Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Project Hi-Psi

BY FRANK RILEY

_The aliens were conducting an experiment under laboratory conditions. So, how could they guess that their guinea pigs held the ultimate weapon?_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Dr. Lucifer Brill stepped briskly down the corridor of the Federal Building. The taps on his leather heels clicked a precise rhythm on the marble floor.

He ignored the door that offered "Information", passed up office after office until he came to the glass paneled door which informed him that behind it functioned the Director of FBI operations in the Los Angeles area.

The door was locked.

Lucifer Brill rubbed the knuckles of his left hand over the bristles of his sand-colored, neatly trimmed bit of mustache. It was a gesture known to all graduate students, Department of Parapsychology, Western University, as an indication of annoyance.

The possibility of this office being closed had definitely not been part of Lucifer Brill's prospectus.

A movement behind the opaque glass panel caught his attention. He rattled the knob. When this produced no results, he tapped with his immaculate fingernails on the glass.

A shadow moved inside the office. The lock clicked. The door opened.

An overweight young woman, obviously interrupted in the act of painting a lush mouth over thin lips, glared at him through a veneer of politeness.

"Yes?"

"I have an appointment with the Director." Lucifer Brill's voice still carried the twang of boyhood in Chelmsford, Mass.

The young woman's plucked eyebrows arched.

"This office is closed. If there is an emergency, you may...."

Lucifer handed her his card. The eyebrows arched still higher.

"Dr. Brill! Your appointment was for 3:45!"

"I am aware of that," he told her, severely, "but the other drivers were not, and there were an incredible number of them on the road. Now, if you please...."

"Would you care to make another appointment for tomorrow?"

"I would not. You may inform the Director that I have arrived, that I regret my tardiness and that the purpose of my visit involves a matter of extreme urgency."

Lucifer hadn't raised the level of his voice, but behind the rimless spectacles, his mild blue eyes became very cold and direct. The secretary unpursed her lips and flounced toward the inner office.

She was back in a moment, and said with disapproval,

"This way, please--Sir."

The Director greeted Lucifer Brill with a courtesy that was somewhat strained. His briefcase was on his desk. So was his hat.

Lucifer went peremptorily to the point.

"I must report a most serious case."

From long training, the Director ignored the tone and inquired with careful politeness.

"What sort of a case, Dr. Brill?"

"I believe you would call it a case of kidnapping--multiple kidnapping."

"Kid--kidnapping!"

The Director's large hands hit the desk top with a cracking sound. His knee touched a button to flip on the tape recorder.

"When?--Where?--Who?"

Lucifer considered the questions, methodically organized his answers.

"As to when, I would say over the last eight years."

"What?"

"As to where, I would say all over the United States."

"Now, one moment ... please!"

"As to who.... Well, that would require a rather lengthy answer."

The Director's voice shook with an effort to keep calm.

"Dr. Brill, I would appreciate an answer to my question."

"Very well."

Lucifer took a small, brown leather notebook from the inside pocket of his beautifully pressed gabardine.

"It will take a little time. You see, I believe that over 3,000 persons have been kidnapped."

The Director's thick neck turned prime-rib red, and swelled over the collar of his shirt. Lucifer began to read:

"Anthell, Ruth ... Atwater, Horace ... Borsook, George...."

"That's enough, Dr. Brill!"

"Thank you. Time really is of the essence, you know. I learned this morning that two of the missing persons disappeared as recently as four days ago."

The Director breathed heavily.

"Just who are these people, Dr. Brill?"

"They are all positives. Some of them are positive positives."

The Director made a small, strangling sound.

"If you don't mind, Dr. Brill--just what in the hell are positive positives?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I had presumed you were familiar with my work."

"I'm a little vague about it."

"I see." Lucifer's expression showed intolerance for this cultural lag, but he condescended to explain. "For several years I have been re-evaluating psi card tests at Western University, with the project goal of answering criticism that Rhine and other researchers ended scoring runs at so-called convenient points. While one cannot approach the statistical ideal of infinity in any series, it is nevertheless mathematically possible, through multitudinous repetitions...."

