It shocked her world-wide audience out of that bemused condition the professionalism of the broadcast had produced. It lifted them out of their seats, those who were seated. It tended to lift the hair of the rest, those who realized that monsters from space who could read human minds were utterly invincible and infinitely to be dreaded. No matter what the children looked like, now, they had been declared on an official fact-revealing broadcast to be extraterrestrial monsters who could read human minds!
It raised hell.
Once said, it could not be withdrawn. It could be denied, but it would be believed. In higher echelons of government all over the world it produced such raging hatred of the children and the United States together as made all previous tensions seem love-feasts by comparison. In Russia it was instantly and bitterly believed that all Soviet military secrets were now in process of being plucked from Russian brains and given to the American military. Rage came from helplessness in the face of such an achievement. There could be no way to stop such espionage, and military action would be hopeless if the Americans knew all about it before it was tried. In more tranquil nations there was deep uneasiness, and in some there was terror. And everywhere that men hated or stole or schemed—which was everywhere—the belief that everybody's secrets were open to the children filled men with rage.
Of all public-relations enterprises in human history, the world-wide broadcast about the children was most disastrous.
Soames and Gail could realize the absurdity of the thing, without any hope of stopping or correcting it.
They went swiftly back to the hidden base in the Rockies. Soames stayed to have certain minor injuries attended to. Also he needed to get in touch with the two physicists who had seen the children and known despair, but who now played at being castaways with gratifying results. In part he was needed for endless, harassing consultations with people who wanted urgently to disbelieve everything he said, and managed to hold on to a great deal of doubt.
Meanwhile there came about a sullen and infuriated lessening of international tension. No nation would dare plan a sneak attack on America if it could be known in advance. And nobody dared make threats if the United States could know exactly how much of the threat was genuine.
Captain Moggs flew busily back and forth between the east and the hidden missile base to which the children had been returned. She informed Soames that the decorated belts had been taken away from the children. One of them had been opened up and the round and square medallions on it examined. One decoration was undoubtedly the case for the sensory-linkage apparatus. There was a way to turn it on and off. It contained a couple of eccentrically shaped bits of metal. That was all. Duplicated, the duplicates did nothing whatever. The other medallions seemed to contain apparatus for purposes yet unguessed-at. One actually had a minute moving part in it. But what it did was past imagining.
Captain Moggs said authoritatively:
"It will take time but we'll find out what it does. Of course right now all research is concentrated on the telepathic device. It will be developed and before long we will be thoroughly informed about the weapons and the councils of other nations. It will be magnificent! We'll no longer have reason to be apprehensive of attack, and we can evaluate every military situation with absolute precision!"
"Dammit!" snapped Soames. "The gadgets aren't telepathic! They don't transmit thoughts! They only exchange sensory information! And there's no danger of the children finding out anything by telepathy when they can only share the sensations of someone wearing a special device! What would they do with military information if they had it?"
Captain Moggs looked mysterious. She departed, and Soames again cursed bitterly the situation he'd happened to create. But still he did not see how he could have done otherwise than to destroy the children's high-power signalling device when they would have used it back on Antarctica. Yet he was not happy about the consequences of his act.
He found time to get in touch with the physicists who'd come out to the Rocky Mountain base. They'd found a few others who could put themselves into the mental state of castaways who knew that a given device could be made, and then tried to make something which wasn't it but had some of its properties. In a way it was deliberate self-deception, but it was deliberate to circumvent a natural habit of the educated mind. A trained man almost invariably tries to see what can be done with what he has and knows, instead of imagining what he wants and then trying to make something more or less like it, even if he has to look for the knowledge he will need. It took a particular type of mind to use Soames' trick. It was necessary, for example, to imagine limitations to the operation of a desired device, or one's starting-point became mere fantasy. And nothing could be made from fantasy.
But Soames found frustration rampant even among the men who were most successful with the fantasy-trick. There were new devices. They were triumphs. They were plainly the beginnings of progress of a brand-new kind, not derived wholly from the present, and certainly not imitative of the children's. But the devices couldn't be used. Their existence couldn't be revealed. Because anything of unprecedented design would seem to have been learned from the children, and the United States insisted—truthfully—that so far it had learned nothing from them. But nobody would believe it if a spate of astonishing technological improvements began to appear in the United States.
Dislike of America rose to new heights anyhow. But presently some trace of suspicion began to appear in the actions of the anti-American nations. Before the broadcast, a dirty trick had been prepared against America. It developed and succeeded. It was not discovered until too late. Somebody tried another one. It wasn't anticipated or stopped. A very lively and extremely tempting idea occurred in quarters where the United States was much disliked. But nobody dared quite believe it—yet.
Then Fran disappeared. He vanished as if into thin air. At one moment he was in the heavily guarded surface area over the hidden base in the Rockies. The next moment he was gone. Three separate lines of electrified fence protected the area from intrusion, with sentries and watching-posts besides. But Fran disappeared as if he'd never been. It was not easy to imagine that he'd run away. His English was still very limited. His ignorance of American ways was abysmal. He couldn't hope to hide and find food while accomplishing anything at all. On the other hand, for him to have been kidnapped out of the top-secret base was unthinkable. Yet if he had ...
Soames got transportation to the Rocky Mountain installation.
He was shocked when he saw Gail.
CHAPTER 8
She smiled faintly in the darkness after they'd paused on the way to the cottage, and after Soames had released her.
"When this is all over, we'll have our life together, you know that, don't you?"
"I'm glad," she said quietly, "that you feel the way you do. I'm thinner. I'm not very pretty just now. But it's because I'm worried, Brad."
He muttered angrily. He felt that infuriated rage which was appropriate because something worried Gail.
"I told the children you were coming," Gail added. "I think they'll be glad to see you. I've an idea Fran especially liked you, Brad."
"No word of him?"
"N-no," said Gail in an odd tone.
"Did he run away?" demanded Soames. They were walking through a soft-warm dusk toward the cottage where Gail stayed with the children.
Gail said in a low tone:
"Careful! The idea of telepathy is alarming. Everything's overheard, Brad. The children are watched every second. I even think there are microphones...."