Chapter 4

Something in my make-up objects violently to being ordered around by a slip of a girl. I balance off at about one-sixty. I guessed her at about two-thirds of that, say one-ten or thereabouts--

"One-eight," she said levelly.

#A telepath!#

"Yes," she replied calmly. "And I don't mind letting you know it, so you'll not try anything stupid."

#I'm getting the heck out of here!#

"No, you're not. You are coming in with me."

"Like heck!" I exploded.

"Don't be silly. You'll come in. Or shall I lay one along your jaw and carry you?"

I had to try something, anything, to get free. Yet--

"Now you're being un-bright," she told me insolently. "You should know that you can't plan any surprise move with a telepath. And if you try a frontal attack I'll belt you so cold they'll have to put you in the oven for a week."

I just let her ramble for a few seconds because when she was rattling this way she couldn't put her entire mental attention on my thoughts. So while she was yaking it off, I had an idea that felt as though it might work.

She shut up like a clam when she realized that her mouthing had given me a chance to think, and I went into high gear with my perception:

#Not bad--for a kid. Growing up fast. Been playing hookey from momma, leaving off your panties like the big girls do. I can tell by the elastic cord marks you had 'em on not long ago.#

Seventeeners have a lot more modesty than they like to admit. She was stunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for me to make a quick lunge across her lap to the door handle on her side.

I flipped it over and gave her a shove at the same time. She went bottom over appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in a normal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on the back of her neck, rolled and came to her feet like a cat.

I didn't wait to close the door. I just tromped on the go-pedal and the car leaped forward with a jerk that slammed the door for me. I roared forward and left her just as she was making another grab.

How I hoped to get out of there I did not know. All I wanted was momentary freedom to think. I turned this way and that to follow the road until I came to the house. I left the road, circled the house with the turbine screaming like a banshee and the car taking the corners on the outside wheels. I skidded into a turn like a racing driver and ironed my wheels out flat on the takeaway, rounded another corner and turned back into the road again going the other way.

She was standing there waiting for me as I pelted past at a good sixty, and she reached out one girder-strong arm, latched onto the frame of the open window on my side, and swung onto the half-inch trim along the bottom of the car-body like a switchman hooking a freight car.

She reached for the steering wheel with her free hand.

I knew what was to happen next. She'd casually haul and I'd go off the road into a tree or pile up in a ditch, and while the smoke was clearing out of my mind, she'd be untangling me from the wreck and carting me over her shoulder, without a scratch to show for her adventure.

I yanked the wheel--whip! whap!--cutting an arc. I slammed past a tree, missing it by half an inch. I wiped her off the side of the car like a mailbag is clipped from the fast express by the catch-hook.

I heard a cry of "Whoof!" as her body hit the trunk of the tree. But as I regained the road and went racing on to safety, I saw in the rear view mirror that she had bounced off the tree, sprawled a bit, caught her balance, and was standing in the middle of the road, shaking her small but very dangerous fist at my tail license plate.

I didn't stop driving at one-ten until I was above Dayton again. Then I paused along the road to take stock.

Stock? What the hell did I know, really?

I'd uncovered and confirmed the fact that there was some secret organization that had a program that included their own highway system, concealed within the confines of the United States. I was almost certain by this time that they had been the prime movers in the disappearance of Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. They--

I suddenly re-lived the big crack-up.

Willingly now, no longer rejecting the memory, I followed my recollection as Catherine and I went along that highway at a happy pace. With care I recalled every detail of Catherine, watching the road through my mind and eyes, how she'd mentioned the case of the missing spoke, and how I'd projected back to perceive that which I had not been conscious of.

Reminding myself that it was past, I went through it again, deliberately. The fallen limb that blocked the road, my own horror as the wheels hit it. The struggle to regain control of the careening car.