There was an expression on the Director's face of a man trying to plod doggedly against a strong gale.

"Positives ..." he reminded, a little desperately.

"... to amass statistics that are conclusively beyond the bounds of chance. In this rechecking, I have received excellent cooperation from researchers at other universities, and consequently have compiled what may well be the largest list of psi cases on record, whereby...."

"Positives," grated the Director. "Kidnapping ... remember, Dr. Brill...?"

"... I have been able to establish categories--in my own terminology--of non-positives, positives and positive-positives. Do you follow me, Sir?"

"Absolutely." The FBI Director removed sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Now, shall we get on with this kidnapping...."

"I am convinced that my positives and positive positives are either being kidnapped, or otherwise caused to disappear involuntarily."

"3,000 of them?"

"3,116."

The Director, in this crisis, took refuge in routine. He picked up Lucifer's card.

"Do you have any other identification with you, Dr. Brill."

The routine was a mistake. Lucifer produced an expired driver's license, an unpaid gas bill, a membership card in the American Society for Psychic Research, a faculty football ticket, a credit slip from the May Company, six traffic citations....

The Director held up his hand in weary surrender.

"O.K.," he said. "Tell me all about it."

Lucifer told his story with an admirable lack of detail, and a certain intensity that compelled attention.

At a certain phase of his project, it was necessary to start re-evaluating cases he had previously re-evaluated. That phase had been reached two months ago. He had selected five hundred names from his card file, and had sent them form letters preparatory to arranging for tests.

When 480 came back marked "Address Unknown", or "No Forwarding Address", he was disturbed, but not unduly so. In an era of great population shifts, people could be lost and forgotten.

He mailed out another 500 forms. Four hundred and sixty-three came back unopened.

A third mailing brought similar results. Subsequent mailings added up to the startling statistic that some 3,000 people apparently had vanished.

Lucifer personally checked a score of names in the greater Los Angeles area. Five could not be located; seven seemed to have moved without leaving a forwarding address; one was reported drowned in the surf off Point Fermin; six were listed with the Missing Persons Bureau. Of the latter, two had briefly made headlines. They had kissed their wives goodby, driven off to work and had never been seen again.

Against his will, the FBI Director was impressed by Lucifer Brill's calm recital of these facts.

"But 3,000 people," he demurred. "Isn't it simply incredible that 3,000 people could disappear without causing a commotion?"

"Do you know the number of missing persons listed annually by the Los Angeles Police Department?"

The Director admitted he did not.

"Nearly 4,000 juveniles and adults. The number in other cities is roughly proportionate to the population ... New York, for example, had about eight...."

The FBI Director made his decision.

"Dr. Brill," he said, "Give me that list of names and addresses."

* * * * *

Within twenty-four hours, teletypes began pouring in from the District Offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Individually, the reports meant nothing. Obscure people who simply were missing. Many of them were not even missed enough to be listed as missing persons.

The final tabulation showed that 3,223 men and women were missing out of 4,775 people who had registered significantly above-chance in the psi re-evaluation tests conducted by Western University.

Lucifer Brill pointed out something else.

"The missing positives were my stronger positives. Most of those who have not disappeared were closer to borderline cases."

At this point, to the infinite relief of the Los Angeles office, prime responsibility for the case shifted to Washington, D.C.

A tight lid of security was clamped over the whole affair. FBI analysts went to work on the facts and figures. Mathematically, they proved that the percentage of missing psi test cases was fantastically above the probability of coincidence.

One by one, the people had dropped from sight, lost in the swirling undercurrents of a vast, shifting population. A school teacher in Little Rock, a side-show freak in Chattanooga, a TV salesman in Milwaukee, an artist in Philadelphia--all had disappeared, obscurely but definitely.

And the disappearances were continuing.

