But the gist of the matter lay in the situation as it was when Mary was removed from the artificial incubator. The titan invasion of Venus had failed, or was failing. Almost certainly she was possessed as soon as they removed her from the tank—but Mary had outlived the slug that possessed her.
Why had the slugs died? Why had the invasion of Venus failed? It was for clues to these that the Old Man and Dr. Steelton had gone fishing in Mary’s brain.
I said, “Is that all?”
He answered, “Isn’t that enough?”
“It raises as many questions as it answers,” I complained.
“Of course there is more,” he told me, “a great deal more. But you aren’t a Venerian expert of any sort, nor a psychologist, so you won’t be called on to evaluate it. I’ve told you what I have so that you will know why we have to work on Mary and so that you won’t question her about it. Be good to her, boy; she’s had more than her share of grief.”
I ignored the advice; I can get along or not get along with my own wife without help, thank you. “What I can’t figure out,” I answered, “is why you ever had Mary linked up with flying saucers in the first place? I can see now that you took her along on that first trip to Iowa on purpose. You were right, granted—but why? And don’t give me any malarkey.”
The Old Man himself looked puzzled. “Son, do you ever have hunches?”
“Lord, yes!”
“What is a ‘hunch’?”
“Eh? It’s a belief that something is so, or isn’t so, without evidence. Or a premonition that something is going to happen—or a compulsion to do something.”
“Sloppy definitions. I’d call a hunch the result of automatic reasoning below the conscious level on data you did not know you possessed.”
“Sounds like the black cat in the coal cellar at midnight. You didn’t have any data, not then. Don’t tell me that your unconscious mind works on data you are going to get, next week. I won’t believe it.”
“Ah, but I did have data.”
“Huh?”
“What’s the last thing that happens to a candidate before he is certified as an agent in our section?”
“The personal interview with you.”
“No, no!”
“Oh—the trance analysis.” I had forgotten hypno-analysis for the simple reason that the subject never remembers it; he’s off somewhere else, wherever it is you go when you’re asleep. “You mean you had this data on Mary then. It wasn’t a hunch at all.”
“No again. I had some, a very little of it—Mary’s defenses are strong. And I had forgotten what little I knew, in my conscious memory. But I knew that Mary was the agent for this job. Later on I played back her hypno interview; then I knew that there must be more. We tried for it—and did not get it. But I knew that there had to be more.”
I thought it over. “You must have been pretty cocky certain that it was worth digging out; you sure put her over the bumps to get it.”
“I had to. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, okay.” I waited a moment, then said, “Look—what was there in my hypno record?”
“That’s not a proper question.”
“Nuts.”
“And I couldn’t tell you if I would. I have never listened to your analysis, son.”
“Huh?”
“I had my deputy play it, then asked him if there were anything in it which I should know. He said there wasn’t so I never played it.”
“So? Well—thanks.”
He merely grunted, but I felt warmer toward him than I had in a long time. Dad and I have always managed to embarrass each other.
XXIX
The slugs had died from something they contracted on Venus. That much we knew, or thought we knew. We weren’t likely to get another chance in a hurry to collect direct information as a dispatch came in while the Old Man and I were still talking, telling us that Rexton had finally ordered the Pass Christian saucer bombed to keep it from falling back in the hands of the titans. I think that the Old Man had hoped to get at those human beings whom we knew to be inanimate prisoners in that ship, find some way to breathe life into them, and question them.