The Best Of A. E. Van Vogt: Volume 2 Part 19

7.

Slowly, the room swung back into a kind of balance. And Hanardy grew aware that the girl was speaking again: "I'll go in through the door facing the bed," she stated. "If he can awaken at all in his condition, I want to ask him some questions. I must know about the nature of super-intelligence."

For a brain in as dulled a state as Hanardy's, the words were confusing. He had been striving to adjust to the idea that he was the one who was supposed to go in to the Dreegh, and simultaneously he was bracing himself against what she wanted him to do.

With so many thoughts already in his mind, it was hard to get the picture that this slip of a girl intended to confront the Dreegh by herself.

Pat was speaking again, in an admonis.h.i.+ng tone. "You stand just inside the other door, Steve. Now listen carefully. Do your best not to attract his attention, which I hope will be on me. The information I want is for your benefit. But when I yell, 'Come!' don't delay. You come and you kill, understand?"

Hanardy had had a thought of his own. A sudden stark realization. The realization was that in this deadly dangerous situation there was ultimately a solution.

He could cast off in his own s.p.a.cecraft!

But that meant he would have to obtain the key equipment Sween-Madro had taken from his s.h.i.+p. Obtain it, repair the control board, get away!

To obtain it he'd have to go to where it was--into the Dreegh's bedroom. At least apparently, he would have to do exactly what Pat wanted.

Fear dimmed before that obvious purpose, yielded to the feeling that there was no other way.

Thinking thus, Hanardy abruptly uttered agreement. "Yep," he said, "I understand."

The girl had started toward the door. At the tone of his voice, she paused, turned back and gazed at him suspiciously. "Now, don't you go having any plans of your own!" She spoke accusingly.

Hanardy was instantly guilty, instantly confused. "For Pete's sake," he said, "I don't like what you want to do--going in there and waking this guy. I don't see any good in my listening to a lecture on intelligence. I'm not smart enough to understand it! So, my vote is if we're going in let's just kill him right off."

The girl had turned away. She did not glance back as she walked out of the room. Hanardy grimaced at Professor Ungarn. Moments later he was through the door, following her, weary, hopeless, mentally shut down, but resigned.

Pat heard him stumbling along behind her. Without looking around she said, "You're a weapon, Steve. I have to figure out how to fire that weapon and escape. Basically, that's all we need to do! Get away from the Dreeghs and hide. Understand?"

He was a man stumbling along metal and rock corridors in a remote part of the solar system, his normal stolidness made worse now by an immense weariness. So he heard the words she uttered; even understood their surface meaning.

It was enough awareness for him to be able to mumble, "Yeah--yeah!"

Otherwise--she went on when he had acknowledged--he might go off like a firecracker, discharging whatever energy h.o.m.o-galactic had endowed him with in a series of meaningless explosions aimed at nothing and accomplis.h.i.+ng nothing.

So the question was: What kind of weapon was he?

"As I see it," she finished, "that information we can only hope to gain from the Dreegh. That's why we have to talk to him."

"Yeah," mumbled Hanardy, hoa.r.s.ely. "Yeah."

They came all too quickly to their destination. At the girl's nod Hanardy broke into an uneven lope and ran around to the far corridor. He fumbled the door open and stepped inside.

At this point Pat had already been through her door for fifteen seconds. Hanardy entered upon a strange scene, indeed.

On the bed, the almost naked body was stirring. The eyes opened and stared at the girl, and she said breathlessly, "That! What you just now did--becoming aware of me. How do you do that?"

From where he stood, Hanardy could not see the Dreegh's head. He was aware only that the Dreegh did not answer.

"What," asked Pat Ungarn, "is the nature of the intelligence of a Great Galactic?"

The Dreegh spoke. "Pat," he said, "you have no future, so why are you making this inquiry?"

"I have a few days."

"True," said Sween-Madro.

He seemed unaware that there was a second person in the room. So he can't read minds! Hanardy exulted. For the first time he had hope.

"I have a feeling," Pat was continuing, "that you're at least slightly vulnerable in your present condition. So answer my question! Or--"

She left the threat and the sentence unfinished.

Again the body on the bed s.h.i.+fted position. Then: "All right, my dear, if it's information you want, I'll give you more than you bargained for."

"What do you mean?"