As a man watching a motion picture, I watched the sky and the earth turn over and over, and I heard my voice mouthing wordless shouts of fear. Catherine's cry of pain and fright came, and I listened as my mind reconstructed it this time without wincing. Then the final crash, the horrid wave of pain and the sear of the flash-fire. I went through my own horror and self condemnation, and my concern over Catherine. I didn't shut if off. I waded through it.

Now I remembered something else.

Something that any normal, sensible mind would reject as an hallucination. Beyond any shadow of a doubt there had been no time for a man to rig a block and tackle on a tree above a burning automobile in time to get the trapped victims out alive. And even more certain it was that no normal man of fifty would have had enough strength to lift a car by its front bumper while his son made a rush into the flames.

That tackle had been rigged and burned afterward. But who would reject a block and tackle in favor of an impossibly strong man? No, with the tackle in sight, the recollection of a man lifting that overturned automobile like a weight lifter pressing up a bar bell would be buried in any mind as a rank hallucination. Then one more item came driving home hard. So hard that I almost jumped when the idea crossed my mind.

Both Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke had been telepaths.

A telepath close to any member of his underground outfit would divine their purpose, come to know their organization, and begin to grasp the fundamentals of their program. Such a person would be dangerous.

On the other hand, an esper such as myself could be turned aside with bland remarks and a convincing attitude. I knew that I had no way of telling lie from truth and that made my problem a lot more difficult.

From the facts that I did have, something smelled of overripe seafood. Government and charities were pouring scads of dough into a joint called the Medical Research Center. To hear the scholars of medicine tell it, Mekstrom's Disease was about the last human frailty that hadn't been licked to a standstill. They boasted that if a victim of practically anything had enough life left in him to crawl to a telephone and use it, his life could be saved. They grafted well. I'd heard tales of things like fingers, and I know they were experimenting on hands, arms and legs with some success. But when it came to Mekstrom's they were stopped cold. Therefore the Medical Research Center received a walloping batch of money for that alone; all the money that used to go to the various heart, lung, spine and cancer funds. It added up well.

But the Medical Research Center seemed unaware that some group had solved their basic problem.

From the books I've read I am well aware of one of the fundamental principles of running an underground: _Keep it underground!_ The Commie menace in these United States might have won out in the middle of the century if they'd been able to stay a secret organization. So the Highways in Hiding could stay underground and be an efficient organization only until someone smoked them out.

That one was going to be me.

But I needed an aide-de-camp. Especially and specifically I needed a trained telepath, one who would listen to my tale and not instantly howl for the nut-hatch attendants. The F.B.I. were all trained investigators and they used esper-telepath teams all the time. One dug the joint while the other dug the inhabitant, which covered the situation to a faretheewell.

It would take time to come up with a possible helper. So I spent the next hour driving toward Chicago, and by the time I'd crossed the Ohio-Indiana line and hit Richmond, I had a plan laid out. I placed a call to New York and within a few minutes I was talking to Nurse Farrow.

I'll not go into detail because there was a lot of mish-mash that is not particularly interesting and a lot more that covered my tracks since I'd parted company with her on the steps of the hospital. I did not, of course, mention my real purpose over the telephone and Miss Farrow could not read my mind from New York.

The upshot of the deal was that I felt that I needed a nurse for a while, not that I was ill, but that I felt a bit woozy now and then because I hadn't learned to slow down. I worked too fast and too long and my condition was not up to it yet. This Miss Farrow allowed as being quite possible. I repeated my offer to pay her at the going prices for registered nurses with a one-month guarantee, paid in advance. That softened her quite a bit. Then I added that I'd videograph her a check large enough to cover the works plus a round trip ticket. She should come out and have a look, and if she weren't satisfied, she could return without digging into her own pocket. All she'd lose was one day, and it might be a bit of a vacation if she enjoyed flying in a jetliner at sixty thousand feet.

The accumulation of offers finally sold her and she agreed to arrange a leave of absence. She'd meet me in the morning of the day-after-tomorrow, at Central Airport in Chicago.