Only two days before an inquiring FBI agent called on a pharmacist in Dubuque, the man had closed up the drugstore, started for home and had never been seen again. He was listed as an amnesia victim at the local police department. In his psi test, four years earlier, he had consistently averaged seventeen out of twenty-five calls. Remorselessly, the accrual of new facts added to the Bureau's bewilderment.

One of the FBI statisticians pointed out that almost an identical number of men and women were missing: 1,596 men; 1,627 women.

Another perceptive young researcher ran cards on the missing positives through an IBM machine, and came up with this statistic: The women were between the ages of 17 and 35; the men between 19 and 45. Eighty percent of both sexes were in their late twenties.

When all possible data had been assembled, the FBI gingerly submitted its report to a super-secret meeting of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The reaction was not flattering.

Navy's slightly profane comment was that someone in the Bureau had flipped his wig.

Army looked disgusted.

State Department was pained.

White House was silent.

The Chairman smiled, and waited for someone else to laugh.

No one laughed.

Red-faced but unyielding, FBI insisted that its report merited serious consideration.

"We've kept this thing quiet," FBI said, "but you know what the reporters could do with it."

State looked less pained. Even Army and Navy gave reluctant attention. White House asked tentatively,

"What about the Russian angle? If even a fraction of this nonsense we hear about psi is true, these people might serve an espionage purpose. Could Soviet agents have smuggled them out of the country?"

"A few, maybe," admitted FBI. "But not 3,223. Not by any known method of transportation."

"Any subversives among them?" asked Army.

"One hard-shelled Commie, a few fuzzy-minded joiners ... about par for the course."

"Then why in the hell is this important, anyway?" demanded Navy.

A large hassle ensued, but all eventually agreed that if more than 3,000 people actually had been caused to vanish, it was at least potentially a cause for security concern. Army pointed out:

"Next time, they might not waste the effort on these crackpots. They might bag some important people."

White House asked:

"What are we going to do about it?"

There was an outburst of silence.

Finally, State spoke up:

"By all means, keep the matter quiet. It could be deucedly embarrassing."

But something, of course, had to be done.

And while something was being debated, at top level, in top secrecy, in eyes-only, Q-clearance sanctums, Lucifer Brill took matters into his own hands.

He felt a compelling personal responsibility to the missing people. Their names had been compiled together in his files; he had made no effort to protect the lists. Anyone who wanted to make the attempt could have found a way to copy the cards.

Lucifer also felt a sense of responsibility to science. And by science, he meant his own branch of parapsychology. All other science existed for him in a vague limbo into which no serious psychological student would venture. "Nuts and bolts," was the way Lucifer customarily dismissed the shadow-world of science outside his own laboratory.

But what use was it to go on confirming and re-confirming the existence of positives and positive positives if they just up and disappeared?

The answer was discouraging.

So Lucifer Brill took stock of himself.

He was forty-four years old. He had no dependents, and was dependent on no one. Except for chronic nearsightedness, and hay fever in the months of July and August, he was sound of limb and body.

Lucifer withdrew from the bank the balance of his inheritance and life savings. He placed the money in a trust fund to be given to Western University for continuance of psi research, five years after his death or disappearance. He drew up a holographic will bequeathing and bequesting his library and papers to the University. He prepared a sealed envelope containing three hundred dollars in cash and instructions for the care of his two parrots for the balance of their natural lives.

And then Lucifer Brill released to the profession the news that after testing thousands of people for the psi talent, he had finally tested himself--and had scored an average of 19 out of 25 in 4,000 PT tests, all conducted under strict laboratory conditions.

Parapsychological circles reacted with an affectionate blend of awe and amusement. Fellow professors wrote him congratulatory notes, some with postscripts that jibed at him goodnaturedly. The editors of two psychic journals called to ask for articles. One Eastern university wanted to test him for PC and PK, but Lucifer stalled for time, waiting for something or someone to cause him to vanish from the face of the earth.

On the evening of August 23, about eight-thirty, there was a knock on the screen door of his bachelor apartment. Lucifer called, "Come in, please," but he continued to work at a statistical tabulation.

