CHAPTER VI

They brought in Erin Grady, dressed in brown civilian clothes and wearing an expression of curiosity on his lean well-proportioned face and in eyes that were accustomed to peering into measureless deeps of the sky. "How'd you get him?" asked Brave.

"Lied like a trooper," said Pope, and the pilot turned half-angry, half-amused blue eyes on him.

Brave gestured to a straight-backed chair. "Please sit there, Mr. Grady." The pilot did so without question. "Forgive this wire," Brave went on, looping the heavy coils around the man's chest and arms, "but we don't think rope would hold you."

Then the pilot spoke. "Kept telling myself for years that scientists are all cracked," he said philosophically. "Guess this proves it."

"Bill," said the Indian to Thihling, "go out and patrol the house. Let us know if anybody approaches--anybody at all."

The rocketjet man left them. Brave put Grady's hands flat on the arms of the chair and lashed them down at wrist and knuckles. Then he stood back, Alan and Don and Rob a little behind him, and he said gravely, "Erin Grady, you smashed up a disk yesterday. But you weren't hurt."

"I was lucky."

"You sat in the regular pilot's chair as it hit?"

"Sure, I--" then his eyes narrowed and he shut his mouth.

"Too late," said Brave grimly. "You gave yourself away. You aren't so clever as you're supposed to be."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"For a superman, you're too slow on the trigger. We got into that disk before they clamped a security ring around it. We saw what happened to the chair. No human could have missed being sliced down the brisket by that juggernaut that came through the control board."

"You clever, clever little bastards," said Grady venomously. "You'll be dealt with." For the first time he seemed angered at the wire that held him. He threw his weight against it, but it held firm. He glared at each of them, and Rob Pope said, "He's trying hypnotism; watch yourselves."

Mariner chuckled. "He can't affect me, I'm too fat. The thought waves get lost."

Brave did not even feel the tentative vibrations of the pilot's mind, but he glanced at Alan and saw that his friend was sweating. "You okay, guru?" he asked anxiously.

"He's talking to me." Alan's face cleared. "But I'm not going under. I believe your treatment did the trick, Brave."

* * * * *

The pilot relaxed and deliberately spat on the rug. Brave reached out an arm like a tree trunk and slapped the tanned cheek, so the head rocked sideways. "We aren't going to be gentle with you, pal," said Don. "Face that. We aren't playing for marbles."

Grady did not speak. Brave took eight strips of light wood, narrow and about two inches long, from his pocket. Kneeling, he fitted them neatly under the pilot's well-manicured and rather long nails. The man flipped them out with a convulsive motion of the fingers; Brave impassively brought his enormous fist down like a hammer on the back of the fellow's right hand. Grady shrieked.

"Do that again and I'll break the other one," said Brave.

"You red-skinned bastard!" howled Grady, "you did bust it up."

"I meant to. I wanted to see if you'd be quick enough this time to simulate pain."

Had Alan not known better, he would have sworn the pilot was actually suffering. "What are you talking about? Why in blue hell shouldn't I feel pain?"

"Because you're a mutant, and we know you can't. Why can't you, I wonder," muttered Brave in a conversational tone, fitting the splinters under the nails again. "Pain is a necessity of life as we know it. It warns you of danger. A man could be sliced off up to the waist without noticing it, except for pain. Why would the next higher animal to man in the scale of evolution have lost the sensation of pain? It doesn't make sense."

"That's the first thing you've said that I agree with or understand. It doesn't make sense. You're all nuts."

"Come off it," said Alan. "You have given yourself away too often. Don't go back to the old innocent routine."

Rob Pope said, "Suppose they can regenerate lost appendages? It isn't as mad as it sounds. Suppose that welder slipped away and grew himself a new hand? In the case of such a beast, what good would pain be to him? It'd be no more than a nuisance. The lack of pain then becomes an intelligent development--but only then."

"What devils they must be," said Don, staring at Grady. "Right out of the swamps of Hell."

Brave said to the pilot, "Now I'm going to ask you a question. If you give me a fair answer I'll take out one of these sticks. If you don't, I'll drive it into you--under the nail it hurts about as bad as anything can--and light it. It's an old trick and it works wonders as a tongue-loosener. Here's the question: are you a mutant of our race, a superman?"

Grady looked at him for a moment and then he laughed. He was still laughing when Brave hit the stiff wood with a hammer and sank it beneath the nail. Then he screamed.

"You do that real well. It sounds as if that hurt you. Keep it up if you like; it won't bother me. I'm an Indian, Mr. Grady. I'm as sensitive and humane as the next guy until I'm up against somebody who fights unfairly, who's mean and cruel and treacherous; then I turn cold and I say to myself, how shall I fight this brute? and if torture is the best answer, I use it without any qualms. That's sense, it seems to me. Well, I hate your uncanny guts, Mr. Grady, and all your crew: and there isn't any way to fight you that I can see, so I'll torture you. And even if I'm nine-tenths certain that you aren't feeling it, still it eases me a little to hear you whoop and yell. And there's that tenth of my brain that says maybe you are feeling it. I hope you are. I really hope you are."

