Part 1

NEEDLER

BY RANDALL GARRETT

Illustrated by Emsh

"The principal difficulty in the case ... lay in the fact of there being too much evidence. What was vital was over-laid and hidden by what was irrelevant." --Sherlock Holmes

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

They just didn't give a damn. The first load of survivors brought back after the Battle of Leymon's Star had been short-circuited somewhere, and they didn't give two hoots whether they lived or died.

The same thing happened to the crew of the GSS _Bedevin_ after the skirmish in the Great Rift. The _Bedevin_ was found drifting along, out of control, after having demolished an enemy vessel with a blast of the new _aJ_ guns.

It was a case of "the operation was a success, but the doctor died." Or might as well have.

The crewmen of the fighting ships were in a state of semicatatonia.

The alien ships were burned and blasted out of space, with the exception of those which turned tail and ran. The survivors in the human ships were picked up and taken to Kandoris VI, the Galactic Main Base of the Interstellar Fleet.

Fleet Commander Allerdyce hospitalized the men and turned the problem over to the Civilian Research Corps. General Director Eckisster frowned over the whole mess, fired out assignments right and left, and dumped the bulk of the responsibility into the lap of Roysland Dwyn, chief of the Special Weapons Group.

Dwyn immediately asked for a specimen from the Fleet Hospital Psychiatric Ward.

Bilford, the chief psychometrist, brought one of the crew members from the _Bedevin_ into the office of the head of Special Weapons four days after the survivors had been picked up.

Roysland Dwyn glanced up from the work at his desk when Bilford entered. Behind the huge plastic block of the desk, he looked no larger than the average man. It was only when he stood that it became apparent that Roysland Dwyn was two sizes larger than the average man, regardless of where you measured.

Bilford walked on into the office. "You wanted to see Captain Gisser, Roysland?"

Roysland nodded his massive head. "Bring him in; I want to get the whole picture on this business."

Bilford nodded and turned back toward the door. His eyes looked sad and pitying, and he ran a lean, nervous hand through his bushy gray hair as he called out: "All right, Captain Gisser--come in here."

* * * * *

As Captain Gisser strolled in from the outer office, Roysland watched him carefully.

Gisser was tall and graceful, in the near-perfect physical trim of a fighting man. He moved with military precision, but without the stiff rigidity of formal marching. He took one step through the door--and stopped.

Roysland narrowed his gray eyes and looked at the captain's face. The expression on it was definitely not the sleepy, glazed look of the hypnotic catatonic. After a moment, Roysland decided it could be described as a sort of apathetic introspection.

"How long will he stand like that?" he asked Bilford.

Bilford spread his hands. "Until someone tells him to move or he collapses from lack of food or sheer fatigue."

"Have him sit down over there." Roysland pointed. "No use making the poor guy stand up."

"Go over to that chair and sit down," Bilford told the captain. Gisser did as he was told.

Bilford pulled up another chair and sat down. "Why'd you want to see him?" he asked. "I mean, do you have anything in mind?"

Roysland shook his head. "Nothing specific; I'm just trying to see every angle of this. The Enlissa have a new weapon; we've got to do something to counteract it. So far, we don't know anything about it except that it bollixes up the brain--and that isn't very useful. It's like trying to deduce the existence of a pistol from the holes in the target."

"Worse," Bilford said gloomily; "we don't even have a hole to analyze."

"Yes, we do. A psychic hole." Roysland gestured toward the silent captain. "Are they all like that?"

"Essentially, yes," Bilford said.

"Can he hear what I'm saying? I mean, can he understand me?"

"That's a hard question to answer. I should say that the understanding was of a very low level. Here, I'll show you what I mean." He turned and looked directly at the seated spaceman.

"Captain Gisser, how old are you?" he asked in a firm, clear voice.

There was no answer.

"Gisser, when were you born?"

Still no answer.

"Gisser, _tell us_ when you were born."

"Twelve, Eight, Seven sixty-four," Gisser said promptly.

Bilford looked back at Roysland. "He won't do anything on his own; there's absolutely no conscious volition. He has to be told what to do.

