Three to Conquer (16 page)

             
"That would be gross violation of their constitutional rights. We could get away with such tactics only by justifying them before the public. To do that, we must release information that we wish to reserve, at least for the time being." His eyes questioned Harper as if to say,
"What's the answer to that?"

             
Harper took it up promptly. "Tell the Whittinghams that Jocelyn died of a new, malignant and highly contagious disease. They must be isolated until
found free from it. The black plague again."

             
"What, when they know she was shot?"

             
"
I
had the disease. I was raving mad with it. I touched her, contaminated her; she's lucky to be dead. You've got to give a clean bill of health to whoever handled her afterward. Some clause in the health laws can be finagled to cover their incarceration. No protectors of civil liberties are going to bawl about the freedom of suspected lepers—and the story will be substantially true, won't it?"

             
"You may have something there." Conway used the phone again, gave instructions,
finished
, "Consult Professor Holzberger about the technical description of a suitable pretext. What is needed is something strong enough to convince, but not strong enough to cause a panic." He ended, said to Harper, "And now what?"

             
"When there's a chance, let me go out there to look them over. If I find them all clean, give them a mock check-up by some worried-looking medico and let them go. They'll be too relieved to gripe."

             
"But if one of them is possessed?"

             
"I'll smell him at first sniff; he
'
ll know it, too. Keep him at all costs. When the others have gone, pull him apart. You could do that without a qualm, because you'll be carving an animated corpse. With luck you might be able to isolate whatever it is."

             
Conway frowned. Jameson looked slightly sick. Benfield didn't enjoy it, either; he was visualizing his hands shaving himself at another's behest."

             
"We'll take that up shortly," said Conway. "There is one more cogent point- yet to be considered. You say that the instant you recognized the Whittingham girl, her immediate thought was of escape?"

             
"Yes."

             
"But not to a specific place?
"

             
"
No."

             
"Therefore her impulse to flee was instinctive, and no more?"

             
"Not entirely. She experienced the shock of somebody deprived, without warning, of a long-established and greatly valued truth—namely, that recognition is impossible. She was confronted with an irrefutable fact which was contrary to all experience. She felt the dire need to get away from me and tell the others."

             
"Which others?
Where?"

             
"
I don't know."

             
"You know only that
she
didn't know?"

             
Harper fidgeted around, brooded at the floor. "Frankly, I'm unable to give a satisfactory answer; she may have known, but succeeded in suppressing the knowledge. That I doubt. Or
—"

             
"Or what?"

             
"She may have possessed some alien sense which enables her kind to contact each other
. "
Something
like
the homing instinct of pigeons or dogs, but on a species basis."

             
"But you are convinced that she was not telepathic?"

             
"Not in the way that I am."

             
"In some other way, perhaps?"

             
"Nothing is impossible," said Harper flatly. "It is beyond my power to list the attributes of things native to some place umpteen millions of miles away, after a one-second glance. Catch me another dozen.
I'll
take a longer look, and tell you more."

             
Responding to Conway's gesture, Benfield switched off the tape-recorder.

             
"Catch you another dozen," echoed Conway. "How the devil are we going to do that? We know of three, and it's not beyond our resources to find and seize them sooner or later. Getting any others who may be around is a different matter. We have nothing to go upon, no details concerning them, no way of identifying them." His gaze came up, levelled on Harper.
"Excepting through you.
That's why you're drafted. We require your services to test every suspect we can lay hands on."

             
"So I'm expected to stay put, wait for your lineups, look them over and say yes or no?"
–

             
"Exactly.
There is no other way."

             
"There is," Harper contradicted.

             
"For instance?"

             
"You could use me for bait."

             
"Eh?"

             
"They want me as badly as you want them. They need to
learn
what makes me a nuisance, fully as much as you need to lea
rn
about them. In that respect, they have an advantage. You must try to grab an unknown number of unknown pseudo-people; they have to snatch one
man whose name, address and car-tag number have been shouted all over the country. Give them half a
chance,
and they'll swarm around me. Then all you need do is step in."

