Part 3

"In other small skirmishes, the _aJ_ guns have proven their effectiveness; they've shot up Enlissa ships before they were in torpedo range. Oddly enough, no human ship equipped with _aJ's_ has ever been hit by a torpedo."

Roysland went back and reread one of the sentences. "Is it possible there's a backwash from their mindjammer?"

_It's possible, sure. Until we know what the mindjammer_ is, _we'll have to admit that anything's possible_.

Report from Kiffer Samm: "I've done the checking you suggested. There is a definite effect on the brain, but it isn't permanent, nor noticeable. The backwash of the _aJ_ guns causes a slight retardation of nerve impulses. But it isn't enough to cause any reaction--either mental or physiological. It doesn't last enough, in the first place; and it isn't powerful enough, in the second. I don't know what would happen if a person were subjected to such a field over a long period of time, but the situation corrects itself so rapidly that there is no danger of cumulative effects.

"Besides, some of the men affected have never been exposed to the backwash from _aJ_ fire before, while others have been exposed a good many times. If the thing were cumulative, we would have men being knocked out here and there, at random, as the accumulation built up--and it just ain't so.

"The only parallel I can make--as far as long-range effects are concerned--are the effects of the backwash from the drive itself. And that isn't bad at all. Statistically speaking, the crews of spaceships are more alert, and have more interest in their surroundings, _after_ long periods of service than they have before exposure. Even so, that is probably due to military work and periodic psychological checkups, rather than to any effect of the field.

"Do you have any other ideas?"

Roysland looked sourly at the report. _Ideas? Sure; I've got all kinds of ideas. I wish I had an answer._

* * * * *

Report from General Director Eckisster--delivered via solidiphone:

"Roysland, you're going to have to start moving, here!" The director shifted his heavy bulk in his chair and glowered at Roysland Dwyn. "As far as I can tell, you haven't done a blasted thing! Of all the meaningless reports I ever read, these are the epitome of nonsense." He waved a chubby hand at a pile of papers in his lap. "As I understand it, you've been looking for some sort of effect emanating from our own weapons instead of from the enemy's.

"Now, to me, that's as silly as a man with a sword trying to explain away the stab wound in his belly by claiming that something happened during the fight and the hilt stabbed him. Or a man with a bullet wound trying to claim it was caused by the recoil of his blunderbuss!"

Roysland tapped his fingers softly on the top of his huge black desk until Eckisster was through, then he said: "It's the only hypothesis that fits the facts. I'll admit that we haven't been able to prove anything yet, but I'm convinced that--"

He was interrupted by the chiming of the solidiphone. He cut in a second circuit, and Fleet Commander Allerdyce coalesced in the air next to Eckisster. He glanced at the general director.

"Good afternoon, Eckisster." Then he looked back at Roysland. "I've got your weapon for you. Forty hours ago, Squadron 8477 met the enemy near St. Jairus' Cluster. We won the battle by a small margin, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing right now is what the hospital and salvage ships found when they came in after the battle. All the data isn't in yet, but as near as we can tell so far, a freak accident occurred.

"One of our ships was surprised by an Enlissa ship that came in out of a nearby sun; the enemy ship actually snapped by at less than a hundred miles. A lucky shot hit the drive generators of the enemy ship, and it stopped almost dead in space.

"They managed to get the crew of our own ship with their mindjammer, but something happened aboard the enemy ship, too. Evidently the weapon does have a backwash; the enemy crew was mindjammed, too!"

Roysland and Eckisster both started to say something, but the commander raised his hand. "Wait a second! The point I'm getting at is this: The Enlissa ship was recovered intact; the mindjammer projectors are aboard! I've sent an emergency order to the squadron commander in that sector; the Enlissa ship will be here tomorrow morning. We'll hold it sealed until you and your crew can investigate. The inspectors will have to go in with you, of course, but you'll be in charge of the weapons themselves."

He stopped and speared Eckisster with a frosty look. "I trust that meets with your approval, Eckisster?"

