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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cargo To Callisto, by Jay B. Drexel
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Cargo To Callisto
-
-Author: Jay B. Drexel
-
-Release Date: February 25, 2021 [eBook #64632]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARGO TO CALLISTO ***
-
-
-
-
-                           Cargo to Callisto
-
-                           By JAY B. DREXEL
-
-                 Four _Aarnian_ criminals--vicious and
-             deadly--fled silently into the Martian night;
-              and grimly the Patrol threw out an airtight
-             dragnet. Nothing human could have escaped ...
-                 but what's human about an _Aarnian_?
-
-           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
-                     Planet Stories November 1950.
-         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
-         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
-
-
-Sarah emerged from the surface of the Great Canal as sleek and brown
-as a seal. Laughing and sputtering, she jerked her head once over each
-round shoulder, parting her soaked hair and revealing her face.
-
-"Try that once again!" she flung at Joe.
-
-Joe Caradac ducked her again, and Kent shouted something from the bank
-that wasn't quite audible over the squeals and splashes.
-
-"What?" Joe held his wife's head firmly between his knees. "What'd you
-say, Kent?"
-
-His Senior Intendant's grin widened as he cupped his hands over it to
-shout again:
-
-"I said--you'll drown the poor thing!"
-
-Joe grunted as Sarah cold-bloodedly located a nerve-center in his
-thigh and bit it. "Not this thing--" he released her and she bobbed up
-swearing in sand-coast Martian--"they had to rope it out of a canal to
-teach it to walk!"
-
-He narrowed his grey eyes humorously and poised for the attack, but
-Sarah had conceded and was swimming toward the bank. The setting sun
-struck a series of glowing V's in her wake. Joe rubbed his tingling leg
-and followed. They reached the green slope at the same time and big
-Kent handed them up with ease.
-
-"Ray's watching the franks," he said, "and I've been watching Ray and
-I think we'd better get up there or he won't be able to hold off much
-longer. His inner man is showing through."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The pianist's dark, saturnine face peered at them over the fire as they
-came up and he rose, wiping his hands carelessly on his sport tunic.
-He had evidently gone into the canal-skimmer and changed out of his
-bathing suit.
-
-"How do," he greeted dourly; "the damned thing itched so I took it off."
-
-[illus2]
-
-Joe gave himself a last swipe with the towel and tossed it through
-the open hatch of the skimmer. Sarah carried her towel into the boat
-and came out presently in a suede skirt and bolero, looking rubbed
-down and delectable. Joe's wife was half Martian, and it showed in her
-long, slender eyebrows and delicately cleft nose and chin. She looked
-worriedly at the three men busy with the frankfurters.
-
-"There's something on the telaudio," she said. "Come in and listen."
-
-"What is it?" Joe asked.
-
-"Something about somebody escaping from Mars Detain."
-
-Ray's humming stopped. He'd been practicing wrist octaves on a flat
-rock and his long hand hung motionless for a moment as if he were
-reaching for something. Kent set his frank across the top of his coffee
-cup--he was always careful about everything--and stood up.
-
-Joe looked at his wife, looked at her eyes. They were frightened.
-
-"That's pretty near here, isn't it?" Sarah said. She moved back to let
-the three men into the boat. They grouped around the telaudio.
-
-"I don't think there's anything to worry about," Kent said slowly.
-"They're bound to catch the men--"
-
-"They aren't men."
-
-The four listened.
-
-"--ruthless _Aarnians_. This warning cannot be taken too seriously.
-Detain is doing everything in its power to recapture the four criminals
-but, as is known, the _Aarnian_ psyche is able to leave its body at
-will and inhabit the body of another entity, subjugating the mind of
-its host and contro--"
-
-"My God," Ray whispered, "I've heard of those devils!"
-
-"--in all likelihood will seek to escape from Mars. To prevent this,
-all persons now holding tickets for interworld travel must submit to
-being psycho-screened before entering liners. No more tickets will be
-sold--"
-
-Sarah's eyes were wide and round. "They'd have to leave their bodies
-behind--here on Mars!"
-
-Big Kent--because he was one of the Caradacs' oldest friends and could
-do such things--put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. She was
-shivering.