The door opened; footsteps approached his desk.

"Sit down," said Lucifer. He had been expecting a summer school graduate student to come by for a book. "I'll be through with this column in just a moment."

"There is no hurry, Dr. Brill."

The voice was strange. It had almost a metallic ring.

Lucifer's fingers turned white where they gripped the pencil. But he carefully totalled up the column and rechecked the answer, ferreting out an error in the addition of 29 plus 8.

Only then did he swivel around to face the tall, thin, dark-faced stranger. Lucifer said quietly,

"Good evening. I am sorry to have kept you waiting."

The stranger nodded, and took a small blue phial from his pocket. Long, lean-muscled fingers squeezed the phial.

Lucifer's apartment faded gently away in the sweet, cloying odor of hyacinth.

* * * * *

When Lucifer Brill opened his eyes, his face was half buried in a white pillow. A damp breeze blew across the back of his neck. The breeze was heavy with tropical odors. Yet there was something curious about them. Lucifer sniffed, and sniffed again. He discovered that his hay fever wasn't bothering him.

Through one probing eye, Lucifer could see his glasses on a nightstand. Beyond them was a window down which drops of rain were beginning to streak.

Memories of the blue phial and the strange visitor flooded back. His right arm was numb, but he decided he had been sleeping on it. He experimented with his toes and legs.

They moved.

His right knee bumped against an object on the other side of the bed. The object felt alien to anything in Lucifer Brill's previous experience. He pushed firmly with his knee, and felt something that was both firm and soft, yielding and unyielding, warm and slightly cold.

There was a sleepy murmur of protest, and the alien object moved away.

Lucifer Brill obeyed habit. He reached for his glasses. Then he raised himself on his tingling right elbow and peered cautiously toward the other side of the bed.

By many standards, Lucifer could have been adjudged a brave man. But what he saw had a curiously frightening effect on him.

He saw the back of a woman's head, and a tangle of dark hair, a bare, sun-brown arm, a bare shoulder.

Lucifer took off his glasses, breathed upon them, polished them thoughtfully on a corner of the sheet, and looked again.

The apparition was still there. Only now the head was turned. The eyes that were watching him were wide and startled. The lips moved in sort of a gasping sound. They framed the words:

"Get out of my bed!"

In spite of a certain paralysis, Lucifer bridled at the words. He was a rational man, and believed that words should originate in a context of rationality.

"I can assure you," he stated, "that I am not voluntarily in your bed, and that I have no intention of remaining here."

There was another gasping sound. The eyes widened still more. The lips exclaimed. "Dr. Brill! Dr. Lucifer Brill!"

Lucifer made a sound that was as close to a gurgle as he had come since infancy.

When he had collated his emotions, he asked in his customary tone,

"Have we met?"

The lips smiled wryly.

"It looks that way."

"Ah ... Yes, of course. But, I mean ... under social or professional circumstances?"

"You're the odd little man who gave me those card tests in San Diego last winter."

Lucifer Brill digested this information in dignified silence. He considered the woman gravely, then took the white sheet and covered her up to her chin.

She gasped again.

"There are certain proprieties," he reminded her severely.

He considered her again, trying to place her face and its personality among the thousands of people he had psi-tested. It was what he would term a Type III face, although he had never been able to establish any defineable connection between bone structure and psi positive characteristics. This was a strong face on the pillow beside him. Strong and at the same time possessed of certain female qualities, principally in the fullness of the rather large lips and in the throat lines. The cheek bones were fairly high. The skin texture indicated a chronological age of about thirty.

Having thus appraised and catalogued the woman, Lucifer asked, "May I have the privilege of making your acquaintance?"

"Wh ... what?"

"Your name," he said impatiently. "Do you mind telling me your name?"

"Nina ... Nina Poteil. They call me Nina ... professionally."

"Professionally ...." Lucifer rolled the word on his tongue as though he relished its flavor. "May I inquire as to the nature of your profession?"

