“I can’t do this too often without resting,” Belem said. “Open your mind. Relax. Let me control your muscles. This illusion is for human eyes only. I can screen it out and see the right way.”
It took tremendous effort on my part to keep my eyes open and my muscles relaxed. That disgusting falling sensation kept growing stronger and every sane instinct I had reacted violently at what my optic nerves described. I was walking into a vanishing point—that was the only way to describe it. I walked right into the point of the white cone and through it—don’t ask me how, because it was an illusion—and then I was in the white corridor again.
I took ten unsteady steps, and came out into a wider tunnel that stretched, curving, to left and to right. Belem guided me to the left.
There were hieroglyphics on the walls at regular intervals but I didn’t realize they indicated doors until the Mechandroid told me to stop. All I had to do was touch the wall and a shutter opened like a cat’s-eye, slitted, then oval, enlarging till I could step through into the room beyond. Behind me the panel closed noiselessly.
It was a large room and there was a matter-transmitter in a corner. The walls were banked with paneling carrying the most complicated set of controls I had ever seen. On a glassy pillar in the center of the floor was a transparent box, small enough to hold in my palm, and it was bathed in a sparkle of glittering lights that poured out from two pencil-like cylinders embedded in the pillar, one on each side of the box.
Within the box was a golden marble.
“I know,” I said dizzily. “It’ll grant me three wishes.”
“That type of humor is a defense mechanism against fear,” Belem told me unsympathetically. “Here is the main reason why I chose the difficult and dangerous method of entering your mind. No men of this age would have gone with me this far. They’re all conditioned against Mechandroids.
“You were the only one who could and would have got into the Subterrane. In that transparent box is, I think, the only weapon against which we have no defense at all. As long as it’s within the field of radiation, as it is now, it’s harmless. Remove it and, within two minutes, it, becomes activated.”
“What is it?”
“A complicated pattern of energies. It’s positively charged now. When it’s activated, it becomes negatively charged. Then it creates a dead field for nearly a mile around it, in which no matter-transmitters will operate.”
“That doesn’t seem so dangerous. You can get along without matter-transmitters long enough to walk a mile, can’t you?”
“Not if we’re under siege. You saw our laboratory. Warfare is still a matter of siege unless one wants to wipe everything out and they don’t. They’ll want to inspect our work. With matter-transmission you can’t besiege a place.
“Everyone inside would simply leak away and escape, taking all their important work with them. This one weapon here is the only completed matrix available at this time. It takes a long while to complete the necessary energy-pattern. So, if we eliminate it, we can stand off a siege long enough to clear out the laboratory.”
“Eliminate it how?”
“Set the matter-transmitter controls to—anywhere. Some obsolete receiver at the edge of the galaxy, maybe. Pick up that box and—fast!—put it in the transmitter, before the radiation dies and it activates. Then the box will appear at the edge of the galaxy and paralyze energy facilities there.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. Long enough. It wouldn’t harm humans but they’d have to walk to a station outside its field. The box can’t be moved, incidentally, or you could just carry it to a spot beyond the range of the nearest transmitter. After it’s activated it has almost absolute inertia. Right now, though, it’s portable. Can you touch it?”
I put out a tentative hand that was stopped in mid-air about a foot above the box. I pushed against nothing. I couldn’t pass the invisible barrier.
“I thought so,” Belem said. “That stud in the pedestal—try pressing it.”
I did. I reached for the box again. This time I could do it. The defense field, whatever it had been, was gone. The box was not very heavy. I set it down again with care.
“All right,” I said. “Fine. But what about me? Why should I help you?”
“Paynter will kill you if you don’t,” Belem said patiently. “If he doesn’t his superiors will as soon as it’s established that you’re a carrier of that nekronic killer, whatever it is. And I think I know. If you help me I believe I can solve that problem too.
“There are two obvious reasons why I’ll protect you. First, I can’t get out of your brain until you’re in physical contact with me again. If you’re killed before then the psychic rapport impact may kill me too. After we finish this job you’ll get in the transmitter and return to the world where I am now—the one where you first saw me. As for the second reason—”
A sudden, violent contraction of all my muscles, like a simultaneous cramp in every limb, doubled me up without the slightest warning. I fell forward—saw the floor hurtling toward me—and felt my rebellious muscles relax again just in time to save myself from a crash. I was so startled that I scarcely noticed the lance of gauzy light, tendriled like a cobweb, that floated in the spot from which I had just been hurled. But Belem’s thought said, “Paralysis projector!”
What happened after that took almost no time at all.
When I got my feet under me I whirled and faced the opened door-panel and the man standing there in arrested motion, weapon lifted. It was Paynter, his pale eyes glittering, his mouth drawn down in a grimace of anger and surprise. The weapon had a basket-hilt and a muzzle that looked like rubbery lips, puffing in and out petulantly.
Belem had sensed his presence before I did. It was the Mechandroid’s control of my motor reflexes that had jerked me forward in a spasmodic dodge that barely cleared the blast of the puffing weapon.
I had no weapon of my own. Paynter was centering his on me for a second, more accurate shot. I hadn’t the ghost of an idea how to avoid it.
“What do I do now?” I demanded in desperation of the mind in my brain.
“I don’t know—be quiet, I’m trying to think!” was all Belem had to offer.
I sought Paynter’s eyes, trying to put hypnosis into my own, saying, “Now wait a minute, Paynter! Hold on! I—”
He did not answer in words. He raised the weapon and took deliberate aim at me. I wondered whether he had been following from the first, how much he knew—why he chose to kill me now, without hearing a word of defense. He wasn’t even curious about how I’d got here.
The puffy mouth of his weapon sucked in deeply and began to pout out again. In another second a web of light would shoot out at me and there was no room here even to dodge again, without colliding with that pedestal upon which the marble in its glass box rested. If I dodged I’d hit it.
If I dodged I’d—
That was the answer, of course. So obvious neither of us had seen it. It was the simplest answer in the world. I almost laughed as I snatched the glass box from its resting place and, in the same quick motion, hurled it straight at Paynter’s face.
No one can say he wasn’t fast. His mind recognized the danger I had dropped in his hands in the same instant his muscles reacted. There was only one possible thing to do, and he did it. He dropped his gun and caught the precious and terribly dangerous box in mid-air.
I didn’t stop to watch. I was already halfway through the door of the matter-projector by the time Paynter’s weapon hit the floor. I slammed the door shut with one kick and put my hands on the wall where the dials were.