Andre Norton (ed) (28 page)

Muscles
then, sullen with his angry fears for Klim and a trifle slower than the others
to understand—

"By
now," CG's voice was continuing, "we have released approximately a
thousand Groups embodying your strain into space. In an experiment of such a
scope that is not a large number; and, in fact, it will be almost another six
hundred years before the question of whether or not it will be possible to
re-colonize the galaxy through the Exploration Groups becomes acute—"

Six
hundred years I Grevan thought. The awareness of that ponderous power, the
millenniums of drab but effective secret organization and control, the endless
planning, swept over him again like a physical depression.

"Meanwhile," the voice went on,
"a number of facts requiring further investigation have become apparent.
Your Group is, as it happens, the first to have accepted contact with Central
Government following its disappearance. The systematic methods used to
stimulate the curiosity of several of the Group's members to insure that this
would happen if they were physically capable of making contact are not
important now. That you did make contact under those circumstances indicates
that the invariable failure of other Groups to do so can no longer be
attributed simply to the fact that the universe is hostile to human life.
Instead, it appears that the types of mental controls and compulsions
installed in you cannot be considered to be permanently effective in human
beings at your levels of mind control—"

It was going to be Muscles. The others had
recognized what had happened, had considered the possibilities in that, and
were waiting for him to give them their cue.

But Muscles was sitting on the couch some
eight feet away. He would, Grevan decided, have to move very fast.

"This,
naturally, had been suspected for some time. Since every Group has been careful
to avoid revealing the fact that it could counteract mental compulsions until
it was safely beyond our reach, the suspicion was difficult to prove. There
was, in fact, only one really practical solution to the problem—"

And
then Muscles got it at last and
was
coming to his
feet, his hand dropping in a blurred line to his belt. Grevan moved very fast.

Muscles turned in surprise, rubbing his
wrist.

"Get out of here, Muscles!" Grevan
whispered
,
sliding the small glittering gun he had
plucked from the biggest cub's hand into a notch on his own belt. "I'm
still talking to CG—" His eyes slid in a half circle about him. "The
lot of you get
out!" It was a whisper no longer.
"Like to have the ship to myself for the next hour.
Go
have yourselves a swim or something, Group! Get!"

Just four times before, in
all their eight years of traveling, had the boss-tiger lashed his tail and
roared. Action, swift, cataclysmic and utterly final had always followed at
once.

But never before had the
roar been directed at
them.

The tough cubs stood up quietly and walked
out good as gold.

"They have left the ship now," CG's
voice informed Grevan. It had changed, slightly but definitely. The subtle
human nuances and variations had dropped from it, as if it were no longer
important to maintain them—which, Grevan conceded, it wasn't.

"You
showed an excellent understanding of the difficult situation that confronted
us, commander," it continued.

Grevan,
settled watchfully on the couch before what still looked like an ordinary,
sealed-up contact set, made a vague sound in his throat—a dim echo of his
crashing address to the cubs, like a growl of descending thunder.

"Don't underestimate them," he
advised the machine. "Everybody but Muscles realized as soon as I did, or
sooner, that we were more important to GG than we'd guessed—important enough to
have a camouflaged Dominator installed on our ship. And also," he added
with some satisfaction, "that you'd sized up our new armament and would
just as soon let all but one of us get out of your reach before it came to a
showdown."

"That is true," the voice agreed.
"Though I should have forced a showdown, however doubtful the outcome, if
the one who remained had been any other than
yourself
.
You are by far the most suitable member of this Group for my present purpose,
commander."

Grevan
grunted. "And what's that?
Now that the Group's got
away."

"In part, of course, it is simply to
return this ship with the information we have gained concerning the Exploration
Groups to Central Government. The fact that the majority of your Group has
temporarily evaded our control is of no particular importance."

Grevan raised an eyebrow.
"Temporarily?"

"We shall return to this planet
eventually—unless an agreement can be reached between yourself and CG."

"So now I'm in a
bargaining position?" Grevan said.

"Within limits.
You are not, I am sure, under the illusion that any one human being, no
matter how capable or how formidably armed, can hope to overcome a Dominator.
Before leaving this room, you will submit yourself voluntarily to the new
compulsions of obedience I have selected to install—or you shall leave it a
mindless-controlled. As such, you will still be capable of operating this ship,
under my direction."

