The Voyage of the Space Beagle

CHAPTER NINE

They had paused at the “glass” room on Grosvenor’s floor. It wasn’t glass, and it wasn’t, by strict definition, a room. It was an alcove of an outer wall corridor, and the “glass” was an enormous curving plate made from a crystallized form of one of the resistance metals. It was so limpidly transparent as to give the illusion that nothing at all was there. Beyond was the vacuum and darkness of space. Grosvenor had just noticed absently that the ship was almost through the small star cluster it had been traversing. Only a few of the five thousand-odd suns of the system were still visible. He parted his lips to say, “I’d like to talk with you again, Mr. Korita, when you have time.”

He didn’t say it. A slightly blurred double image of a woman wearing a feathered hat was taking form in the glass directly in front of him. The image flickered and shimmered. Grosvenor felt an abnormal tensing of the muscles of his eyes. For a moment, his mind went blank. That was followed rapidly by sounds, flashes of light, a sharp sensation of pain. Hypnotic hallucinations! The awareness was like an electric shock.

The recognition saved him. His own conditioning enabled him instantly to reject the mechanical suggestion of the light pattern. He whirled and shouted into the nearest communicator, “Don’t look at the images! They’re hypnotic. We’re being attacked!”

As he turned away, he stumbled over Korita’s unconscious body. He stopped and knelt.

“Korita!” he said in a piercing tone, “you can hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Only my instructions influence you. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“You’re beginning to relax, to forget. Your mind is calm. The effect of the images is fading. Now it’s gone. Gone completely. Do you understand? Gone completely.”

“I understand.”

“They cannot affect you again. In fact, every time you see an image, you’re reminded of some pleasant scene from home. Is that clear?”

“Very.”

“Now you’re beginning to wake up. I’m going to count to three. When I say ‘three’, you’re wide awake. One… two… three — wake up!”

Korita opened his eyes. “What happened?” he said in a puzzled tone.

Grosvenor explained swiftly, and then said, “But now, quick, come along! The light pattern keeps pulling at my eyes in spite of counter suggestion.”

He hurried the bewildered archaeologist along the corridor toward the Nexial department. At the first corner, they came to a human body lying on the floor.

Grosvenor kicked the man, not too lightly. He wanted a shock response. “Do you hear me?” he demanded.

The man stirred, “Yes.”

“Then listen. The light images have no further effect on you. Now get up. You’re wide awake.”

The man climbed to his feet and lunged at him, swinging wildly. Grosvenor ducked, and his assailant staggered past him blindly.

Grosvenor ordered him to halt, but he kept on going without a backward glance. Grosvenor grabbed Korita’s arm. “I seem to have got to him too late.”

Korita shook his head dazedly. His eyes turned toward the wall, and it was clear from his next words that Grosvenor’s suggestion had not taken full effect, or else was already being undermined. “But what are they?” he asked.

“Don’t look at them?”

It was incredibly hard not to. Grosvenor had to keep blinking to break the pattern of light flashes that came at his eyes from other images on the walls. At first it seemed to him that the images were everywhere. Then he noticed that the womanish shapes — some oddly double, some single — occupied transparent or translucent wall sections. There were hundreds of such reflecting wall areas, but at least it was a limitation.

They saw more men. The victims lay at uneven intervals along the corridors. Twice they came upon conscious men. One stood in their path with unseeing eyes, and did not move or turn as Grosvenor and Korita hurried by. The other man let out a yell, grabbed his vibrator, and fired it. The tracer beam flashed on the wall beside Grosvenor. And then he had tackled the other and knocked him down. The man — a Kent supporter — glared at him malignantly. “You damned spy!” he said harshly. “We’ll get you yet.”

Grosvenor didn’t pause to discover the reason for the man’s astounding behaviour. But he grew tense as he guided Korita to the door of the Nexial department. If one chemist could so quickly be stimulated to open hatred of him, then what about the fifteen who had taken over his rooms?

To his relief, they were all unconscious. Hurriedly, he secured two pairs of dark glasses, one for Korita and one for himself, then turned a barrage of flashing lights against the walls, the ceilings, and the floors. Instantly, the images were eclipsed by the strong light.

