v0.9 by the N.E.R.D's. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.
Virginia Mention's presence was quite accidental. She came out of a restaurant, and there were the fire trucks, and the smoke pouring out of the open door of a one-story building. Virginia walked over, her reporter's instinct vaguely roused. Fires were long since out of her reportorial field, except that she was on the scene of this one. She visualized the tiny stick she would write:
Fire of so and so origin broke out this morning on the premises of thingumajerk. Slight damage.
The sign that hung out in front of the building read:
FUTURIAN SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES
NEUROLOGICAL AND
ORGANICOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
She wrote that down, and the number, 411 Wainworth Avenue. When she had finished, the firemen were stamping out of the door. Virginia grabbed the chief by the arm.
'I'm from the Herald. I happened to be passing. Anything important?'
The chief was a big, clumsy man, slow of speech.
'Naw. Outer office furniture. Boss not in. Fire seems to have started in a wastepaper basket from a cigarette stub.'
He went on, grinning: 'The receptionist in there is a queer young drip. Never saw anybody so scared in my life. He was gobbling like a turkey when I left. Didn't speak a single understandable word.'
He chuckled callously. 'If that's the way he feels now, I can imagine what he'll be like when the boss arrives. Well, so long.'
He walked off to his car.
Virginia Mention hesitated. Actually, she had all the information she wanted. But there was such a thing as personal curiosity. She walked over to the still open door.
It was a small office that she peered into. It contained three chairs and a streamlined counter in blue and white. That is, it had been blue and white. Now, it was a half charred mass, made uglier by the water that had been ruthlessly poured on it. Behind the counter was an electric adding machine of some kind.
Behind the counter, also, was the receptionist.
Virginia's mind suffered a considerable pause. The young man was tall and very thin, and he wore clothes that were too short for him in length and too wide for him in width. His face was hollow-cheeked and colorless. His chin, his forehead and his neck were covered in pimples, and he had an Adam's apple that kept moving and bobbing.
The apparition stared at her out of big, brown, terrified eyes. Its lips parted and spluttered gibberish at her. At least it would have been gibberish to anyone unaccustomed to the mumblings of editors and interviewees.
Virginia Mention translated aloud, transposing the pronoun: 'What do I want? I'm a reporter. What's the value of the furniture?'
'Ubble dubble dow,' said the young man.
'Don't know. Hmm, looks like a pretty complete mess, except for that comptometer, or whatever it is you've got behind the counter. I think I'll just put down: "Damage to office furniture".'
She wrote, then closed her book with a snap. 'Well, be seeing you.'
She intended to turn away and leave. But there was an interruption. A buzzer sounded. A man's deep, quiet voice said from some indeterminate point in the wall behind the young man:
'Edgar Gray, press button seventy-four.'
The young man galvanized. For a moment, he seemed to be all arms and long legs, leaping behind the counter. Somehow he untangled himself. One of his long bony fingers touched a button on the 'comptometer'.
He stood then, eyes closed, pressing it down. Virginia had thought his face was as colorless as it could possibly be. But now it blanched, and visibly grew paler. A curious darkness seemed to creep over it finally, as if the half-life of the young man's body was suffering a great defeat.
The effect, the impression, was unnaturally sharp. Virginia stared blankly.
A minute passed; and then slowly the ungainly creature drew a deep breath. He took his hand away from the button. He opened his eyes. He saw Virginia. A vague flush of returning color stabbed at the lines of his cheekbones.
Virginia Mention found her voice. 'What on earth was that?'
She saw that Edgar Gray was too far gone even to gibber. He stared at her glassily, and she had the impression that he was going to faint. With an audible, gasp, he sank down in the charred chair.
He slumped there, looking like a sick dog.
Virginia said in a kindly voice, 'Look, Edgar, the moment your boss gets here, you go home and lie down. And why not try eating something once in a while. It's good for the health.'
She turned and went out. And forgot about him.
* * *
She had been gone about five minutes when a woman's clear, vibrant, yet low-pitched voice said from the wall, 'Edgar!'
The gangling youth looked startled. Then, agitated, he stood up. The woman's voice said insistently: 'Edgar, draw the blinds, shut the door, and turn on the lights.'
Like an automaton, the young man carried out the commands. But his hands were shaking when he paused finally, and stared wide-eyed at the door which separated the rear of the building from the front.
There was a stirring there, a vague flickering of pinpiints of light. The door did not open, but a woman stepped through it.
Through it!
Daemonic woman! Her form was indistinct, insubstantial. She wore a white gown of a flimsy, transparent material. For a moment, the door was visible beyond her, through her.
She stood there as if in some strange and unearthly fashion waiting for physical completion.
Abruptly, she was no longer transparent. But whole. Real. She walked forward. Her hand came up and slapped his face, hard.
He half staggered, but managed to keep his balance. He began to whimper, tears of chagrin and hate.
'Edgar, you were told not to smoke.'
Again, the hand came up. Again the resounding slap.
'You will remain here your usual time, and perform your duties. Do you understand?'
The woman stared at him bleakly. • 'Fortunately, I arrived in time to see that woman reporter. That is well for you. I was minded to use the whip.'
She turned and walked toward the inner door, paused for a moment, and then stepped through it, and was gone.
* * *
Accidents begin, and human nature carries on. Before the fire, Virginia had passed the Futurian Science Laboratories a hundred times without ever noticing that it was there. Yet now she was aware of it.
Two days and a morning after the fire, she emerged from the same restaurant with her husband. She watched him stride off toward the university, then turned and went her own way. As. she came to the Futurian sign, she paused with a sudden memory. She peered through the great plate glass window.
'Hmm!' she said.
There was a new counter in place of the half burnt one, and a new chair. In the chair sat Edgar Gray, reading a magazine.
She could see his blotched face, and she had a clear profile of his Adam's apple. An empty box lunch stood on the counter beside him.
It was a thoroughly normal scene; and she didn't give it a second thought. But that night at eight-ten, when her husband was escorting her to the theater, she glanced out of the taxi, as it passed Futurian.
The enormous window glowed from the reflections of a spotlight behind the counter. Under the spot sat Edgar reading.
'He keeps long hours,' said Virginia out loud.
'Did you speak?' asked Professor Mention.
'It's nothing, Norman.'
A week later, coming home from a party at a quarter after eleven at night, their car passed Futurian. And there was Edgar under his light, reading.
'Well, of all things,' exploded Virginia. 'Whoever owns that joint sure has got hold of a sucker.'
Her husband grinned at her. 'Working on a newspaper has certainly enriched your vocabulary, sweet.'
Virginia gave him briefly the sequence of her experience with Futurian. She watched his face crinkle, his fine eyes narrow with thought. But in the end he only shrugged.
'Maybe it's Edgar's turn to be on the night shift. Since the war and the absorption of returned men into the planetary services, there's been a tremendous shortage of ordinary help, as witness the fact that you are compelled by law to work; and we have to eat vitaminless food in restaurants because you can't work and cook too.' He grimaced. 'Restaurants, wagh!'"
Virginia laughed; then soberly: 'There may be a manpower shortage, but the people who are available are treated like tin gods.'
'Uh, I suppose you're right. I'm afraid I can't help you then. As a lecturer on practical psychology, my city contacts are becoming less every day. Why not ask Old Cridley in your office? He's supposed to be a good man.'
Cridley, the science editor, stroked his beard. 'Futurian Science Laboratories,' he said. 'No, I can't say that I've heard of them. Let me see.'
He drew a commercial register across the desk toward him, opened it. 'Hmm,' he said. 'Yes, here it is… Research… Doesn't tell you much, but' - he looked up - 'they're legal.'
He added with a sardonic smile, 'I somehow had the impression you thought they weren't.'
Virginia said, "There was a vague idea in the back of my mind that they might be worth a story for the magazine section.'
In a way that was true - Old Cridley was reaching for the phone. 'I'll ring up Dr Blair, the only neurologist on my list. Perhaps he can give us some information.'
The phone conversation was prolonged. Virginia had time to smoke a cigarette. At last the old man clicked down the receiver. He looked up.
'Well,' he said. 'You've run into something.'
'You mean the place is phony.'
He grinned. 'No, no, the other way around. It's big. It's a ten,' twenty, thirty billion dollar concern.'
'That little place!' said Virginia.
'It seems,' said Old Cridley, 'there are duplicates of that little place right around the world. There's one on some main avenue of every city of two hundred thousand or more in the entire world. There's one at Canalis Majoris on Mars, and one each on the two principal islands of Venus.'
'But what do they do?'
'Ostensibly, they do research work. But actually it's a high pressure organization to get people to put up money for research. Some lame attempts have been made to investigate the outfit, but so far every attempt has died while still in the embryo stage.
'Dr Dorial Cranstone, the founder, used to be quite a man in his field. But about fifteen years ago, he went money mad, and developed this beautiful system of milking gold from softhearted dopes who want to help science., The key moochers are men and women whose personalities are plus and then some. They shine like jewels in a crowd. You know the type. You've got a long start in the direction of that kind of personality yourself.' A
Virginia let the compliment pass. 'But have they ever made any worthwhile research?'
'Not that I know of.'
