But now the situation simply worsened. The Voice of Action had made its move under the assumption that the Guardian Etland, in her willingness to speak to the Everliving, had allowed herself to be trapped. At the time she was still in a guarded compartment of the stronghold, disarmed and in the company of Dr. Cay. But when a detachment was sent to execute her there, it was destroyed in a horribly vicious attack by native life forms which until then had appeared completely innocuous. Deadly fumes infested other sections of the fort; and there was so much confusion that considerable time elapsed before it was discovered that the Guardian had left the stronghold, evidently unharmed, and had taken Dr. Cay with her.
Neither of the two was seen thereafter, but there were continuing manifestations of the Guardian’s presence in the area. The Great Palachs and Palachs of the Voice of Action, now in furious dispute among themselves as to what might be the best course to follow, retreated to the expedition’s command ship and to two other space vessels in the vicinity. The ships were stationed at depths below the surface of the sea which seemed to place them beyond the reach of the Guardian, but presently the command ship received a fragmentary report that she was attacking the two other vessels. This was followed by violent explosions in which the two ships evidently were destroyed.
It was enough. The command ship broadcast an order to all divisions on Nandy-Cline to withdraw at once from the planet. As we know, this belated attempt to escape was not successful. The general human attack already had begun. The command ship apparently was annihilated in the planet’s atmosphere, and in a short time the entire expeditionary force was virtually wiped out.
I must emphasize strongly the oppressively accumulating effect these events produced on the Parahuans during the relatively short period in which they occurred. As related by the survivors, there was a growing sense of shock and dismay, the conviction finally of having challenged something like an indestructible supernatural power. At the time they were questioned, the survivors still seemed more disturbed by this experience than by the practical fact of their own impending demise on orders of Porad Anz, of which they were aware. It is not only that at the end there were no Parahuan disbelievers in the Tuvela Theory on Nandy-Cline but that the Tuvelas seemed to have proved to be monstrously more dangerous even than had been assumed. The impression was strengthened by the fact that the Guardian Etland appeared to be a young female. The Parahuans are aware that in the human species as in many others it is the male who is by biological and psychic endowment as well as by tradition the fighter. What a fully mature male Tuvela might have done to them in the circumstances staggered their imagination. Evidently the Guardians had considered it unnecessary to employ one of their more formidable members to dispose of the invasion forces; and evidently their judgment was sound.
I must conclude that the account of the surviving Parahuan witnesses was objectively correct. What they reported did occur. The interpretation we should put on these events may be another matter. But the reports circulating in the Federation obviously were distorted in that the true cause of the Parahuan rout at Nandy-Cline—that is, the appearance and actions of Dr. Etland—was not made public. I offer no opinion on the possible reasons for the falsification.
The Lord Ildaan: The Lord Toshin will comment.
The Lord Toshin: I agree with the Lord Mingolm’s conclusion. We can assume that the Parahuan survivors told the truth as they knew it. We must ask, then, why the Federation’s official version of the Parahuan defeat did not refer to the Tuvela Theory, why Dr. Etland’s name was barely mentioned, and why she is credited only with having warned of the enemy presence.
The simplest explanation might seem to be that she is in fact, as she claimed and as Dr. Cay claimed, a Tuvela-Guardian. But that confronts us with the other question of why a Guardian should reveal her most secret identity and expose her group to the enemy. To that question there is no reasonable answer.
Further, I see no room in the structure of the Federation’s Overgovernment for a class of hidden rulers. It is a multilayered complex in which the Federation Council, though popularly regarded as the central seat of authority, frequently appears to be acting more as moderator among numerous powerful departments. That all these organizations, led by very capable beings, should be the unwitting tools and pawns of Tuvela-Guardians may not be impossible but is highly questionable.
Therefore, I say we should not accept the possibility that Dr. Etland is a Guardian as a satisfactory explanation. I ask the Lord Ildaan to poll the Committee.
The Lord Ildaan: I poll the Committee and the Committee agrees. The Lord Toshin will resume comment.
The Lord Toshin: The second possible explanation is that Dr. Etland, while not a Guardian and not in the Parahuan sense a Tuvela, has paranormal abilities and employed them to terrorize the invasion force to the point of precipitate retreat. I refer to what is known as the Uld powers. To this, I can say only that there is nothing in her record or reputation to indicate she has such abilities. Beyond that, lacking sufficient information on the human use of Uld powers, I shall offer no opinion.
The Lord Ildaan: The Lord Gulhad will comment.
The Lord Gulhad: At one time I made an extensive investigation of this subject in the Federation. My purpose was to test a theory that the emergence of a species from its native world into space and the consequent impact of a wide variety of physical and psychic pressures leads eventually to a pronounced upsurge in its use of Uld powers. The human species, of course, has been in space for a very short time in biological terms. Because of the recent acute disturbances in its political history, I was unable to obtain confirmation of the theory. The available records are not sufficiently reliable.
However, I could establish that the humans of our day make use of Uld powers more extensively than most other intelligent species now known to us. Humans who do so are called psis. There is little popular interest in psis in the Federation, and there is considerable misinformation concerning them. It is possible that several branches of the Overgovernment are involved in psi activities, but I found no proof of it. It is also possible that the Federation has advanced the non-biological harnessing of Uld powers to an extent considerably beyond what is generally known, and is therefore relatively indifferent to its usually less exact control by living minds.
The question is then whether Dr. Etland, either directly or with the aid of Uld devices, could have used Uld powers to produce the disconcerting manifestations reported to the Committee by the Lord Mingolm. Did she incite normally harmless lower life forms to attack the Parahuans? Did she make herself invisible and generally untraceable? Did she cause opponents to disappear, perhaps into the depths of the sea, into space—even into dimensions presently unknown to us? Did she madden the minds of the Voice of Action, forcing them into their disastrous revolt? Was the explosion of the two submerged ships which triggered the abrupt retreat brought on by a manipulation of Uld powers?
All this is possible. We know or suspect that human psis and other users of Uld have produced phenomena which parallel those I listed.
However, it is improbable. In part because there is no record that any one Uld user could employ the powers in so many dissimilar ways. Even if we assume that Dr. Cay was also an accomplished psi and that the two worked together, it remains improbable.
It is further improbable because we cannot say that Dr. Etland could have achieved what she did only through the use of Uld power. Considered individually, each reported event might have had a normal cause. And since the deliberate control of Uld to a significant extent remains exceedingly rare also among humans, its use should not be assumed when other explanations are available.
The Lord Ildaan: I poll the Committee and the Committee agrees. The Lord Toshin will comment.
The Lord Toshin: There remains, as the Lord Gulhad indicated, a third possibility. I find it perhaps more disquieting than the two we have considered. It is, of course, that Dr. Etland is precisely what she seems to be—an exceptionally capable human, but one with no abnormal qualities and no mysterious authority. Our investigation indicated that she is thoroughly familiar with the floating forests of her world and the life forms to be found there, is skilled with weapons and on a number of occasions has engaged successfully in combat with her kind. Dr. Cay was a Parahuan captive long enough to have gained detailed information on the Tuvela Theory. It is difficult to see how he could have transmitted this knowledge to Dr. Etland. But if we assume he found a way of doing it, it seems we should accept, as the most probable explanation of the events reported by the Parahuan survivors, that Dr. Etland used the information and her familiarity with the area and its tactical possibilities, along with physical competence and ordinary weapons, to demoralize and eventually rout the enemy.