-
-"--tenant Smith of Detain informs us that the _Aarnians_ are unable to
-pronounce certain consonantal diphthongs such as jee and jay--even if
-occupying bodies that can normally pronounce such sounds. This is very
-important, as it may be an only possible means of identification, for
-the _Aarnians_ will undoubtedly seek new bod--"
-
-Sarah switched off the telaudio, her brown face openly sick. She bit
-her lip and looked at each of the three men surrounding her.
-
-"That gives me the shivers," she said. "Let's go home."
-
-After that they didn't talk much. Under the red twilight, they packed
-up the pots and pans, leaving the unwanted food for the night-crawling
-_nolls_. They spent a lot of time looking over their shoulders as they
-did this, although each tried to conceal it from the others. At last
-the skimmer moved silently away from the bank and pointed its nose at
-the distant haze that was Ofei, By the Great Canal.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-At precisely seven o'clock the telaudio on the headboard of Joe's
-bed turned itself on. Sounds pricked the balloon of his disturbed
-slumber, tugged his mind out to wakefulness. He rolled over and sat up,
-listening, rubbing his lanky legs.
-
-Instead of the usual symphonic music, he heard an urgent voice,
-obviously ad-libbing:
-
-"--be very, _very_ careful. The criminals--the _Aarnians_--have still
-not been found. All residents of Ofei and vicinity are warned--this
-warning cannot be overemphasized--"
-
-Joe reached out and clicked on the screen. The announcer's tunic was
-wrinkled, his sash was awry. He looked as if he'd been up all night.
-
-"--are advised to stay within the city limi--"
-
-Joe snapped off the telaudio and glanced over at Sarah's bed. She was
-snoring delicately, one smooth arm pillowing her mass of blue-black
-hair. Better that she doesn't hear any more about that business, he
-decided firmly.
-
-Joe liked the simple life. No servants, no flunkies, although he could
-have afforded a dozen. Five sunshiny rooms on the Great Canal, with a
-nice view of Mars Memorial Park on the bank opposite. He robed himself
-against the early morning chill and headed for the kitchen. His head
-ached faintly and, to judge by what little he could remember of it,
-he'd had a dilly of a nightmare. Something about ... being chased, or
-something? Or smothered by a....
-
-Even as he stopped in his tracks to try to pin it down, the memory
-broke, dissolved as if in flight. Frowning, he pushed through the
-kitchen door and crossed to the deep-freeze, slid it open and rummaged
-in it.
-
-The nightmare wasn't important surely, but he mulled it over with
-interest as he prepared breakfast, for Joe, being rather well adjusted,
-dreamed rarely, and then mostly about Iowa, back on Earth ... a
-long-ago picture of a twelve-year-old boy, his first day in college;
-the boy sitting under his shining Projector, surrounded by a group
-of thunderstruck Psychologists; the quick death of their initial
-skepticism, and in its place a growing wonder as it became evident
-that, although a History spool was whirling in the scanner and the
-thought-helmet functioning to perfection, the boy's mind was receiving
-neither spoken text nor images....
-
-"You don't feel anything?" a Psychologist asked skeptically.
-
-Joe closed his eyes. There was a low, unmusical humming in his ears and
-that was all. He tried to shake his head and couldn't, so he said: "No,
-I don't."
-
-"When was the World Federation formed?"
-
-"I don't know."
-
-"Are you lying?"
-
-"No."
-
-One of the other Psychologists standing nearby looked up from the
-little box he held in his hand and said that Joe wasn't lying.
-
-The first Psychologist raised his eyebrows. "We'll try another
-Projector."
-
-While Technicians dismantled Joe's Projector and examined it for shorts
-or haywire, the Psychologists had Joe sit down under all the other
-Projectors in 1stY-Cubicle 149. Then they tried 148 and 150.
-
-"It's some kind of block," the first Psychologist said finally, looking
-profound to cover up his tizzy. "There's some kind of barrier in his
-mind."
-
-Joe Caradac clenched his fists. "That's not true--I want to learn!"
-
-"Then you probably will, boy--" the Psychologist sat down to fill in
-some forms--"but you'll have to go back three hundred years to do it.
-You'll have to learn from books!"