Virginia frowned. 'Funny we haven't heard more about them. I think I'll look into it further.'
* * *
It began to rain shortly after five o'clock. Virginia Mention retreated deeper into the doorway of Sam's Haberdashery, and stared miserably up at the sullen skies.
The idea was just beginning to penetrate that she was in for a night. Oddly, she had no intention of giving up. Logic said that Edgar ought to be watched over the supper hour.
He was going to be watched.
At seven the rain petered out. Virginia oozed out of her doorway, and paced up and down glaring at the office across the street. A light had flicked on, the same shaded counter lamp she had previously observed. Under it sat Edgar Gray reading a magazine.
'The little coward!' Virginia Mention raged silently. 'Hasn't he got guts enough to stand up for his rights? I know he was in there this morning.'
The fury faded with the minutes, yielded to the.(passing of the hours. At ten minutes after ten, she dashed hurriedly into the restaurant, gulped a cup of coffee, and phoned her husband.
Professor Mention's chuckle on the phone, as she described her vigil, made her feel better. 'Personally,' he said when she had finished, 'I'm going to bed in another hour. I'll see you in the morning.'
'I've got to hurry,' Virginia breathed. 'I'm scared silly he'll leave while I'm in here.'
But the light was still there when she got outside. And so was Edgar. '
He was reading a magazine.
It was funny, but suddenly she began to picture him there in terms of years. Day after day after day, she thought, Edgar Gray coming to work in the morning and remaining until a tremendously late hour at night. And no one cared; no one even knew, apparently. For surely self-consciousness such as Edgar carried around with him could not exist if he had a normal home life.
She began to feel sorry for Edgar as well as for herself. What a life he was leading, what an incredible inhuman life.
She watched him jump to his feet, and press down one of the 'comptometer' keys.
Virginia Mention shook her head, bewildered. This business made less sense every second. Eleven o'clock came and passed. Eleven thirty. At eleven-thirty-two, the light blinked out abruptly, and after a minute Edgar emerged from the front door.
It was a quarter after eight the next morning when Virginia Mention staggered up the single flight of stairs to her apartment.
'Don't,' she murmured to her husband, 'ask me any questions. I've been up all night. I'll tell you everything about a month from now when I wake up. Phone the office, will you, that I won't be in?'
She did muster the energy to undress, and get into her pajamas, and crawl into bed.
When she wakened, her wristwatch said four thirty - and a woman in a white evening dress was sitting in the chair beside her vanity.
The woman had, Virginia Mention saw after a blank moment, blue eyes and a very lovely face. That is, it would have been lovely if it hadn't been so hard, so cold. Her body was long and slim, like Virginia's own. In one of her finely shaped hands, she fingered a knife with a thin, cruelly long blade.
The woman broke the silence softly:
'Now that you have started your investigation of us, you must also bear the consequences, the rewards of zealousness. We're all very glad you're a woman. Women weigh less.'
She paused. She smiled a fleeting, enigmatic smile, and watched alertly as Virginia slowly sat up in bed. Virginia had time to think that she had seen this creature somewhere; and then the woman went on:
'Women also arouse more sympathy… My dear, you've come into something you won't forget for' - she lingered over the phrase caressingly - 'the rest of your life.'
At last Virginia found voice. 'How did you get in here?'
Except for the sense of recognition, that was actually as far as her mind had gotten. The woman's word's the enormous threat in them, would catch up to her only gradually. Her voice was shriller, as she repeated, 'How… into my apartment?'
The blonde woman smiled, showing her teeth. 'Through the wall of course.'
It sounded like very unveiled satire. It roused Virginia Mention as nothing else could. She drew a deep breath - and was herself.
Narrow-eyed, conscious suddenly of the eerie quality of this meeting, she stared at the other. Her gaze lighted on the devilish knife and, just like that, fear came.
She pictured Norman coming in, and finding her stabbed to death. She pictured being dead, while he was still alive. She pictured herself in a coffin.
She began to feel warm with terror.
Her gaze flashed up to the woman's face - and terror sagged.
'Why,' she said aloud, wonderingly, 'I know now who you are. You're the wife of the local electrical tycoon, Phil Patterson. I've seen your picture in the society pages.'
Fear was fading fast now. She couldn't have explained the psychology, except that people you knew, and people of importance, didn't commit murder. Murderers were strangers, unhuman creatures who emerged briefly from a mass of meaningless faces, after the police had caught them, and, once executed, retreated into the depths of your memory, never again to be recognized.
Virginia found her voice again. 'So,' she said, 'you're one of the Futurian Science Laboratories crowd.'
The woman nodded brightly. 'That's right. That's the crowd I belong to. And now' - she sat up a little straighter; her voice was as resonant as a bell - 'I really musn't waste any more time in idle chatter.'
Virginia said in a level voice, 'What have you done to Edgar Gray? He's a thing, not a human being.'
The woman seemed not to hear. She was hesitating. At last, cryptically: 'I must be sure you know enough. Have you ever heard of Dorial Cranston?'
There must have been a look in Virginia's face, for the woman said, 'Ah, I see you've got that far. Thank you very much. You could have been very dangerous.'
She broke off. She stood up. She said in an oddly drab voice, 'That's really all I need to know. It is silly to give information to people who are about to die.'
She was at the bed before Virginia could grasp the deadly intent behind the words. The knife, which Virginia had almost forgotten, flashed up in the woman's hand, then down at Virginia's left breast.
There was a pain like fire, a tearing sensation at her flesh. She had time to see the knife hilt protruding from just above her heart.
Blackness came, blotting out the unbearable agony.
* * *
Professor Norman Mention was whistling happily under his breath as he entered the apartment. The hands of the hall clock were poised just over the seven. By the time he had deposited his hat, coat and cane in the empty living room and kitchen, the minute hand had moved in stately fashion to five after seven.
He noticed, while hanging up his coat, that Virginia's current coat and hat and things were all there.
Still whistling, but more softly now, he walked over to the door of her room, and knocked.
No sound came from inside. Rather hastily, he retreated to the living room, and took up the copy of the Evening Herald that he had bought on his way home.
He was a highly trained reader, with a capacity of just under twelve hundred words a minute, but the effect of the enormous speed was partially canceled by the fact that he read everything but the society columns.
It was half past eight before he folded the paper.
He sat, frowning. He thought irritably that if Virginia had been sleeping since that morning, then she ought to be roused. And besides, it was time she satisfied his curiosity as to the results of her vigil before the Futurian Science Laboratories the night before.
He knocked at the bedroom door, and, when there was no answer, opened it, and went inside.
The room was empty.
Professor Mention was not nonplussed. He stared ruefully at the unmade bed, and then shook his head, and smiled. After twelve years of being married to Virginia, he was well aware of the intricate maneuverings of women newspaper reporters.
It was not like Virginia to leave her room untidy, but it had happened at least twice before, and each time he had done what he did now: He made the bed, ran the carpet sweeper over the rug and mopped the floor.
When he was making the bed, he noticed a bloodstain on the sheet.
'Darn it,' Professor Mention muttered irritably. 'Virginia oughtn't to go out when her nose is bleeding, and without her coat, too.'
He went finally back to the living room, and tuned in^a comedy team, whose popular appeal he had for some weeks vainly tried to analyze.
The failure was repeated this night. He laughed hollowly once. When the ordeal was over, he clicked off the radio, and began to whistle softly under his breath.
After a while his watch said that it was eleven. Perhaps, if he phoned the Herald office - No, that wouldn't do. She was supposed to be sick.
He picked up a detective novel he had been intending to read for a month. At twelve o'clock he finished it, and looked at his watch.
He had felt the worry creeping up on him for some time. It tingled in the back of his mind all the while that he was reading the story. The ending, the act of closing the book, was like a cue.
Professor Mention stood up. He swore aloud. He told himself he was very angry with Virginia. She oughtn't to go off like that, and then not phone him.
He decided to go to bed. He woke up with a start. The dials of his watch showed eight o'clock, and the sun was peering through the window. Unnerved, he climbed from under the cozy quilts, and went into Virginia's room.
It was unchanged.
The important thing, Professor Mention told himself precisely, was to be logical. Suppose he did go to the police -after, of course, duly verifying that she was not at the office or at a few other places he could think of.
The police would ask questions. Description? Well, she was strikingly good-looking, five feet six inches tall, sort of redheaded though not exactly. There was an odd glint in her hair that -
Mention stopped that thought with a conscious effort. This was no time for romantic touches. 'Redhead,' he said aloud, firmly, 'and she was wearing - '
He paused grimly. At this point at least, scientific accuracy was possible.
Resolutely he headed for her clothes closet. For ten minutes he fumbled with increasing gloom among some four dozen dresses striving to picture which one was missing. The amazing thing was the number of dresses that he couldn't remember ever having seen before.
At the end of ten minutes, he knew himself defeated. He turned back into the bedroom - just as the hazy figure of a man stepped through the wall of the room.
He stood there for a moment, like a motion picture image focused on a cloud. The insubstantial form of him began to thicken. It became a man in evening clothes, a man with arrogant, sardonic eyes, who bowed coolly, and said, 'Don't go to the police. Don't do anything foolish. Perform your normal duties, and make reasonable excuses for your wife's absence. After that, wait. Just wait.'
