The transmitter’s visualization tank cleared suddenly from a smokily glowing green into a three-dimensional view of the Viper’s control room; and the Co-ordinator gazed with approval on the silver-eyed, spacesuited, slender figure beyond the ship’s massive control desk. Human or not, Pagadan was nice to look at.
“And what do you want now?” he inquired.
“Agent-Trainee Hallerock,” the Lannai informed him, “6972.41, fourth year.”
“Hm-m-m. Yes, I know him!” The Co-ordinator tapped the side of his long jaw reflectively. “Rather striking chap, isn’t he?”
“He’s beautiful!” Pagadan agreed enthusiastically. “How soon can you get him out here?”
“Even by Ranger,” the Co-ordinator said doubtfully, “it would be ten days. There’s an Agent in the nearest cluster I could route out to you in just under four.”
She shook her head. “Hallerock’s the boy—gloomy Hallerock. I met him a few months ago, back on Jeltad,” she added, as if that made it clear. “What are his present estimated chances for graduation?”
The inquiry was strictly counter-regulation, but the Co-ordinator did not raise an eyebrow. He nudged a switch on his desk.
“I’ll let the psych-tester answer that.”
“If the Agent-Trainee were admitted for graduation,” a deep mechanical voice came immediately from the wall to his left, “the percentage of probability of his passing all formal tests would be ninety-eight point seven. But because of a background conditioned lack of emotional adjustment to Vegan civilization, graduation has been indefinitely postponed.”
“What I thought,” Pagadan nodded. “Well, just shoot him out to me then—by Ranger, please!—and I’ll do him some good. That’s all, and thanks a lot for the interview!”
“It was a pleasure,” said the Co-ordinator. Then, seeing her hand move towards her transmitter switch, he added hastily, “I understand you’ve run into a secondary mission problem out there, and that Correlation foresees difficulties in finding a satisfactory solution.”
The Lannai paused, her hand on the switch. She looked a little surprised. “That Ulphian illusionist? Shouldn’t be too much trouble. If you’re in a hurry for results though, please get behind Lab Supply on the stuff I requisitioned just now—the Hospital ship, the Kynoleen and the special types of medics I need. Push out that, and Hallerock, to me and you’ll have my final mission report in three weeks, more or less.”
She waved a cheerful farewell and switched off, and the view of the Viper’s control room vanished from the transmitter.
* * *
The Co-ordinator chewed his upper lip thoughtfully.
“Psych-tester,” he said then, “just what is the little hellcat cooking up now?”
“I must remind you,” the psych-tester’s voice returned, “that Zone Agent 131.71 is one of the thirty-two individuals who have been able to discern my primary purpose here, and who have established temporary blocks against my investigations. She is, furthermore, the first to have established a block so nearly complete that I can offer no significant answer to your question. With that understood, do you wish an estimate?”
“No!” grunted the Co-ordinator. “I’d forgotten. I can make a few wild guesses myself.” He ran his hand gently through his graying hair. “Let’s see—this Hallerock’s trouble is a background conditioned lack of adjustment to our type of civilization, you say?”
“He comes,” the psych-tester reminded him, “of the highly clannish and emotionally planet-bound strain of Mark Wieri VI.”
The Co-ordinator nodded. “I remember now. Twenty-two thousand light-years out. They’ve been isolated there almost since the First Stellar Migrations—were rediscovered only a dozen years or so ago. Extra good people! But Hallerock was the only one of them we could talk into going to work for us.”
“He appears to be unique among them in being galactic-minded in the Vegan sense,” the psych-tester agreed. “Subconsciously, however, he remains so strongly drawn to his own kind that a satisfactory adjustment to permanent separation from them has not been achieved. Outwardly, the fact is expressed only in a lack of confidence in himself and in those with whom he happens to be engaged in any significant work; but the tendency is so pronounced that it has been considered unsafe to release him for Zonal duty.”
“Ninety-eight point seven!” the Co-ordinator said. He swore mildly. “That means he’s way the best of the current batch—and I could use a couple like that so beautifully right now! Psychoing won’t do it?”
