Sunday is Three Thousand Years Away and Other SF Classics Page 15

  Gibbs nodded slowly. “Intangible—too intangible for characters like Kendricks. He’d snort in derision. And Prentiss would laugh in your face if you told him that a piece of flesh no bigger than a pigeon egg barred him from Fourth Order. Yes, it’s intangible like all the other things men’s minds have fought to grasp for the last ten thousand years—intangible like love and loyalty and freedom.

  “The Centrasi won’t fight us, either. That’s the part we’ll like best. We’ll just come on the scene and they’ll wither away as if a plague had cut them down—all because of a great intangible.”

  Glenn didn’t move his eyes from the ship but he spoke slowly at last. “No—it won’t be that way, Doc. It won’t be that way. We don’t need Fourth Order that badly. In fact, I don’t think we need it at all.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Dr. Gibbs sat motionless in the chair as if a hair trigger had been suddenly set within him. Then his bony frame leaned carefully across the desk. “Do you mean that, Glenn? Do you really mean it?”

  “Sure I mean it. There’s no other thing I could mean. It’s straight black-and-white.”

  “Huh?”

  Glenn grinned faintly. “That’s what Nancy would call it—black-and-white. You know something’s right, you go ahead and do it. You don’t get all fouled up with considerations and alternatives and ‘adaptations to the situation.’ It’s plain black-and-white and there’s no in between.”

  “That Nancy of yours is a smart little girl, but some things are inherently in between, I’m afraid—like this situation. Kendricks knows too much. You can’t keep it secret.”

  “We can keep it secret. No one actually knows the ship is Fourth Order except you and me. We’ll get rid of the ship.”

  _”How?“_

  “Look—Emdor knows what’s happening. He knows all about AR or has deduced enough to know that his people have got to abandon contact with other races. So he and his companions are sacrificing themselves to keep us from finding his home world.

  “We’ll tell Emdor we understand. We’ll put him aboard the ship and send it off. Let him explode it in space if he wants to. But we’ll be rid of the ship. Men like Prentiss and Kendricks and all their blundering ravaging kind will never set foot on the Centrasi worlds. We’ll tell them that Emdor escaped with one of our medical pressure suits and took off. It could happen at change of shifts tonight.”

  Gibbs seemed to be holding his breath as if witnessing a vision. “It might work—it just might work! Emdor would surely cooperate on a plan like that! But you—you’re taking a tremendous risk. You’d be stripped of rank, court-martialed and disgraced if it ever became known.”

  “I’ll take that chance. It’s black-and-white.”

  They were silent a moment, enjoying a new understanding of each other—their eyes fixed on the mute emblem of defeat, the sick exhausted adrenal gland of the Centrasi. The phone buzzed abruptly. Gibbs reached for it with impatience and listened a moment. Then he rose in a half crouch of sudden defense.

  “What is it?” Glenn demanded.

  Slowly Gibbs put the phone down, his face burdened with defeat. “Emdor—they got to him. Prentiss came in. I guess Kendricks was in on it too. Prentiss had a pass to contact the Centrasi and the orderly let him through. Now Emdor’s out cold, maybe dead. That’s military organization for you! Everything according to altitude. If the man above you says hell is frosted over, it’s so. Come on, let’s get up there.”

  Glenn joined him and they raced along the hallway. They took the steps two at a time rather than wait for the elevator. “I should have foreseen this,” grunted Glenn. “Prentiss told me he thought the Centrasi were lying about not understanding the ship. I should have known he’d try to get to them.”

  “And so Earth gets Fourth Order and the Centrasi get extinction. A fine piece of work!”

  “We’ll see. It may not be as bad as that.”

  The ward looked empty as they approached. Then they saw Emdor slumped on the floor, his limbs sprawled helplessly. Gibbs cursed the orderly who had admitted Prentiss and then apparently vanished in terror.

  “Look! He’s got the cyberlogue turned on and he’s got the intensifier fastened to his head. Look at that wire trailing under him.”

