“I wouldn’t claim to have the last word on it, but it looks to me as if you’ve got a bunch of visual telepaths here.”
Lindell looked at them.
“But . . . in that case . . . why do they use their voices at all?”
“Because there’s one thing a telepath needs to know as much as anyone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“He needs to know who’s talking. And how is he going to know that just by seeing a picture form in his mind?”
“Then all that repetitious chatter is just—recognition signals! Good Lord! No wonder we couldn’t figure it out!” Lindell paused as a new aspect occurred to him. He looked at Doyle in amazement. “But if they’re visual telepaths, and you were able to communicate with them . . . then you—”
Doyle shook his head. “That doesn’t make me much of a telepath. It just means they’re powerful enough to put an image in my mind, and sensitive enough to detect what I’m trying to get across, once they realize—from my repeating my recognition signal—what I’m trying to do.”
Lindell nodded. “Yes, I see. And now we’ve got a way to get across to them, we can rig up a test to prove objectively that they communicate. Then I can classify this planet the way it should be classified.”
Doyle, worn out, went back to his ship, congratulating himself that he wouldn’t have to fight a war with telepathic entities that could kill at an unspecified range by overloading a man’s brain circuits.
He was starting to feel like himself again when a call came in from Nels Krojac. Krojac’s expression was a little hard to decipher. There was anger in it, plus triumph, and something else that was hard to place.
“Say, Doyle,” said Krojac. “I’ve got a little problem.”
“What?” said Doyle warily.
“Lindell got the situation across to the cats down there, and they put it to him that having the R and R center here is O.K., so long as they pick the spot. But first, I was supposed to ‘talk’ to them myself. Well, they gave me a pretty hard looking over, and I got kind of a funny feeling in the head. And . . . ah . . . this contract I made out. It’s got a couple of jokers in it. Now every time I start to plan when to spring the trap, the room goes black, I get a ringing in my ears, my hands and feet go numb, and I get a funny swimming sensation. Do you figure this means what I think it might mean?”
“I know one thing. If I were you, I’d spring no legal surprises on them.”
“Yeah. Well—How far do you suppose this effect reaches out?”
“You have the unique opportunity to find the answer to that, yourself.”
Krojac nodded thoughtfully. “O.K. Thanks, Doyle. If you ever get sick of traveling third class in the Space Force, drop around. I can always use a man with brains and guts. Forty thousand to start.”
“Thanks,” said Doyle. “If I ever get sacked, I’ll think of it.”
Krojac grinned and broke the connection.
A little later, Lindell was on the screen.
“I wanted to thank you, Colonel. I was so surprised earlier that I didn’t even think to thank you. But now, there’s one other thing about this that leaves me dumbfounded.”
“What’s that?”
“How could you find such a difficult, out-of-the-way answer to this when everyone else failed, including all my experts, and even the LC-10,000 itself—the greatest and most infallible expert in the entire field?”
Doyle laughed. “I had an unseen advantage, Dr. Lindell.”
Lindell blinked. “What was that?”
“Everyone else was an expert-in-the-field. But the answer wasn’t in the field. And that’s a situation where a rank amateur has all the advantage. He can look outside the field, where the answer is.”
THE HUNCH
Stellar Scout James Connely and Sector Chief of Scouts Gregory MacIntyre eyed each other with mutual suspicion. Connely, his blood pressure already well above normal, could see that this latest meeting was going to develop along the lines of those that had gone before.
“Look, Mac,” said Connely, “my ship’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t need anything re-equipped. Spare me the new improvements and just let me know—What’s the job this time?”
MacIntyre, a powerfully-built man with heavy brows and light-blue eyes of unusual brilliance, watched Connely with that look of alert concentration seen on bullfighters, duelists, and cats springing for mice.
“This isn’t the usual scout job,” said MacIntyre emphatically. “We’ve sent out two ships four months apart, and heard nothing more from either. Obviously they came up against something that outclassed them.”
MacIntyre gestured at the new and weird devices that sat on tables and chairs around the room. “We flatly will not let you go out half-equipped. This job is risky.”
Connely looked at the new equipment with no enthusiasm, and jerked a thumb in the direction of his ship, “Look, I can already outfight any ordinary ship up to twice the weight of my own. I keep away from territory infested with commerce raiders. If I do get surprised, my ship’s as fast as they come. If I have to, I can even outrun the Space Force.”
MacIntyre snorted. “The Space Force. Who cares about them? When they aren’t hide-bound, they’re budget-bound. I hate to hear an Stellar Scout measure himself by the Space Force.”
“Mac,” said Connely, lowering his voice with an effort, “it took me six months to figure out that last batch of new equipment you put in the ship. Some of that stuff is fine, and some of it’s poison. Now that I know which is which, leave it alone.”
MacIntyre visibly controlled himself. “Why don’t we at least try to be logical about this, Con?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“All right. Now, look. These two ships I’ve mentioned went out on the same route you’re going to take. They weren’t heard from again. They had more advanced equipment than your ship has. And yet they were lost.”
“So, you think I should have the same equipment they had, eh?”
“Oh, no, Con.” MacIntyre looked shocked. “That’s the whole point. We’ve got better equipment, now, and you’ve got to have it.”
“Where were these two ships headed?”
MacIntyre snapped on a three-dimensional stellar projection and pointed out a distant sun-system.
Connely scowled. “The shortest route there is thick with Maury’s commerce raiders. That’s the worst gang there is. Maury’s got a reconverted dreadnought.”
“I know,” said MacIntyre. He touched a button, and a complex set of lines appeared in the projection, showing a series of awkward roundabout jumps to detour the dangerous territory.
Connely scowled at the long route. “Damn and blast commerce raiders.”
MacIntyre nodded, “With the Space Force tied up in that sector, they crop up like toadstools. But there they are and we have to face it.” He snapped a switch, and the projection faded out. “You noticed how complex the detour was? That makes it extra hard to know where the trouble happened. But at least it is obvious that it happened en route. As soon as either of those scouts reached his destination, he’d have orbited a signal satellite. The satellite has an automatic trip that triggers a subspace emergency call if it’s not canceled every twelve hours. No call has been received. Now, we have no knowledge of anything natural along these routes that would finish off two ships four months apart. Therefore, we’re up against something manmade.”
“An undeclared commerce-raider preying on the secondary routes?”
“Most likely,” said MacIntyre. “You see how we arrive at this conclusion by simple logic. But let’s go further. If the other two ships were lost because of inferior speed or weapons, what we have to do to prevent your loss is to remove the inferiority. Therefore, your ship needs to be re-equipped. Q.E.D.”
Connely opened his mouth and shut it.
MacIntyre beamed. “All right, Con?” He reached for the work-order.
“No,” said Connely. He struggled for an explanation of his own viewpoint and finally said, “The thing doesn’t feel right to me, Mac. I’ve got a hunch the equipment caused the trouble.”
MacIntyre’s face changed expression several times. As if tasting the sentence, he growled, “I’ve got a hunch.” He nodded his head in disgust and got up. “Well, Con, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He started for the door, and paused with his hand on the knob. “If you want your mail, incidentally, it’s in the top drawer on the left.” When he went out, he slammed the door so hard that a badly-balanced piece of equipment slid off a chair, gave a low whistling sound, and lit up in green lights.
Connely blew his breath out and glanced around suspiciously. It was not like MacIntyre to give up without a knock-down, drag-out fight. Puzzled, Connely crossed to MacIntyre’s desk and reached down to pull open the drawer.