"Just asking him a question isn't enough; you have to insist on the answer. That's what I meant by saying that his understanding is on a very low level. He can't even deduce the presence of an unspoken command."

Roysland frowned and started to say something, but he was interrupted by a flicker of light on his desk panel.

He looked at Bilford. "The boss," he said dryly. Then he pressed a stud.

* * * * *

Light flickered in the air and coalesced into the seated figure of a portly, smiling, middle-aged man. The image wavered a little, then settled into an illusion of material solidity.

General Director Eckisster smiled and said: "Are we getting anywhere, gentlemen?"

"We're just getting started," Roysland said.

Eckisster nodded. "I see." His eyes lit on the captain, who was still sitting in the same position he had taken when he was ordered into the chair. "Is this one of the _Bedevin_'s men?"

It was Bilford who answered. "Yes, sir. Captain Gisser, Prime Officer."

"And you haven't found out anything about him yet? Don't you know what's wrong with these men?" Eckisster's voice was bland on the surface, but there was a biting hardness underneath.

"We know what's wrong with them, sir," Bilford said stiffly; "we just don't know what caused it."

"According to the electroencephaloscope readings, the electrical activity of the prefrontal lobes is exhibiting a loop-feedback pattern. It's going around in circles without getting anywhere. As far as the nerve impulses are concerned, these men have been effectively lobotomized--almost completely so."

"I see." Eckisster looked at the captain again. "Captain, stand up." The captain stood. "Sit down." The officer sat. Eckisster rubbed a plump finger over his chin. "That's according to the report, at least. Would he kill himself if I asked him to?"

"Not if you _asked_ him to," Bilford said coldly. "He might if you _told_ him to. Do you want me to try it?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" the general director snapped. He looked at Roysland, who had been sitting quietly, waiting for Eckisster to finish. "Roysland, do you have any idea of the nature of this weapon?"

"None, sir," Roysland said quietly. "Neither I nor the psychologists have any idea what could do this to the human brain."

"Oh, no?" Eckisster's plump face smiled. "Haven't I heard something about microwaves at high intensity?"

Roysland nodded. "Sure. I know what you mean. But I was talking about doing it over a range of seven hundred million miles.

"We know that it can be done, but we don't know how the enemy did it. Look at it this way: If we'd found every one of these men with his skull bashed in, we could say that it had been done with a club. But that still wouldn't explain how it was done from better than a light-hour away."

"Besides," Bilford chipped in, "high intensity microwaves don't have that effect. They affect the brain, sure--but not that way."

Eckisster nodded and folded his hands placidly. "I understand. Well, gentlemen, I--" He stopped suddenly and looked to one side, out of the range of his pickup. A voice said: "This facsimile just came in on the ultrabeam, sir."

A hand materialized out of nowhere, holding a fac sheet; Eckisster took it, unfolded it, and read it. His eyes opened a trifle wider, and he looked up at Roysland.

"Roysland, they've used it again. The _Killiver_ was picked up this side of the Noir Nebula, near Poulderr. They found her because of the automatic signals. Every man aboard was just like Captain Whatsisname, there. They're bringing the ship here, to Kandoris." He paused and looked at both men in turn. "If this keeps up," he said, "they'll have us whipped. It's your job to keep them from doing that. Now, you've got several trails to follow. Follow them, and get some answers; that's all."

His hand touched the arm rest of his chair, and abruptly the image dissolved into transparent air.

Bilford looked at Roysland. "I don't like the way he keeps needling people," he said. "It gets under my skin."

Roysland stood up. "He thinks that's the best way to get things done. Maybe it is; I really don't know. I do agree with him in one respect: we _have_ to do something--what, I don't know, but something.

"We've been fighting the Enlissa for eighteen years. Up until last year, when we invented the _aJ_ gun, there hadn't been an improvement on either side; they were winning because they had more ships.

"Then we get the _aJ_ gun functioning, and use it against them; and when we do, it turns out that they have an even better weapon. I know what they mean when they say war is hell."

He stopped and looked at the captain. "Well, let's get on with it; I want to ask him a few questions."