             
Conway breathed heavily and objected, "It's a risk, a grave risk."

             
"Think
I'm
tickled pink about it?"

             
"If anything should go wrong, we
'
ll have lost our most effective counter-weapon, and be without means to replace it."

             
"The beauty of that will be," said Harper cheerfully, "that I will no longer care one-tenth of a damn. The dead are splendidly indifferent about who wins a war, or gains a world."

             
"Perhaps not; but well still be living."

             
"That won't concern me, either. My great-grandmother doesn't give a hoot about the hole in my sock."

             
"And
you
may still be living," retorted Conway.
"Even though dead.

             
"I'll be a go
n
er, either way," Harper gave back.
"What if some midget alien
is
wearing me like mink?"

             
He grinned at them, enjoying the repulsion in their minds.

-

             
The general was like a chess-player trying to decide whether checkmate could be ensured by sacrificing his queen. To his military mind, telepaths were expendable—providing the supply of them was endless. Unfortunately, they were neither shells nor guns; they could not be manufactured to order. So far as could be determined, he had one, and only one, telepathic weapon in his armory. If that one went, there'd be no more.

             
Conway was still stewing it over, when again his phone called for attention. He took it meditatively, listened,
abruptly
came to full attention.

             
"Who?"
When did this happen? Yes, yes, you'd better." He cradled it, scowled forward.

             
"Something wrong?" asked Harper.

             
"You know what's wrong; you must have heard the details being recorded in my mind."

             
"I wasn't listening. I was full of my own thoughts. I can't make noises at myself and at the same time take note of other people's cerebral trumpetings."

             
"One of the witnesses is dead; the old man at the filling station."

             
"Murdered?"

             
"Yes. It
happened
a couple of hours ago, but they found him only within the last fifteen minutes. Whoever did it has a good headstart." Conway cocked an inquiring eye at Jameson. "I don't know what to think of it. You've far more experience in such matters; do you suppose this may be mere coincidence?"

             
"How was he killed?" Jameson asked.

             
"They discovered him lying by his pumps, his skull crushed by a single blow from a heavy.
instrument
. They say it looks as if he filled somebody's tank, and was struck down when he tried to collect."

             
"Any evidence of robbery?
Had his pockets been emptied or the cash register cleaned out?"

             
"No."

             
"H'm!" That doesn't prove that robbery wasn't the motive," Jameson opined. 'The culprits may have been scared off before they could complete the job. Or maybe they were joyriders who slugged him for a free tank of gas, overdid it, and made it murder."

             
Conway turned his attention to Harper. "The police out there feel hamstrung because they're under strict orders to abandon everything in favor of the hunt for missing pilots.-Yet one investigation may be part of the other, and I don't want it to be ignored if there is a connection. On the other hand, I'd rather not countermand orders unless such a connection exists. What is your opinion?"

             
"If Venusians did it to shut the old fellow's trap, they arrived too late. He saw their photos and set the fireworks going before they could stop him. But
they
wouldn't know that."

             
"You think this is not a coincidence?"

             
"No," said Harper carefully. "Jameson has given his viewpoint, and I'm trying to consider its opposite. I'm telling you that if those three are aware of the identity of the girl they converted, her death will give them the shakes. Two and two make four on any planet. They'll add up the news, make it the correct total, and decide she'd been found out somehow, God knows how."

             
"And so—?"

             
"They know a nation-wide hunt will be after them, unless they can cover up. If they can postpone capture long enough, it will come too late. Many people spotted them in that Thunderbug, but only two saw them with the girl, and took a close look at them at the time.
Those were Alderson and the oldster. The former is too dead to study pictures; it would help them some to have the latter in the same condition."

             
"Then why were they so slow to get at him?" commented Conway. "They dealt with him three to four hours behind time."

             
"I killed that girl and came here as fast as I could go, and have been hanging around all day. The news didn't break until some time after I'd left. If, when they saw the news, they had to rush back as far, or perhaps farther, they must have moved as swiftly as they dared. It takes time to cover territory, even in these days."