“Possibly not,” said Hallerock reasonably, “but then he does have it under control. Enough to hash it up from one pole to the other if he panics. That’s what keeps putting this dew on my brow.”
“Agent-Trainee Hallerock,” Pagadan replied impatiently, “I love you like a son or something, but at times you talk like a dope. Even a Telep-Two doesn’t panic, unless you let him get the idea he’s cornered. All we’ve got to do is keep Moyuscane’s nose pointed towards the one way out and give him time enough to use it when we switch on the pressure—but not quite time enough to change his mind again. If it makes you feel any better, you could put trackers on any unprotected Vegans for the next eight hours.”
Hallerock laughed uneasily. “I just finished doing that,” he admitted.
Pagadan shrugged. Gloomy old Hallerock! From here on out, he’d be waiting for the worst to happen, though this kind of a job, as anyone who had studied his training records would know, was right up his alley. And it had been a pleasure, at that, to observe the swift accuracy with which he’d planned and worked out the schedule and details of this operation, in spite of head-shakings and forebodings. The only thing he couldn’t possibly have done was to take the responsibility for it himself.
She smiled faintly, and came over to sit down for a while beside the bunk on which Jasse was lying.
* * ** * *
Two hours later, when her aide contacted her again, he seemed comparatively optimistic.
“Reaction as predicted,” he reported laconically. “I’m beginning to believe you might know what you’re doing.”
“Moyuscane’s got the Kynoleen space-tests stalled?”
“Yes. The whole affair was hushed up rather neatly. The H-Ship is down now at some big biochemical center five hundred miles from Central City, and the staff was routed through to top officials immediately. The question was raised then whether Ulphian body chemistry mightn’t have varied just far enough from standard A-Class to make it advisable to conduct a series of local lab experiments with the drug before putting it to use. Our medics agreed and were asked, as between scientists, to keep the matter quiet meanwhile, to avoid exciting the population unduly. There also was the expected vagueness as to how long the experiments might take.”
“It makes it so much easier,” Pagadan said gratefully, “when the opposition is using its brains! Was anyone shown around the ship?”
“A few dozen types of specialists are still prowling all over it. They’ve been introduced to our personnel. It seems a pretty safe bet,” Hallerock acknowledged hesitantly, “that Moyuscane has discovered there isn’t a shielded mind among them, and that he can take control of the crate and its crew whenever he wants.” He paused. “So now we just wait a while?”
“And let him toy around with the right kind of ideas,” agreed Pagadan. “He should be worried just enough by now to let them come floating up naturally.”
Night had fallen over Central City when the message she was expecting was rattled suddenly from the skiff’s communicator. She decoded it, produced evidence of considerable emotional shock, shook Jasse awake and, in a few dozen suitably excited sentences, handed Moyuscane his jolt. After that, though, there were some anxious moments before she got her patient quieted down enough to let the antishock resume its over-all effect.
“She kept wanting to get up and do something about it!” Pagadan reported to Hallerock, rubbing a slightly sprained wrist. “But I finally got it across that it wasn’t Cultures’ job to investigate undercover mass homicide on a foreign planet, and that one of our own Zone Agents, no less, was landing secretly tomorrow to take charge of the case.”
“And that,” said Hallerock darkly, “really is switching on the pressure!”
“Just pressure enough for our purpose. It’s still a big, hidden organization that’s suspected of those fancy murder rituals, and not just one little telepath who’s played at being planetary god for the past few centuries. Of course, if we’d pointed a finger straight at Moyuscane himself, he would have cracked right there.”
She passed a small handkerchief once, quickly, over her forehead. “This kind of thing is likely to be a bit nerve-wracking until you get used to it,” she added reassuringly. “I can remember when I’ve felt just about as jumpy as you’re feeling now. But all we have to do is to settle down and let Moyuscane work out his little problem by himself. He can’t help seeing the answer—”
But a full two hours passed then, and the better part of a third, while Pelial, the minor official of Galactic Zones, continued to work quietly at her files of reports and recordings, and received and dispatched various coded communications connected with the impending arrival of her superior—the hypothetical avenging Zone Agent.