He turned. His body changed, became transparent. He stepped into the wall. And was gone.
* * *
There seemed nothing else to do. There seemed nothing to do. Yet during the war he had learned the habit of decision.
Mention hesitated. Then slowly he went into his room, and removed the Luger automatic from the back of the drawer where he had kept it for years. It was a war trophy; and because he had won the medal it required no license.
He stood fingering it with a gathering skepticism. But finally, conscious of its symbolic importance to his morale, he put it into his coat pocket, and started out into the morning.
He was halfway to the university before it struck him that it was Saturday. Mention stopped short in the street, laughed harshly. To think that he had imagined he was taking it calmly.
He stood undecided, grim, thinking with a sudden dismay: a man who could walk through solid walls! What had Virginia run across?
His brain sagged before the implications. He felt strangely boneless, and dry inside, as if his body was all shriveled up by an intense inner heat. His fingers, when he raised them to his burning forehead, were moistless, almost abrasive.
He looked at them, startled. Then hurried into a corner drugstore.
'Give me an injection of blood plasma,' he said. 'I've just narrowly escaped being run over, and I feel dizzy.'
It was only partly a lie. There was no question but that he was suffering from shock, and in no mild form either.
'That'll be one dollar,' said the druggist a minute later.
Mention paid it gratefully, and strode out. His brain was working again; and his body had lost the drab sense of approaching unconsciousness. What he needed now above everything else was to appraise his situation.
He thought drably: the facts were: Futurian Science Laboratories - Edgar Gray - Dr Dorial Cranstone - a strange cold-faced man who walked through walls.
He stopped there. Once more he felt himself change color. He whispered huskily, 'It's impossible. I must have dreamed it. The human body is a structure evolved from a more primitive type. Therefore, unless - '
Higden's thesis! Only if a man had once been innately capable of passing through substance, could outside energy help him do it now. Higden's thesis that present day man was a degenerate from a higher form must be correct.
Mention laughed curtly. He lashed at himself. 'Am I having an academic argument with myself when Virginia is - '
His mind faltered. He felt the strain coming back. He saw another drugstore sign ahead. He went in and bought his second and last plasma injection.
Afterward, physically buoyed but mentally depressed, he seated himself in one of the booths. An hour later, the reality was still the same.
He was a badly frightened man. And since the fear was not for himself, there was nothing he could do about it but what the stranger had suggested:
Wait!
* * *
Sunday: At eleven a.m., he went downtown and peered through the plate glass window of the Futurian Science Laboratories. Edgar was there, a long skinny monstrosity, absorbed in a magazine.
After ten minutes, Edgar hadn't moved except to turn over pages. Mention went back to the apartment.
* * *
Monday: He had one period without a class. There were three other professors in the recreation room. Mention turned the subject to the Futurian Science Laboratories.
Troubridge, physics professor, jumped at the use of the name, then laughed with the others.
Cassidy, assistant professor of English, said, 'It sounds straight out of Tommy Rocket, the new comic sensation.'
The third man changed the subject.
* * *
Tuesday: He had no free periods. During the noon hour he went into the library, and asked for books by and about Dr Dorial Cranston.
There were two by the doctor, and one about him by a Dr Thomas Torrance. The first published of Cranston's two volumes was entitled Physical Affinity of the Human Race.
Astonishingly, it was a tract on pacifism, a ringing condemnation of international slaughter, an hysterical document against war, in which the worthy doctor enlarged emotionally upon the theme that men were brothers under the skin. He advocated the extension of the handshake as a symbol of friendship, urged the adoption of promiscuous kissing among men and women alike, and spoke highly of the Eskimo custom of rubbing noses.
'Alien peoples,' he wrote, 'are electrically charged against each other, and only sustained physical contact will resolve the difference in their potential. A white co-ed, for instance, who allows herself to be kissed by a Chinese student will find that the hundredth kiss is far from repulsive. In the interval the man has become for her a human being in some fashion which she cannot analyze. The next step, marriage, comes into her thoughts; and what began as a desire for exotic thrills has, through contact, attained a more honorable status. We see these marriages taking place all around us, and, unless we have ourselves established similar contacts, we cannot begin to comprehend how they ever happened.'
Basically, stripped of its pacifistic ranting, that was the book. The lunch hour was over when Mention finished his-perusal. He took the other two out, resolved to read them that night at home.
The second Cranston book was a repetition, in even more violent and dogmatic language, of the first. The man was obviously a bug on his subject; and it required a real effort for Mention to read the second volume to the end.
He picked up the Torrance biography of Cranston, flipped it open at chapter one, and read:
Dr Dorial Cranston, pacifist, neurologist extraordinary, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in -
Mention closed the book wearily. He was willing to concede that physical contact would do wonders for human relations. But it was already clear that the reading of old books about Cranston had no connection with the present reality.
* * *
Wednesday: He had no new thoughts.
* * *
Thursday: Professor Troubridge fell into step beside Mention, as the latter started home.
'Norman,' he said, 'about your reference the other day to Futurian Science Laboratories. If they've approached you, don't hesitate. They can do what they claim.'
For a moment, the words sounded as if they had been created at random by a mechanical machine. But there was meaning finally. Meaning so important that Mention fought doggedly to prevent himself from blathering questions that would reveal his ignorance. He gulped, paused disastrously, and then was saved, as Troubridge went on:
'Three years ago, my physician, Dr Hoxwell, told me that my heart wouldn't last six months. I went to the Mayo Clinic. They confirmed the diagnosis. It was a month after that, when I was already despairing, that I was approached by the Futurian people, and informed that I could be furnished with a new heart for ten thousand dollars. They showed me a heart in a glass case, beating. It was a living heart, Norman, and they said it made no difference what organ I needed at any time, they could supply it, provided I had the money.'
Mention said, 'I thought organic transplantations were impossible because - '
He stopped. Realization came that that wasn't really the thought in his mind. There was something else, a picture, a question that roared through his brain with the clamor of a tidal wave. As from a great distance, he heard Troubridge say:
'They can do it because they've discovered a new principle in organic electricity.'
The thought that had come to Mention dominated the whole universe of his mind now. In a dead voice, he uttered the terrible words: 'Where do they get their live replacement organs?'
'Eh!' said Troubridge. His eyes widened. A stunned expression crept over his face as he whispered, 'I never thought of that.'
By the time Mention reached the empty apartment, he didn't want to think of it either.
* * *
There came purpose.
He paced the living room of the apartment that night in a fury at himself for having waited so long. And yet the problem was still: what should he do, what could he do that would be effective?
Go to the police?
He felt immensely reluctant, because there was still a chance. They wouldn't have told him not to go to the authorities merely to keep him quiet for a week - if at the end of that time he went anyway.
He could mail a letter to his bank to put into his safety deposit box, which would be opened if something happened to him… Yes, he would do that.
He wrote the letter, then sat at his desk striving to think. After a long period during which nothing would come, he began heavily to write down a list of possibilities, item by item:
* * *
Virginia accidentally runs across Futurian Labs. She disappears.
I am warned by a man who walks through walls. I discover that:
(1) Dr Dorial Cranston, founder of Futurian, is a fanatic pacifist as as well as a neurologist.
(2) That Futurian sells human organs on a mass scale to rich men. (This is probably their purely commercial enterprise, their source of income.)
(3) The ability to walk through walls is obviously a means of power, and they are not sharing that with anyone. Yet they seem unworried by the fact that I know about it.
(4) Cridley, science editor of the Herald, told Virginia that several attempts to investigate Futurian were stifled in embryo stage, proof that they have influence in high places.
(5) There is absolutely no reason why they should treat Virginia any differently than they do the other - sources - of their live organs.
Mention wrote the last sentence grimly, then stared down at the list, dissatisfied. It seemed to offer no lead that he could follow with even the vaguest possibility that he would find Virginia.
After a moment, he wrote slowly:
If I went to the police, and they arrested Dr Cranston and Edgar Gray, Cranston would walk out through the walls of the prison, and Edgar would -
Mention lifted his pen and stared with a sudden heady surmise at what he had written. Edgar! If it was true that there were Futurian shops in all the large cities, then there were hundreds of Edgars all over the world acting as receptionists. But - Edgar!
Virginia had disappeared after a night of investigating Edgar.
What had she discovered?
Excitement touched his mind, then flared through his body. He looked at the mantel clock. It showed one minute to ten. If he hurried, he could get downtown just about the time that Virginia had phoned the night she followed Edgar.
He might be trailed of course, as she must have been.
Edgar was still there. Mention parked his car a little way along the street, but at a point from which he could see Edgar plainly, where he sat under his spotlight.
Edgar was reading a magazine. At eleven thirty, Edgar rose, put on his hat, switched out the light, and came out of the door. He locked the door behind him.
He did not look around him but headed straight for the restaurant where Mention had often eaten with Virginia. Mention climbed out of the car, and walked over to the restaurant window.
Edgar was at the counter, wolfing a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. He put some money on the counter; and Mention had time only to turn his back, as Edgar emerged from the door.
