of its gas when passing by a hot white star, then whipped into the void again. At first we were afraid they might collide with us, but luckily ... Well, you're seeing what saved us: the attraction of an outer planet. So how exactly is Aglabec going to account for the collision of Swiftyouth with not one meteorite but maybe half a score of them, each greater than the one that washed Voosla and half an ocean high into the hills?"
At that very moment the whitened disc of Swiftyouth redoubled in brilliance. Chybee drew back from the ocular and tried to laugh at the prospect of Aglabec's discomfiture.