“Nothing short of complete mind-control for a period of several weeks.”
The Co-ordinator shook his head. “It would settle his personal difficulties, but he’d be spoiled for us.” He considered again, briefly, sighed and decided: “Pagadan’s claimed him, anyway. She may wreck him completely; but she knows her therapy at that. Better let her give it a try.”
He added, as if in apology:
“I’m sure that if we could consult Trainee Hallerock on the question, he’d agree with us—”
He was reaching out to punch down a desk stud with the last words and continued without a noticeable break:
“Central Communicator clear for Lab report on the rate of spread of the Olleeka plagues—”
His mind clearing also with that of any other matter, he settled back quietly and waited for Lab to come in.
* * *
System Chief Jasse, D.C. Cultural Field Investigator, listened attentively till her study recorder had clicked out “Report Dispatched.” Then she sat frowning at the gadget for a moment.
The home office would like that report! A brisk, competent review of a hitherto obscure section of Ulphi’s long-past rough and ready colonial period, pointing out and explaining the contrast between those days and the present quaintly perfect Ulphian civilization. It was strictly in line with the Department of Cultures’ view of what any group of A-Class human beings, left to themselves, could achieve and it had sounded plausible enough when she played it back. But somehow it left her dissatisfied. Somehow Ulphi itself left her dissatisfied.
Perhaps she just needed a vacation! As usual, when a new case was keeping her busy, she had been dosing herself with insomniates for the past two weeks. But in her six years of work with Cultures she had never felt the need for a vacation before.
Patting back a yawn in the process of formation, Jasse shook her head, shut off the recorder and stepped out before the study mirror. Almost time for another appointment—some more historical research.
Turning once slowly before the tall mirror, she checked the details of her uniform and its accessories—the Traditionalist Greens which had been taken over with all their symbolic implications by the Department of Cultures. Everything in order, including the concealed gravmoc batteries in belt and boots and the electronic mind-shield switch in her wrist bracelet. No weapons to check; as a matter of policy they weren’t carried by D.C. officials.
She pulled a bejeweled cap down on her shoulder-length wave of glossy black hair, grimaced at the face that, at twenty-five or thereabouts, still wore an habitual expression of intent, childish seriousness, and left the study.
By the lake shore, fifty feet from the D.C. mobile-unit’s door, the little-people were waiting. Six of them today—middle-aged historians in the long silver-gray garments of their guild, standing beside a beautifully shaped vehicle with a suggestion of breath-taking speed about its lines. The suggestion didn’t fool Jasse, who knew by experience that its looks were the only breath-taking thing about an Ulphian flow-car. The best it would produce in action was an air-borne amble, at so leisurely a pace that throughout her first trip in one of the things she had felt like getting out and pushing.
One mustn’t, of course, she reminded herself conscientiously, settling back in the flow-car, judge any human culture by the achievements of another! Granted that Ulphi had long since lost the driving power of Vega’s humming technologies, who was to say that it hadn’t found a better thing in its place?
A fair enough question, but Jasse doubtfully continued to weigh the answer while the lengthy little Ulphian ritual of greetings and expressions of mutual esteem ran its course and came to an end in the flow-car. Then her escort of historical specialists settled down to shop talk in their flowery derivative of one of the twelve basic human dialects, and she began automatically to contribute her visiting dignitary’s share to the conversation—just enough to show she was deeply interested but no more. Her attention, however, remained on the city below.
They were gliding only five hundred feet above the lake’s shoreline, but all roofs were low enough to permit a wide view—and everything, everywhere, was in superbly perfect symmetry and balance. The car’s motion did not change that impression. As it drove on, the gleaming white and softly tinted buildings about and below it flowed steadily into new and always immaculate patterns of sweeping line and blended color, merging in and out of the lake front with a rightness that trembled and stopped at the exact point of becoming too much so.
And that was only a direct visual expression of the essence of Ulphi’s culture. Every social aspect of the planet showed the same easy order, the same minute perfectionist precision of graceful living—achieved without apparent effort in cycle on cycle of detail.