Three to Conquer (12 page)

             
"We're onto something peculiar here. I won't take up your time with the full details. It would help considerably if you can tell me whether a new space-venture has been made in secret." He listened a bit, while his expression gradually went flat. "Yes, it's highly important that we should know one way or the other. Will you? Thanks a lot!" He planted the phone.

             
"He doesn't know?" said Harper.

             
"Correct."

             
"Should
he know?"

             
"I assumed that he would;' I could be wrong. The more highly confidential a piece of knowledge, the fewer entrusted with it—and the further we
'
ll have to seek for an answer, if there
is
a satisfactory answer." Taking a large blue handkerchief from his breast pocket, Jameson mopped his brow, although he was not perspiring. "Brockman will call back as soon as he can make it."

             
"It would save valuable time to ring the White House and ask the President. Don't tell me
he
won't know what's going on.

             
Jameson was shocked. "Look, let me handle this in my own way, will you?"

             
"Sure. But the longer we take over this, the sooner you may start handling things in some unearthly way." Harper registered a sour grin. "Not having my gun, I'd then be forced to strangle you with my own hands—if I could do so without
you
taking me over."

             
"Shut up!" ordered Jameson
, .
looking
slightly sick. He scowled at the telephone, which promptly jangled. He snatched it up, said, "Well?" and let half a dozen expressions run over his face. Then he racked the phone, came to his feet and said, "They want us over there immediately.
"

             
"
And we know why, don't we?"

             
Offering no response, Jameson led the way down and got into a car. They rolled ten blocks, went up to the twentieth floor of a glass and concrete building and entered an office in which waited four serious men.

             
These four glanced briefly at Harper without recognizing him, despite all the recent publicity. Apparently, they seldom got around to reading the newspapers, or watching the video.

             
The oldest of the quartet, a lean-faced individual with sharp eyes and fine white hair, snapped at Jameson, "What's all this about a space-expedition? Where did you pick up such a story?"

             
Jameson indicated his companion. "This is Wade Harper. State police have him tagged as a murderer. He came to us an hour or so ago. My query arose from his story."

             
Four pairs of eyes shifted to Harper. "What story?"

             
These men were edgy, and Harper could see it. He could also see why
they
had the willies: they were deeply concerned about reserved data becoming public property. And he could see, too, that, for the moment, Jameson had forgotten his special aptitude.

             
Addressing the white-haired man, Harper filched his name and said, "Mr. King, I know for a fact that eighteen months ago we sent a ship to Venus, the nearest planet. That ship was the
result of twenty years of governmental experimentation. It bore a crew of three hand-picked men. Its return has two alternative dates. If the crew found conditions unbearable, the ship should have been back last
November. If conditions permit them to exist, and indulge a little exploration, they're due in mid-June, about five weeks hence. The fact that they are not known to have returned is officially considered encouraging. The government awaits their arrival before giving the news to the world."

             
King heard all this with a facial impassivity that he fondly imagined concealed his boiling thoughts. He asked with forced calmness,
And
how did you obtain this information?"

             
It was too much for Jameson, who had listened with amazement to the recital and had been awakened by it. "This man is telepathic, Mr. King. He has proved it to my satisfaction; he has picked the facts out of your mind."

             
"Indeed?" King was openly skeptical. "Then how do you account for the nature of your call to Brockman twenty minutes ago?"

             
"I suspected it then," Harper chipped in. "But now I
know."
He studied King levelly, and added, "At the moment, you're thinking that if the world is to be afflicted with such creatures as telepaths, it might
be a good thing to put them out of harm's way, and fast."

             
"You know too much," said King. "No government could function with any degree of security with people like you hanging around."

             
"I've been hanging around enough years to make me wish they were fewer. We haven't had a bloody revolution yet."

             
"But we have a suspected murderer dragged into a government office by a departmental director of the F.B.I.," said King. "It is certainly a new and previously unheard-of practice. I hope they had the forethought to search you for concealed weapons."

             
By Harper's side, Jameson reddened and interjected, "Pardon me, Mr. King, but there is far more to this issue than the aspect that seems to irritate you."

             
"Such as what?"

             
"The ship is back," Harper put in.