-
-There the dream would simply end, for no fantasy of wish-fulfillment
-could have exceeded in satisfaction Joe's actual conquest of this
-problem. At eighteen he wore thick glasses--he preferred them to
-contacts or artificial irises. At twenty he took tests contrived
-especially for him by the members of Central Education assigned to his
-case. He was awarded equivalence degrees in Business Administration,
-Metatomics and Interplanetary Law. His marks were the highest of the
-year and Joe Caradac's name was briefly in the newsphones.
-
-He started with the New Chicago offices of Mars Imports and Exports
-as a mercury. After six weeks of flying back and forth with memos he
-traded his anti-gravs for a desk.
-
-And on June 32, 2401, the newly appointed Regional Buyer for M. I. and
-E. got married and was flown to Mars by a chartered spacer to take
-command of the regional office at Ofei, By the Great Canal....
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-He was putting the finishing touches on breakfast when he heard a groan
-and the sound of a stretch from the bedroom. When he turned around,
-Sarah was standing in the doorway.
-
-Joe's sandy eyebrows went up. His wife was certainly not a modest
-woman, but considering even that, this morning was an agreeable
-surprise. Her eyes were still dull--he guessed that she'd worried about
-those whatyoucallits after going to bed--but she was smiling broadly.
-Joe began to have visions of missing work for half a day. He smiled
-back at her and she laughed a little.
-
-"_Hohn, Uarnl!_" she said.
-
-Joe was thrusting halved oranges into the juicer. He turned off the
-machine and grinned.
-
-"You'll have to talk plainer than that, little monkey," he said. He
-held out a glass of juice. "Drink this--it'll wake you--up--" The last
-word faded into an astonished silence.
-
-Then Joe said, "Hey--come back!" He set down the glass and went into
-the bedroom.
-
-She was lying on her bed, her face hidden. Joe dropped onto the edge of
-the bed and put a tentative hand on her back.
-
-"Hey now," he said softly, "if that's the way you feel about it I'll
-juice up some grapefruit." He moved his hand down and spanked lightly.
-"Hein?"
-
-She didn't look up. She had turned her head and was looking at the
-corner of the room by Joe's bed.
-
-"I do not feel well. Go away."
-
-Joe's face was immediately concerned. He bent over her, reached for a
-wrist. "What's the matter, Sarah? Can I get you anything?" The wrist
-hung limply in his hand.
-
-"No. Go away."
-
-Joe straightened up and drew his eyebrows together in thought. Sarah
-was usually tearful and pretty much of a leech when she wasn't feeling
-well. Excessive commiserations and breakfast in bed were the rule at
-such times.
-
-"Do you want me to get Doc Halprin?"
-
-The blue-black head shook from side to side.
-
-"So what am I supposed to do, monkey? I hate to leave you this way."
-
-"Go away."
-
-"But can't I--"
-
-"Go away, damn you!"
-
-Joe stood up abruptly. He clenched his fists and looked at his wife's
-still form and gradually the anger dulled and left him. He had no
-right to be angry. Everybody got tempermental once in a while.
-
-But this was the first time she had ever cursed him.
-
-"O.K.," he said softly. "I'll see you tonight."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The regional offices of Mars Imports and Exports sat upon a hill at
-the end--or the beginning--of Ila Boulevard, depending upon which
-way you were going. It was twenty-five-hundred feet of silver and
-native marble, and covered four city blocks, and Joe Caradac was top
-man--literally--since his office and personal staff took up the whole
-two-hundred and fifty-first floor.
-
-His morning mail--about twelve letters weeded out of the daily
-thousands--was gotten out of the way with skill and dispatch. Grinning,
-he propped his feet on the low, curving window sill and said: "Miss
-Kal--take an audiogram."
-
-Miss Kal used two of her arms to adjust pad and stylus, looking up
-expectantly. Her other arms were busy transcribing a previously
-dictated letter into Venusian--her native tongue, although she spoke
-sixty-eight--and tugging at a humidified legging that had somehow
-worked down almost to the floor.
-
-"My dearest, darling monkey--" Joe began. Miss Kal looked up again in
-amazement. Joe grinned at her and said, "It's to my wife."
-
-Miss Kal nodded wisely and began to write.
-
-"--I am sending this from my dark and dismal office," Joe went on. It
-was a habit they had when anything went wrong at breakfast. Joe had
-first proposed by audiogram.