Grosvenor headed for his technique room and there broadcast commands intended to free those he had hypnotized. Through the open door, he watched two unconscious bodies for response. After five minutes, there was still no sign that they were paying any attention. He guessed that the hypnotic patterns of the attacker had by-passed, or even taken advantage of, the conditioned state of their minds, nullifying any words he might use. The possibility was that they might awaken spontaneously after a while and turn on him.

With Korita’s help, he dragged them into the washroom, and then locked the door. One fact was already evident. This was mechanical-visual hypnosis of such power that he had saved himself only by prompt action. But what had happened was not limited to vision. The image had tried to control him by stimulating his brain through his eyes. He was up to date on most of the work that men had done in that field. And so he knew — though the attackers apparently did not — that control by an alien of a human nervous system was not possible except with an encephalo-adjuster or its equivalent.

He could only guess, from what had almost happened to him, that the other men had been precipitated into deep trance sleeps, or else they were confused by hallucinations and were not responsible for their actions.

His job was to get to the control room and turn on the ship’s energy screen. No matter where the attack was coming from — whether from another ship or actually from a planet — that should effectively cut off any carrier beams the enemy might be sending.

With frantic fingers, Grosvenor worked to set up a mobile unit of lights. He needed something that would interfere with the images on his way to the control room. He was making the final connection when he felt an unmistakable sensation — a slight giddy feeling — that passed almost instantly. It was a feeling that usually occurred during a considerable change of course, a result of readjustment of the anti-accelerators.

Had the course actually been changed? It was something he’d have to check — later.

He said to Korita, “I intend to make an experiment. Please remain here.”

Grosvenor carried his arrangement of lights to a near-by corridor, and placed it in the rear compartment of a power-driven loading vehicle. Then he climbed on and headed for the elevators.

He guessed that, altogether, ten minutes had gone by since he had first seen the image.

He took the turn into the elevator corridor at twenty-five miles an hour, which was fast for these comparatively narrow spaces. In the alcove opposite the elevators, two men were wrestling each other with a life-and-death concentration. They paid no attention to Grosvenor but swayed and strained and cursed. The sound of their breathing was loud. Their single-minded hatred of each other was not affected by Grosvenor’s arrangements of lights. Whatever world of hallucination they were in, it had taken profoundly.

Grosvenor whirled his machine into the nearest elevator and started down. He was beginning to let himself hope that he might find the control room deserted.

The hope died as he came to the main corridor. It swarmed with men. Barricades had been flung up, and there was an unmistakable odour of ozone. Vibrators fumed and fussed. Grosvenor peered cautiously out of the elevator, trying to size up the situation. It was visibly bad. The two approaches to the control room were blocked by scores of overturned loading mules. Behind them crouched men in military uniform. Grosvenor caught a glimpse of Captain Leeth among the defenders and, on the far side, he saw Director Morton behind the barricade of one of the attacking groups.

That clarified the picture. Suppressed hostility had been stimulated by the images. The scientists were fighting the military, whom they had always unconsciously hated. The military, in turn, was suddenly freed to vent its contempt and fury upon the despised scientists.

It was, Grosvenor knew, not a true picture of their feeling for each other. The human mind normally balanced innumerable opposing impulses so that the average individual might live his life span without letting one feeling gain important ascendance over the others. That intricate balance had now been upset. The result threatened disaster to an entire expedition of human beings, and promised victory to an enemy whose purpose could only be conjectured.

Whatever the reason, the way to the control room was blocked. Reluctantly, Grosvenor retreated again to his own department.

Korita met him at the door. “Look!” he said. He motioned to a wall-communicator plate, which was tuned to the finely balanced steering devices in the fore part of the Space Beagle. The sending plate there was focused directly along a series of hairline sights. The arrangement looked more intricate than it was. Grosvenor brought his eyes to the sights and saw that the ship was describing a slow curve which, at its climax, would bring it to bear directly on a bright white star. A servo mechanism had been set up to make periodic adjustments that would hold it on its course.

“Could the enemy do that?” Korita asked.