"There are no Great Galactica," said the Dreegh. "No such beings exist, as a race. To ask about their intelligence is--not meaningless, but complex."

"That's ridiculous!" Pat's tone was scathing. "We saw him!"

She half-glanced at Hanardy for confirmation, and Hanardy found himself nodding his head in full agreement with her words. Boy, he sure knew there was a Great Galactic.

On the bed, Sween-Madro sat up.

"The Great Galactic is a sport! Just a member of some lesser race who was released by a chance stimulus so that he temporarily became a super-being. The method?" The Dreegh smiled coldly. "Every once in a while, accidentally, enough energy acc.u.mulates to make such a stimulus possible. The lucky individual, in his super-state, realized the whole situation. When the energy had been transformed by his own body and used up as far as he himself was concerned, he stored the transformed life-energy where it could eventually be used by someone else. The next person would be able to utilize the energy in its converted form. Having gone through the energy, each recipient in turn sank back to some lower state.

"Thus William Leigh, earth reporter, had for a few brief hours been the only Great Galactic in this area of s.p.a.ce. By now his super-ability is gone forever. And there is no one to replace him.

"And that, of course," said the Dreegh, "is the problem with Hanardy. To use his memory of intelligence in its full possibility, he'll need life energy in enormous quant.i.ties. Where will he get it? He won't! If we're careful, and investigate his background cautiously, we should be able to prevent Steve getting to any source, known or unknown."

Hanardy had listened to the account with a developing empty feeling from the pit of his stomach. He saw that the color had drained from the girl's face. "I don't believe it," she faltered. "That's just a--"

She got no further, because in that split instant the Dreegh was beside her. The sheer speed of his movement was amazing. Hanardy, watching, had no clear memory of the vampire actually getting off the bed.

But now, belatedly, he realized what the Dreegh's. movements on the bed must have been--maneuverings, rebalancings. The creature-man had been surprised--had been caught in a p.r.o.ne, helpless position, but used the talk to brace himself for attack.

Hanardy was miserably aware that Pat Ungarn was equally taken by surprise. Sween-Madro's fingers s.n.a.t.c.hed at her shoulder. With effortless strength, he spun her around to face him. His lank body towered above her, as he spoke.

"Hanardy has a memory of something, Pat. That's all. And that is all there is. That's all that's left of the Great Galactics."

Pat gasped, "If it's nothing, why are you scared?"

"It's not quite nothing," Sween-Madro replied patiently. "There is a--potential. One chance in a million. I don't want him to have any chance to use it, though of course we'll presently have to take a chance with him and put him into a state of sleep."

He released her and stepped back. "No, no, my dear, there's no possible chance of you making use of some special ability in Hanardy--because I know he's over there by the door. And he can't move fast enough to get over here and hit me with that metal bar."

The tense Hanardy sagged. And Pat Ungarn seemed frozen, glaring at the creature. She came back to life, abruptly. "I know why you don't dare shoot Steve. So why don't you shoot me?" Her tone was up in pitch, challenging.

"Hey!" said Hanardy. "Careful!"

"Don't worry, Steve," she answered gaily without turning around. "It's not because I have any I.Q. potentialities. But he won't touch me either. He knows you like me. You might have a bad thought about him at a key moment, later. Isn't that right, Mr. Dreegh? I've got your little dilemma figured out, haven't I, even though I've only got a Klugg brain."

Her words seemed suicidal to Hanardy. But Sween-Madro just stood gazing at her, swaying a little, saying nothing--a naked scarecrow of a man from the waist up, and below, wearing knee-length dungarees over bone-thin legs.

Yet there was no belief in Hanardy that the Dreegh was vulnerable. He remembered the other's high speed movements--that seemingly instantaneous transition from one location in s.p.a.ce to another ... from the bed to Pat, at invisible speed. Fantastic!

Once more Pat's voice broke the silence, mockingly: "What's this? An I.Q. of 400 or 500 baffled? Doesn't know what to do? Remember, no matter what action you take, he can't stay awake much longer. It's only a matter of time before something has to give."

At that point, another sharp anxiety struck through Hanardy. He thought: She's wasting time. Every minute those other Dreeghs are getting closer!

The thought was so urgent in his mind, he spoke it aloud, "For Pete's sake, Miss Pat, those other Dreeghs'll be here any second--"

"Shut up, you fool!"