  They hurried into the dressing chamber and slipped into the pressure suits. It seemed an eternity of waiting for equalization and sterilization. At last the door opened. Gibbs rushed in and turned the Centrasi over. A moment’s examination showed that Emdor was dead.

  Gibbs examined the cyberlogue intensifier fastened to the skull. It was an instrument which could probe the lowest depths of a sentient brain.

  “Leave it there,” said Glenn. “I want to have a look.”

  He moved to the machine and adjusted the controls. He plugged an intensifier into his own suit and cautiously advanced the probe depth. Bleak frustration clouded his face as he searched through the still lucid thought patterns in the dying cells of the Centrasi brain. At last he jerked the plug out.

  “What is it?” said Gibbs.

  “Prentiss, all right. He induced a heavy neural shock with the intensifier, momentarily breaking down Emdor’s careful defenses. If he used a recorder he got everything he needed to know about Fourth Order. Emdor was a principal engineer in the work. Prentiss can build one from scratch with the data from Emdor’s mind.”

  “Then there’s not a chance in the world of suppressing this.”

  * * * *

  They stared in silence at the dead Centrasi, whose sacrifice had been so vain. Glenn thought of that incredibly distant world of beauty and charm and ancient civilization that was old when Neanderthal walked the Earth. He thought of men of Earth traveling to those fair worlds with commerce and huckstering and greedy exploitation.

  “How long do you suppose we can get good reception from Emdor’s neural patterns?” he said abruptly.

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “Keep the body right here as it is. There may be just one slim chance if I can get back in that time. Wait for me.”

  He rushed to the lock chamber and stripped off the suit while Gibbs demanded to know what he was going to do. But Glenn went on without offering an answer. He skipped down the stairway again and sped away on the scooter, cutting into the shadow of a hundred-thousand-ton ship that was being towed out to the take-off area.

  And then he was beneath the oval of the Centrasi ship. He donned a suit and lifted himself into the vessel with the freight hoist.

  His guess had been right. He found Prentiss and Kendricks in the main drive chamber. Through the helmet plastic their faces wore defensive surprise as he entered the chamber. It changed swiftly to hostility as he strode toward them.

  Kendricks seized the initiative at once. “It is just as well that you followed Lieutenant Prentiss over here,” he said. “You will be interested to learn that he has been successful in wresting the secret of Fourth Order from the Centrasi.”

  “I know. I saw Emdor—dead. I would be more interested in knowing when it became a policy of the Council to approve deliberate murder in exchange for technical data.”

  Prentiss’ face went white. “I’ll jam that down your throat! Emdor was nearly dead. He would have gone off in the next ten minutes and carried his secret with him, It was wholly accidental that — “

  “Medically, it was murder. Gibbs can testify that the shock of the intensifier killed him. And you have forgotten the well-known fact that if he really had any secret to which we were entitled it could be obtained from his dead brain as well as his live one.”

  Prentiss smiled. “And you forget that there is no proof that I didn’t get it from a dead brain. No one can determine whether he died five minutes before or after I entered.

  “There’s no proof except the indelible record you left in his mind!”

  It was incredible, Glenn thought. Prentiss was terrified and his thinking processes were utterly devastated. He was not thinking in any respect like the cold technical precise P
rentiss who could direct the analysis of a ship like this.

  Kendricks stepped forward. “I think nothing irregular will be found in the conduct of Lieutenant Prentiss,” he said evenly. “It would be comforting for you to be able to say as much for yours. It appears that you were instrumental in keeping all others from interviewing the Centrasi with the object of deliberately suppressing the knowledge they might have given out.

  “What motives you had remain to be determined but these facts, if proven by court-martial, would make it difficult to avoid termination of your Navy career in complete disgrace. Perhaps it would be just as well if you eliminated any suspicion from your mind regarding the irregularity of Lieutenant Prentiss’ actions.”

  So that was it, Glenn thought. Kendricks was worried too—and scared.