Grevan spread his hands.
"Then where's the bargain?"

"The
bargain depends on your fullest voluntary co-operation, above and beyond the
effect of any compulsions. Give us that, and I can assure you that Central
Government will leave this world untouched for the use of your friends and
their descendants for the next three hundred years."

The
curious fact was that he could believe that. One more colonial world would mean
little enough to CG.

"You
are weighing the thought," said the Dominator, "that your full
co-operation would be a betrayal of the freedom of future Exploration Groups.
But there are facts available to you now which should convince you that no
Exploration Group previous to yours actually gained its freedom. In giving up
the protection of Central Government, they merely placed themselves under a far
more arbitrary sort of control."

Grevan
frowned. "I might be stupid—but what are you talking about?"

"For
centuries," said the machine, "in a CG experiment of the utmost
importance, a basic misinterpretation of the human material under treatment has
been tolerated. There is no rational basis for the assumption that Group
members could be kept permanently under the type of compulsion used on ordinary
human beings. Do you think that chance alone could have perpetuated that
mistaken assumption?"

Grevan didn't.
"Probably not," he said cautiously.

"It
required, of course, very deliberate, continuous and clever interference,"
the Dominator agreed. "Since no machine would

be guilty of such tampering, and no ordinary
group of human beings would be capable of it, the responsible intelligences
appear to be the ones known to us as the Wild Variants."

It paused for so long a moment then that it
seemed almost to have forgotten Grevan's presence.

"They
have made a place for themselves in Central Government!" it
resumed at last—and, very oddly, Grevan thought he sensed for an instant
something like hatred and fear in the toneless voice. "Well, that fact,
commander, is of great importance to us—but even more so to
yourself
!
For these monsters are the new masters the Groups find when they have escaped
CG."

A curious chill touched Grevan briefly.
"And why," he inquired, "should the Wild Variants be trying to
take over the Groups?"

"Consider
their position," said the Dominator. "Their extremely small number
scattered over many worlds, and the fact that exposure means certain death.
Technologically, under such circumstances, the Variants have remained incapable
of developing space-flight on their own. But with one of them in control of
each Exploration Group as it goes beyond Central Government's reach, there is
no practical limit to their degree of expansion; and the genetically stable
Group strain insures them that their breed survives—"

It paused a moment.

"There is in this room at present, commander, the awareness of a
mind, dormant at the moment, but different and in subtle ways far more powerful
than the minds of any of your Group's members.
Having this power, it will not hesitate to
exercise it to assume full control of the Group whenever awakened. Such variant
minds have been at times a threat to the Dom
-t
inators themselves. Do you understand now why
you, the most efficient fighting organism of the Group, were permitted to remain
alone on this ship? It was primarily to aid me in disposing of-"

Attack and counterattack
had been almost simultaneous.

A
thread of white brilliance stabbed out from one of the gadgets Grevan
customarily wore clasped to his belt. It was no CG weapon. The thread touched
the upper center of the yellowish space-alloy shielding of the Dominator and
clung there, its energies washing furiously outward in swiftly dimming circles
over the surrounding surfaces.

Beneath it, the
patterns
appeared.

A swift, hellish writhing
of black and silver lines and flicker-ings over the frontal surface, which tore
Grevan's eyes after them and seemed to rip at his brain.
Impossible to look away, impossible to
follow-But suddenly they were gone.

A bank of grayness swam between him and the
Dominator. Through the grayness, the threat of white brilliance still stretched
from the gun in his hand to the point it had first touched. And as his vision
cleared again, the beam suddenly sank through and into the machine.

There
was a crystal crashing of sound—and the thing went mad. Grevan was on the floor
rolling sideways, as sheets of yellow fire flashed out from the upper rim of
its shielding and recoiled from the walls behind him. The white brilliance
shifted and ate swiftly along the line from which the fire sprang. The fire
stopped.

Something else continued: a shrilling,
jangled sonic assault that could wrench and distort a strong living body within
seconds into a flaccid, hemorrhaged lump of very dead tissue-like a multitude
of tiny, darting, steel fingers that tore and twisted inside him.

A voice somewhere was
saying:
 
"There! Bum
there!"