-
-He casually watched a skimmer that was in danger of creating a honey of
-a traffic jam down below. Didn't that schlemiel know his left from his
-right?
-
-"--Where was I? Oh, yes--my dark and dismal office." Joe scratched a
-cigarette alight, blew a happy smoke ring. "I hope that you are feeling
-much, _much_ better and that you will take luncheon with me in the
-Pluto Room of the you-know-what Hotel--" His mind went back to those
-honeymoon days and he lost track of his dictation again. Another smoke
-ring, a somewhat more thoughtful one.
-
-"You-know-what Hotel--" said Miss Kal phlegmatically.
-
-"Yes--ah--just end it 'at one fifteen sharp, your everloving Joe.'"
-
-There was a knock on the door and Miss Kal set down her pad and stylus
-and started to get up. Joe was on his feet and around the desk in a
-second.
-
-"Stay right where you are," he smiled; "I need the exercise."
-
-Miss Kal smiled also and settled back into her specially built chair
-with its temperature and humidity controls. A present from Mr. Caradac.
-He was such a nice being to work for.
-
-Joe opened the door, and said, "Oh, hullo, Kent. Since when are you
-knocking?"
-
-Big Kent nodded formally to Miss Kal and winked at Joe. He said, "Yoe,
-there's something I'd like to talk over with you in private."
-
-With a sigh, Miss Kal rose again and made her way through the other
-door into her little office. The door closed behind her.
-
-Kent let out a long breath. He smiled at Joe and the smile turned into
-a laugh that had an odd sound of triumph.
-
-"_Hohn, Uarnl_," he said, and laughed again. "_Ut sinna d'yonlwar?_"
-
-Joe sat down behind his desk and looked at the big man. Hone you-arnel.
-Wasn't that what Sarah had said--or something very much like it? He
-shook his head.
-
-"You wanted to talk to me about something, Kent? What are you and Sarah
-cooking up with this gibberish?"
-
-The brilliant Martian sunlight--not as dim as had been anticipated in
-the days before space travel--came through the ceiling-high windows,
-struck little lights here and there from the bouquet of Venusian
-Glass-moss that Miss Kal tended so carefully. It slanted across Kent's
-big face as he looked at Joe for a long moment, giving his left eye a
-pale, shallow lustre and throwing the shadow of his jutting nose down
-over his mouth. He opened and closed his hands, and said:
-
-"Nothing. It'll wait, I guess." His gaze wandered over the room and
-settled on a corner that was empty save for a throw rug--a relic of
-Caradac's Iowa past. Kent's mouth tightened into a thin line. He stared
-at the corner.
-
-"It'll wait--for a while," he said stiffly and opened the door and went
-into the outer office. Bone-faced, he walked toward the transveyor belt.
-
-"Mr. Kent--Mr. Kent!" The big man's Mercurian secretary rose out of a
-chair near the door, his voice quacking from the speaker set into his
-fishbowl helmet.
-
-"Yes?"
-
-"They tolt me that you hat gone to Mr. Caradac's office, sir. I've been
-trying to finte you all morning, sir. A laty, sir, on the visiphone.
-She has callt many times--many times--"
-
-"Thank you," Kent said tonelessly. "I know who it is."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Joe Caradac stared in astonishment at the door. First Sarah--now Kent.
-This seemed to be the day for everybody to blast in orbits ... well,
-hell ... he shrugged his shoulders and called Miss Kal back out of her
-office. She dropped into her chair with a sigh and they picked up the
-day's business from where it had fallen.
-
-San-Vika of Saturn Enterprises was threatening all kinds of things if
-he didn't receive his shipment of ato-rotors on the very next flight.
-Joe didn't waste much time with that. One of the many things that made
-him a top executive was that he knew how to deal with phonies. He told
-San-Vika--via spacephone--that he could go stick his heads in a waste
-eliminator and push the button, and that if he wanted to get nasty, M.
-I. and E. had an army of lawyers hanging around just itching to get
-their teeth into last year's insurance double-deal.
-
-"We let everybody get away with it--once!" Joe told him and cut the
-suddenly fawning image off the screen. M. I. and E.'s investigators, he
-thought absently, could certainly give the Sol Secret Service a run for
-their credits. Now that he had tactfully gotten San-Vika straightened
-out, he might as well release those ato-rotors to be shipped.