Edgar hurried off down the street. After five minutes he turned into the dimly lighted foyer of an all-night theater. Mention debauched from his car again, bought his ticket a little breathlessly - and a minute after that watched Edgar sink into a seat well down in the front of the theater. He edged into the third row behind Edgar.
At three o'clock Edgar was still in the show, goggling bright-eyed at the screen. It was shortly after that that Mention fell asleep.
He wakened with a start. His watch said six forty-five. Edgar was hunched down in his seat, his legs over the back of the seat ahead. But he wasn't sleeping.
At seven forty, he got up abruptly, and hurried out of the theater. Straight for the restaurant he headed, with Mention following a hundred feet behind. It took four minutes for Edgar's meal to be served, three for him to eat it. At the counter the girl handed him two of their made-up box lunches, and then he was outside.
He paused in a drugstore to purchase four magazines.
At one minute to eight he unlocked the door of the Futurian Science Laboratories, and settled himself in the chair behind the counter. He picked up one of the magazines and began to read.
Apparently, his long day was about to repeat itself.
Now what?
* * *
Back in the apartment, Mention wakened himself with a cold shower, hurried through a breakfast of toast and coffee, and then set out for the university. His first class was not until twenty to ten; and so he had a reasonable amount of time to ponder his findings.
Actually, what had he discovered? Nothing except another facet of the neurological research of Dr Cranston. The man was undoubtedly a genius. Perhaps he had passed over the books by and about Cranston too hastily.
There was nothing to do about that until night. Then he took down from the shelf, where he had put it unread, the biography of Dr Dorial Cranston by Thomas Torrance, Ph.D.
As he opened the volume, he saw that there was a picture in the frontispiece, a photograph of a man standing on the terrace of a swanky house.
Mention jumped as he saw the picture, then stared and stared at the cold, sardonic face and powerful body. The caption underneath read:
The author, Dr Thomas Torrance, at his palatial home in New Dellafield, Massachusetts.
There was no mistaking the identity. Torrance was the man who had stepped through a solid wall, and warned him not to call the authorities.
He couldn't think. The sleep he had missed the night before, the sheer nervous exhaustion of the past week, took their toll of his brain now, when he needed strength to examine the potentialities of his great discovery.
His last thought before he finally allowed the sleep to engulf him was: Whatever had happened to Virginia had happened during her sleep that day. Perhaps he too -
He woke up annoyed that he was safe, and then, slowly, he grew aware of a purpose. His watch said eleven fifteen. He stood up and headed straight for the phone.
Considering that his call was from California, it went through swiftly. After fifteen minutes the phone rang.
'Your party, sir,' said the operator.
Mention drew a deep breath; then tensely, 'Hello!' he said.
There was the sound of the operator hanging up, a pause, and then a familiar voice said quietly:
'What's on your mind, professor?'
Mention gulped. The words were all wrong; and the confident implications of the quiet tone in which they were uttered, stunned him. Incredibly, he felt ridiculous, as he said:
'Torrance, unless my wife is returned at once, I shall take action.'
There was a little silence, then a half chuckle.
'I'm curious,' said the voice, 'just what kind of action you have in mind.'
The arrogance was almost palpable now. Mention was conscious of a distinct emptiness inside him. He fought off the feeling. He said thickly, 'First of all, I shall go to the newspapers.'
'Nope, won't do!' said Torrance in an oddly judicial tone. 'We've had every newspaper owner in the country in our organic wards. And, just in case you have other ideas, that also goes for state governors, lieutenant governors, state attorneys, cabinet ministers and a few others.'
'That must be a lie,' said Mention. He felt suddenly colder, more sure of himself. 'It's against the law of averages that every one of those men could have had something wrong with him.'
Torrance's laughter peeled over the receiver.
'I'm afraid,' he said, 'we'd be waiting yet if we had depended on Nature.' His voice tightened. 'Our main base of operations, Mention, is on North America, so we couldn't take chances with men like that. We went after them, and they're now, I assure you, solidly in our clutches.'
He ground on, without pause.
'I won't explain the how of that, professor. Just take my word for it. You could of course go to the local police. We never bother with small fry until they bother us. Then we neutralize them. I hope I have made everything clear. And now, if you don't mind, I shall - '
Rage came so abruptly to Mention that he had no time to fight it.
'Torrance,' he shouted. 'What have you done with my wife?'
The reply was cool: 'My dear fellow, this will surprise you. But we haven't got your wife. Goodbye.'
There was a distinct click.
Doggedly, Mention put a call through to the small city residence of the author.
'Hello,' he said, when the connection was finally made. 'Is that you, Dr Cranston?'
There was a chuckle over the receiver. 'My, my,' said the voice of Thomas Torrance, 'but you are persistent.'
Mention replaced the phone on its cradle without another word. Just how a call to New Jersey could be switched to Massachusetts was not clear. But he accepted the fact of what he had heard.
He was turning blankly towards the living room - when Virginia, a hazy figure, stepped through the wall of the hallway.
She was wearing pajamas; and the insubstantial form of her - thickened - before his eyes. For a long moment she stood there staring at him with anguished eyes.
She began to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her face grew wet. She ran towards him. Her arms clutched him with the strength of panic-stricken terror.
'Oh, darling, darling,' she sobbed. 'They've killed me. They've killed me!'
* * *
She moaned and cried in those minutes before full awakening. The horror of what she had last seen - the knife in her heart - was strong in her mind, like acid burning.
She wakened with a start.
She was lying in a large, curious room. It took a long moment to grasp that she was stretched out on a table; and a full minute must have passed before she grasped dazedly that the knife was no longer protruding from just below her breast.
With a shock like fire, it struck her that there was no pain, and that she was alive.
Alive! She sat up shakily. And instantly sagged back at the sharp splinter of pain that jabbed at her left breast.
The pain subsided. But the fact that it had come at all left her weak with fear. She lay, not daring to move.
She grew more aware of her surroundings.
The room she was in was about a hundred feet square. It was almost completely filled with little glass cases. The cases lined the walls, and stood on the floors, with only narrow aisles between them; and each case was divided into compartments about two feet square.
By turning her head, Virginia could see plainly the inside of the compartments against the wall to her right and left.
Each one contained what looked like a human heart, suspended from a small machine in the ceiling of the compartment.
She stared at them blankly; and she was on the point of turning away when the realization struck with a terrible force: the hearts were beating.
Strongly, steadily, they expanded and contracted. There was no pause in that quiet movement. The sustained quality of it calmed her, quieted her overstrained nerves. After five minutes, consciousness came that she ought to examine her personal situation again.
Cautiously, almost without fear this time, she lifted her head. For the first time, now, she saw what she had missed before:
A square of cloth had been cut out of her silk pajamas. There was a clean, white bandage carefully taped where the knife had penetrated.
Curiously, it was the pure whiteness of the bandage that braced her. It suggested that she was being looked after. The death that had so violently threatened her was frustrated.
She began to think of herself as being in the private surgery of some neighborhood doctor. She must have been rushed to him for emergency attention.
She was alive, but it seemed odd that no one was attending her. Surely, she wasn't going to be left here on this table.
Just like that, anger came. And because fear was still a wavering, dark curtain in the back of her mind, the anger was unnaturally violent and unreasonable.
Anger faded before the passing of the minutes. If she had been in a bed, she would have lain quietly, and awaited events. But it was impossible to remain on this flat, hard table.
She had allowed her head to sink back to the surface, now she raised it again. Carefully, putting most of her weight on her right arm, she raised herself to a sitting position.
Nothing happened. No pain, not a twinge of the anguish that had struck at her a little while before. Evidently, the important thing was not to move too rapidly.
She sat for a minute on the edge of the table, her legs dangling, looking around at the fantastic total of human hearts all around her.
She began to be afraid. It was unreal, that row on row of quietly beating hearts, each in its compartment, each functioning with a steady lifeness.
Most disturbing of all was the complete absence of human beings. Except for its unnatural furniture, the room seemed utterly empty; it unnerved her.
Trembling, Virginia lowered herself to the floor. She stood very still, letting the strength flow back into her body.
It was pleasantly surprising to realize that there was strength.
She walked along an aisle, glancing only fleetingly at the double line of hearts. The number of them made her uneasy again. There was a door at the far end of the room. One of the hinges, and the lock, were badly smashed. It opened easily, however, onto a stairway that led upward to another door.
She climbed with a sense of urgency, a conviction that she must get away from those phalanxes of soundlessly beating hearts.
The second door was metal. But its lock too had been roughly handled, though there was a key in the shattered keyhole.
She opened the door, eager now; and stepped out onto a jungle pathway. A brilliant sun was shining down on a hilltop clearing a few feet away. She climbed toward it, reached it, and stood briefly paralyzed by what she saw.
* * *
Virginia Mention paused in her recount of what had happened. Her husband had laid her down on the bed; and from that prostrate position she looked up at him. He was staring down at her with a grim tenderness.
'But you're not dead. You're here with me, alive and safe.'
She said hopelessly, 'You don't understand, sweetheart. You… don't… understand.'
Professor Mention replied quietly, 'Go on, my dear. What did you see that startled you?'
She was on an island, an atoll green with jungle, and surrounded by a blue ocean that extended on every side as far as the eye could see.
The sun, though still high in the heavens, was well past midday. The heat was blasting; it made her feel ill.
