Spence sought to quell this inner mutiny as he walked back to the lab. There was no reason not to continue as planned-no scientifically objective reason.
He entered the lab with the faint whisper of the sliding partition. The lights were off and Tickler was gone. The lab was quiet. He stepped in and the door slid closed behind him, leaving him in complete darkness and silence.
He turned to fumble in the blackness for the access plate in order to switch on a lighting panel overhead. As he wheeled around, the faintest trace of a glimmer caught his eye. He stopped and turned back slowly.
In the darkness of the empty lab he perceived a strange luminescence, a sort of halo, barely visible, hanging in the air in the center of the lab. He closed his eyes and opened them again and the slight, greenish glow remained. As Spence watched, the radiant spot seemed to coalesce, to focus and grow brighter by degrees, and he moved toward the glow as if drawn by a heavy magnetic force.
The halo was quite visible now; it even threw off a gentle reflection all around. Spence walked slowly around it, his muscles tensed like a cat ready to spring. It was like nothing he had ever seen. Whichever way he moved, the shimmering halo showed always the same face to him: a luminescent wreath of pale green light shining with a gleaming radiance which shifted and danced under his gaze. The center of the halo remained unaffected by the light. Through it he could see the dim outlines of objects on the other side of the room.
Spence edged cautiously closer, sideways like a crab. He attempted to look away, but his curiosity, or some greater force, held his attention firmly. He could not resist.
Now he was standing very close to the glowing presence in the center of the lab. So close that he could feel a tingling sensation on his hands and face, a tiny prickling of the flesh as if with extreme cold. He raised one hand toward the aura and saw it surrounded by the greenish cast.
Gradually he noticed a movement within the halo-a very transparent shimmer of deepest blue, almost beyond human vision. The radiance intensified and cast out beams which glittered gold and silver as they fluoresced within the green aura of the halo.
Although he stood rooted firmly in his place, he experienced the unnerving sensation of traveling very rapidly into the halo, as if he were being sucked into a swirling vortex of cold blue fire. With this sensation came a quickening of his physical senses. His heart began beating rapidly, his breathing labored, sweat beaded up on his forehead and neck. He was feeling very weak and dizzy, teetering on the brink of consciousness, when he felt a unique sensation: the flesh at the base of his neck began creeping upward in tiny pinpricks over his scalp. For one brief instant he wondered what that could mean. What could it be? The answer hit him like a shock: every hair on his head was standing on end.
Spence opened his mouth to cry out, but no sound came. He was held in the steely grip of a terror he could not name, a fear which came swimming at him from the darkened corners of the room-of his mind. He could not move or scream or look away. Only endure.
Some small part of his mind withdrew from the horror which now twisted his features. It watched with dread fascination as the green aura flared brilliantly and the whirling blue lightning slowed and began to take shape. To his rational inner eye it appeared that a scene was taking place behind a filmy curtain of light, but the movements were too indistinct and too remote to be understood.
Gradually he became aware of a sound which perhaps had been there all along, but had gone unnoticed. It was the thin, needle-like tinkling of tiny bells. This he heard not with his ears, but inside his head and on the surface of his skin. And hearing it now, in this way, turned his blood to ice water in his veins. For up to this moment it was a sound heard only in his dreams.
With an effort he raised his hands and clamped them over his ears and screamed with every fiber of will left in him. Then he toppled insensible to the floor.
5
… HERE HE IS." THE flashlight beam played over the slumped figure on the floor. "Passed out."
"I'll get the lights," said a second, slightly higher pitched voice.
"No, leave them off. He might wake up," replied the first. "What shall we do with him? We can't just leave him on the floor…"
"Why not? We can come back later." "He might remember."
"Right. Let's put him in the sleep lab."
"Good idea. Hook up the scanner, too. That way he won't be sure. Even if he remembers he won't be sure."
"I'll take his feet. Careful, don't wake him up."
T o SPENCE I T SEE M E D as if his mind returned like a rock dropped into a lake. He felt his awareness returning, falling slowly through the void of darkness, while he himself waited floating to receive it.
The floating sensation continued for some time. When he tried to move his head he was overcome by a powerful dizziness and the feeling that he was falling in slow motion into a vast, bottomless pit.
So he lay motionless and tried to collect the fragments of his thoughts-what was left of them. He remembered talking to Dr. Lloyd and then returning to the lab. That was all-only darkness after that. And yet there must be something more. For here he was, if his guess was correct, in the sleep lab lying on the scanner's cav couch. How he had gotten there he could not say.
From the control room he heard the soft chime of the session clock. Then Tickler's voice sounded over the speaker, drifting down from above like snow. "The session is terminated, Dr. Reston. Shall I bring up the lights?"
"Yes," he heard himself say, "bring up the lights."
The overhead panels began to glow, faintly at first but steadily until he could make out the ordinary cylindrical dimensions of the room. He sat up slowly as the last waves of dizziness rolled over him. He gripped the sides of the cav couch and started awkwardly to his feet, aware that Tickler was watching him closely from the control booth.
He felt a tug and realized that he was wearing the scanning cap. He slipped it off and tossed it back onto the couch in the depression his head had made, and then moved slowly, as in a dream, toward the booth.
"Good scan this session, doctor," Tickler said happily. "Bring it to me after breakfast." Spence shook his head groggily. "Anything wrong?"
"No. I, uh, didn't sleep very well, that's all."
"You remember, of course, that you have scheduled to inter view cadets for the assistantships today."
"Tickler, do we really need an assistant? I mean, the project is just myself and you. It isn't as if we were in HiEn-those guys want thirty people for every experiment."
"Each department is required to take a cadet."
"Well, couldn't Simmons take an extra one? I don't really see where we need to…"
"BioPsych is a small department, yes," Tickler sniffed. "But it will hardly expand if those of us in a position to encourage the interest of bright young minds fail to take full advantage of the assistantship program."
Spence hated Tickler's testimonials; so to prevent further aggravation he replied as evenly as he knew how, "You are right, of course. In fact, I think it would be a good idea for you to interview the cadets yourself."
"Me? But, Dr. Reston, I-"
"I don't see why not. You have a good feel for that sort of thing. I will, however, want to approve your choice. When you've found the right candidate for the job, bring him to me."
Spence ducked quickly out of the control booth, bringing an end to the matter. He stepped into the corridor and began threading his way to the commissary. Once free from Tickler's annoying presence his mind returned to the mysterious problem of his blackout.
In the jumble of the crowded cafeteria he found seclusion to properly mull it over in his mind. Noise, considered Spence, was just as good an insulator as perfect quiet. Maybe better. With a proper level of random sound the mind turned naturally inward, completely shutting out the rest of the world.