* * * * *

Eighteen years of fighting hadn't seriously damaged either side, insofar as actual loss of life was concerned. Men in ships had been killed, of course, but no civilian had yet lost his life as a direct result of the Enlissa-Human war. The Enlissa hadn't gotten in close enough to occupied planets--yet.

But, until a year ago, it had seemed inevitable that they would. The screen of ships that ranged around the periphery of the human-inhabited section of the galaxy was getting thinner all the time. The Enlissa had more ships, and, rather than make a direct attack, they seemed to prefer to punch at the screen, weakening it steadily.

But the Enlissa had underestimated human ingenuity. Both sides had been relying on the ultralight torpedoes to knock each other out of the sky, and humanity had realized that they had to have something better. So they had come up with the _aJ_ projector. If matter can be projected through the no-space of ultralight velocities, why not energy?

The result was as devastating a heat beam as any dreamer could logically expect; all the energy of a nuclear reaction focused along a narrow locus of no-space toward the enemy ship. Even a shielded hull gives under bombardment like that.

It looked as though the war was won. That is, it did until ships came back with mindless crews.

The _Killiver_ was sitting in its launching cradle at the far side of the ten-mile-square Grand Port of Kandoris. Roysland didn't bother to take the tubeway; he flashed his credentials and commandeered a surface jeep. Bilford had already taken charge of the crew, but Roysland wasn't worried about _them_; he wanted a look at the ship.

The _Killiver_ was swarming with inspectors and special government investigators. Roysland jumped out of the jeep as it slowed near the giant sphere of the ship, and strode toward the ring of guards that surrounded the globe.

One of the guards looked up at Roysland's huge frame and said: "May I see your pass, sir?"

Roysland pulled out his pass and handed it to the guard.

The guard barely glanced at it; then he shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir; this is a general pass. You'll have to get one of the special passes for this ship. The Inspection Division has--"

"Where the devil do I get a pass?" Roysland snapped.

"You'll have to apply at Inspection," the guard said. "In person," he added.

Roysland shook his hand. "I'm not going twelve miles back to Administration. Who's in charge here?"

"Inspector Gowlan, sir."

"Call him; tell him Roysland Dwyn wants to see him."

The guard hesitated for a moment, then spoke softly into the communicator on his wrist. The speaker in his ear buzzed a reply. "He'll be right out," said the guard.

A moment later, a dark-haired, average-sized man in a chief inspector's uniform fell through the drop chute from the ship and crossed the open space toward Roysland. "Roysland Dwyn?" he said, holding out his hand. "You're Special Weapons, aren't you? I'm Gowlan."

Roysland nodded and gripped the proffered hand in his own great paw. "Glad to know you. I want to get on that ship."

The inspector shook his head. "'Fraid not ... not without a special pass. We've got to make damage estimates."

"That ship is equipped with _aJ_ projectors," Roysland said. "My gang designed and built them from the ground up; I know more about them than you do. I want to see them--and the rest of the ship. I haven't got time to go gallivanting all over this base getting signatures on a blasted pass."

The inspector started to say something, but Roysland cut him off. "You can check with Eckisster, if you want; but hurry it up."

Gowlan looked up into Roysland's eyes, hesitated, then spoke into his wrist phone.

Less than two minutes later, Roysland was inside the ship.

* * * * *

The _Killiver_ was in almost perfect shape. The _aJ_ guns appeared to be in perfect operating condition, and the meters showed that three of them had tracked and fired at something that had passed the upper starboard quadrant of the vessel.

Roysland checked the recordings, then looked up at Gowlan, who had elected to follow him. "Any sign of the ship they were firing at?"

Gowlan shrugged. "The Space-fleet men didn't find anything. If the _Killiver_ holed it, they would still probably be light-years away from where the ship was found."

"What made them skitter off like that?"

Gowlan looked at him. "I don't get it. What do you mean?"

Roysland waved his hand to indicate their surroundings. The corridors and rooms of the great ship were swarming with inspectors, who were photographing and checking every square centimeter of the ship.