  And he was willing to bargain. But he held all the bargaining power. He held the secret of Fourth Order and that revelation would smother any accusations Glenn might utter against the two.

  There was nothing that he could barter against their knowledge of Fourth Order. But he had to make a try. “Yes—I knew they had Fourth Order,” he said slowly. “And I intended to suppress it.”

  Like an old skin the gloom vanished from the faces of Kendricks and Prentiss. They smiled with braggart confidence.

  “Let me show you why,” said Glenn softly.

  He took the damaged adrenal gland from a pocket of the suit and held it up before them. “There is our barrier to Fourth Order.” Then he told the story Gibbs had given him, the story of a great race whose psychic reaction made of man a lethal disease in their midst.

  The two of them looked as if convinced of Glenn’s insanity before his plea was half finished.

  * * * *

  Prentiss exclaimed, “Do you think we’re going to be stopped from utilizing the greatest mechanical development in the history of the galaxies—stopped by that chunk of meat that’s smaller than my fist? You must be crazy! We’re going to have Fourth Order in this end of the universe and it’s very sad if the race that invented it can’t stand visitors!”

  “You and Dr. Gibbs have stepped far beyond the bounds of your authority,” said Kendricks icily. “It is fantastic for you to pass judgment on this situation. And it is equally absurd to think that we would deliberately harm another race by improper use of Fourth Order—even if it were possible in the unbelievable manner you suggest.

  “We will take all necessary precautions. There is no barrier, however, that cannot be overcome in time. We will visit the Centrasi and confer with them. Between our two races the problem can most certainly be solved.”

  “The moment one of our ships lands on a Centrasi world their race is doomed. We’re a disease! Each of us is a single germ which can infect them with a virulent charge of AR. There can be no conferring with them without destroying them. Why can’t we just let them alone? Surely the rest of the universe is big enough for us. Our existence doesn’t depend on going there and selling them shiploads of soap and confetti.”

  “Your attitude clearly indicates your incapacity to handle matters of this scope, Captain. As of this moment you are relieved of your charge. Lieutenant Prentiss will supervise the analysis of this ship from here on. Please report to my office in the morning, Captain Baird.”

  “All right. I know when I’m licked,” said Glenn wearily. He pocketed the specimen adrenal gland and turned away. Then he paused. “There’s just one thing I’d like to show you—something that you overlooked in the Centrasi brain. Will you come with me while there is still time to pick it up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Emdor’s mind is still alive enough for probing. Come and listen to just this one thing. It’s evidence—you can’t withhold from me the privilege of presenting evidence of value in the proceedings against me.”

  “Very well,” said Kendricks. “We will examine anything you have.”

  He moved readily as if anxious to prove his magnanimity and fairness of mind now that he had triumphed in the matter. Prentiss came reluctantly, for to him it was only an added irritation.

  Gibbs was waiting in the ward when they came. “You stayed pretty long,” he said to Glenn. “I don’t know about this now.”

  “Let’s hurry,” said Glenn. “Please put on the intensifier pads,” he directed Kendricks and Prentiss. He looked through the glass to check if the other line were securely on the dead skull of Emdor.

  Prentiss watched in hostile silence and sat down before the panel. Kendricks sat opposite with an air of tolerant amusement. Glenn faced the control panel. The impressions available from Emdor’s mind were truly feeble now. He prayed that he hadn’t taken too long, that they wouldn’t be too weak.

  It was eerie, journeying back through the dead creature’s brain—like walking through the long abandoned corridors of a ghost city, seeing it alive with scenes long vanished. He adjusted the machine carefully, searching through the millions of neural patterns for the one he needed.

  Then he found it—that area of incredible fear, that violent pattern of stress that had killed the mighty intelligences.

  Prentiss caught it suddenly. He looked up in a moment of understanding fright, half rising from his chair. “You can’t!” he screamed.

  Swiftly, Glenn spun the dial of the intensity control to its utter maximum.