* * * * *

He lit the wood: it was synthetic, a very light, hard compound of fibers that burnt with a quick flame, as hot as the heart of a coal. It reached the nail and curled it back in two shavings of black char: and Grady almost shattered his throat with his roaring.

"Brave," said Alan, "stop it! He does feel it!"

"You raving maniacs, certainly I feel it!" Grady cried. "Where'd you get the idea I couldn't? You're all mad!"

Don Mariner said calmly, "I'll tell you why he doesn't feel it. Just look at his face." They all did so, uncomprehending. "He isn't sweating," said Don triumphantly, "and he hasn't even turned pale!"

Grady turned his head toward the engineer. "Oh, you fat little blob of stupidity," he said icily. "You stand there with your idiot companions and your bright little idea that's about as wrong as wrong can get. Of course I'm not sweating. _I haven't any sweat glands. I haven't any pores._ And naturally I can't turn pale. This is my natural color. I'm no damned human chameleon. But I can feel pain, in spite of your driveling theories. What do you want to know?" He spat again. "I won't sit here and take this agony for anyone. What the blazes can you do to us if you do know? You can't touch us. Go on, ask away."

"Are you mutants?" asked Brave.

"No."

"Are you human?"

"Not as you understand it."

"Where did you come from?"

The pilot sneered. "From the ninth planet of a sun unknown to you," he said.

Brave glanced back at Alan. "Think he's lying?"

"I swear I don't know."

"I'm not lying," said Grady. "Want to know how I got out of that disk alive? I heard the damn machinery shifting in front of me--oh yes, my ears are sharper and my sight's better, and I can move a lot faster than you can--so I spread myself out thin against the back of the seat. Lucky for me the monster stopped an inch short of my guts. Want to see how I did it? Will that convince you?"

Then he did an incredible, a terrible thing to see: he seemed to turn almost fluid, and though none of his features changed, they withdrew to the sides; his whole body thinned out and flattened along the chair back, and he became a caricature of a man run over by a steam roller. Then he laughed at them.

Above Rob's gasp and Alan's cry came the shriek of Don Mariner. Then he had swept Brave aside and fired a grenade pistol almost in the face of the pilot; and Grady died without a sound.

* * * * *

"No recriminations," said Alan. "You can't see a thing like that and hold your hand. If I'd been armed I'd have done it myself."

Brave was running his hands over the exposed flesh of the dead pilot. "This is weird stuff," he said. "It isn't human--well, that's obvious. It feels vaguely like gutta-percha. It's swelling up slowly. No, by glory, it's going back into shape again. It's becoming humanoid again." He looked up. "Notice how that word springs to the mind? Humanoid. He wasn't human, he told the truth about that. He wasn't even superhuman. He was alien."

Don Mariner, still shaking, said, "I'm sorry I shot him. I just went out of my head at that stunt he pulled. Never been so scared in my life. I sure fouled up our chances of learning how and whom to fight."

"'What can you do to us if you do know? You can't touch us.'" That was Rob Pope musing aloud. "What did he mean by that? That they're so powerful it doesn't matter now if we know about them?"

"You could put any interpretation on it," said Alan.

"Before we theorize any more," said Bill Thihling from the door, "you'd better know there's an air taxi headed this way. It's a Manhattan job and I thought it might be McEldownie again, but you never know. So what do we do with the corpse you birds so casually created?"

Brave said promptly, "The garbage disposal unit. It'll take care of him in thirty seconds--and very appropriate too." He hoisted the body of the pilot out of the chair, after cutting the wires. As he carried it off to the kitchen and the hidden well that was the disposal unit, Alan opened a camouflaged wall cupboard and took out the all-vac. Switching it on, he ran its round nozzle over the gouts and stains of blood on the rug, the walls, and the chair. It sucked them into itself like an anteater inhaling a hill of ants, leaving no trace of discoloration. Whipping it back into its nook, and tossing the long pieces of wire in after it, he slammed the door and turned round.

"That's that. We're clean. If it's Mac, we tell him the truth; otherwise Grady was never here. Right?"

Bill opened the door. McEldownie was just coming up the walk.

"Cheers, gang. The eminent statesman is put off. We're set for tonight. What crimes have you been committing?"

"Oh, kidnapping and murder," said Alan. The announcer dropped to the couch.

"You're jesting, I trust?"