Dizzy, she turned to look at the door through which she had come. She expected to see a building, but there wasn't one.
Undergrowth spread in a thick tangle all around where the building should have been. Even the open door was half hidden by lichens that intertwined cunningly all over the exposed metal face of the door.
There was a strong odor of dying vegetation.
To Virginia, standing there under that lonely brilliant sky, came an unreasoning fear that the door would close, and shut her forever out in this empty world.
She stared down toward the door. She had taken only three steps when a thin, screaming sound touched her eardrums. The sound came from the remote sky to her right. It was faint and faraway at first, but grew louder and louder.
After a moment of worried puzzlement, she recognized with relief the origin of the sound: a jet-propelled plane.
It came into sight, a black point in the blue heavens. It took on size. It was a twenty-jet machine about two hundred feet long, wingless except for the upward bending wing struts supporting its vertical jet fuselages.
It flashed past, unaware of her frantically waving arm, a passenger express plane bound from beyond the eastern horizon toward the setting sun.
She watched it till it disappeared into the sun-fire, hope dying gradually. The return of silence startled her. Shocked, and enormously depressed, she remembered again her fear of the door closing upon her.
She entered it hastily, closing it behind her, but not locking it. Before, she hadn't noticed how cool and comfortable the 'weather' was in the great room, nor had she been aware of the indirect lighting. Now her attention fastened eagerly on the evidences of mechanization. There must, she thought anxiously, be a basement, perhaps other underground floors. The electric power must have a source.
For a timeless period she searched for a second door, but succeeded only in tiring herself. She lay down on a couch which she discovered at one end of the room; and she was resting there when her darting gaze brought her awareness for the first time that each transparent compartment of the showcases had a little placard attached to it.
A name was,printed on the first one she examined; it read:
Morrison, John Law once
257 Carrigut Street
New York City
The second one also had name, and nothing else. Virginia walked slowly along the line of compartments. She was at the N's before it struck her that the compartments were ticketed in alphabetical order.
Her mind made a fantastic jump; and she rushed over to the P's. She found the name she wanted instantly; and, having discovered it, stared at it blankly:
Patterson, Mrs Philip
(Cecilia Dorothy)
Suite 2, May fair A parts.
Crest City, California
The blankness ended abruptly. With a gasp, she hurried over to the Grays. But Edgar wasn't there. The only person with anything like his name was:
Gray, Percival Winfield
3 Huntingdon Court
West Tuttenham
London, England
Briefly calm, Virginia stood watching Percival's heart as it beat on quietly. She was thinking:
But of course! Edgar was not one of them. He was a slave, held somehow in a thrall that included an utter inability to sleep.
After a little there seemed nothing to think about that. But another thought came, a thought so tremendous that her mind rejected it three times as she ran back toward the M section. But each time it came back stronger and more terrible.
She found the compartment she sought. The heart in it was
slightly different from the others. It was beating steadily, but
it had a small neat bandage over a portion of the flesh wall
facing her. The placard on the glass was equally unmistakable:
Mention, Mrs Norman (Virginia) . . .
Virginia Mention stared at the thing with avid eyes, like a bird fascinated by a monstrous reptile. A sound came from behind her, but she heard it only vaguely. It came again, and this time it snatched at her attention.
It was the sound of a man clearing his throat. A slow, quiet voice said, 'Dr Dorial Cranston at your service, madam.'
Virginia had no memory of turning. Nor did she so much as think of the fact that she was in pajamas in front of a strange man.
The man standing before her was old; and he wasn't at all what she had expected. Just what she had expected she couldn't have said, but not a gentle face. Not a sad-looking, old, old man with tired blue ,eyes, who bowed gracefully, and spoke again, in the same oddly matter-of-fact way:
'The problem of keeping organs alive outside of the body was solved in various countries before, during and after the second great war. But the best work was done in Russia. I like particularly the various mechanical addenda, such as the autojector, which they brought to a high degree of perfection. Of course, in the preservation of the organs, I merely used the discoveries of the Russians and of the scientists of other nations. I'm a nerve man myself. I - '
It was at that point that Virginia found her voice. She had been standing staring glassily, but with her courage coming back instant by instant, her eyes brightening before the mildness, the obvious harmlessness of this old man. Yet, in spite of terrible relief, there was a tenseness in her, a need to know, unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life.
In a piercing voice, she cried, "But if this is my heart' - she jerked her arm with automatic stiffness toward the living flesh behind the glass - 'what's inside me now? What?'
The harmless old man looked suddenly cool and unfriendly. He said in a frigid voice:
'You were stabbed to death, weren't you? Yet now you're here talking to me. Don't worry about what's inside you. I took out a lot more than just your heart. Don't bother searching for more operation cuts. I don't work that way. Come over here.'
Without waiting to see if she would follow, he turned and walked with the sedate bent-knees movement of age toward the back of the room. He touched something embedded in a narrow stretch of bare wall. A door swung noiselessly open, revealing a set of stairs leading downward.
The room below was as large as the one above; and it too was completely filled with glass cases. The contents of the compartments were various: hearts, lungs, liverlike organs; there was even a pancreas and a few pairs of kidneys.
All of the organs seemed alive. The lungs were definitely so. They expanded and contracted gently but with unmistakable strength and sureness.
The old man paused before a compartment containing a pair of lungs. He motioned wordlessly toward the placard attached to it. Virginia braced herself, as she stepped forward. The bracing helped. It was her own name.
Slowly she faced him. Her mind was clearer, fear a fading force. The reality was that she was alive. Beside that fact, all this had no meaning. She laughed harshly.
'Please stop playing games. What do you want, all of you?'
She had thought herself calm, but there was enough hysteria in her voice to shock her. That woman, she thought, that terrible woman had scared her. SheNfound her voice again.
'Dr Cranston,' she said earnestly, 'you look honest. What is all this? What has happened?'
The old man shrugged. 'I'm afraid I don't dare tell you anything but that these are your lungs, and the heart upstairs is your heart. An organ removed in its entirety does not involve serious damage to the nervous system of the body except at one or two key points, and those are easy to fix.'
He looked at her. 'I suppose you've been outside. I was prevented from coming back here as soon as I intended, so you've had time. I'm sorry about that. I've never been able to fix locks on those doors. They were smashed by a man whom I saved as I have you and who - ' He paused. 'Never mind.
'About the organs,' he said. 'After they killed you, I could do nothing but take them ouk Your brain' - he turned to a nearby case - 'is here. Mrs Patterson was very thorough. After she had stabbed you to death, she used a long needle to pierce your brain through your ear, and she also pricked at your lungs. Her intention was to make certain that you would not be brought back to life in any normal fashion. She, and the others, have an idea that if I am forced to make replicas of themselves that I automatically create a recruit for them. So far' - he smiled grimly - 'they have proved right.'
He frowned, then reached briskly into his pocket, and produced a necklace with an intricate pendant suspended from it. He held it out.
'Here is your radio device. Whenever you want power, touch this little lever, and say into the pendant: "Press button 243." That's your number. Two four three. Don't forget it. I'll call it for you this time, so that you can get home.'
He fastened the pendant around her neck, touched a tiny lever, and said: 'Press button 243.'
There was a pause: and then - she began to burn inside. It was so sharp, such a flame of agony that she cried out. Her breath came in quick gasps. She twisted. She started to run. But there was nowhere to run. The pain went with her, like a moving directed fire.
The conviction came that she was really dead; and that all that had gone before was a dream, a flashing kaleidoscope of unreality born out of the hideous pain of dying. Through a blur, Dr Cranston's voice came to her:
'… Very painful the first few times. But remember that your brain controls the power. When you think yourself insubstantial, that is how you will be. The moment you let go of the thought, you return automatically to a state of solidity. The power to do that wears off after a few hours, and requires recharging. I shall come with you as far as the outer walls of your apartment'
* * *
Virginia was in the apartment, and for long minutes babbling away to her husband, before realization finally came that she was not dead, That actually her situation was worse than that.
She must have been unconscious for a week, to have memory of only a few hours of waking.
By noon they were no further than that. She couldn't stop talking. Twice, Mention persuaded her into bed, but each time when he went into the kitchen to mix her a drug, she was out from under the quilts and following him.
After the second time, the knowledge penetrated that he had a mentally sick woman on his hands. Above everything else, she needed rest, time to calm down.
He managed finally to /give her the protein sleep drug, cadorin. But it was not until he lay down beside her that her voice grew drowsy; and she fell into a restless sleep.
He had time to wonder what he ought to do, now that she was back. He was still utterly divided two hours later, when she wakened tense and terrified.
'That woman,' she began thickly. 'She put a needle through my ear into my brain, and she pricked my lungs. She - '
'Many people have pierced eardrums,' Mention suggested. 'The important thing is she didn't disfigure you.'
The phrase had proved briefly magical a half dozen times before. It proved so now. The funny, mad look went out of her eyes. She lay quiet for a long time. So long that Professor Mention got worried.