By now, she conceded at last, she might be beginning to feel a little disturbed, though, naturally, she had prepared alternative measures, in case—
Hallerock’s thought flashed questioningly into her mind then. For a moment, Pagadan stopped breathing.
* * *
“Linked!” she told him crisply. “Go ahead!”
“The leading biochemists of Ulphi,” Hallerock informed her, “have just come up with a scientific achievement that would be regarded as noteworthy almost anywhere—”
“You subhuman comic!” snapped Pagadan. “Tell me!”
” . . . Inasmuch as they were able to complete—analyze, summarize and correlate—all tests required to establish the complete harmlessness of the new space-fear drug Kynoleen for all type variations of Ulphian body-chemistry. They admit that, to some extent, they are relying—”
“Hallerock,” Pagadan interrupted, in cold sincerity now, “you drag in one more unnecessary detail, and the very next time I meet you, you’re going to be a great, big, ugly-looking dead body!”
“That’s not like you, Pag!” Hallerock complained. “Well, they rushed fifty volunteers over to the H-Ship anyway, to have Kynoleen given a final check in space right away—all Ulphi is now to have the benefit of it as soon as possible. But nobody seemed particularly upset when our medics reminded them they had been informed that the ship was equipped to conduct tests on only one subject at a time—”
Pagadan drew a shivery breath and sat suffused for a moment by a pure, bright glow of self-admiration.
“When will they take off with him?” she inquired with quiet triumph.
“They took off ten minutes ago,” her aide returned innocently, “and headed straight out. As a matter of fact, just before I beamed you, the test-subject had discovered that ten minutes in space will get you a whole lot farther than any Telep-Two can drive a directing thought. It seemed to disturb him to lose contact with Ulphi—WOW! Watch it, Pag! Supposing I hadn’t been shielded when that lethal stunner of yours landed!”
“That’s a beautiful supposition!” hissed Pagadan. “Some day, you won’t be! But the planet’s safe, anyway—I guess I can forgive you. And now, my friend, you may start worrying about the ship!”
“I’ve got to compliment you,” she admitted a while later, “on the job you did when you installed those PT-cells. What I call perfect coverage! Half the time I don’t know myself from just what point of the ship I’m watching the show.”
She was curled up now in a large chair, next to the bunk on which Jasse still slumbered quietly; and she appeared almost as completely relaxed as her guest. The upper part of her head was covered by something like a very large and thick-walled but apparently light helmet, which came down over her forehead to a line almost with her eyes, and her eyes were closed.
“Just at the moment”—Hallerock hesitated—”I think you’re using the Peeping Tommy in the top left corner of the visitank Moyuscane’s looking into. He still doesn’t really like the idea of being out in deep space, does he?”
“No, but he’s got his dislike of it under control,” Pagadan said lazily. “He’s the one,” she added presently, “who directed the attack on our D.C. today at the Historical Institute. She has a short but very sharp memory-picture of him. So it is Moyuscane, all right!”
“You mean,” Hallerock asked, stunned, “you weren’t really sure of it?”
“Well—you can’t ever be sure till everything’s all over,” Pagadan informed him cheerfully. “And then you sometimes wonder.” She opened her eyes, changed her position in the chair and settled back carefully again. “Don’t you pass out on me, Hallerock!” she warned. “You’re supposed to be recording every single thing that happens on the H-Ship for Lab!”
There hadn’t been, Hallerock remarked, apparently still somewhat disturbed, very much to record as yet. The dark-skinned, trimly bearded Ulphian volunteer was, of course, indulging in a remarkable degree of activity, considering he’d been taken on board solely as an object of scientific investigation. But no one about him appeared to find anything odd in that. Wherever he went, padding around swiftly on bare feet and dressed in a set of white hospital pajamas, the three doctors who made up the ship’s experimental staff followed him earnestly, with a variety of instruments at the ready, rather like a trio of mother hens trailing an agitated chicken. Occasionally, they interrupted whatever he was doing and carried out some swift examination or other, to which he submitted indifferently.