-
-At twelve fifteen an audiogram came from Sarah. _I don't feel well
-enough to come. Love, S._ Well, at least it was an improvement in tone.
-
-At one o'clock, Miss Kal went into her office to open the mysterious
-little package of lunch that she brought with her every day. Joe
-stretched out his legs on the window sill and looked at the traffic jam
-below. That driver had really done a fine job. There were three Patrol
-skimmers circling the mess, darting to and fro like angry wasps.
-
-He didn't feel much like eating. Breakfast and supper were his big
-meals--the habit was a long-standing one. However, he thought, this
-morning's breakfast hadn't been much to rave about. Orange juice, some
-burned Pohl, some undercooked sand-hoppers.
-
-He switched on the inter-office visiphone.
-
-"I would save you the trouble," he said, when Miss Kal's face appeared,
-"but they built this place so that all of my inside calls have to be
-routed through your selective tentacles."
-
-"The usual, Mr. Caradac?"
-
-"The usual."
-
-Joe was rather proud of the fact that everything in his division of
-M. I. and E. worked smoothly and efficiently--even the kitchens. In a
-little less than forty seconds a portion of his desk folded back and
-the "usual" appeared on an elevator tray. A pot of light coffee and
-some doughnuts with powdered brown sugar.
-
-Joe dunked the solid portion of his lunch and considered the morning's
-peculiar happenings. Apparently unrelated incidents that were related
-in part always intrigued him. There was usually a logical reason
-for parallels. The trick, he thought, was to concentrate not on the
-"coincidences" themselves but to examine the circumstances under which
-they occurred.
-
-Sarah's illness--Kent's queer behavior. Not obviously connected.
-Separately neurotic. Yet what was it Kent had said that had reminded
-him of Sarah's strange greeting?
-
-Hone you-arnel?
-
-The two had played practical jokes on him before. He grinned. This was
-probably one of their special five-day jobs, designed to make him into
-a shattered wreck by Friday so Sarah could duck him on Saturday and get
-by with it.
-
-Joe repeated the syllables aloud, trying to make some sense out of them:
-
-"Hone you-arnel."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Instantly he was on his feet fighting, his lips raving silently. His
-big chair tipped back and fell over to the floor.
-
-A furious, icily cold intrusion was being made upon his mind. He stood
-with feet planted on either side of the overturned chair and threw the
-force off but it came back again and again. The office was suddenly
-oppressive and stifling, and the objects about him were small and
-crystal clear, as if seen through the wrong end of a hand galaxiscope.
-The churning, utterly loathsome invasion surged up like a wave roaring
-against a reef--and fell back and away in horrible desperation.
-
-From a million miles away he heard--or felt--a voice. It said:
-"_Uarnl--yes, Uarnl!_" and it said other things, raging things, that
-Joe could not understand.
-
-Then it was gone. As suddenly as it had come. The office regained its
-normal perspective. The bright sunlight, reflected now from the tall
-buildings across the Great Canal, erased the ragged, black hole out of
-his consciousness.
-
-Painfully he righted the chair and sank into it. His lungs felt pressed
-in and stale, like the inside of a folded blanket. He took a deep
-breath, shoved his wet palms hard at the top of the desk.
-
-_Uarnl._ The nightmare.
-
-It came back to him as dreams rarely do: down to its last beastly
-detail. A dream of fear and peril--a running dream--and not a dream,
-after all. _Uarnl._ He looked at the corner of the room, at the
-colorful throw rug. It lay there under the sun, brighter than it had
-been, as if a pane of glass had been lifted from it.
-
-After a while he got up and went to the door of Miss Kal's office. She
-looked up vaguely, concealing a small, resigned lizard under her jacket.
-
-"Miss Kal," Joe said blindly, "do you have my morning papers?"
-
-He took the facsimiles back to his desk, walking slowly, afraid to
-get there and sit down and open them. The nightmare; the first aborted
-attempt. Sarah and Kent--approaching him separately--yet similarly.