I videographed the check and then took off again, confident that I'd be able to sell her on the idea of being the telepath half of my amateur investigation team.

Then because I needed some direct information, I turned West and crossed the line into Indiana, heading toward Marion. So far I had a lot of well-placed suspicions, but until I was certain, I could do no more than postulate ideas. I had to know definitely how to identify Mekstrom's Disease, or at least the infected flesh. I have a fairly good recall; all I needed now was to have someone point to a Case and say flatly that this was a case of Mekstrom's Disease. Then I'd know whether what I'd seen in Ohio was actually one hundred percent Mekstrom.

VI

I walked into the front office with a lot of self-assurance. The Medical Center was a big, rambling place with a lot of spread-out one- and two-story buildings that looked so much like "Hospital" that no one in the world would have mistaken them for anything else. The main building was by the road, the rest spread out behind as far as I could see; beyond my esper range even though the whole business was set in one of the clearest psi areas that I'd even been in.

I was only mildly worried about telepaths. In the first place, the only thing I had to hide was my conviction about a secret organization and how part of it functioned. In the second place, the chances were good that few, if any, telepaths were working there, if the case of Dr. Thorndyke carried any weight. That there were some telepaths, I did not doubt, but these would not be among the high-powered help.

So I sailed in and faced the receptionist, who was a good-looking chemical-type blonde with a pale skin, lovely complexion and figure to match. She greeted me with a glacial calm and asked my business.

Brazenly I lied. "I'm a freelance writer and I'm looking for material."

"Have you an assignment?" she asked without a trace of interest in the answer.

"Not this time. I'm strictly freelance. I like it better this way because I can write whatever I like."

Her glacial air melted a bit at the inference that my writing had not been in vain. "Where have you been published?" she asked.

I made a fast stab in the dark, aiming in a direction that looked safe. "Last article was one on the latest archeological findings in Assyria. Got my source material direct from the Oriental Institute in Chicago."

"Too bad I missed it," she said, looking regretful. I had to grin, I'd carefully avoided giving the name of the publication and the supposed date. She went on, "I suppose you would not be happy with the usual press release?"

"Handouts contain material, all right, but they're so confounded trite and impersonal. People prefer to read anecdotes about the people rather than a listing of facts and figures."

She nodded at that. "Just a moment," she said. Then she addressed her telephone in a voice that I couldn't hear. When she finished, she smiled in a warmish-type manner as if to indicate that she'd gone all out in my behalf and that I'd be a heel to forget it. I nodded back and tried to match the tooth-paste-ad smile. Then the door opened and a man came in briskly.

He was a tall man, as straight as a ramrod, with a firm jaw and a close-clipped moustache. He had an air like a thin-man's Captain Bligh. When he spoke, his voice was as clipped and precise as his moustache; in fact it was so precise that it seemed almost mechanical.

"I am Dr. Lyon Sprague," he clipped. "What may I do for you?"

"I'm Steve Cornell," I said. "I'm here after source material for a magazine article about Mekstrom's Disease. I'd prefer not to take my material from a handout."

"Do you hope to get more?" he demanded.

"I usually do. I've seen your handouts; I could get as much by taking last year's medical encyclopedia. Far too dry, too uninteresting, too impersonal."

"Just exactly what do you have in mind?"

I eyed him with speculation. Here was not a man who would take kindly to imaginative conjecture. So Dr. Lyon Sprague was not the man I'd like to talk to. With an inward smile, I said, "I have a rather new idea about Mekstrom's that I'd like to discuss with the right party."

He looked down at me, although our eyes were on the same level. "I doubt that any layman could possibly come up with an idea that has not been most thoroughly discussed here among the research staff."

"In cold words you feel that no untrained lunk has a right to have an idea."

He froze. "I did not say that."

"You implied, at least, that suggestions from outsiders were not welcome. I begin to understand why the Medical Center has failed to get anywhere with Mekstrom's in the past twenty years."

