since they are made to underlings whose only interest in the human race is to encode
and file our reports properly. But, since their automatic instruments have recorded
much of this change of government, it will have to be reported in detail. And a Great
One, or even a Greater Great One, may become interested, in which case the
reporter’s mind may be searched.” Prenk looked thoughtful, then shook his head.
“There’s no use trying to gloss it over. In an event like this the Greatest Great One
himself will very probably become interested and the reporter will die on the spot. In any
case, even with an ordinary Great One, his mind will be shattered for life.”
“I see,” Seaton said. “I didn’t think of it, but I’m not surprised. We’ve tangled with
Chlorans before. But cheer up. I locked eyes with their Supreme Great One . . .”
“You didn’t!” Prenk broke in, – in amazement. “You actually did?”
“I actually did, and I knocked him-it?-loose from his teeth.” Regretfully Seaton added,
“But we can’t make a. battle out of this.” He scowled in concentration for a minute, then
went on, “Okay, there’s more than one way to stuff a goose. I’ll make the report. Let’s
go.”
Wherefore, twenty-five minutes later, Seaton sat at an ultra-communicator panel in
Communications, ready to flip a switch.
The reporter whose shift it was stood off to one side, out of the cone of vision of the
screen. Crane sat-gingerly, sidewise, and on a soft pillow-well within the cone of
visibility of the screen, at what looked like an ordinary communications panel, but was in
fact a battery of all the analytical instruments known to the science of Norlamin.
“But, Your Exalted,” said the highly nervous reporter. “I’m very glad indeed that you’re
doing this instead of me, but won’t they notice that it isn’t me? And probably do
something about it?”
“I’m sure they won’t.” Seaton had already considered the point. “I doubt very much, in
view of their contempt for other races, if they ever bother to differentiate between any
one human being and any other one. Like us and beetles.”
The reporter breathed relief. “They probably don’t, sir, at that. They don’t seem to pay
any attention to us as individuals.”
Seaton braced himself and, exactly on the tick of time, flipped the switch. Knowing that
the amoeboids could assume any physical form they pleased and as a matter of course
assumed the form most suitable for the job, he was not surprised to see that the filing
clerk looked like an overgrown centipede with a hundred or so long, flexible tentacles
ending in three-fingered “hands”-a dozen or so of which were manipulating the gadgetry
of a weirdly complex instrument-panel. He was somewhat surprised, however, in spite
of what he had been told, that the thing did not develop an eye and look at him; did not
even direct a thought at him. Instead:
“I am ready, slave,” a deep bass voice rolled from the speaker, in the language of
Prenk’s planet Ray-See-Nee. “Start the tape.”
Seaton pressed a button; the tape began to travel through the sender. For perhaps five
minutes nothing happened. Then the sender stopped and a deeper, heavier voice came
from the speaker: a voice directed at the filing clerk, but using Rayseenese . . .
Why? Seaton wondered to himself. Oh, I see. Soften ’em up. Scare the pants off of ’em,
then put on the screws.
“Yield, clerk,” the new voice said.
“I yield with pleasure O Great One,” the clerk replied, and went rigidly motionless; not
moving a finger or a foot.
“It pleases me to study this matter myself,” the giant voice went on as though the clerk
had not spoken. “While slight, the possibility does exist that some of these verminous
creatures have dared to plot against the Race Supreme. If this is merely another
squabble among themselves for place it is of no interest; but if there is any trace of
nonsubmission, vermin and city will cease to exist. I shall learn the deepest truth. They
can make lying tapes, but no entity of this or of any other galaxy can lie to a Great One
mind to mind.”
While the Great One talked, the picture on the screen began to change. The clerk
began to fade out and something else began to thicken in. And Seaton, knowing what
was coming, set himself in earnest and brought into play that part of his multi-
compartmented mind that was the contribution of Drasnik, the First of Psychology of
Norlamin.
This coming interview, he knew, must be vastly different from his meeting with the
Supreme Great One of Chlora One. That had been a wide-open, hammer-and-tongs
battle; a battle of sheer power of mind. Here it would have to be a matter of delicacy of
control; of precision and of nicety and of skill as well as of power. He would have to play
his mind as exactly and as subtly as Dorothy played her Stradivarius, for if the monster
came to suspect any iota of the truth all hell would be out for noon with no pitch hot.
The screen cleared and Seaton saw what he had known he would see; a large, flatly
ellipsoidal mass of something that was not quite a jelly not quite a solid; a monstrosity
through whose transparent outer membrane there was visible a large, intricately
convoluted brain. As Seaton looked at the thing it developed an immense eye, from
which there poured directly into Seaton’s brain a beam of mental energy so incredibly
powerful as to be almost tangible physically.
Braced as he was, every element of the man’s mind quivered under the impact of that
callously hard-driven probe; but by exerting all his tremendous mental might he took it.
More, he was able to hold his Drasnik-taught defenses so tightly as to reveal only and
precisely what the Great One expected to find-utter helplessness and abject
submission.
That probe was not designed to kill. Or rather, the Great One did not care in the least
whether it killed or not. It was intended to elicit the complete truth; and from any
ordinary human mind it did.
“Can you lie to me, slave?” That tremendous voice resounded throughout every
chamber of Seaton’s mind. “Or withhold from me any iota of the truth?”
“I cannot lie to you, O Great One; nor withhold from you any iota, however small, of the
truth.” This took everything of camouflage and of defensive screen Seaton had; but he
managed to reveal no sign at all of any of it.
“How much do you personally know, not of the details of the coup d’etat itself, but of the
motivation underlying it?”‘
“Everything, O Great One, since I was Premier Ree-Toe Prenk’s right-hand man,” and
Seaton reported the exact truth of Prenk’s motivation and planning.
The Great One’s probe vanished, the screen went dark, and the sender resumed its
sending.
“Huh!” Seaton wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief. ” `This dope isn’t of any
interest, clerk old boy, so just file it away and forget it,’ His Nibs says. It’s a good thing
he was after Prenk’s motivation, not mine. If he’d really bored in after mine I don’t know
whether I could have kept things all nice and peaceful or not. I knew I’d been nudged,
believe you me.”
“I believe you,” Crane said, looking into his friend’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
And:
The reporter goggled in awe: “And you can still talk intelligently, sir?”
“Yeah.” Seaton answered both questions at once, but did not elaborate. “What did you
get, Mart? Anything?”
“I learned where it is,” said Crane. Nothing else.
Small reward for weeks of effort and risk of life . . . and yet it was for that the entire
campaign on the planet RaySee-Nee had been waged! The whole operation had been
designed to get that one fact. A people had been given new hope; some hundreds had
lost their lives; many thousands had received scars they would bear a long time; a
regime had been deposed and a new one put in power.
But these were only by-products, only the small change of a victory which justified all of
Seaton’s efforts . . . and would have its consequences in every part of the Universe, for
incalculable times to come!
21 LLAMZLAM MERGON
RAY-SEE-NEE’s new department heads, in their meeting with Premier Ree-Toe Prenk
in the Room of State, were in unanimous agreement that everything was under control.
Some quislings and recalcitrants had been shot and a few more would probably have to
be. That was only to be expected. Yes, since all of the new incumbents had been
jumped many grades in status and in authority and in salary, there was and would
continue to be a certain amount of jealousy; but that was not of very much importance.
The jealous ones would either accept the facts of life or be shot. Period.