“Then you’re saying that the Enemy won’t strike again because they have what they want,” said Vanaman.
“Of course,” the girl said bleakly. “They have Provost. Through Provost they have every mind on this Satellite. They don’t need to fight on the surface any more, they’re right here.”
Vanaman’s eyes were hard as he rose from his seat. “Well, we can stop that. We can kill Provost.”
She caught his arm as he reached for the intercom switch. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said tightly. “What do you think you’re going to do when you’ve killed him?”
“I don’t know,” he snarled. “But I’ll do something. I’ve got to get them out into the open somehow, out where I can see them, before we all split open at the seams.”
“You mean find out whether they have green skins and five legs or not? Who cares?” She twisted his arm with amazing strength, pushing him back into the seat. “Listen to me, you fool. What we have to know is what they want, how they think, how they behave. Physical contact with them is pointless until we know those things. Can’t you see that? They’ve realized that from the start.”
He stared at her. “But what do you think we should do?”
“First, find out some of the things we have to know,” she said. “That means we have to use the one real weapon we’ve got—John Provost—and I’m going to see that he’s kept alive. Show me your arm.”
Puzzled, Vanaman held it out to her. The needle bit so quickly he could not pull back. Realization dawned on his face.
“Sorry,” she said gently. “There’s only one thing we can do, and killing Provost isn’t it” She pushed him back in the seat like a sack of flour. “I wish it were,” she added softly, but Vanaman wasn’t listening any more.
As she moved down the corridor the magnitude of what she was doing caught Dorie,and shook her violently. Things had crystallized in her mind just before she had gone to talk with Vanaman. A course of action had appeared which she only grasped in outline, and she had moved too fast, too concisely, before thinking it out in full. But now she had tripped the switch. The juggernaut was moving in on her now, ponderously, but gaining momentum.
There would be no stopping it now, she knew, no turning it back. A course of action, once initiated, developed power of its own. She was committed . . . .
Earth was committed . . . .
She shook off that thought, forcefully. She was too terrified to think about that aspect of it. Her mind was filled and frozen by the ordeal she knew was facing her now: John Provost.
Somehow she had to take Provost back from them, wrench him out of their grasp. She remembered the hard, flat look in his eyes when he watched her, and she shuddered.
There was a way to do it.
All around her she could feel the tension of the Satellite ship, waiting helplessly, poised for demolition. She ran down the empty corridors, searched the depths of the ship until she found the place she was seeking. Once inside Atmosphere Control section she leaned against the wall, panting.
Then she slipped the filters into her nostrils, and broke the tiny capsules, feeding them into the ventilation ducts of the ship.
She would take Provost back from the Enemy; then, if she survived—what? There were only hazy outlines in her mind. She knew the limitation of thought that was blocking her. It was the limitation that was utterly unavoidable in thinking of an alien, a creature not of Earth, not human. The limitation was terribly easy to overlook until the alien was there facing her: the simple fact that she was bound and strapped by a human mind. She could only think human thoughts, in human ways. She could only comprehend the alien insofar as the alien possessed human qualities, not an inch further. There was no way she could stretch her mind to cope with alienness. But worse—even in trying desperately to comprehend alienness, her own human mind inevitably assumed a human mind on the part of the alien.
This the Enemy did not have. What kind of mind the Enemy did have she could not know, but it was not a human mind. Yet that alien mind had to be contacted and understood.
It had seemed an insoluble conundrum—until she had realized that the Enemy had faced exactly the same problem, and solved it.
To the Enemy, stumbling upon intelligent life in Earth’s solar system, a human mind was as incomprehensible as an alien mind was to a human. They had faced the same dilemma, and found a way to cope with it. But how? The very pattern of their approach showed how. It was data, and Dorie Kendall had treated it as data, and found the answer.
It revealed them.
They tried so hard to remain obscure while they studied us, she thought as she moved back toward the Analogue Section, and yet with every move they made they revealed themselves to us further, if we had only had the wit to look. Everything they did was a revelation of themselves. They thought they were peering at us through a one-way portal, seeing us and yet remaining unseen, but in reality the glass was a mirror, reflecting their own natures in every move they made. They discovered our vulnerability, true, but at the same time inadvertently revealed their own.
The ventilators hummed. She felt the tension in the ship relaxing as the sleep-gas seeped down the corridors. Muscles uncoiled. Fear dissolved from frightened minds. Doors banged open; there was talking, laughter; then lethargy, dullness, glazed eyes, yawns, slack mouths—
Sleep. Like Vanaman, slumped back in his chair, everyone on the Satellite slept. Operatives fell forward on their faces. The girls in the Relief rooms yawned, dozed, snored, slept.
It seemed to Dorie that she could sense Provost’s thoughts twisting out toward her in a tight, malignant channel driving to destroy her, seeking release from the dreadful hatred the aliens were using to bind him. But then even Provost dozed and slept.
With the filters protecting her, she was alone on the ship, a ghost. In the Analogue bank she activated the circuits she needed, set the dials, rechecked each setting to make certain that she made no error.
She dared not make an error.
Finally, she went to Provost. She dragged his drugged body into the Analogue cubicle and strapped him down. She fit his hands into the grips. Another needle, then, to counteract the sleep-gas, and his eyes blinked open.
He saw her and lunged for her with no warning sound. His arms tore at the restraints, jerking murderously. She jumped back from him a little, forcing out a twisted smile. She reached out mockingly to stroke his forehead, and he tried to bite her hand.
“Butcher!” she whispered. “Monster!”
Pure hate poured from his mouth as she laughed at him. Then she threw the Analogue switch. He jerked back as contact was made, and she moved swiftly to her own Analogue helmet waiting in the adjacent cubicle, threw another switch, felt in her own mind the sickening thud of Analogue contact.
Her Analogue. A therapeutic tool before, now a deadly weapon in frightened, unsteady hands.
She was afraid. It seemed that she was watching images on a hazy screen. She saw Provost there, facing her, hating her, but it was only a mental image. She was sitting alone in darkness and knew that he also was sitting in darkness. Then gradually the darkness seemed to dissolve into unreality; the two Analogue images—hers and Provost’s—became sharp and clear.