"What happened? Why have we got this ship?" Roysland asked.

Gowlan thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I see what you're getting at. Let's see--

"The _Killiver_ is cruising in ultradrive. They pick up a blip on the detector; it's an enemy ship. They're too far away to torpedo, but they're well within range of the _aJ_ projectors. That gets us up to the moment of firing." He stopped and his frown deepened. "Wait a second; that doesn't make sense."

Roysland raised an eyebrow. "What doesn't?"

"Well, look here: The gunners would have had to be awake when the _aJ's_ were fired. All right; that means they tracked the Enlissa ship, then cut in the automatics to fire the _aJ's_. They must have missed, because the Enlissa used the mindjammer _after_ the _aJ's_ were fired.

"But if that's so, then why didn't the Enlissa ship capture the _Killiver_?"

It was a good point. Roysland frowned and turned the thing over in his mind. A spaceship is expensive--hellishly expensive; the cost of a fleet of seagoing battleships is nothing in comparison. So you don't waste ships, even the enemy's. The whole object of a space battle is to destroy the enemy crew without destroying the ship. Even a badly-damaged interstellar vessel is worth saving.

The _Killiver_ was in excellent condition. If the Enlissa ship were still in good shape after the battle, why hadn't they taken the _Killiver_?

"The only thing I can figure," Gowlan said, "is that the Enlissa ship fired their mindjammer just after the _aJ's_ were fired--almost at the same time, you might say." He grinned. "Sure. That's what must have happened."

Roysland nodded. "It looks like the only explanation," he agreed. "That is, except for one thing."

"What's that?" Gowlan wanted to know.

"Why has the same coincidence occurred in three different battles, in widely separated parts of the galaxy?"

Gowlan's face lost its self-satisfied look. "Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah. Why?"

"Kick that around a while," Roysland said, grinning. "If you come up with anything, let me know."

* * * * *

Roysland Dwyn spent the next two days sitting in his office with his feet on his desk, leaning back in a chair that creaked ominously with his weight. The only interruptions were for food and sleep--except when one of his staff called in with new data, which was rare.

He got one call from Milford. The microwave business that the general director suggested had shown some promise of snapping the stricken crews out of their apathy. Some of the men were improving rapidly, and others more slowly; but all of them were showing some positive response to the treatment.

On the afternoon of the second day, he got a call from Eckisster. The old man didn't look particularly jovial. His image solidified with a scowl on it. "What have you got on this microwave business?" he snapped.

Roysland lifted his big boots off the desk and leaned forward leisurely. "Nothing."

"You'd better get something fast," the general director said. "They're attacking shipping now, and they're well within the periphery."

Roysland jerked erect. "_What? What happened?_"

Eckisster's lower lip curled. "Don't use that tone of voice on me, Roysland. I don't like it. I want you to find out a few things. What's happening? Why do they attack this way and do nothing? What sort of gadget do they have? Is there any defense against it? Can we make it? Can we--"

His voice trailed off. Roysland had stood up and walked around his desk until he was less than a yard from the image of the general director. He knew full well that his own image in the director's office was doing the same thing. And in spite of the fact that Eckisster knew the image was harmless, Roysland's impressive mass quieted him.

When he spoke, Roysland's voice was low. "Now you listen to me, Eckisster. You want me to solve this problem. O.K. I want to figure it out as much as you do, but I can't do a thing without data. I have to know what has happened, and I have to know exactly how it happened. So don't come busting in on me with a lot of vague hints when I'm thinking. I don't have to put up with that sort of stuff; either give me the data on what happened, or go yak at someone else while I figure this out without any help from you."

Eckisster looked up at the bulk of bone and muscle that towered over him. "Don't get excited, Roysland," he said. "I'll forgive your impertinence: it's just that I'm so worried, myself."

"O.K. You're excused, too. Now, what's this about shipping being attacked?"

Eckisster glanced to one side and reached for something outside the pickup field. The end of his arm vanished and reappeared holding a sheaf of papers. "Of course, a copy of this will be sent to your office right away, but I can give you the essentials now.