He glanced at her cautiously. Her eyes were open, but staring, and narrowed with thought. For a minute, unobtrusively, he watched her. Then, slowly, he said:
'Apparently, what we have here is a gang, remorseless, murderous, infinitely evil. It was founded as the result of a neurological discovery of Dr Dorial Cranston, but he himself is not one of the gang. Its political and material power seems indestructible. It's too big; like a gigantic octopus it sprawls over the earth. But Cranston goes around trying within the pitiful limits of an old man's strength to undo the damage done by the monsters he has created.'
'Norman!'
The tone of her voice indicated to Mention that she had not heard a word he had said.
He spoke softly, 'Yes, dear?'
'Norman, Dr Cranston won't live much longer. Do you realize that?'
He knew there must be a deeper meaning behind her words than just the fact. After a moment he thought he had it. He said, 'You mean, then there will be no check on those devils.'
Once again, she seemed oblivious to his words. Her tone was more urgent, intent.
'Norman, if he's the only one who knows where that island is, then what will happen to my heart, and the hearts and organs of those others, after he dies? Surely, they won't go on beating, living, without attention.'
It was odd, but for a moment the words meant nothing to Mention, but that here was one more fear to soothe out of her tortured mind. He actually formed the calming words on his lips; and then he stopped himself.
He lay very still, mentally transfixed. That's it! he thought. That's their fear. They must be desperate. They'll stop at nothing.
His mind leaped out over the possibilities. By evening he had still to come to a decision. It was amazingly hard to know what to do, what could be done, against such a vast organization.
The days strode by while he stood moveless in his mental valley of indecision. Each day Mention told himself, Surely, today something will happen. They'll do something, show in some way why they did all this to us.
Virginia returned to work. A whole month passed. It was a week after that that Mention walked into the apartment one afternoon - just as Virginia stepped through the wall and materialized in the hallway.
She was radiant. She glowed. There were times in the past when he had seen her alive and excited. But never like this. Her body was vibrant; it seemed to cast off an aura inhuman in its power. Almost literally, her face glowed.
Mention stared at her; and slowly her richly tinted cheeks lost their natural color. It was their day for eating in. Without a word Virginia turned, and hurried into the kitchen.
Two hours later, when the radiance of her had faded to normal intensity, Mention looked up from the newspaper, and said quietly, 'Virginia.'
She jumped; then, 'Yes?'
'How often have you done that?'
She was visibly agitated. It struck Mention with a shock that, in some curious way, she had hoped he wouldn't refer to what had happened. Her lips twitched. She said finally in a low voice:
'That was the first time.'
She was not, he thought, used to lying. So that the lie was as transparent as a child's. He felt sick; then in automatic defense of her, told himself that she had never recovered from her experience.
He said gently, 'Why did you do it?'
She seemed relieved that he had accepted her statement. She began eagerly:
'I wanted to see how it worked, partly because being able to do it might prove a defense against them; and I couldn't remember what it had been like the first time. I was too excited then, and besides it hurt terribly.'
'And this time?' Steadily.
'It didn't hurt. I felt alive, warm, wonderful. After a while I wished myself insubstantial, and it was so; then I stepped through the wall, simultaneously wishing myself in the alley behind the Herald oflSce - and there I was. I felt no sensation.
The movement through space was instantaneous.'
Her eyes were wide as they gazed into his. Briefly, all fear was gone out of them.
'Norman, it's miraculous, godlike. It's - '
'Why not try,' Mention said, 'to wish yourself on the island? I'd like to have a talk with Dr Cranston.'
Virginia shook her head vigorously. 'It's impossible. I don't mean I tried to go there. But I made several attempts to go to places I'd never been; and nothing happened. You have to know the direction and you have to be able to visualize the place. You have to know where it is you're going.'
Mention nodded slowly. 'I see,' he said.
He let the subject drop, but he thought wearily, This is what they're waiting for: to let the reality of her situation sink into her. To allow her time to grasp that she is in the same box as they are.
But why? What did they want of her? They had started off by killing her because she had made some minor discoveries about them. Then, when Cranston interfered with the finality of their murder, they had warned Virginia's husband not to go to the police. They wanted something; and now that they had gotten Virginia to experimenting with the power they had given her, it shouldn't ta!ce long before they showed then-hand.
He glanced up at Virginia. She was sitting, gazing into space, her eyes half closed. Mention felt a sudden, enormous unease.
* * *
It was ten o'clock that night when the doorbell rang jarringly. Mention glanced at Virginia, and then stood up.
'We won't be getting friendly visitors at this hour,' he said. 'Better call Edgar, and tell him to press button 243. No use taking chances.'
He waited until she had spoken into the wrist radio, then slipped the Luger into his pocket, and went to the door. It was a messenger boy with a letter. The letter read:
Wednesday the 23rd.
Will Professor and Mrs Mention come Friday evening at seven to a dinner party in the main dining room at the Grand York Hotel? Give your name to the maltre d'hotel.
Cecilia Patterson.
There was one thought that dominated all others in Mention's mind, as he read the letter: action was beginning. If ever he intended to do something not of their choosing, the time had come.
He spent the night thinking, straining for a clue. He was in the middle of a lecture the next morning when comprehension came as easily and quietly as life to a newborn puppy.
He stood very still, staring at the class, but seeing only a blur of faces.
Why, he thought in a great wonder, it's been there before our eyes ever since Virginia came back. What blind fools we've been not to realize.
Not until he was on his way home did he realize what he must do about it.
* * *
He left his bedroom window open.
He waited until the illuminated dials of his watch pointed at two. He dressed silently, shoes and all, then waited until a streetcar moaned past along a nearby street. He let the outside sound clothe any sounds he might make in moving to the window.
The drop from the second story window jarred his bones, but the softness of the earth in the flower garden below saved him from injury.
There was a twenty-four hour U-Drive-It garage three blocks away. Half an hour after leaving his room, Mention slipped into the theater seat beside Edgar Gray.
'All right, Edgar,' he said quietly. ^You're wanted. Come along.'
'Glug goo?' said Edgar in a whispered fear.
'Come along!' hissed Mention threateningly. And flashed his Luger.
Edgar came. Mention drove out into the country, and parked finally in an open stretch of farmer's roadway, off the main highway.
He didn't switch off the motor, and he left the gear in second, and kept his foot on the clutch - just in case. But he knew he was safe. Even they couldn't be everywhere.
The idea of using Edgar for his purpose seemed cleverer every minute that passed. There were two problems in connection with him: one was to get him to talk in an understandable fashion; the other was to see to it that Edgar told no one of this meeting and its results.
It was the first problem that proved difficult. But after half an hour it began to solve itself. Mention found that he was beginning to understand Edgar's gloppings. Behind all his incoherent glugs and glibbers, Edgar spoke English.
Mention expected little from the questioning phase of the interview; and that was exactly what he got.
The mind of Edgar was a misty region, but the darkness lacked depth. If a human brain could be compared to a book, then Edgar's was a magazine of the more lurid sort. But he was almost completely lacking in personal experiences.
An orphan from babyhood, he had spent the first fifteen years of his life within the walls and behind the fences of an institution. At fifteen, they had picked him up, and put him behind the enormous glass window of the Futurian Scientific Laboratories, and he had been there ever since.
'But,' asked Mention, puzzled, 'you have been treated, so that you don't need sleep. When was that done?'
'When they took out my heart,' Edgar mumbled, 'and my lungs and my brain and other things, they said I wouldn't need sleep anymore. They do that to people they want to control.'
'Yes,' Mention thought precisely, 'Virginia sleeps normally. There are variations and variations to this business.'
Edgar finished simply: 'I was scared at first but' - his voice tightened with hate - 'the woman whipped me a couple of times, and then I didn't dare not do as they wanted.'
It was the suppressed fury in Edgar's voice whenever he talked of 'the woman' that solved the second problem.
'Listen, Edgar,' Mention said earnestly. 'I'm on your side against that woman. When I get through with her, she'll never whip you again; and you'll have a chance to do all the things you've ever wanted to do.
That last was important. A youth who read as much escapist literature as Edgar must be absolutely maddened with the desire to go places and do things.
'Listen,' said Mention, 'here's what I want you to do. Tomorrow night at twelve o'clock, a jet plane leaves here for Los Angeles. At one thirty a.m. a rocket ship leaves Los Angeles. I want you to be on that jet and make the connection with the rocket.'
'Me on a rocket ship,' gurgled Edgar ecstatically.
'You'll be back in time for work; so don't worry about that. Here's some money, and a notebook containing exact instructions as to what you are to do. I've even left spaces for the answers I want you to write down.'
He handed over the notebook and the money, and watched Edgar slip the former into his breast pocket, the latter into a billfold. Edgar's fingers shook with excitement.
Mention trembled too, but it was not excitement. He felt cold and hot by turns as he thought of Edgar having that notebook all day long. If they ever got hold of it -
Mention shivered, and drew his gun. He made his voice hard and cold.
'Edgar, take one last look at this. If you fail me in any way; if you do this job, and do it right, I'll use this gun oh you. Understand!'
In the dim light of the dashboard, Edgar's eyes glowed with understanding.
'Glug goo!' gulped Edgar.
* * *
Mention taught at the university as usual the next day. It was during the noon hour that he put through his phone call.
'Tell her,' he curtly informed the male servant who answered, 'that it's Professor Mention.'