The general director was beaming seraphically. "It does, commander; indeed it does. Thank you. Thank you, so much."

Allerdyce glowered. "I'll be available in a couple of hours. Right now, I've got to get some work done." He cut the circuit.

Eckisster turned his beaming visage from the dissolving image of Allerdyce to the blocky figure of Roysland.

"May I suggest that you try investigating what few facts the fleet may have turned up? Who knows--you may find them profitable, eh? Or perhaps you're too busy trying to figure out how the _aJ_ guns work to have any time for the enemy's mindjammer?

"However that may be, I'll leave you to your work, bumblehead."

Roysland shot to his feet. "Good! Maybe I could get some work done, myself, if you weren't around needling me!" He reached out to snap off the solidiphone switch, but Eckisster, still smiling benevolently, was already fading. Roysland got the impression that his smile, Cheshirelike, still lingered after he had gone.

* * * * *

The crew of the Enlissa ship were the first live aliens ever seen by human beings. Their corpses had been dissected by the thousands, but the living organism had never been investigated before.

"This gives us a jump on them," one of the biologists said. "As far as we know, no living human has ever been caught by the Enlissa."

Roysland, who was watching the aliens being herded out of the captured ship, turned his head to look at the biologist. "They don't know we've got this ship, either," he said.

The biologist blinked, then nodded. "Yeah. I see what you mean."

They were standing on the broad spread of plastalloy that covered the great landing field of Grand Base, standing in the shadow of the huge alien ship. The Psych men were pushing the Enlissa out of the ship, through the path formed by the Inspection Corps men and Roysland's own Special Weapons Group of the Research Division. The Psych men simply pushed them into the drop chutes from the ship. Other Psych men kept them moving toward the trucks that were taking them away.

The Enlissa weren't quite as tall, on the average, as a human being. The skeletal structure was a little heavier, and the section corresponding to the human rib cage was a series of armor plates that completely enclosed the viscera. The pale blue-violet of their skins came from the cobalt-protein complex that carried the oxygen through their blood, performing the same function that hemoglobin does in the human animal.

They were noseless; breathing was done through the mouth. The teeth were widely spaced, and the lips could not close over them, thus allowing the Enlissa to breathe, even when unconscious. The eyes were a solid black. It was impossible to tell, from a superficial inspection, where the deeply-pigmented surface of the eyeball ended and the dead black of the lens opening began. They were somewhat larger than human eyes, but they were set in front of the skull, allowing stereoscopic vision.

Their protective covering might have been called hair, by stretching the definition somewhat. By an equal amount of stretching, it could have been called fingernails or scales. It would have taken an awful lot of stretching to call it feathers.

The "hair" consisted of ribbons of thin chitinlike material. The ribbons weren't much thicker than human hair, but they were nearly a sixteenth of an inch in width, and ranged in color from a glossy black to a royal blue, depending on the individual.

The feet were splayed, almost radial; the hands were four-digited--double thumbed and double fingered.

The clothing they wore, though radically cut, was analogous to the styles worn by human beings.

Roysland waited until the aliens were herded out of the ship. They had to be prodded like beasts, since there was no way to talk to them. No exchange of language had ever been achieved; but, like their human counterparts, the mindjammed Enlissa seemed to be perfectly willing to obey any exterior commands.

"What?" said Roysland. He had been so engrossed in his own thoughts that he had only dimly realized that Kiffer Samm was talking to him.

"I said that we'll have to check on them, too, after we see what this weapon is all about."

Roysland folded his hands and rubbed his thumbs together. "Maybe before."

"Huh?"

"Never mind," Roysland said. "Here come the last of them. We want to get all the samples out of their supplies that we can, and we've already been promised first look at those projectors the Enlissa have on board the ship. Come on; let's take a look."

The Enlissa ship wasn't organized too differently from the human version. On the surface, things looked odd; but the laws of the universe function the same way in all places, so the internal workings of the ship were essentially similar.

The Special Weapons men went through the ship with the men of the Inspection Division, photographing, tracing circuits, analyzing, checking differences, and organizing similarities.