"Two unarmed cargo vessels left Belixa III a week ago, bound for Niadel V. They were escorted by a light cruiser of the _Sidneg_ class. They were picked up, off course, after they had passed the Niadel sun; nobody on board had even bothered to eat for four days.

"They probably wouldn't have been found at all if they'd been ordinary merchant vessels, but the local government on Niadel V was looking for them; there'd been an epidemic of some sort there, and these ships were on an emergency run with antibiotics of some kind."

Roysland stepped back and sat on the edge of his desk. "Got all three of them?"

"All three of them," said Eckisster emphatically. "Now, I'll send this report over to you immediately. We'll have to get some action. If the Enlissa can get in this close, they may decide to attack Kandoris itself! Your job is Special Weapons. Find a screen of some sort that will protect us from this--whatever it is."

"Call it a mindjammer," Roysland said. "One of the inspectors used that word, and I kind of like it."

"You like it." Eckisster's voice was cutting. "I don't like anything that does _that_ to a human brain. Get busy and find some way to beat it."

Roysland started to explain that he liked the word--not the object--but the general director's image was already dissolving. Roysland stepped back behind his desk and dialed a number. A few seconds later, Bilford's image materialized. The nervous little man looked more nervous than ever.

* * * * *

"What is it, Roysland? More trouble? I hope not. I've had Eckisster on my neck all morning."

"I know; I just got him off mine. But I wanted to ask you something. Is there any correlation between the frequencies that help those men and the frequency of the feedback circuit in their prefrontal lobes?"

Bilford frowned in thought. "I don't know; I'd never thought of it from that angle. They don't have any obvious correlation, I can tell you that. I'll check on it, though. I'll run it through the differential analyzer."

Roysland nodded. "Try that. Let me know if you get anything."

He cut Bilford off and dialed another number. The image that appeared this time was wearing the uniform of a fleet commander.

"Commander Allerdyce, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"

"Go ahead, Roysland. What is it? I hope you're not going to needle me the way your boss does. I'd have tossed him out of my office, except that you can't grab a solidiphone image. Best I could do was shut him off, which was very unsatisfactory." The commander grinned wryly at the thought.

A big grin spread itself across Roysland's blocky face. "I know how you feel. No, commander, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions, as I said.

"You're familiar with the details of the Enlissa attack on that medical supply convoy?"

The fleet commander nodded.

"Well," Roysland continued, "what would happen if you were in command of the cruiser and you found a trace on the scope that indicated an Enlissa ship?"

"The orders cover that," said the commander. "The cruiser cuts in with the _aJ_ guns before the Enlissa ship gets within torpedo range."

"And this always works?"

The commander shrugged. "It always has so far, the _aJ's_ knock them out of space before they can get close enough to launch screenbuster torpedoes accurately. But this new gadget they've got evidently has as great a range as the _aJ_ projectors."

"Or greater," Roysland added.

"Yeah," said Allerdyce softly, "or greater."

"Is there any other possibility?" Roysland wanted to know.

The commander nodded. "One--if the Enlissa were lucky, that is. If the enemy ship could have approached the convoy by coming in directly from a star, the subetheric radiation from the sun behind them would blank out their own radiation, and they could get in pretty close before they registered on a screen.

"But in order to do that, they'd have to know the convoy's course and lie in wait for it. If they actually did use a star to hide themselves, it was probably pure luck on their part that they happened to be in the right place at the right time."

Roysland nodded slowly, his eyes narrowed in thought. "I wonder--" he said finally. "Would you do me a favor, commander? Would you check and see if that cruiser actually fired towards a sun? That might give us some information."

"I'll check," Allerdyce said. "It'll be on the recorders. I'll let you know what I come up with."

"Fine," said Roysland. "I'll see you later." He cut off, and his image disintegrated.

Roysland looked at the dark, blurred reflection of his face in the black plastic of his desk for a moment, then grinned. "All right, buster," he said to the face in the desk, "you're stuck for a while, anyway. Time to call in some help."

He touched a switch plate on his desk panel and said: "Call a meeting of the Special Weapons Staff at my home at twenty-nine hundred hours."