-Allies. Each had been confident that during the night _Uarnl_--had--
-
-There was nothing else on the front sheets but the names _Ih_, _Lof_,
-_Dir_, and _Uarnl_ and the story of their possessors' escape from Mars
-Detain. A power breakdown had weakened the energy barrier that kept
-their elusive minds, and hence their bodies, in confinement. By the
-time armed replacements could be sent to the _Aarnians'_ isolated cell
-the beings had vanished. The guards had been strangled. Energy barriers
-had been set up at all space and canal ports. Other barriers had been
-formed into a hundred mile noose that was being carefully drawn in
-toward Detain.
-
-Joe folded the last paper over the cruel three-eyed faces that seemed
-to mock him. He fumbled at the visiphone. Miss Kal was wiping her lips
-cheerfully.
-
-"Miss Kal," Joe said, "get me Mr. Reader in Shipping." He leaned his
-elbows wearily on the desk and waited until Reader's puritanical face
-appeared on the screen.
-
-"Yeah, boss?"
-
-"Reader, has anyone consigned four large crates to go off-world
-tomorrow night?"
-
-"Yeah," Reader replied promptly; "Mr. Kent. B-type mobile spacesuits.
-Had me alter the manifest this morn--"
-
-"Do you have the crates down there?"
-
-"Uh-uh. Mr. Kent said he'd skim them in sometime tomorrow. He was
-coming up to get the switch O.K.'d by you. Why? Anything wrong?"
-
-Joe opened the center drawer of his desk.
-
-"No. Nothing's wrong. Listen carefully, Reader. I'm going to take care
-of those crates myself. If I'm--not in my office tomorrow you are _not_
-to load them on-ship! No matter what Mr. Ke--_anyone_ says or does! If
-the crates come in refrigerate them and call the Patrol and send the
-name of the addressee to Detain immediately!"
-
-Reader came as near as he ever had to looking surprised. Nothing
-wrong? His right eyebrow shot up several millimeters. Joe added, "Keep
-this in your cheek and there'll be double credits for you pay-day."
-
-Reader nodded. "Yeah, boss. Don't I always?"
-
-Joe took his atom pistol out of the drawer, handling it with unfamiliar
-fingers. It had been a long time since those target shooting days in
-Iowa. He checked the gun quickly, reloaded it with fresh pellets.
-
-He had left the visiphone on, and when Reader had broken his
-connection, the interior of Miss Kal's office and the surprised face of
-that eavesdropper had automatically returned. She stared at the atom
-pistol.
-
-"Miss Kal," Joe said softly. "Get me a canal-cab."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The bodies were lying in a row beneath an overhanging ledge of
-sandstone. They had burrowed deep into a miniature jungle of thick
-leaved canal weeds, and it had taken him a long time to find them. The
-gleam of four shiny new B-type spacesuits, less carefully concealed,
-had finally ended the search. Kent and Ray had been busy this morning.
-
-Standing where he was, Joe could look down the green and red dotted
-slope and see the ashes of the picnic fire, the scatterings of food
-that the night-crawling _nolls_ had found unpalatable. And, blown by
-Mars' occasional winds--or taken by alien hands--to a spot only a few
-feet from where it had been thrown away, was the scrap of paper with
-his letterhead on it. The paper that he and Kent had marked up during
-their discussion of tomorrow night's flight to _Aarn_, Callisto.
-
-_If they didn't actually hear us talking_, Joe thought, _it was that
-paper that started the whole thing._
-
-He said loudly: "Are you here, _Uarnl_? You thought it was perfect,
-didn't you? You thought you could repossess your bodies as the liner
-went off-world. Well, look at this!"
-
-With executival thoroughness, he blasted the four bodies into cinders.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Sarah came out of the kitchen as Joe opened the canal door and let
-himself in. He turned and paid the cabby and the skimmer moved off.
-
-"Hello, darling," she said, and tugged at his arm. "I've got a swell
-supper fixed!"
-
-Joe smiled at her as he shrugged out of his tunic. He flung it casually
-over her favorite potted _Zinhaeat_. She didn't grab it off. _I should
-have been a detective_, he thought. He followed her into the kitchen.
-
-"Anything interesting happen today?" Sarah began to arrange the table,
-moving things here and there fussily. She looked at Joe from the corner
-of her eye. "That's about how you like it, isn't it?" she asked.
-
-Joe said, "That's fine." He ground out his cigarette on a clean plate.