"In a gnat's eye," said Mariner. "You're just thirty seconds too late to see the corpse." He told Jim briefly what they had done. The bony man did not say anything for a few moments, and then, "Jee-blinking-rusalem! You caught one and pumped him and slew him out o' hand, all in the time it took me to fly to the studio and back. What a bunch of thugs. The Black Hand could have taken lessons from you." He leaned forward as Brave came in. "Well, you seem to have got precious little out of him before young Donald here got peeved, but let's coordinate it and see what we have."

"One, he could do miraculous things with his physical structure," said the Indian. "It's the first wholly sure thing we've learned since we saw the welder burn off his hand without flinching."

"Two," put in Alan, "he said his kind aren't mutants, but aliens from another system. It may be true. Lord knows. We have only his word."

"Three, he claimed to feel pain, and if he was faking, he was a class A actor," said Rob Pope. "I'll tell you why: I was pretty sensitive to his brain waves, even when he wasn't broadcasting at us. Once I thought I caught a plea for help to someone unnamed. And every time Brave hurt him, I felt that he was actually suffering."

"I felt it too," agreed Alan.

* * * * *

Brave, getting out bottles of Scotch and rye, said, "In the minute I had to examine his skin and flesh, I found he wasn't lying about his being without pores. The skin was perfectly smooth. It felt rather like a kind of rubber, though not so much so as to seem inhuman to a casual touch. And his body assumed the human shape after death, so it would appear to be the natural form of the beasts." He passed one bottle to Rob and the other to Mac. The six allies drank deeply. Through two bottles they discussed the enemy; coming at last to a sort of half-conclusion, that there were extraterrestrials who could change their shapes within limits, and there were others, either from the same strange world or existing as a mutation of Earthmen, who were impervious to pain. The aliens, Alan and his crew decided, were susceptible to it. The near-tangible thought waves from the tormented pilot had been too agonized to deny.

It was then a little past four in the afternoon.

"A bit more than three hours before we need to leave for the station," said Thihling, "if we take one of the colony's air taxis. What say we relax and loaf and forget for part of those three hours?"

Alan got up and went sprawling at full length on the deep-napped rug. "I'm for that. Let's loosen up. Loll around. My God, I'm as strung up as Captain Kidd."

"I thought you fell down on purpose," said Rob. "But if you're capable of turning phrases like that, I guess you're just too drunk to stand."

Unquote found Alan and sat down with an air of modest ownership in the small of his back. Brave got out more bottles. "We ought to be drinking to things," he said. "There should be witty toasts and pledges to fair maidens. Bumpers should be drained to the memory of gay college days and friends long gone."

He passed the rye to McEldownie, who said, "We ought to be sucking this booze out of old ivy-covered pewter mugs, then, instead of giving each other our loathsome diseases. More collegiate, y'know."

The Indian took a healthy gulp of bourbon. He sighed appreciatively and flipped the bottle through the air and Bill caught it and had it uncorked and upended in the same motion, dexterous as a conjurer. "Ah," he said, choking and spluttering, "smooth!" He passed it to Alan, who nearly upset Unquote in reaching for it; the cat dug her claws into the rough fabric of his coat, glared at the back of his neck, and spoke sharply and at some length concerning the irreverence of certain men.

"Puss, simmer down," said Jim. "Your master drinketh."

"Now there's a bad word in its context," said Alan gravely. "You know nothing about cats, Mac, m'boy. Nobody was ever a cat's master. If Napoleon kept a cat, it bullied him."

"Napoleon, my illiterate friend, had an intense fear of cats. So obviously he didn't own one."

"If Tamerlane had a cat, it bullied him. If Genghis Khan--"

"You've made your point. Send the alky on its way," said Don.

"Brave, pass around the old ivy-covered pewter mugs," Alan said grandly, rolling over and precipitating a furious Unquote to the rug. "While you're at it, get some old ivy-covered crackers and cheese."

"I could stomach an old ivy-covered potato chip," murmured Rob Pope.

"Let's have a little masculine nostalgia," said Bill. "Let's remember Oxford, Brave."

Four strictly-American-college men hooted him down.

* * * * *

Brave brought glasses and a tray of snacks, and, thoughtfully, a dish of milk for Unquote. "Here comes old ivy-covered Brave now," said Rob. The big Indian emptied a fifth of rye into the glasses. Jim picked up the empty bottle, regarded it like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick, and said, "Blessed blue ruin, how I love thee. Omar had nothing on McEldownie."

"McEldownie the Tentmaker," said Alan. "It has a fine classic ring to it."

"I pawned my fine classic ring last week. I was hungry."

"God," said Bill. "Classic of '58, I presume?"

They finished the rye and after serious consultation opened a bottle of Scotch. McEldownie began to talk with a broad Highland accent and it seemed very funny to everyone. Unquote stalked away to her playbox in disgust. Brave sat bolt upright, looking like a statue of copper-colored granite. They all got drunk.