"What do you mean?" he snapped.

"Merely that it is the duty of all scientists to listen to every suggestion and to discard it only after it has been shown wrong."

"Such as--?" he said coldly, with a curl of his eyebrows.

"Well, just for instance, suppose some way were found to keep a victim alive during the vital period, so that he would end up a complete Mekstrom Human."

"The idea is utterly fantastic. We have no time for such idle speculation. There is too much foggy thinking in the world already. Why, only last week we had a Velikovsky Adherent tell us that Mekstrom's had been predicted in the Bible. There are still people reporting flying saucers, you know. We have no time for foolish notions or utter nonsense."

"May I quote you?"

"Of course not," he snapped stiffly. "I'm merely pointing out that non-medical persons cannot have the grasp--"

The door opened again and a second man entered. The new arrival had pleasant blue eyes, a van dyke beard, and a good-natured air of self-confidence and competence. "May I cut in?" he said to Dr. Sprague.

"Certainly. Mr. Cornell, this is Scholar Phelps, Director of the Center. Scholar Phelps, this is Mr. Steve Cornell, a gentleman of the press," he added in a tone of voice that made the identification a sort of nasty name. "Mr. Cornell has an odd theory about Mekstrom's Disease that he intends to publish unless we can convince him that it is not possible."

"Odd theory?" asked Scholar Phelps with some interest. "Well, if Mr. Cornell can come up with something new, I'll be most happy to hear him out."

Dr. Lyon Sprague decamped with alacrity. Scholar Phelps smiled after him, then turned to me and said, "Dr. Sprague is a diligent worker, businesslike and well-informed, but he lacks the imagination and the sense of humor that makes a man brilliant in research. Unfortunately, Dr. Sprague cannot abide anything that is not laid out as neat as an interlocking tile floor. Now, Mr. Cornell, how about this theory of yours?"

"First," I replied, "I'd like to know how come you turn up in the nick of time."

He laughed good-naturedly. "We always send Dr. Sprague out to interview visitors. If the visitor can be turned away easily, all is well and quiet. Dr. Sprague can do the job with ease. But if the visitor, like yourself, Mr. Cornell, proposes something that distresses the good Dr. Sprague and will not be loftily dismissed, Dr. Sprague's blood pressure goes up. We all keep a bit of esper on his nervous system and when the fuse begins to blow, we come out and effect a double rescue."

I laughed with him. Apparently the Medical Center staff enjoyed needling Dr. Sprague. "Scholar Phelps, before I get into my theory, I'd like to know more about Mekstrom's Disease. I may not be able to use it in my article, but any background material works well with writers of fact articles."

"You're quite right. What would you like to know?"

"I've heard, too many times, that no one knows anything at all about Mekstrom's. This is unbelievable, considering that you folks have been working on it for some twenty years."

He nodded. "We have some, but it's precious little."

"It seems to me that you could analyze the flesh--"

He smiled. "We have. The state of analytical chemistry is well advanced. We could, I think, take a dry scraping out of the cauldron used by MacBeth's witches, and determine whether Shakespeare had reported the formula correctly. Now, young man, if you think that something is added to the human flesh to make it Mekstrom's Flesh, you are wrong. Standard analysis shows that the flesh is composed of exactly the same chemicals that normal flesh contains, in the same proportion. Nothing is added, as, for instance, in the case of calcification."

"Then what is the difference?"

"The difference lies in the structure. By X-ray crystallographic method, we have determined that Mekstrom's Flesh is a micro-crystalline formation, interlocked tightly." Scholar Phelps looked at me thoughtfully. "Do you know much about crystallography?"

As a mechanical engineer I did, but as a writer of magazine articles I felt I should profess some ignorance, so I merely said that I knew a little about the subject.

