“Join the Space Force,” snapped MacIntyre.
Barnes turned red, sucked in a deep breath, and rose half out of the chair. MacIntyre balled his fists and leaned forward. Connely glanced around nervously at all the instruments that might get smashed up.
Apparently, the same thought occurred to Barnes and MacIntyre, who glanced pugnaciously around, and then by mutually graduated stages, that were a little hard for a bystander to follow, slowly subsided into their seats.
Connely tried to get the conversation back on its tracks. “What happened after you went out of the ship?”
Barnes blinked, and looked around as if he’d forgotten where he was.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, till I got about thirty feet from the ship, nothing happened. Then there was a growl, I turned around, and a thing like the Hound of the Baskervilles was coming straight for me, from the direction of the ship.”
“What did you do?”
“The first thing I did,” said Barnes, “was to make the mistake of starting to reach for my gun. Bang! It slammed out of the holster into my hand and fired itself. The animal was almost on me by this time, and I hadn’t wanted to shoot for fear I’d put a hole through the ship, which was right behind it. Rather than risk another shot, I made my second mistake, and pressed down on the toes of the Gazelle Boots, like you’re supposed to if you want to go somewhere in a hurry.”
Connely had never heard of Gazelle Boots before, and cast a questioning glance at MacIntyre. MacIntyre refused to meet his gaze, and looked off noncommittally at a corner of the control room. This told Connely that Gazelle Boots were one of those items on which production had been “temporarily suspended pending further study.” If the boots had still been in production, MacIntyre would have looked back with stern righteousness.
Barnes said, “The left-hand boot took off in a hurry, but so did the right-hand boot. I landed flat on my back, and this animal bounded over my head. Well, I couldn’t wait to get on my feet, but in my hurry, I couldn’t keep from pressing down on the toes of the boots before I got up. Every time I did this, the boots went somewhere fast, and I bounced and dragged along after them. The animal’s jaws were snapping shut half an inch from my face, and I was in a terrible state by the time I managed to get to my feet. I barely had the wit to press down alternately heel-and-toe, according to the directions for walking in Gazelle Boots, and then the boots really streaked out fast. But the reflex clothing froze up like cast iron every time there was any sudden stress on it, so I couldn’t move my legs fast, and at the same time I had to, because of the boots.”
Connely shook his head sympathetically. “Then what?”
“The boots almost snapped my legs off at the ankles. I ended up on the ground again, and the monster dog was all over me. I was firing at it, and couldn’t seem to hit it. Then suddenly the dog was gone, and a voice somewhere was talking some kind of foreign language. The meaning seemed to form in my head at the same time as the foreign words that I couldn’t understand.”
* * *
Barnes shook his head in reminiscence, and after a little silence, MacIntyre said, “What did the voice say?”
“It said, ‘Why, this fellow is a mere beginner. He’s got his spells crossed.'”
MacIntyre looked blank. “Did it say ‘Spells’?”
“That’s what it said.”
There was another silence, and then MacIntyre said, “Then what happened?”
“That was it,” said Barnes. “The dog was gone. I went back to the ship and discovered that the first shot from the matter-displacement gun had taken a chunk the size of a beachball out of the outer hull and frame of the ship. Before I could repair it, everything changed to look the way it looks out there now.”
Connely said, “But what happened after that? I mean, what did you do?”
“What could I do? Once I was stuck there, with those monstrosities staring at me from that wall, I didn’t do much traveling, I can tell you that. And I couldn’t work on the ship, because I couldn’t see it, or feel it. Then a stream of visitors began to come, and I discovered that I was a curiosity. Some of them tried to teach me the language, which they said I had forgotten completely because of mental shock. I think they all looked over the ship while they were around, although I couldn’t see the ship myself, so I couldn’t be sure. Pretty soon, an argument started between a couple of factions of these visitors.
“As nearly as I could figure it out, one side claimed that I had made the ship and other devices myself, subconsciously, but didn’t have the conscious skill to operate them. The other faction claimed that the whole thing was a hoax, engineered by Aloom, or someone with a similar name. They quizzed me on the subject, and when I learned enough of the language to tell them the plain truth, they had a big laugh over it.
“Then each side claimed that what I’d said proved their theory. One side claimed that it showed that I was a basically irrational sort of person who relied on intuition rather than reason, and as everyone knew this meant that I would tap the subconscious more easily. The other side said that the illusion was too detailed to be the work of an irrational untrained mind. The whole illusion must have been impressed on me from outside. This argument got hotter and hotter, and the insults flew back and forth, and all I can say is, I’m glad they didn’t forget to feed me now and then.”
MacIntyre said, “They had a fight?”
Barnes nodded, “There was thunder and lightning—or seemed to be—earthquakes, tornadoes, and all kinds of natural disasters. The sky was black for a solid week one time. I don’t know how to describe it. At any rate, now and then things would go into a state of flux, the walls would seem to run like glue, and then they would form again with a different arrangement. Not much different, but enough so you could notice it. I think what it meant was that one side had wrested mental control away from the other side. While this was happening, I could get a wavering view of the ship and grassland around it.”
“In other words,” said MacIntyre, frowning, “their illusions canceled each other out?”
“Maybe,” said Barnes. “Or maybe, when they nullified each other, I was able to impress my own picture of reality on the scene.”
MacIntyre shook his head violently. “It wasn’t all illusion. Truth is things as God sees them.”
“Sure,” said Barnes, “but can we see things that way?”
The discussion was making Connely uneasy. To try to get it back into some familiar channel, he said, “We had a few strange experiences ourselves, right after we landed, and before we put the battle-computer in control.” He told Barnes about the snake and the daggers, and added, “It seems like a fair conclusion that the people on this planet have highly developed psychic powers.”
“I suppose that’s it,” said Barnes. “Whatever they’ve got, it’s no fun to tangle with it.”
Connely looked at MacIntyre. “What do we do about a planet like this?”
“The first thing is to get off it. See if we can drag Barnes’ ship up with a gravitor beam, and then put some space between the planet and us.” He frowned as he said this, and it occurred to Connely that MacIntyre’s problems would not be over once they got off the planet.
* * *
MacIntyre put this into words himself after they’d got Barnes’ ship up, and were in orbit well out from the planet. “This,” he said sourly, “is a real, first-class mess.”
Connely nodded, but Barnes said, “Why? It looks like a simple ‘No Landing-No Colonizing’ job to me. We put the warning satellites in orbit, notify Planet Certification, and let it go at that.”
“Fine,” said MacIntyre. “And just what reason do we give?”
Barnes opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Hm-m-m,” he said. “Well, that is a problem.”
“The authorities,” said MacIntyre, “don’t believe in psychic phenomena. Here we’ve got a whole planet full of psychic phenomena. Now, what do we do?”
Barnes said hesitantly, “You’re a sector chief, Mac. They’d believe you, wouldn’t they?”
“They’d believe I was in need of a rest cure. I wouldn’t believe this myself, if I hadn’t seen it.”
The three men were silent a moment, then Connely said, “Suppose we brought back proof?”
“What proof? The viewscreen didn’t show what we saw outside. Therefore the records won’t either.”