             
All four jerked, as though stabbed with needles.

             
King demanded, "When did it return? Where did it land?"

             
"I don't know."

             
"Then how do you know it is back?"

             
"He found a trace of the crew," informed Jameson. "Or that's how it looks."

             
Harper contradicted carefully, "No, I don't think I did; I think the crew is dead."

             
"So the crew died and you haven't the faintest notion of where their ship is planted?" inquired King. "Nevertheless you
know
that the ship has returned?"

             
"I do."

             
"It made the trip all on its own? A unique spatial convulsion flung it thirty million miles or more across the void, and dumped it somewhere unknown to all and unsuspected by anyone but you?"

             
"Your sarcasm is pointless, doesn't help any, and furthermore it gives me a pain in the seat," snapped Harper, becoming tough. "The ship was brought here by a bunch of Venusians. How d'you like that, eh?"

             
King didn't like it at all. His mind unhesitatingly rejected the bald statement, started sorting out a dozen objections.

             
The bespect
a
cled man on his right took advantage of the pause to chip in.

             
"Piloting a space-ship is not an easy matter."

             
"No, Mr. Smedly, I guess it isn't."

             
"It's highly technical; it requires a great deal of know-how."

             
"That," said
Harper,
"is precisely the hell of it.
"

             
"
What do you mean?"

             
"Anyone who can hijack a ship and run it forthwith, without any tuition, can take over anything else we've got with as little trouble." He gave them a few seconds to stew the point, then added for good measure, "Bit by bit, piece by piece, until they have everything and we have nothing—not even our souls."

             
"That idea is detestable," said King, beginning to feel cold.

             
"It should be," agreed Harper. "And further, you'd do well to abandon this latest notion you're concocting.
"

             
"
What notion?"

             
"That I'm the agent of a scheming gang across the ocean who are trying to pull a fast one. All that feuding is over, as from today. They're in the same mess along with the rest of humanity; they're going to become just as scared as I am right now."

             
"I doubt it. They'll be equally suspicious; they'll blame us for trying to disturb the world with a better and bigger bogey."

             
"It won't matter a cuss who blames whom when we're no longer human.
Come to that, we won't be capable of apportioning blame."

             
King argued stubbornly, "It seems to me that you're taking a devil of a lot for granted on the basis of very little evidence. That evidence may be real enough to you. To us, it comes secondhand. Even if we accept you as a genuine telepath, I can conceive no logical reason for supposing that a telepath is impervious to delusions. Do you seriously expect us to alert the entire defenses of this country on the strength of an unproved story?"

             
"No, I don't," admitted Harper. "I'm not that daft."

             
"Then, what do you expect of us?"

             
"First, I wanted official confirmation of my suspicion that a ship really has been sent somewhere beyond the Moon. That is why I came all the way here, and avoided being picked up by local police who know too little and bark too much. Somehow or other I
had
to learn about that ship."

             
"Secondly?"

             
"I now expect action, within reasonable limits. If it produces the proof you require, I expect further action on a national scale."

             
"It is far easier to talk about getting proof than to go out and dig it up. If it exists, why didn't you find it yourself and bring it with you? Surely your own common sense should tell you that the wilder a story, the more proof it requires to make convincing?"

             
"I know," said Harper. And I reckon I could have got enough to make you leap out of your shirt if only I'd possessed an item hidden in your top-secret files.
"

             
"
To what are you referring?"

             
"The photographs of those three spacemen."
He eyed King and his confreres with the sorrowful reproof of one surprised by their inability to perceive the obvious. "We have a witness who got a good, close look at two of those three, and made careful note of them. Show him your pictures. If he says they're the
boys, that settles
it. The balloon goes up next minute."

             
Jameson waggled his eyebrows and put in, "Yes, that is the logical move. It should decide the matter one way or the other. We can do better than that, too. We can remove any element of doubt."

             
"How?" inquired King.

             
"A dozen, twenty, or forty people may have noticed that Thunderbug and the three men with it. I can put agents on the job of tracing that back-track and finding the witnesses. If all of them say the same thing, namely, that those three men are your missing pilots—" He let it die out, thereby making it sound highly sinister.