Roysland and Kiffer spent most of their time with the big, complex projectors that were cradled in the hull blisters.

When Kiffer first saw them, he turned to Roysland and tried to keep from looking bewildered. "They're subelectronic projectors of some kind. But _what_ kind?"

"That's what we've got to find out," Roysland told him. "We'll have to find out what they do on a physical level first. From there, we'll go on to the physiological level; then we may--just _may_--be able to go on to the psychological effects."

Kiffer Samm looked up at the great frame of his superior, and grinned sardonically. "O.K. Now we've got the effect and the weapon that causes it. Can we correlate the two?"

Roysland shrugged his broad shoulders. "Sure we can. But how long will it take us?"

* * * * *

The laws of the universe may not differ from place to place, but the methods of using them do; and the particular laws that may be discovered in one place aren't necessarily the same ones that are discovered in another. No two human beings think alike; two different evolutionary branches of intelligence, stemming from totally different beginnings, certainly can't be expected to reason similarly. The amazing thing about the Enlissa was not the ways in which they differed from humanity, but the ways in which they were similar.

So it wasn't to be wondered at that the Special Weapons technicians couldn't figure out for the life of them what the projectors from the Enlissa ship did, or why they worked. If they had been the type of men to be stymied by seemingly-unbreakable barriers, they would have gone off their collective rockers in the first three weeks.

One by one, Roysland Dwyn called in the best analysts from every sector of the human-controlled galaxy. And slowly the information began to build up.

The first firing test of the enemy weapon was conducted on Syndor, the outermost and smaller of the two satellites of Kandoris VI. Roysland had the thing taken to the subnucleonics lab there because he felt that there was no need to subject the population of Kandoris to any danger from the backwash--if any. And only God knew how much territory the effective field might cover.

The Special Weapons group had dismantled one of the projectors from the ship and loaded it carefully on the X-69, along with the Enlissa-built generator that powered it.

On Syndor, Roysland watched the unloading. He stood on the broad, airless stretch of the landing field and watched the grapples lower the big, tubular weapon to the deck of the field. The blue-white glare of the distant sun splashed off the metallic sides of the ship, forcing Roysland to narrow his eyes, in spite of the heavy polarized filter in the helmet of his spacesuit.

The thing floated down under the control of the grapple beams until it was only a few feet from the surface.

Roysland heard the voice of the crew leader bellow in his earphones. "O.K., watch it! Get the truck underneath that thing before you drop it any more!"

A sturdy six-wheeled truck was moved in under the projector. The grapple operator turned a rheostat, and the projector sank another six inches, to rest on the truck.

"O.K.!" yelled the crew leader. "Haul her away!"

The truck trundled off in the direction of the Llordis Mountains.

Kiffer's voice came through Roysland's phones. "Let's go, Roysland; I'm right behind you."

Roysland turned around. Kiffer Samm was sitting in the driver's seat of a small jeep.

As he climbed in, Roysland said, "I felt the vibration as you pulled up, but I didn't pay any attention to it. Coming up behind a guy like that is real sneaky."

Kiffer's chuckle coincided with the slight vibration of the jeep as it started moving after the six-wheeler.

* * * * *

The testing area was some miles from the permanent labs. Roysland wanted to test the weapon by firing at Kandoris herself. The huge blue-white sun could certainly take anything directed at her.

It took the better part of three days to set up the site for the test, and during most of that time, Roysland Dwyn was in a spacesuit. The construction engineers had rigged up a plastic shell for dormitories and other inside necessities, but the work had to be done in the vacuum of space. By the time the set-up had been completed, Roysland felt exhausted in every muscle of his huge body. On the "afternoon" of the third day, he peeled off his oversize spacesuit and lay back on his cot. It was much too short for him, and his feet stuck out over the edge; but he was too tired to worry about that.

Kiffer was sitting on his own bunk, massaging his neck to get the kinks out. "The thing that bothers me," he said, "is the eternal sunlight. That blasted star won't go down for another seventy days."

Roysland nodded, but it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere.