"You don't remember? Oh, well, I guess you'd call me a psychologist."

"A psychologist!" Lucifer's eyes glowed with relief and approval. If he had to awake to find himself in these distressing circumstances, it was good to know that he was with a confrere.

"Really!" he said. "I had no idea! It astonishes me that I do not remember you. What is your specialization?"

"I'm called an entertainment psychologist."

"How extraordinary! Where do you practice?"

"At the Blue Grotto on Fifth Street. I'm billed for character readings. Cards are my medium, but I don't need them, of course."

"Oh."

Lucifer adjusted his glasses. He said, "Now, if you will kindly face toward the opposite wall, I will get out of this bed."

As Lucifer climbed out of bed, he was painfully conscious of a short kimono that scarcely reached to his white, bony knees. Panic-stricken, he looked around for something else to wear, and found some neatly folded garments on a chair behind his side of the bed. With a shock, he realized this was exactly the way he had always left his own clothes overnight.

Only these were not his own clothes. They appeared to be made of a light, semi-transparent plastic material. There was a pair of trousers that fit rather like jodhpurs, a loose, practical tunic, and boots of the same thin material. When he had dressed, he still felt like a man in a goldfish bowl.

Looking out the window, he saw that they were near the center of a very large compound, comprising hundreds of small dwellings, all constructed of a slate-like grey metal. Each dwelling was surrounded with a neat area of what appeared at first glance to be a lawn. On closer observation, it was a lush, mossy growth, deep green in color. At one end of the compound was a much larger building, sprawling into many wings and substructures. Behind it rose a tremendous, yet somehow slender and graceful, silhouette of a shining projectile, aimed toward the clouds. Around the compound, at intervals of about two hundred yards, were tall guard towers. The compound itself seemed to be located in a vast, towering forest that rolled away in all directions until it disappeared in the low-hanging mists. Through a break in the clouds, Lucifer saw a giant, orange wheel, many times the size of the sun he had known all his life.

"Amazing," Lucifer murmured.

Averting his eyes from the bed, he walked across the room and opened a door. It led to a large, bright room, artificially lighted from a source he could not determine. At the far end of the room were a door and glass casement windows that opened on a small, mossy clearing. The forest curved in behind the clearing, and walled it off. In the room itself, a large screen occupied most of one wall. The furniture was extremely functional. Everything, even the cushions on a low couch, appeared to be made of a tinted metal. But when Lucifer touched one of the cushions, it yielded resiliently.

"Amazing," he repeated.

In his astonishment, Lucifer forgot himself and looked toward the bed.

"Miss Poteil, have you any idea where we are?"

"I woke up after you did," she reminded him.

"I see." He regarded her sternly. "What is your last recollection prior to awakening?"

"I don't know.... Yes, I do!" She sat up, then sank back and covered herself again as he glared disapproval. "I was in the Blue Grotto--It was getting late, and I had just left my card--like I always do--at a table where two men were drinking. One of them said, 'Sure, we want a reading.' Then I sat down, and that's all I remember."

"All?" he insisted, as if questioning a reluctant student.

"There was kind of a strange odor...."

"I know."

"You do!" She bolted upright, forgetting the sheet. She looked accusingly at him.

"Naturally, I recall the same odor. How else do you suppose I happened to wake up in this bed?"

"I wondered."

Lucifer turned back to the window in time to see two men, in the same plastic tunic and leggings he was wearing, approaching the front of their bungalow.

"We have visitors," he said. "Perhaps we shall also have some answers. While I greet them, I suggest that you make an effort to acquire some kind of apparel."

* * * * *

One of the visitors was a gaunt, heavy-boned man, exceedingly tall. Lucifer guessed his height at close to seven feet. The bone structure of his face was harsh and massive. His head was shaved; the flesh deeply bronzed. The second visitor was nearly as tall, but he was older, and his shoulders sagged. Bronze skin hung loosely over the bones of his face.