“Nuts. I did, and I’ll take the responsibility for it. Look, Rod, they were right, weren’t they?”
“What?”
“Sure. People ought to be waked up about what’s going on over in Sector Two. Those phonies over there need taking down a peg, and we’re the only ones to do it. This ought to be headquarters for Callisto, right here. Why listen, Rod, a united Callisto could take over Ganymede.”
“Borg, was there anything over the televis tonight? Anybody make a speech you listened to?”
“Sure, didn’t you hear it? Our friend Skidder. Must have been while you were walking here, because all the televis turned on automatically-it was a general.”
“And-was anything specific suggested, Borg? About Sector Two, and Ganymede, and that sort of thing?”
“Sure, general meeting tomorrow morning at ten. In the square. We’re all supposed to go; I’ll see you there, won’t I?”
“Yeah,” said Lieutenant Caquer. “I’m afraid you will. I-I got to go, Borg.”
Ron CAQUER knew what was wrong now. Also the last thing he wanted to do was stay around the station listening to Borgesen talking under the influence of-what seemed to be-a Vargas ‘Wheel. Nothing else, nothing less, could have made police Lieutenant Borgesen talk as he had just talked. Professor Gordon’s guess was getting righter every minute. Nothing else could have brought about such results.
Caquer walked on blindly through the Jupiter lighted night, past the building in which his own apartment was. He did not want to go there either.
The streets of Sector Three City seemed crowded for so late an hour of the evening. Late? He glanced at his watch and whistled softly. It was not evening any more. It was two o’clock in the morning, and normally the streets would have been utterly deserted.
But they were not, tonight. People wandered about, alone or in small groups that walked together in uncanny silence. Shuffle of feet, but not even the whisper of a voice. Not even
Whispers! Something about those streets and the people on them made Rod Caquer remember now, his dream of the night before. Only now he knew that it had not been a ream. Nor had it been sleepwalking, in the ordinary sense of the word.
He had dressed. He had stolen out of the building. And the street lights had been out too, and that meant that employees of the service department had neglected their posts. They, like others, had been wandering with the crowds.
“Kill-kill-kill-You hate them…”
A shiver ran down Rod Caquer’s spine as he realized the significance of the fact that last night’s dream had been a reality. This was something that dwarfed into insignificance the murder of a petty book-and-reel shop owner.
This was something which was gripping a city, something that could upset a world, something that could lead to unbelievable terror and carnage on a scale that hadn’t been known since the Twenty-fourth Century. This-which had started as a simple murder case!
Up ahead somewhere, Rod Caquer heard the voice of a nun addressing a crowd. A frenzied voice, shrill with fanaticism. He hurried his steps to the corner, and walked around it to find himself in the fringe of a crowd of people pressing around a man speaking from the top of a flight of steps.
“-and I tell you that tomorrow is the day. Now we have the Regent himself with us, and it will be unnecessary to depose him. Men are working all night tonight, preparing. After the meeting in the square tomorrow morning, we shall-“
“Hey!” Rod Caquer yelled. The man stopped talking and turned to look at Rod, and the crowd turned slowly, almost as one man, to stare at him.
“You’re under-“
Then Caquer saw that this was but a futile gesture.
It was not because of the man surging toward him that convinced him of this. He was not afraid of violence. He would have welcomed it as relief from uncanny terror, welcomed a chance to lay about him with the flat of his sword.
But standing behind the speaker was a man in uniform-Brager. And Caquer remembered, then, that Borgesen, now in charge at the station, was on the other side. How could he arrest the speaker, when Borgesen, now in charge, would refuse to book him. And what good would it do to start a riot and cause injury to innocent people-people acting not under their own volition, but under the insidious influence Professor Gordon had described to him?
Hand on his sword, he backed away. No one followed. Like automatons, they turned back to the speaker, who resumed his harangue, as though never interrupted. Policeman Brager had not moved, had not even looked in the direction of his superior officer. He alone of all those there had not turned at Caquer’s challenge.
Lieutenant Caquer hurried on in the direction he had been going when he had heard the speaker. That way would take him back downtown. He would find a place open where he could use a visiphone, and call the Sector Coordinator. This was an emergency.
And surely the scope of whoever had the Vargas Wheel had not yet extended beyond the boundaries of Sector Three.
He found an all-night restaurant, open but deserted, the lights on but no waiters on duty, no cashier behind the counter. He stepped into the visiphone booth and pushed the button for a long-distance operator. She flashed into sight on the screen almost at once.
“Sector Coordinator, Callisto City,” Caquer said. “And rush it.”
“Sorry, sir. Out of town service suspended by order of the controller of Utilities, for the duration.”
“Duration of what?”
“We are not permitted to give out information.”
Caquer gritted his teeth. Well, there was one someone who might be able to help him. He forced his voice to remain calm.
“Give me Professor Gordon, University Apartments,” he told the operator.
“Yes, sir.”
But the screen stayed dark, although the little red button that indicated the buzzer was operating flashed on and off, for minutes.
“There is no answer, sir.”
Probably Gordon and his daughter were asleep, too soundly asleep to hear the buzzer. For a moment, Caquer considered rushing over there. But it was on the other side of town, and of what help could they be? None, and Professor Gordon was a frail old man, and ill.
No, he would have to-Again he pushed a button of the visiphone and a moment later was talking to the man in charge of the ship hangar.
“Get out that little speed job of the Police Department,” snapped Caquer. “Have it ready and I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” came the curt reply. “All outgoing power beams shut off, by special order. Everything’s grounded for the emergency.”
He might have known it, Caquer thought. But what about the special investigator coming in from the Coordinator’s office? “Are incoming ships still permitted to land?” he inquired.
“Permitted to land, but not to leave again without special order,” answered the voice.
“Thanks,” Caquer said. He clicked off the screen and went out into the dawn, outside. There was a chance, then. The special investigator might be able to help.
But he, Rod Caquer would have to intercept him, tell him the story and its implications before he could fall, with the others, under the influence of the Vargas Wheel. Caquer strode rapidly toward the terminal. Maybe it was too late. Maybe his ship had already landed and the damage had been done.
Again he passed a knot of people gathered about a frenzied speaker. Almost everyone must be under the influence by this time. But why had he been spared? Why was not he, too, under the evil influence?
True, he must have been on the street on the way to the police station at the time Skidder had been on the air, but that didn’t explain everything. All of these people could not have seen and heard that visicast. Some of them must have been asleep already at that hour.