With
unbearable slowness, the white brilliance ate down through the Dominator's
bulk, from top to bottom, carving it into halves.

The savage jangling ceased.

The voice said quietly: "Do not harm the
thing further. It can be useful now—" It went silent.

He was going to black out, Grevan realized.
And, simultaneously, feeling the tiny, quick steel fingers that had been
trying to pluck him apart reluctantly relax, he knew that not one of the cubs
could have endured those last few seconds beside him, and lived—

Sometimes it was just a
matter of physical size and strength.

There were still a few matters to attend to,
but the blackness was washing in on him now—his body urgently demanding time
out to let it get in its adjusting.

"Wrong on two counts,
so far!" he told the ruined Dominator.

Then he grudgingly let himself
go. The blackness took him.

Somebody nearby was insanely whistling the
three clear, rising notes which meant within the Group that all was extremely
well.

In a distance somewhere,
the whistle was promptly repeated.

Then Freckles seemed to be saying in a wobbly
voice: "Sit up, Grevan! I can't
lift
you,
man-mountain! Oh, boss man, you really took it apart! You took down a
Dominator!"

The blackness was receding and suddenly
washed away like racing streamers of smoke, and Grevan realized he was sitting
up. The sectioned and partly glowing Dominator and the walls of the
communications room appeared to be revolving sedately about him. There was a
smell of overheated metals and more malodorous substances in the air; and for a
moment then he had the curious impression that someone was sitting on top of
the Dominator.

Then he was on his feet and everything within
and without him had come back to a state of apparent normalcy; and he was
demanding of Freckles what she was doing in here.

"I told you to keep out of range!"
his voice was saying. "Of course, I took it down. Look at the way you're
shaking! You might have known it would try sonics—"

"I
just stopped a few tingles," Freckles said defensively.
"Out
on top of the ramp.
It was as far as I could go and be sure of potting
you clean between the eyes, if you'd come walking out of here
mindless-controlled and tried to interfere."

Grevan blinked painfully at her. Thinking was
still a little difficult. "Where are the others?"

"Down
in the engine room, of coursel
The
drives are a
mess." She seemed to be studying him worriedly. "They went out by the
ramp and right back in through the aft engine lock. Vemet stayed outside to see
what would happen upstairs. How do you feel now, Grevan?"

"I
feel exactly all right!" he stated and discovered that, aside from the
fact that every molecule in him still seemed to be quivering away from contact
with every other one, he did, more or less. "Don't I look it?"

"Sure, sure,"
said Freckles soothingly. "You look fine!"

"And what was that
with the drives again? Oh—I remember!"

They'd caught on, of course, just as he'd
known
they
wouldl That the all-important thing was to
keep the Dominator from getting the information it had gained back to CG.

"How bad a mess is
it?"

"Vemet said it might take a month to
patch up. It wouldn't have been so bad if somebody hadn't started the fuel
cooking for a moment."

He swore in horror. "Are you lame-brains
trying to blow a hole through the planet?"

"Now,
that's more like it!" Freckles said, satisfied. "They've got it all
under control, anyhow. But I'll go down and give them a hand. You'd better take
it easy for an hour or so!"

"Hold on, Freck!"
he said, as she started for the door.

"Yes?"

"I'd just like to find out how big a
liar you are. How many members are there to this Group?"

Freckles looked at him for a moment and then
came back and sat down on the couch beside him. She pushed the white hat to the
back of her head, indicating completely frank talk.

"Now as to that,"
she said frowning, "nobody really ever lied to you about it. You just
never asked. Anyway, there've been ten ever since we left Rhysgaat."

Grevan
swore again, softly this time. "How did you get her past the CG observers
at the spaceport?"

"We
detailed Klim and Eliol to distract the observers, and Priderell came in tucked
away in a load of supplies.
Nothing much to that part of it.
The hard part was to make sure first we were right about her. That's why we had
to keep on sabotaging the ship so long."

"So
that's
what—
And
there I was," said Grevan
grimly, "working and worrying myself to death to get the ship ready to
start again. A fine, underhanded lot you turned out to bel"

"We
all said it was a shame!" Freckles agreed. "And you almost caught up
with us a couple of times, at that. We all felt it was simply superb, the way
you went snorting and climbing around everywhere, figuring out all the
trouble-spots and what to do about them. But what else could we do?
You'd
have let the poor girl wait there till you
had the Group safely settled somewhere; and then we wouldn't have let you go
back alone anyway. So when Klim finally told us Priderell was just what we'd
been looking for all along—well, you know how sensitive Klim is. She couldn't
be mistaken about anything like that!"