Instantly shrill, hysterical, terrified--that was her totally unexpected reaction.

She said something else in that same high-pitched tone, but Hanardy did not hear it clearly. For in that moment between his own words and hers, the Dreegh turned. And his arm moved. That was all that was visible. Where did it move to? The super-speed of the movement blurred that. It could only, logically, have been toward the pocket of his dungarees, but nothing like that was visible.

A weapon glittered; a beam of light touched Hanardy's face.

As blackness swept over him, he realized what else it was the girl had said: "Steve, he'll put you to sleep while that thought about the Dreegh's coming quickly is in your mind. ..."

8.

How swiftly can transition between wakefulness and sleep take place?

As long as it requires for the wakefulness center to shut off and the sleep center to turn on.

So there is no apparent conscious time lag. If you live a dull, human existence, it seems brief enough.

To Hanardy, who was normally duller than most, it seemed no time at all.

He started forward, his lips parted to speak--and he was already asleep ... so far as he--the self--was aware. He did have a vague feeling of starting to fall.

Consciously, nothing more occurred.

Below the conscious, there was a measurable lapse of time.

During that time, the particles inside the atoms of his body did millions of millions of separate actions. And molecules by the quadrillion maneuvered in the twilight zone of matter. Because of the thought that had been in Hanardy's mind, at some level of his brain he noticed exact spots of s.p.a.ce, saw and identified the other-ness of the Dreeghs in the approaching Dreegh s.h.i.+p, estimated their other-whereness, computed the mathematics of change. It was simple in the virtual emptiness of s.p.a.ce, difficult where matter was dense. But never impossible.

As he did so, the Dreegh s.h.i.+p with its eight Dreeghs changed location from one spot to another exact spot in s.p.a.ce, bridging the gap through a lattice-work of related spots.

In the bedroom in the meteorite, the visible event was that Hanardy fell. A twisting fall, it was, whereby he sprawled on his side, the arm with the metal bar in it partly under him.

As Hanardy collapsed to the floor, the Dreegh walked past Pat toward the open door behind it. Reaching it, he clutched at it, seemingly for support.

Pat stared at him. After what had happened she didn't quite dare to believe that his apparent weakness was as great as she saw it to be.

Yet after a little, she ventured, "May I ask my father a question?"

There was no answer. The Dreegh stood at the door, and he seemed to be clinging to it.

Excitement leaped through the girl.

Suddenly she dared to accept the reality of the exhaustion that was here. The Dreegh's one mighty effort had depleted him, it seemed.

She whirled and raced over to Hanardy, looking for the metal bar. She saw at once that he was lying on top of it and tried to roll him over. She couldn't. He seemed to be solidly imbedded in the floor in that awkward position.

But there was no time to waste! Breathing hard, she reached under him for the metal weapon, found it, tugged at it.

It wouldn't budge.

Pull at it, twist it, exert all her strength--it was no use. Hanardy had a vice-like grip on the bar, and his body weight reinforced that grip. Nothing she could do could move it, or him.

Pat believed the position, the immovability, was no accident. Dismayed, she thought the Dreegh caused him to fall like that.

She felt momentarily awed. What an amazing prediction ability Sween-Madro had had--to have realized the nature of the danger against him and taken an exact defense against it.

It was a maneuver designed to defeat, exactly and precisely, a small Klugg woman, whose ability at duplication could not lighten the weight of a body like Hanardy's enough to matter and whose ability to solve problems did not include the ability to unravel a muscularly knotted hand grip.

But--she was on her feet, infinitely determined--it would do him no good!

The Dreegh also had a weapon. His only hope must be that she wouldn't dare come near him.

Instants later, she was daring. Her trembling ringers fumbled over his dungarees, seeking openings.

They found nothing.

But he had a weapon, she told herself, bewildered. He fired it at Steve. I saw him!

Again, more frantically, she searched all the possibilities of the one garment he wore--in vain.

She remembered, finally, in her desperation, that her father must have been watching this room. He might have seen where it was.

"Dad!" she called anxiously.

"Yes, my dear?" The reply from the intercom came at once, rea.s.suringly calm.

Watching the Dreegh warily, she asked, "Do you have any advice on how to kill him?"