  With a low moan Prentiss slumped back into the chair, his face blanched. Kendricks, not anticipating the sudden blast, stiffened and was still, his breath heavy and gasping.

  Glenn cut the switch. Beyond the glass wall that separated the anteroom from the ward, Gibbs stared. “What did you do to them? What happened?”

  Glenn’s lips made a thin tired line before he spoke. “I let them feel what it’s like to be a Centrasi—on Earth. You’d better come out and have a look at them now.”

  * * * *

  Gibbs joined him in a few moments. He looked at the stiff unconscious bodies of the two men. “You knew what you were doing. It could be murder.”

  “I don’t know. I had to take the chance. See how they are, Doc.”

  Gibbs bent over them with a stethoscope. “It’s difficult to know what the total reaction will be. If you blasted them with the full power of the cyberlogue while it was probing the stress pattern in Emdor’s mind it may set up an AR in them that can’t be stopped.”

  “They don’t have the Centrasi psychic makeup. It couldn’t feed on itself like a chain reaction. They will recover if they’re still alive.”

  “Then what the devil did you hope to accomplish?” Gibbs exploded.

  “We’ll see. Maybe I was wrong—maybe not.”

  They were placed in a hospital room on beds. Glenn watched over them in the dimmed light of a lamp. He prayed mentally for their recovery before the midnight change of shift.

  An hour before midnight he left for a moment to call Nancy for the third time. “I’m sorry darling if I’ve messed things up for us,” he said wearily. “It looks bad. This may have been a black-and-white deal, but right now it looks wholly black. But I had to do it.”

  “Let me come down there with you.”

  “No. Go to bed and get some sleep. I’ll call you in the morning. If they haven’t revived by then…”

  They were awake when he returned to the room. Prentiss was sitting up and his eyes were those of a man who has seen the gates of hell. “You were right,” he said hoarsely. “We have no right to destroy them like that. They’d never have a chance against us. We can do without Fourth Order.”

  Kendricks was lying still but his eyes were open. He nodded. “Walt’s right—and you were right, Captain. What can we do?”

  Glenn had to fight to overcome the moment’s weakness that threatened to overpower him at this reprieve for both himself and the Centrasi. “Come on,” he said. “It won’t take long.”

  They returned to the ship and Glenn looked up to the great bulk of it looming in the darkness. There was longing in his heart and an ache in his throat. It was like Columbus, he thought,
gazing upon a fully-fitted ship that would take him to all the far dreams he had ever dreamed—gazing upon it and deliberately turning his back forever to those dreams.

  He would never ride this ship now along the far curve of space.

  They went inside and Prentiss showed him the records from Emdor’s mind, the details that would make Fourth Order available to man. It was a vast and complex thing and Glenn felt sure that Prentiss would remember no significant part of it. They left it where it was.

  * * * *

  Then Glenn stepped to the intercom system they had spread throughout the ship and gave warning to the analyzer crew. “Evacuate ship! The Centrasi have escaped and are in control. They are lifting ship in ten minutes.

  Evacuate ship at once!”

  When the warning had been obeyed the three of them went to the main power room. They fitted up a time control to the great piles that drove the ship. They fitted them so that every moderator would be jerked at once. And then they put the plant in operation on primary power.

  Leaving the ship they fled as if pursued and joined the host of analysts who stood waiting for the unknown. And then Glenn saw Nancy. She was coming toward him from the parking area by the building. She ran toward him and he put his arm around her. She searched his face with anxious eyes.

  “It’s all right, darling,” he whispered. “It worked out just the way we hoped.”

  They turned then to face the great ship. Inside it a timer switched the controls. The giant unmanned vessel lifted majestically into the air and soared far beyond Pacific Base into the moonlit sky.

  Glenn’s eyes were on Prentiss and Kendricks. Their throats worked, and he sensed that their eyes were not dry. His own were certainly not. He looked upward again, following their gaze, but the ship was already beyond vision in the night sky. Then, moments later, he saw it—a soundless flash of light that for an instant was the brightest pinpoint in the heavens.