able to draw weapons upon a signal-my signal. Also upon signal their heads and bodies
will turn, they will leap toward the center of the room, and they will’ make certain noises
and utter certain words, the records of which I shall prepare. Go to it!”
“Don’t you need to control him through the headsets?” asked Loring curiously.
“I may have to control him in detail when we come to the really fine work, later on,”
DuQuesne replied absently. “This is more or less in the nature of an experiment, to find
out whether I have him thoroughly under control. During the last act he’ll have to do
exactly what I shall have told him to do, without supervision, and I want to be absolutely
certain that he will do it without a slip.”
“What’s the plan-or maybe it’s something that is none of my business?”
“No; you ought to know it, and I’ve got time to tell you about it now. Nothing material can
possibly approach the planet of the Fenachrone without being seen, as it is completely
surrounded by never less than two full-sphere detector screens; and to make assurance
doubly sure our engineer there has installed a mechanism which, at the first touch of the
outer screen, will shoot a warning along a tight communicator beam directly into the
receiver of the nearest Fenachrone scout ship. As you already know, the smallest of
those scouts can burn this ship out of the ether in less than a second.”
“That’s a cheerful picture. You still think we can get away?”
“I’m coming to that. We can’t possibly get through the detectors without being
challenged, even if I tear out all his apparatus, so we’re going to use his whole plan, but
for our benefit instead of his. Therefore his present hypnotic state and the dummies.
When we touch that screen you and I are going to be hidden. The dummies will be in sole
charge, and our prisoner will be playing the part I’ve laid out for him.
“The scout ship that he calls will come up to investigate. They will bring apparatus and
attractors to bear to liberate the prisoner, and the dummies will try to fight. They will be
blown up or burned to cinders almost instantly, and our little playmate will put on his
space suit and be taken across to the capturing vessel. Once there, he will report to the
commander.
“That officer will think the affair sufficiently serious to report it directly to headquarters. If
he doesn’t, this ape here will insist upon reporting it to general headquarters himself. As
soon as that report is in, we, working through our prisoner here, will proceed to wipe out
the crew of the ship and take it over.”
“And do you think he’ll really do it?” Loring’s guileless face showed doubt, his tone was
faintly skeptical.
“I know he’ll do it!” The chemist’s voice was hard. “He won’t take any active part-I’m not
psychologist enough to know whether I could drive him that far, even drugged, against an
unhypnotizable subconscious or not-but hell be carrying something along that will enable
me to do it, easily and safely. But that’s about enough of this chin music-we’d better start
doing something.”
While Loring brought spare clothing and weapons, and rummaged through the vessel in
search of material suitable for the dummies’ fabrication, the Fenachrone engineer worked
rapidly at his task. And not only did he work rapidly, he worked skillfully and artistically as
well. This artistry should not be surprising, for to such a mentality as must necessarily be
possessed by the chief engineer of a first-line vessel of the Fenachrone, the faithful
reproduction of anything capable of movement was not a question of art-it was merely an
elementary matter of line, form, and mechanism.
Cotton waste was molded into shape, reenforced, and wrapped in leather under
pressure. To the bodies thus formed were attached the heads, cunningly constructed of
masticated fiber, plastic, and wax. Tiny motors and many small pieces of apparatus
were installed, and the completed effigies were dressed and armed.
DuQuesne’s keen eyes studied every detail of the startlingly lifelike, almost
microscopically perfect, replicas of himself and his traveling companion.
“A good job,” he commented briefly.
“Good?” exclaimed Loring. “It’s perfect! Why, that dummy would fool my own wife, if I
had one-it almost fools me!”
“At least, they’re good enough to pass a more critical test than any they are apt to get
during this coming incident.”
Satisfied, DuQuesne turned from his scrutiny of the dummies and went to the closet in
which had been stored the space suit of the captive. To the inside of its front protector
flap he attached a small and inconspicuous flat-sided case. He then measured carefully,
with a filar micrometer, the apparent diameter of the planet now looming so large
beneath them.
“All right, Doll; our time’s getting short. Break out our suits and test them, will you, while I
give the big boy his final instructions?”
Rapidly those commands flowed over the wires of the mechanical educator, from
DuQuesne’s hard, keen brain into the now docile mind of the captive. The Earthly
scientist explained to the Fenachrone, coldly, precisely, and in minute detail, exactly what
he was to do and exactly what he was to say from the moment of encountering the
detector screens of his native planet until after he had reported to his superior officers.
Then the two Terrestrials donned their own armor and made their way into an adjoining
room, a small armory in which were hung several similar suits and which was a veritable
arsenal of weapons.
“We’ll hang ourselves up on a couple of these hooks, like the rest of the suits,”
DuQuesne explained. “This is the only part of the performance that may be even slightly
risky, but there is no real danger that they will spot us. That fellow’s message to the
scout ship will tell them that there are only two of us, and we’ll be out there with him,
right in plain sight.
“If by any chance they should send a party aboard us they would probably not bother to
search the Violet at all carefully, since they will already know that we haven’t got a thing
worthy of attention; and they would of course suppose us to be empty space suits.
Therefore keep your lens shields down, except perhaps for the merest crack to see
through, and, above all, don’t move a millimeter, no matter what happens.”
“But how can you manipulate your controls without moving your hands?”
“I can’t; but my hands will not be in the sleeves, but inside the body of the suit-shut up!
Hold everything-there’s the flash!”
The flying vessel had gone through the zone of feeble radiations which comprised the
outer detector screen of the Fenachrone. But, though tenuous, that screen was highly
efficient, and at its touch there burst into frenzied activity the communicator built by the
captive to be actuated by that very impulse. It had been built during the long flight through
space, and its builder had thought that its presence would be unnoticed and would
remain unsuspected by the Terrestrials.
Now automatically put into action, it laid a beam to the nearest scout ship of the
Fenachrone and into that vessel’s receptors it passed the entire story of the Violet and
her occupants. But DuQuesne had not been caught napping. Reading the engineer’s
brain and absorbing knowledge from it, he had installed a relay which would flash to his
eyes an inconspicuous but unmistakable warning of the first touch of the screen of the
enemy. The flash had come-they had penetrated the outer lines of the monstrous
civilization of the dread and dreaded Fenachrone.
In the armory DuQuesne’s hands moved slightly inside his shielding armor, and out in the
control room the dummy, that was also to all outward seeming DuQuesne, moved and
spoke. It tightened the controls of the attractors, which had never been entirely released
from their prisoner, thus again pinning the Fenachrone helplessly against the wall.
“Just to be sure you don’t try to start anything,” it explained coldly, in DuQuesne’s own
voice and tone. “You have done well so far, but I’ll run things myself from now on, so that
you can’t steer us into a trap. Now tell me exactly how to go about getting one of your
vessels. After we get it I’ll see about letting you go.”
“Fools, you are too late!” the prisoner roared exultantly. “You would have been too late,
even had you killed me out there in space and had fled at your utmost acceleration. Did
you but know it you are as dead, even now-our patrol is upon you!”
The dummy that was DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and its automatic pistol and that of its
fellow dummy were leaping out when an awful acceleration threw them flat upon the
floor, a magnetic force snatched away their weapons, and a heat ray of prodigious