"Suppose there is a backwash from this thing," Roysland said at last. "That would account for a lot of things. We've been wondering why the Enlissa ships didn't loot our own vessels after they used the mindjammer."

"Certainly," Kiffer said. "It's obvious. Their own weapon backfired on them, and left the Enlissa ship incapable of doing any looting. I figured that out a long time ago."

"Oh, did you?" asked Roysland smoothly. "Then did you figure out why the Enlissa didn't test the thing before they used it?"

Kiffer shrugged. "Who knows? What do I know about alien psychology?"

"You don't have to know anything about psychology of any kind; all you have to know is a common, ordinary law of species survival. Any race that takes a weapon into battle without testing it thoroughly, doesn't survive very long."

Kiffer ran the tips of his fingers across his lower lips. "True; but maybe they were suicide squads--or maybe they have a hospital ship following them to pick them up and cure them. After all, Bilford has this cure of his working pretty well now; if the Enlissa invented this thing, they probably know how to counter its effects.

"Besides, you didn't think we'd tested the _aJ_ guns thoroughly. And we're still surviving."

Roysland turned to look at Kiffer, and his face was definitely sneering. "Kiffer, there are times when your thinking has all the clarity and lucidness of a hunk of obsidian.

"There's a difference between the lack of testing of the _aJ_ gun and the Enlissa's not thoroughly testing the mindjammer. There's a difference between looking for something you could logically expect and not finding something that you don't even suspect the existence of."

Kiffer nodded. "Sure; I see what you mean. But that simply means that they don't have any way of shielding the effect--so they have a hospital ship trailing them."

Roysland lay back again and closed his eyes. "Obsidian," he said. Then, after a moment, "One: Why do they sacrifice a crew--even if it's only for a short time? Two: Why don't they use such an efficient weapon against ships that blast them out of the sky? Three: Why do they come in at a ship without firing anything at all?

"Until your hypothesis answers all of those questions--and a lot more besides--it isn't worth a damn."

Kiffer chewed at his upper lip and then looked at his wrist watch. "If you're going to test that thing in an hour, you'd better call Eckisster now."

Roysland sighed deeply. "O.K.; I'll call Old Nasty. Give me a minute to brace myself."

He didn't take the minute; he didn't really need it. He walked over to the solidiphone and punched in the code numbers. Three seconds later, General Director Eckisster was sitting in the middle of the room.

"You're ready, eh? All right; go ahead," he said. "Find out what you can--if anything. I have no further instructions--just don't get yourself killed while you're working."

The heavy space boot that came from Roysland's hand sailed through the image just as it was dissolving. Eckisster had cut off without waiting for Roysland's answer.

"One of these days," Kiffer said, "you're going to be in his office, and you'll forget it isn't a solidograph image and let go with a boot, or something, and knock the boss' teeth in."

Roysland shook his head emphatically as he walked over to pick up the boot. "Nope. If he's actually there in person, I'm going to have a poisoned needle to jab into him. I'll show him how to needle people!"

* * * * *

The Enlissa weapon was fired at Kandoris at 30:00 hours. Spaceships posted along the long line of fire between the satellite of Kandoris VI and the sun itself had sent out instrument-filled drones in the path of the beam to check the beam frequency. The time required for the subetheric wave to travel the eight hundred million miles from the planetary orbit to primary was too short to be measured. As far as the recording instruments were concerned, the beam was instantaneous.

The projector itself was fired by remote control; there were no personnel within three miles of the Enlissa projector when it went off.

The resultant recordings were run through the differential analyzers, and the final graphs were delivered to Kiffer Samm.

After four hours of working with the data, Kiffer made his report to Roysland.

"It's an odd wave length," he said. "Actually, it's a harmonic of three different basic frequencies. Look here: the thing is definitely frequency modulated, but it's a comparatively simple thing." He ran his finger along the primary recordings. "The thing wouldn't really have to be run through the differentials; it could be figured out with a slipdisk.