-Sarah would have taken his head off if he had ever done that.
-
-"No," he went on, "nothing happened. Same old stuff."
-
-They sat down to eat. Joe tasted his soup. It was rotten. He wondered
-if they cooked like that all over Callisto, or only in _Aarn_.
-
-"Is it all right, darling?" Sarah was looking at him brightly, her
-fingers twined under her chin with the left pinkie extended, her head
-cocked to one side. It was all so cute that it made Joe sick. He
-decided that if the showdown were put off much longer he'd never be
-able to stand the sight of her again.
-
-"You haven't called me 'darling' since our days of stardust and
-chivalry," he said. "Call me Joe."
-
-"What?"
-
-"I said--call--me--Joe."
-
-Sarah pushed her plate away. Her brown eyes were muddy.
-
-"I wasn't hungry anyway," she said coldly.
-
-Big Kent and Ray came through the door that led into the living room.
-Kent leaned against the wall and folded his massive arms. He grinned
-mockingly at Joe. "We never give up," he said. Ray stared nervously and
-wet his lips.
-
-Joe shoved back his chair inch by inch.
-
-"_Uarnl's_ dead," he said. "He blundered things in my office and got
-scared and tried to get off-world in a passenger. The Patrol blasted
-him."
-
-Sarah rose calmly and looked at Ray and Kent. Their faces were stony.
-She said: "_Lof--Dir_--I think the four of us together can break down
-his resistance to Occupancy." Her eyes traveled to an empty corner of
-the kitchen. "Are you ready, _Uarnl_?"
-
-She faced Joe again, a sly smile on her lips.
-
-"_Uarnl_ wasn't killed, Yoe--atomics don't kill us. The passenyer was."
-
-Joe wasn't surprised when she floated away from the chair and toward
-him, her slippers hardly seeming to touch the floor. He'd been
-expecting to be attacked.
-
-But what almost broke him into little pieces was her third eye--the
-one that blinked open in the middle of her forehead, brushing aside a
-brittle shell of skin and glaring at him with its wide, unhuman hunger.
-Then, for one terrible second, his brain felt packed in ice; the room
-was grotesque, filled with alien contrivances. The only sensible thing
-in it was _Ih's_ warm, familiar third eye.
-
-With all his melting strength, Joe thought, "_I destroyed the bodies!_"
-and the whole scene dangled unmoving before him, the weird, distant
-setting for the climax of a play, as he heard his own voice in a
-wrenching groan:
-
-"Our bodies--destroyed!"
-
-Appalling misery and hatred for _himself_ rocked Joe's brain. Then
-_Uarnl_ recoiled, as the _Aarnians'_ rapport was broken.
-
-Joe cried chokingly, "Lieutenant--Lieutenant Smith!"
-
-The canal door burst open and Lieutenant Smith of Mars Detain, who
-had been hugging the narrow metal landing ledge, came in like the
-proverbial tornado. What he'd heard had more than convinced him. The
-deadly little sphere in his hands started to make sharp spitting sounds.
-
-Sarah and Kent and Ray and the invisible _Uarnl_ screamed. All
-together, in a dissonance of agony and fear and death.
-
-[Illustration: They screamed, in a dissonance of agony and fear and
-death....]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Then, three of them stood loosely, in puzzled silence.
-
-Big Kent brushed a hand across his eyes. "Ray," he muttered, "what in
-hell were you yelling about?"
-
-Ray looked at him and sank into the nearest chair.
-
-"Yelling?" he said bewilderedly. His fingers began to unconsciously
-perform on the chair arm. "I don't know. Was I yelling?"
-
-Sarah was in Joe's arms, her blue-black hair sending its aching
-fragrance into his nostrils. "Joe," she whispered, "Joe, what happened?"
-
-He tipped back her head, ran a finger over her smooth, brown forehead.
-Hypnosis--to paralyze and freeze him, to weaken him. He drew her face
-against his shoulder again.
-
-What _had_ happened? What would those Psychologists back in Iowa say
-if this story ever reached their ears? _The barrier?--the "some sort
-of block" in my mind, my freakish mind, that keeps out Projectors--and
-Aarnians?_
-
-"Kent," he said, "fix us all some drinks. Lieutenant Smith's got a
-story to tell us--about that picnic."
-
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