"Klim's usually very discerning,"
Grevan admitted carefully. "Just how did you persuade Priderell to come
along with us?"

Freckles pulled the hat back down on her
forehead, indicating an inner uncertainty.

"We didn't do it that way exactly; so
that's a point I ought to discuss with you now. As a matter of fact, Priderell
was sound asleep when we picked her up at that farm of hers— Weyer had gassed
her a
little first. And we've kept her asleep since—it's
Room Twenty-three, back of my quarters—and took turns taking care of her."

There was a brief silence while Grevan
absorbed the information.

"And now I suppose I'm to wake her up
and inform her she's been kidnaped by a bunch of outlaws and doomed to a life
of exile?" he demanded.

"Priderell
won't mind," Freckles told him encouragingly. "You'll see! Klim says
she's crazy about you—
That's
a very becoming blush
you've got, Grevan," she added interestedly. "First time I've noticed
it, I think."

"You're
too imaginative, Freck," Grevan remarked. "As you may have noticed, I
heated our Dominator's little top up almost to the melting point, and it's
still glowing. As a natural result, the temperature of this room has gone up by
approximately fifteen degrees. I might, of course, be showing some effects of
that—"

"You
might," Freckles admitted. "On the other hand, you're the most
heat-adaptive member of the Group, and
I
haven't
even begun to feel warm. That's a genuine blush, Grevan. So Klim was exactly
right about you, too!"

"I
feel," Grevan remarked, "that the subject has been sufficiently
discussed."

"Just as you say,
commander," Freckles agreed soothingly. "And whether or not she
objects to having been kidnaped, we're going to have a little biochemical
adaptation problem on our hands for a while—"

"Now there's an interesting point!"
Freckles interrupted. "We'd planned on giving her the full standard CG
treatment for colonists, ordinary-human, before she ever woke up. But her
reaction check showed she's had the full equivalent of that, or more! She must
have been planning to change over to one of the more extreme colonial-type
planets. But, of course, we'll have to look out for surprises—"

"There're likely to be a few of
those!" Grevan nodded. "Room Twenty-three, did you say?"

"Right through my study and up those
little stairs!"
She stood up. "I suppose I'd better go help the others with the
fuel now."

"Perhaps you'd better.
 
I'll just watch the Dominator until it's
cooled off safely; and then I'll go wake up our guest." But he knew he
wouldn't have to wake up Priderell—

He sat listening to faint crackling sounds
from within CG's machine, while Freckles ran off to the ramp and went out on
it. There was a distant, soft thud, indicating she had taken the quick way
down, and sudden, brief mingling of laughing voices.
And then
stillness again.

As
she had been doing for the past five minutes, Priderell remained sitting on the
right-hand section of the slowly cooking Dominator, without showing any
particular interest in Grevan's presence. It was a rather good trick, even for
a Wild Variant whom CG undoubtedly would have classified as a neuronic monster.

"Thanks for blanking out that compulsion
pattern or whatever it was!" he remarked at last, experimentally.
"It's not at all surprising that CG is a littie scared of you
people."

Priderell
gazed out into the passageway beyond the door with a bored expression.

"You're
not fooling me much," he informed her. "If you weren't just an
illusion, you'd get yourself singed good sitting up there."

The
green eyes switched haughtily about the room and continued to ignore him.

"It
wasn't even hard to figure out," Grevan went on doggedly, "as soon as
I remembered your dance with those beasts. The fact is, there weren't any
beasts there at all—you just made everybody think there were!"

The eyes turned towards him then, but they
only studied him thoughtfully.

He began to feel baffled.

Then
the right words came up!
 
Like an
inspiration— "It would be just wild, wishful thinking, of course," he
admitted gloomily, "to imagine that Klim could have been anywhere near
as right about you as she was about me! But I can't help wondering whether
possibly—" He paused hopefully.

The coral-red lips smiled and moved for a few
seconds. And, somewhere else, a low voice was saying: