James H. Schmitz Agents of Vega

Odnośniki

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

top of the inner wall.
Cleaver Spaceport lay on her left, a twenty-mile rectangle of softly gleaming
marblite absolutely empty except for the narrow white spire of a control tower
near the far side. The spaceport's construction had been begun the year
Arlene was born, as part of the interplanetary colonization program which a
rash of disasters and chronically insufficient funds meanwhile had brought to
an almost complete standstill. Cleaver Spaceport remained unfinished;
no spaceship had yet lifted from its surface or settled down to it.
Ahead and to Arlene's right, a mile and a half of green lawn stretched away
below the platform. Automatic tenders moved slowly across it, about half of
them haloed by the rhythmically circling rainbow sprays of their sprinklers.
In the two years since Arlene had first seen the lawn, no human being had set
foot there. At its far end was a cluster of low, functional buildings. There
were people in those buildings . . . but not very many people. It was the
security island where Dr. Lowry had built the diex projector.
Arlene crossed the platform, passed through the doorless entry of the building
beyond it, feeling the tingle of another somatic barrier as she stepped into
its shadow. At the end of the short hallway was a narrow door with the words
NONSPACE CONDUIT above it. Behind the door was a small, dimly lit cube of a
room. Miss Rolf went inside and sat down on one of the six chairs spaced along
the walls. After a moment, the door slid quietly shut and the room went dark.
For a period of perhaps a dozen seconds, in complete blackness, Arlene Rolf
appeared to herself to have become an awareness so entirely detached from her
body that it could experience no physical sensation. Then light reappeared in
the room and sensation returned. She stood up, smoothing down her skirt, and
discovered, smiling, that she had been holding her breath again. It happened
each time she went through the conduit, and no previous degree of
determination to breathe normally had any effect at all on that automatic
reaction. The door opened and she picked up her purse and went out into a hall
which was large, well-lit and quite different in every respect from the one by
which she had entered.
In the wall screen across the hall, the image of a uniformed man smiled at her
and said, "Dr. Lowry has asked that you go directly to the laboratory on your
return, Miss Rolf."
"Thank you, Max," she said. She had never seen Max or one of the other project
guards in person, though they must be somewhere in the building. The screen
went blank, and she went on down the long, windowless hall, the sound of her
steps on the thick carpeting again the only break in the quiet. Now, she
thought, it was a little like being in an immaculately clean, well-tended but
Page 245
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
utterly vacant hotel.
* * *
Arlene pressed the buzzer beside the door to Dr. Lowry's quarters and stood
waiting. When the door opened, she started forward, then stopped in surprise.
"Why, hello, Colonel Weldon," she said. "I didn't realize you would be on the
project today." Her gaze went questioningly past him to Dr. Lowry, who stood
in the center of the room, hands shoved deep into his trousers pockets.
Lowry said wryly, "Come in, Arlene. This has been a surprise to me, too, and
not a pleasant one. On the basis of orders coming directly from the top which
I have just confirmed, by the way our schedule here is to be subjected to
drastic rearrangements. They include among other matters our suspension as the
actual operators of the projector."
"But why that?" she asked startled.
Dr. Lowry shrugged. "Ask Ferris. He just arrived by his personal conduit. He's
supposed to explain the matter to us."
Ferris Weldon, locking the door behind Arlene, said smilingly, "And please do
give me a chance to do just that now, both of you! Let's sit down as a start.
Naturally you're angry . . . no one can blame you for it. But I promise to
show you the absolute necessity behind this move."
He waited until they were seated, then added, "One reason though not the only
reason for interrupting your work at this point is to avoid exposing both of
you to serious personal danger."
Dr. Lowry stared at him. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Ben," Ferris Weldon asked, "what was the stated goal of this project when you
undertook it?"
Lowry said stiffly, "To develop a diex-powered instrument which would provide
a means of reliable mental communication with any specific individual on
Earth."
Weldon shook his head. "No, it wasn't."
Arlene Rolf laughed shortly. "He's right, Ben." She looked at Weldon. "The
hypothetical goal of the project was an instrument which would enable your
department telepaths to make positive identification of a hypothetical Public
Enemy Number One . . . the same being described as a `rogue telepath' with
assorted additional qualifications."
Weldon said, "That's a little different, isn't it? Do you recall the other
qualifications?"
"Is that important at the moment?" Miss Rolf asked. "Oh, well . . . this man
is also a dangerous and improbably gifted hypnotist. Disturb him with an
ordinary telepathic probe or get physically within a mile or so of him, and he
can turn you mentally upside down, and will do it in a flash if it suits his
purpose. He's quite ruthless, is supposed to have committed any number of
murders. He might as easily be some unknown as a man constantly in the public
eye who is keeping his abilities concealed. . . . He impersonates people. . .
. He is largely responsible for the fact that in a quarter of a century the
interplanetary colonization program literally hasn't got off the ground. . .
."
She added, "That's as much as I remember. There will be further details in the
files. Should I dig them out?"
"No," Ferris Weldon said. "You've covered most of it."
Dr. Lowry interrupted irritably, "What's the point of this rigmarole, Weldon?
You aren't assuming that either of us has taken your rogue telepath seriously.
. . ."
"Why not?"
Lowry shrugged. "Because he is, of course, one of the government's blandly
obvious fictions. I've no objection to such fictions when they serve to
describe the essential nature of a problem without revealing in so many words
what the problem actually is. In this case, the secrecy surrounding the
project could have arisen largely from a concern about the reaction in various
Page 246
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
quarters to an instrument which might be turned into a thought-control
device."
Weldon asked, "Do you believe that is the purpose of your projector?"
"If I'd believed it, I would have had nothing to do with it. I happen to have [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

angamoss.xlx.pl