The announcer stood up and juggled three glasses, then four, and the others applauded, for he was good at it. "For all your awkward look, Mac," said Alan, "you're a slilful--skilful old bird."

"When I juggled before the crowned heads of Europe, they went mad over me. I often wished I could juggle in front of whole people," he added wistfully. "Never did. Just heads."

"Oh, brother," said a woman's voice. They all turned round and looked toward the door. Win Gilmore stood there, shaking her beautiful blued coiffure. "This place looks like a shebeen. And you're all fried to the eyeballs. Ought to be ashamed of yourselves." She dropped her lavender cloak: she was wearing an amethyst-colored halter and a pleated nylon skirt of syenite blue, which clung to her legs as she walked toward them. Alan could see the play of muscles in her thighs where the soft skirt touched them. Some of the liquor sank away from his brain and he remembered that this woman was not human. He gritted his teeth and turned his head away to look at Brave. The Indian was also sobered. He said, "Well, hello," uncertainly.

"It makes me mad," said Win, pouring herself a shot of rum. "All this attractive male virility going to waste. No women to appreciate it. There ought to be wenches flung picturesquely here and there."

"You paint a sordid picture, madame," said Rob. "We've been chastely reliving old school days, knotting old school ties, and reciting the Boy Scout oath to each other. It's uplifting. It's--"

"Sophomoric?"

"Who is this dazzling fluff?" McEldownie asked.

"Win Gilmore."

The tall man opened his green eyes wide. "Oho? The super-jade!"

* * * * *

Win regarded him without affection. "Who the hell are you, and what the hell do you mean by that crack?"

"Your secret is known, harridan," said Jim. He stared into her wide eyes. "Alan says you can't feel pain. That makes you one of the enemy in our book. If it weren't for your perfection of form, I myself would take pleasure in booting you in the left nostril." He let his gaze wander over her well-stocked amethyst halter. "Alan," he said critically, "far be it from ol' Mac to question your judgment, but I doubt this lassie's inhumanity. I really feel we've made another error. If she isn't human, then I'm a rhinoceros."

"You look more like a starving stork," Win cried furiously. "Alan, who is this wretch?"

"Peace, gal, I'm standing up for you, no matter what it sounds like. Doc, you can't convince me that a gal with a balcony that'd grace the Palace Theatre isn't human. I think you're wrong."

"Of course she's good looking. She's a step above us in the evolutionary scale, isn't she?" snarled Alan. "Or else she's from some goddam planet out in the other galaxies." Win looked at him blankly.

"I think you've jumped to a conclusion when you should have crawled to it." McEldownie took a step forward and caught Win's eyes with his own. "I believe you can feel pain," he said.

"Good Lord, of course I can feel--ouch!" She gave a little scream. The announcer had pinched her sharply on the naked flesh just below her halter. Because she had been looking into his eyes, she could not have seen the casual motion of his hand.

"There!" said Jim, standing back and bowing with a juggler's flourish. "What about that, gentlemen?"

Brave spoke. "Win, he's drunk, so don't hold it against him. But he's done you--and us--a great service." Raising his voice above her passionate cursing, he went on. "You know our mutant theory. It's been changed today but the pain angle still holds good to a degree. Well, Alan burnt you accidentally with his Rocketeer cigarette last night, and you didn't feel it; so we have been thinking that you must be one of them. Evidently you're not. You have our apologies all round."

She stood silent, taking it in; then she said, "Great heavens above!" and turned on Alan, who was looking sheepish and incredibly relieved. "You grunt-brain! Don't you, with all your knowledge, realize that there are times in a woman's life--yes, and in a man's--when she or he can be burned, whipped, and kicked in the funny bone, without realizing it?"

Alan made a gesture of incomprehension.

"You moron, what were we doing when you burned me?"

Brave reached into the encyclopedia of his mind and said, "She's right, governor. It was first explained in 1952. When one is sexually stimulated, the increase in blood pressure, the intensified heart-beats, and the rigidity of all the muscles sometimes combine to make one totally unaware of pain. The author of the theory was a Dr. Linsey, or Kinsey, or something like that." He pursed his lips. "I don't suggest that you were necking, chieftain, but if you were, that explains it, and we were damned unjust to Win."

"If you weren't necking, Doc," said Jim, "you're dead, or ought to be."

Win tossed down her rum. "I'll have more to say on the subject later," she declared to Alan. "For now, I'm too mad to risk staying here and breaking up the furniture. I found that burn on my arm after you left. By then it hurt like hell." She strode over and picked up her cloak. "Good night, or afternoon, or whatever the everlastingly blasted time it is," she said between her teeth, and closed the door gently behind her which made a more effective exit than if she had slammed it and made the walls quiver.

"Bless my soul," said Jim mildly, reaching for his glass. "We have transformed a superwoman into a livid Fury. What a day!"