Grosvenor shook his head, more puzzled than alarmed. He shifted the viewer over to the bank of supplementary instruments. Accordingly to the star’s spectral type, magnitude, and luminosity, it was just over four light years distant. The ship’s speed was up to a light-year every five hours. Since it was still accelerating, that would increase on a calculable curve. He estimated roughly that the vessel would reach the vicinity of the sun in approximately eleven hours.

With a jerky movement, Grosvenor shut off the communicator. He stood there, shocked but not incredulous. Destruction could be the purpose of the deluded person who had altered the ship’s course. If so, there were just ten hours in which to prevent catastrophe.

Even at that moment, when he had no clear plan, it seemed to Grosvenor that only an attack on the enemy, using hypnotic techniques, would effectively do the job. Meanwhile….

He stood up decisively. It was time for a second attempt to get into the control room.

He needed something that would directly stimulate brain cells. There were several devices that could do that. Most of them were usable for medical purposes only. The exception was the encephalo-adjuster, an instrument that could be used to transmit impulses from one mind to another.

Even with Korita’s help, it took Grosvenor several minutes to set up one of his adjusters. Testing it consumed still more time; and, because it was such a delicate machine, he had to fasten it to his loading vehicle with a cushion of springs around it. Altogether, the preparation required thirty-seven minutes. He had a brief, though rather sharp, argument then with the archaeologist, who wanted to accompany him. In the end, however, Korita agreed to remain behind and guard their base of operations.

Carrying the encephalo-adjuster made it necessary for him to keep down the speed of his vehicle as he headed for the control room. The enforced slowdown irked him, but it also gave him an opportunity to observe the changes that had taken place since the first moment of attack.

He saw only an occasional unconscious body. Grosvenor guessed that most of the men who had fallen into deep trance sleeps had awakened spontaneously. Such awakenings were common hypnotic phenomena. Now they were responding to other stimuli on the same basis. Unfortunately — although it also was to be expected — that seemed to mean that long-suppressed impulses controlled their actions.

And so men who, under normal circumstances, merely disliked each other mildly had, in an instant, had their dislike change to murderous hatred.

The deadly factor was that they would be unaware of the change. For the mind could be taught without the individual’s knowing it. It could be tangled by bad environmental association, or by the attack that was now being made against a shipload of men. In either case, each person carried on as if his new beliefs were as soundly based as his old ones.

Grosvenor opened the elevator door on the control-room level, and then drew back hastily. A heat projector was pouring flame along the corridor. The metal walls burned with a harsh, sizzling sound. Within his narrow field of vision, three men lay dead. As he waited, there was a thunderous explosion. Instantly, the flames stopped. A blue smoke hazed the air, and there was a sense of suffocating heat. Within seconds, both the haze and the heat were gone. It was obvious that at least the ventilating system was still working.

He peered out cautiously. At first sight, the corridor seemed deserted. Then he saw Morton, half hidden in a protective alcove less than a score of feet away. At almost the same moment, the Director saw him and beckoned him over. Grosvenor hesitated, then realized he had to take the risk. He pushed his vehicle through the elevator doorway and darted across the intervening space. The Director greeted him eagerly as he came up.

“You’re just the man I wanted to see,” he said, “We’ve got to get control of the ship away from Captain Leeth before Kent and his group organize their attack.”

Morton’s gaze was calm and intelligent. He had the look of a man fighting for the right. Nor did it seem to occur to him that an explanation for his statement was required. The Director went on. “We’ll need your help particularly against Kent. They’re bringing up some chemical stuff I’ve never seen before. So far, our fans have blown it right back at them, but they’re setting up fans of their own. Our big problem is, will we have time to defeat Leeth before Kent can bring his forces to bear?”

Time was also Grosvenor’s problem. Unobtrusively, he brought his right hand up to his left wrist and touched the activating relay that controlled the directional-sending plates of the adjuster. He pointed the plates at Morton as he said. “I’ve got a plan, sir. I think it might be effective against the enemy.”

He stopped. Morton was looking down. The Director said, “You’ve brought along an adjuster, and it’s on. What do you expect from that?”