A minute later, a woman's voice glowed on the phone. Mention said, 'Mrs Patterson, I wish to change the hour of our dinner from seven to midnight. I believe the Grand York holds late dances every night, so there will be no difficulty about getting the service.'
'The reason?'
Mention laughed curtly. 'Do I have to give one? All I'll say is, my wife and I won't come unless you agree. You do! Very well'
He felt grimly pleased, as he hung up. It was risky; it would make them suspicious. But Edgar's movements would now be as free from watchful eyes as the precautions of one man could make them. There were only three dangers now:
First, that it didn't matter what he did. Second, that he was not really fooling them at all. Third -
Nitwit Edgar himself.
* * *
They were led to a table where four men, one of them Torrance, and five women, one of them blonde Mrs Patterson, were already seated. The men stood up. The women ceased their animated talking, and looked them over curiously.
Their faces shone with unmistakable extra life. All nine, men and women both, almost literally glittered with power. The table was the center of attraction. People kept glancing over from nearby tables in fascinated awareness.
Mention felt drab and lifeless beside them, as he sank into one of the two empty chairs, but it was a physical feeling only. Mentally, he had never been more alive, more determined.
Convince Virginia, he thought, that she had nothing in common with these creatures. Gain information. And give Edgar time to get safely started on his long, swift trip. Those were his purposes.
The anxious hope came that Edgar had not been drained of strength to provide the glittering life that these people now paraded.
It was worrying. Picturing the possibilities made eating his fruit cocktail an effort. In the end he could not contain himself. It was Torrance who answered his carefully worded question.
'No, the Edgars in our power centers are not "batteries". They're transmitters. The word negative is the key. Every time somebody passes the great plate window behind which Edgar sits, there is a tiny flow from them to him, but he cant use it. Where Edgar's internal organs - and mine and your wife's - used to be, are now electronic impulsors largely made from tantalum. One difference is that Edgar is negative. Your wife and the others and myself are positive. Is that clear?'
It sounded like Yogi mouthings. But apparently he was going to be given information. He flashed his next question. Torrance answered promptly.
'There are two hundred and forty-three of us including your wife. Of course,' he went on, 'we're only the executive central. We own immense property, and have tens of thousands of employees, including the people we have had watching you and your wife.'
He laughed. But Mention was not amused. The personal words had come so unexpectedly that he swallowed hard. He forced his tense nerves to relax. Only what he had done last night mattered, he told himself unsteadily. And because of his precautions, no one, absolutely no one, had followed him. He was sure of that.
It was clear, though, that the man was playing with him. It startled him. It brought awareness of how tremendous was the power these people must believe themselves to possess.
He felt shocked into studying for the first time the faces around the table.
He had thought the four men were handsome, and the five women regular streamlined beauties. In a way that first impression was not wrong. Even now, examined intently, all nine, men and women alike, showed themselves to be well formed physically, a quality enhanced by the fact that they were marvelously well dressed and marvelously well groomed.
At that point the beauty ended like a road snapped off by the gap in a bombed-out bridge.
Those finely formed faces were chiseled masks of hardness. Merciless, inhuman hardness. Here was an innate cruelty that only Death personified could equal. Their eyes were slate-blue and slate-gray and slate-brown. Their lips were uniformly thin and compressed.
That was the underlayer. Superimposed, dominating, crowning each countenance was arrogance, supreme and terrible arrogance.
There was no question at all. They did believe in their power.
Mention ate his soup course, fighting for calm. He stole a glance at Virginia, but she was staring down at her plate. She had, he saw, taken very few spoonfuls.
He thought darkly, in surprise, that nobody was saying anything. The only words they had spoken so far had been in answer to his questions.
He saw that Torrance was smiling enigmatically.
Stronger grew Mention's conviction that he was being toyed with. And yet, up to now, he had lost nothing, had actually gained information.
That course couldn't be dangerous. He asked his next question. As before, it was Torrance who answered, and with the same promptness, the same apparent honesty.
'You're right, there wasn't much about Cranston's discovery in his books, mainly because he hadn't discovered very much when he wrote them. And my biography of him was written to kid him along at a time when we were building up our organization.'
He paused. 'Don't forget, in thinking of Cranston and his work, that he's a nut. For instance, it was not-until he discovered that his idea of spreading goodwill by universal physical contacts was not going to be given a trial that he conceived the idea that artificially magnified nervous energy might do what he required - without contact.
'Never did a theory of a man fall on a smoother, rounder surface. That ball is rolling yet.
'Within the short space of one year, Dr Cranston had found that an interflow of energy took place every time two or more human beings came near each other. It was genuine transference of life force, but it needed magnification before it would have the same effect as physical contact. Accordingly, he engaged a first-rate electronic engineer - myself - to develop a tube and a circuit which not only magnified the organic energy, as he called it, but which could tune each individual's wavelength at will.
'An improvised version of that original circuit is now inside your wife keeping her - connected - to the hearts, lungs and brains in Dr Cranston's secret laboratory.'
He gazed earnestly at Mention. 'Cranston has never explained to me why it is necessary for the organs to be outside the body, except to say that there must be a flow over distance. Yet at the same time there is no distance. The blood, the nervous energy, every breath of air we take is pumped, flows and is purified by the organs in those glass cases of his. If anything happens to those organs, we'll die.'
Mention hadn't intended to speak. But this was what he had wanted to know. AH his doubts had writhed around the one point of those human organs in Dr Cranston's island laboratory.
And they were connected. They were. Nut, the old fanatic might be. But he had these Machiavellians in the palms of his two hands.
But why - the wonder was a savage force - why hadn't Cranston used his control and destroyed the whole lustful crew?
That was the question that burst from Mention's lips. And Torrance, his eyes like gray-diamond drills, answered from between clenched teeth:
'Because he can't bring himself to kill. Because he's a bug on pacifism as no one ever has been. Think! His whole discovery, this tremendous discovery, is based upon his emotional desire to find a practical method of spreading goodwill.
'That emotionalism is our deadly danger. It makes it possible for him to fool himself. It's true he can't bring himself to kill us. But he's seventy-eight years old. Not old as ages go nowadays, yet well over the average life expectancy.
'He could, literally die any day. He stubbornly refuses to recognize that possibility. He won't permit our doctors to v examine him. In some queer way, he's convinced himself that if he dies, and we don't find our organs in time, then he wonH really be responsible for our deaths.
'How did he get them in the first place? Man, who'd ever suspect that an old fool like that would be so cunning He performed all the operations except his own. And somehow he must have become suspicious of us.'
Torrance was utterly intent now, his gray gaze so concentrated that Mention had the impression of two dully blazing lights shining at his face.
'Mention, we must locate that laboratory. We must gain control of our vital organs.'
'That is where your wife comes in.'
Torrance paused.
There was no question but that he had come to his point.
'You see, professor,' he went on softly, 'every time we discover that someone suitable to our purpose is investigating us, we wait until we think they knew enough to take the shock of revival. It is amazing how little knowledge is required, and yet how important it is; dozens of people whom we simply picked up on the street went insane on us.
'Anyway, we kill the investigator at the right moment, then transport the dead body to Dr Cranston's home.
'Here again, care is necessary. The old man tires quickly these days. And when he is tired his emotional mind convinces itself easily that there is nothing he can do.
'So we found it was useless to bring him too many bodies.
'Under normal circumstances, however, the poor old fool can't stand to see people dead when he knows he can do something for them. He is particularly partial to' - smilingly, Torrance bowed at Virginia - 'to beautiful women! And, even though he is aware of our purpose in bringing the corpses to him, he has reached a state of mind where he doesn't care. He feels hopeless, defeated by our enormous organization.
'Accordingly, over a period of time, we have built up a picture of the surroundings of his hiding place. We know that it is on an island, somewhere in a tropical zone. Your wife, we hope, will be able to tell us some little point more. Since her own life is at "stake, she will, I am sure, be glad to tell us all she can.'
Torrance stopped. He looked at Virginia, then at Mention with a strange imperturbability.
'Is everything clear now?' he finished.
'Yes,' said Mention.
He felt a relentless rage. It was not the host of murders that did it, though the probable number of them did blurring things to his mind. It was not even Virginia. Thought of her predicament only made him feel cold and sick and afraid. It was the old man, the use being made of an old man and his idealism.
The ruination of an old man's wonderful crazy dream shook the very life within him. Mention felt abruptly fortified to the depths of his soul. And, just like that, he knew with an implacable determination exactly what he must do to these people, if ever the opportunity came.
Funny how long it had taken him to realize that, quite by chance, Virginia possessed all the clues to the location of the island.
They couldn't know yet the extent of her knowledge.
They musn't know.
Mention said in his steadiest voice, 'My wife woke up in Cranston's laboratory and Cranston was there. She had no time to look around, because he brought her straight home. And that, if you don't mind, is where she and I will start for now.'
He pushed his chair away from the table, then hesitated, glancing at Virginia.
There was a brief silence; and then one of the blondes, not Mrs Patterson, laughed harshly. 'I notice, Professor Mention, that your wife is not making any move to follow you. Is it something she intends to remember having seen something?'
It was a possibility that had already occurred to Mention.
It was up to her.