"The thing that makes it different is the extremely short wave length. The longest of the three has a wave length of eighty thousand kilometers, and the shortest is forty-two thousand kilometers. In a subetheric beam, that's the equivalent of hard X-rays--damned high frequency."

Roysland looked at the recordings carefully. "Is there any reason why this particular wave length should have any effect on the human brain?"

Kiffer looked at the graphs for a long time. When he finally looked up, he said: "I don't know for sure; mind if I call Bilford?"

Roysland shook his great head. "Go ahead; I don't mind."

When Bilford's image flickered into existence, Roysland kept his mouth shut while Kiffer showed the psychometrist the recordings of the energy from the Enlissa projector.

Bilford listened and looked and frowned. "The recordings actually don't make sense to me," he admitted. "I'm a psychometrist, not a subelectronocist.

"If you could translate those recordings from subetheric to their electromagnetic equivalents, I might be able to make something out of it."

The conversion didn't take long; all Kiffer had to do was run the stuff through the analyzer and punch in a correction factor.

Bilford stared at the corrected graphs and compared them with tracings of his own.

"I don't see any correlation," he said at last. "This may take a bit of work. There may be multiple harmonics of the basic stuff involved, of course; but frankly I can't see that the subetherics have anything in common with the electromagnetics as far as this area is concerned."

For the first time, Roysland spoke. "Try a combination-permutation synthesis. See what you get--O.K.?"

Bilford nodded in agreement. "I'll try it--all the different wave lengths involved, plus the subetheric velocity factor. If I come up with anything, I'll let you know."

"Good enough," said Roysland.

* * * * *

The solidiphone image of General Director Eckisster stood in the center of the room. He looked around and then focused his gaze on Roysland Dwyn. "Listen here, Roysland," he said belligerently, "why haven't you done anything? What's the situation now?"

Roysland looked at the general director and put on his nastiest grin. "You've got the report; we haven't done anything. We've fired the Enlissa projector six times. There is only a residual backwash that is harmless. You could fire the thing in your living room if you wanted to. Meanwhile, we want to know what the effect of the beam is."

"And why, may I ask," said Eckisster, "can't you determine so simple a thing as that? This request is utter and absolute nonsense!" He slapped at the papers he held in his hand.

"I knew you'd like that," Roysland said. "I thought maybe you could suggest something else. I can't."

"As I understand it," Eckisster said testily, "you want a human volunteer to test the Enlissa mindjammer on."

"That's right," Roysland said. "So far, all we've proven is that the backwash from the projector has no effect on humans or animals; but we don't know what happens to a man who's hit by the beam itself."

"Oh? We don't? I rather assumed that the fleet hospital's psychiatric wards were full of men who have been hit by the beam."

"An unjustified assumption," Roysland snapped. "At least, so far, it's unprovable. The point is: Do I or don't I have your permission to ask for a volunteer?"

"Why can't you use test animals?" Eckisster asked.

"If you'd bother to read the reports I send you, you'd know. We _have_ used 'em. The beam didn't touch 'em. We sprayed one group for half an hour; and as far as anyone can tell, we might just as well have been shining a flashlight on them."

"Of course," Eckisster said. "The mindjammer causes a feedback loop in the prefrontal lobes. What do you expect it to do to animals with no prefrontal lobe?"

"My point exactly," Roysland agreed. He knew perfectly well that Eckisster had read the report completely and thoroughly. His pretended ignorance and snide remarks were just a mechanism he used for purposes of his own.

"The question is," Roysland repeated, "do I have your permission to ask for a volunteer?"

"I checked with Bilford," the general director said. "He's getting the microwave technique worked out fairly well now; he says he can bring a man around in twenty-five to thirty days." He stopped and looked at Roysland closely. "Go ahead and ask for volunteers."

"Thanks," said Roysland.

Eckisster nodded as he dissolved.

Roysland reached over and punched a button. "Where's Kiffer?" he asked.

"Eating at the mess hall, right now," said a voice.

"That's what I thought. Will you have him come here, to my place, as soon as he gets through? Say, in half an hour?"

"I'll tell him."