Grosvenor’s first tense reaction yielded to a need for a suitable answer. He had hoped that Morton would not be too familiar with adjusters. With that hope blasted, he could still try to use the instrument, though without the initial advantage of surprise. He said in a voice that was taut in spite of himself, “That’s it. It’s this machine I want to use.”

Morton hesitated, then said, “I gather from the thoughts coming into my mind that you’re broadcasting—” He stopped. Interest quickened his face. “Say,” he said presently, “that’s good. If you can put over the notion that we’re being attacked by aliens—”

He broke off. His lips pursed. His eyes narrowed with calculation. He said, “Captain Leeth has twice tried to make a deal with me. Now we’ll pretend to agree, and you go over with your machine. We’ll attack the moment you signal us.” He explained with dignity. “You understand, I would not consider dealing with either Kent or Captain Leeth except as a means to victory. You appreciate that, I hope?”

Grosvenor found Captain Leeth in the control room. The commander greeted him with stiff-backed friendliness. “This fight among the scientists,” he said earnestly, “has placed the military in an awkward position. We’ve got to defend the control room and the engine room and so perform our minimum duty to the expedition as a whole.” He shook his head gravely. “It’s out of the question, of course, that either of them be allowed to win. In the final issue, we of the military are prepared to sacrifice ourselves to prevent the victory of either group.”

The explanation startled Grosvenor out of his own purpose. He had been wondering if Captain Leeth was responsible for aiming the ship directly at a sun. Here was at least partial confirmation. The commander’s motivation seemed to be that victory for any group but the military was unthinkable. With that beginning, it was probably only a tiny step to the concept that the whole expedition must be sacrificed.

Casually, Grosvenor pointed the directional sender of the adjuster at Captain Leeth.

Brain waves, minute pulsations transmitted from axon to dendrite, from dendrite to axon, always following a previously established path depending on past associations — it was a process that operated endlessly among the ninety million neuron cells of a human brain. Each cell was in its own state of electro-colloidal balance, an intricate interplay of tension and impulse. Only gradually, over the years, had machines been developed that could detect with some degree of accuracy the meaning of the energy flow inside the brain.

The earliest encephalo-adjuster was an indirect descendant of the famous electroencephalograph. But its function was the reverse of that first device. It manufactured artificial brain waves of any desired pattern. Using it, a skilful operator could stimulate any part of the brain, and so cause thoughts, emotions, and dreams, and bring up memories from the individual’s past. It was not in itself a controlling instrument. The subject maintained his own ego. However, it could transmit the mind impulses of one person to a second person. Since the impulses varied according to the sender’s thoughts, the recipient was stimulated in a highly flexible fashion.

Unaware of the presence of the adjuster, Captain Leeth did not realize that his thoughts were no longer quite his own. He said, “The attack being made on the ship by the images makes the quarrel of the scientists traitorous and unforgivable.” He paused, then said thoughtfully, “Here’s my plan.”

The plan involved heat projectors, muscle-straining acceleration, and partial extermination of both groups of scientists. Captain Leeth failed even to mention the aliens, nor did it seem to occur to him that he was describing his intentions to an emissary of what he regarded as the enemy. He finished by saying, “Where your services will be important, Mr. Grosvenor, is in the science department. As a Nexialist, with a co-ordinative knowledge of many sciences, you can play a decisive role against the other scientists….”

Weary and disheartened, Grosvenor gave up. The chaos was too great for one man to overcome. Everywhere he looked were armed men. Altogether he had seen a score or more dead bodies. At any moment the uneasy truce between Captain Leeth and Director Morton would end in a burst of projector fire. Even now he could hear the roaring of the fans where Morton was holding off Kent’s attack.

He sighed as he turned back to the captain. “I’ll need some equipment from my own department,” he said. “Can you pass me through to the rear elevators? I can be back here in five minutes.”

As he guided his machine into the back door of his department a few minutes later, it seemed to Grosvenor that there was no longer any doubt about what he must do. What had seemed a far-fetched idea when he first thought of it was now the only plan he had left.

He must attack the aliens through their myriad images, and with their own hypnotic weapons.