Slowly, Mention gathered his forces. He looked at Virginia, and saw that her face was sheet-white. Her lips trembled, as her glance met his - and then she looked away.
Mention said urgently, 'Virginia!'
Once more, she looked at him. There were tears in her eyes.
'Virginia, you've heard what these people have to say. And it isn't what you know or don't that's at stake at all. It's, are you going to become one of them, or are you not?
'Don't make your decision now.
'There must be things we can do. Surely Dr Cranston can be reached, if we persevere. I'm certain, if we could talk to him, that he'd finally make up his mind to kill these creatures. He's been isolated. He must be made to see that his life's work can yet be rescued from these human rats, these mass killers, these - '
He paused. He whirled on Torrance. 'How many,' he rasped, 'how many human beings do you kill every year for their internal organs?'
'About five thousand,' said Torrance without hesitation. 'Mostly orphans, poor people who move around a lot, and families without relatives.'
'Uh!' blinked Mention.
He hadn't expected an answer. He had flung the question to point up a grim aspect of these people's activities. Now, he felt torn from his train of thought.
'Five thousand!' he echoed.
The total was bigger than he had ever thought. It shocked him. He had believed himself hardened to anything that might come out in this deadly interview. And he wasn't.
He felt nausea. With a titanic effort, he caught hold of himself. Realization came that there was nothing he could say that would add any emphasis to the sum itself.
He did speak, however. He said wanly, 'The defense rests.'
He looked at Virginia - and she smiled at him through tears. It was a dreary smile. But a smile!
'Oh, you poor fool,' she said. 'You don't have to argue with me. You don't have to prove anything to me. There's evil here, beyond description. Evil of that curious advanced kind, which is only amused by the word and the realization. Look at them!'
She waved one hand, futilely. Mention had already looked. The nine faces were twisted in nine variations of sardonic amusement. Virginia's voice burned on:
'It's become like the evil of the universe, beyond the power of individuals to resist, with one exception. Only Dr Frankenstein can destroy the monster he has created.
'The rest of us can but try to save our loved ones from the deadly elements. Oh, Norman, don't you see - '
'I see,' said Mention harshly, 'that you're thinking of giving in.'
'Norman,' she said whitely, 'they've been too frank. They've told us so much that it's obvious they don't care what we know. Don't you see what that means?'
'You're thinking of yourself when you say that,' Mention said.
'Am I?' She looked at Torrance. 'Am I?'
Torrance said, 'Your wife is smarter tonight than you are, Mention. You see, she is safe. Cranston will somehow see to it that no harm befalls the few of us he thinks, worth saving.'
He turned toward Virginia. 'If you start talking before two minutes have passed, you and your husband can go home. You will never again be bothered by us. And if we gain control of the organs, we guarantee that no harm shall befall yours. Naturally, we prefer that everybody with power should join us.'
He looked down at his watch. 'We do not make promises lightly, having no need for lies. It is now seventeen minutes to one. You have two minutes.'
Virginia parted her lips as if to speak, and then she caught Mention's gaze. And closed them again.
She sat staring at him like a hypnotized bird.
'Don't you dare,' Mention almost hissed. 'In the war, we discovered that there's no compromising with such things as these. Their word isn't worth the uttering. If they have any information we'll use it to destroy them.'
Even now, he mustn't let them guess that they did have the information. x
Torrance said drabbly, 'The two minutes is up.'
He whirled on Virginia. 'You fool!' he said coldly. 'You've let him condemn himself to death. At this moment,' he went on icily, 'you may consider that your husband has one year to live. A minute from now, it will be fifty-one weeks, and so on. If at the end of fifty-two minutes you still haven't started talking, we shall kill him within the next few days.
'In any event he's a dead man. You can save him for a year. That's final. Mrs Mention, start talking.'
Mention climbed to his feet. 'Virginia,' he said roughly, 'let's go.'
Torrance reached up, and caught his arm. 'Sit down, you idiot.'
Mention smashed him in the face.
He felt incredulous the moment he had done it, astounded at his foolishness. But by then, the uproar had begun.
The waiters who carried Mention outside were not gentle. Nor were they slow. Mention succeeded in shouting once, 'Virginia, don't you dare!' And then he struck the sidewalk with a hard plop.
After ten minutes, Virginia had still not come out.
The minutes dragged. Twice Mention tried to go in. But the doormen were on the watch for him.
'Not tonight, Mac,' one of them said. 'You've had one too many.'
It was Torrance who brought Virginia out. The man looked triumphant.
'The West Indies!' he exulted. 'What luck that she went out just as one of the rare twenty-jet planes passed, and that she noticed it was mid-afternoon there, but nearly noon when she got back to California. The continental time differences work in beautifully. We've got the old scoundrel at last.'
He looked at Mention coolly. 'It's too bad you're a returned man. We're really indifferent as to whether you live or d:e, but we've discovered that men who were officers in the army, navy or air force do not cooperate with us even to the extent of just minding their own business.'
He finished: 'Your wife talked after twenty-five minutes and she didn't start to tell the truth till we took her upstairs to a lie detector. You'll be feeling a knife at the end of the allotted time - after which we'll force your wife to join us. Goodbye.'
He walked back into the hotel, with Mention's Luger pointing at him all the way. At last, gloomily, Mention took his hand out of the gun pocket.
'I don't dare,' he said. 'Killing one wouldn't do any good. Besides, I can't afford to spend the night in jail.'
Beside him, Virginia said dully, 'I'm sorry, Norman.'
I'm sorry, too,' Mention replied gently, 'for what I said to you before.'
She spoke again, but this time he didn't hear. There was a clock above the ornate entrance of the hotel. Its hands showed twenty minutes to two. Mention stared at them, and calculated.
The Los Angeles-Miami rocket was only ten minutes out from its glitteringly showy launching run. It would be thirty-five minutes yet before Edgar arrived in Miami and started his inquiries.
By then, Torrance and the others, having flashed the 'nerve power' way to Florida, would be on their way to the island by the fastest jet planes available. i
* * *
He made sure they weren't followed, by taking three different taxis to the airport.
They were on the three thirty rocket from Los Angeles to Miami. There was one chance, Mention realized, as he sank deeper into the cushions from the enormous acceleration. One chance.
Virginia had been to the island. Torrance and those eight veterans of the organization who had attended the dinner hadn't.
When he told Virginia his plan, she stared at him somberly. She said bleakly, 'Suppose Edgar started home on the quarter to three, Los Angeles time, rocket.' ,
'I don't believe it,' Mention said flatly. 'For years Edgar has palpitated for adventure. He'll stay till a quarter to five L.A. time, as I advised him to. But he won't go far afield. He's not that bold, not yet'
They found Edgar in one corner of the waiting room, reading a magazine.
He handed over the notebook. There were four twenty-jet planes a day in the West Indies, he gobbled, all on the.same route, every six hours in both directions.
He led the way to an enormous wall map of the West Indies.
The route was marked in a white line in bold relief; and there was a tiny island shown at the probable time point.
In the city directory, Mention located the Miami Futurian Science Laboratories. A taxi took Virginia, Edgar and himself there. A brick cracked the glass, then sent it shattering to the sidewalk.
'Get in there, Edgar!' Mention urged. 'Press button 243. And then beat it back to the airport.'
Two minutes later, as the early morning sun burst through a fleecy bank of low clouds, Mention drew a radiantly powered Virginia into a doorway.
'Darling!' he said. This is it!'
He went on doggedly: 'It must work. They transported you to Cranston's home when you were just a dead body. And Cranston took you to the island in the same way. That radio impulsor inside you must build a force field all around you when you're "charged". If they could move you, then you can take me along now.'
He saw the expression on her face. He said earnestly, 'Don't forget, you've been there. And you know the way at last.' He pointed eastward. 'The island is over there. Visualize the hill you stood on that day when you came out of Dr Cranston's underground laboratory. You can. I know you can.'
He felt her stiffen with decision. 'Hold me close!' she whispered. He felt her vibrant body press against his, responsively.
Somewhere nearby an Irishman began to curse in annoyance, something about a window having been broken on his beat, b'gorra.
The officer's voice was cut off curiously. There was a sudden tingling inside Mention, thrillingly sharp. And sustained.
The sensation ended. He was standing in a room lined with glass cases, staring at an old man, who confronted them with an ax in one hand and a revolver in the other.
'I have a little system,' Dr Cranston said in a queer, tired voice. 'I phone Torrance up. If I can't get in touch with him, I come here, just in case he's up to something.'
He lowered the gun wearily. 'Just when I'd half convinced myself that I would kill the first person who came in here, in barge two innocent people.'
Mention did not hesitate. This was the man who could fool himself about things like responsibility for death.
He was going to have the chance.
Mention stepped forward and took the gun from the old man's unresisting hand.
'I'd like you,' he said, 'to hand me the ax of your own free will.'
Dr Cranston shrugged wearily. 'There's nothing else I can do.'
He handed over the ax. He looked suddenly cheerful. 'I suppose there's nothing I can say that will prevent you from doing what you have in mind?'
'You can,' said Mention grimly, 'indicate those cases which you think can be left intact. And don't indicate too many.'
When Mention finally put the ax aside, twenty-three compartments remained unshattered.