"Well, Mr. Cornell, you may know that in the field of solid geometry there are only five possible regular polyhedrons. Like the laws of topology that state that no more than four colors need be used to print a map on a flat surface, or that no more than seven colors are required to print separate patches on a toroid, the laws of solid geometry prove that no more than five regular polyhedrons are possible. Now in crystallography there are only thirty-two possible classes of crystal lattice construction. Of these only thirty have ever been discovered in nature. Yet we know how the other two would appear if they did emerge in natural formation."

I knew it all right but I made scribblings in my notebooks as if the idea were of interest. Scholar Phelps waited patiently until I'd made the notation.

"Now, Mr. Cornell, here comes the shock. Mekstrom's Flesh is one of the other two classes."

This was news to me and I blinked.

Then his face faded into a solemn expression. "Unfortunately," he said in a low voice, "knowing how a crystal should form does not help us much in forming one to that class. We have no real control over the arrangement of atoms in a crystal lattice. We can prevent the crystal formation, we can control the size of the crystal as it forms. But we cannot change the crystal into some other class."

"I suppose it's sort of like baking a cake. Once the ingredients are mixed, the cake can be big or small or shaped to fit the pan, or you can spoil it complete. But if you mix devil's food, it either comes out devil's food or nothing."

"An amusing analogy and rather correct. However I prefer the one used years ago by Dr. Willy Ley, who observed that analysis is fine, but you can't learn how a locomotive is built by melting it down and analyzing the mess."

Then he went on again. "To get back to Mekstrom's Disease and what we know about it. We know that the crawl goes at about a sixty-fourth of an inch per hour. If, for instance, you turned up here with a trace on your right middle finger, the entire first joint would be Mekstrom's Flesh in approximately three days. Within two weeks your entire middle finger would be solid. Without anesthesia we could take a saw and cut off a bit for our research."

"No feeling?"

"None whatever. The joints knit together, the arteries become as hard as steel tubing and the heart cannot function properly--not that the heart cares about minor conditions such as the arteries in the extremities, but as the Mekstrom infection crawls up the arm toward the shoulder the larger arteries become solid and then the heart cannot drive the blood through them in its accustomed fashion. It gets like an advanced case of arteriosclerosis. Eventually the infection reaches and immobilizes the shoulder; this takes about ninety days. By this time, the other extremities have also become infected and the crawl is coming up all four limbs."

He looked at me very solemnly at that. "The rest is not pretty. Death comes shortly after that. I can almost say that he is blessed who catches Mekstrom's in the left hand for them the infection reaches the heart before it reaches other parts. Those whose initial infection is in the toes are particularly cursed, because the infection reaches the lower parts of the body. I believe you can imagine the result, elimination is prevented because of the stoppage of peristalsis. Death comes of autointoxication, which is slow and painful."

I shuddered at the idea. The thought of death has always bothered me. The idea of looking at a hand and knowing that I was going to die by the calendar seemed particularly horrible.

Taking the bit between my teeth, I said, "Scholar Phelps, I've been wondering whether you and your Center have ever considered treating Mekstrom's by helping it?"

"Helping it?" he asked.

"Sure. Consider what a man might be if he were Mekstrom's all the way through."

He nodded. "You would have a physical superman," he said. "Steel-strong muscles driving steel-hard flesh covered by a near impenetrable skin. Perhaps such a man would be free of all minor pains and ills. Imagine a normal bacterium trying to bore into flesh as hard as concrete. Mekstrom Flesh tends to be acid-resistant as well as tough physically. It is not beyond the imagination to believe that your Mekstrom Superman might live three times our frail four-score and ten. But--"

Here he paused.

"Not to pull down your house of cards, this idea is not a new one. Some years ago we invited a brilliant young doctor here to study for his scholarate. The unfortunate fellow arrived with the first traces of Mekstrom's in his right middle toe. We placed about a hundred of our most brilliant researchers under his guidance, and he decided to take this particular angle of study. He failed; for all his efforts, he did not stay his death by a single hour. From that time to the present we have maintained one group on this part of the problem."