Dale sat up and frowned. “No, I didn’t know it.”
“It is true,” the man said, watching him intently.
“Why are you telling me?”
The man cleared his throat significantly. “You might be in a position to save the world from an atomic war.”
Dale stiffened. “You must know,” he said coldly, “what my position is. I am in the employ of the United Nations, and any attempt to control my actions is coercion and the penalty is death.”
The man did not back away. He moved closer, and his eyes became black points of force. The Bryd saw that the man had mental powers unusual for that period of Earth’s history.
“Look at me, Dale Stevenson.”
Dale fought against it, but the man’s will was powerful. Dale’s resistance weakened. The man’s eyes never wavered from Dale’s. He moved still closer and spoke in a low tone. “Our information is that France will drop atomic bombs on Spain’s principal cities at three a.m. one week from today. Suppose—just suppose—that some other nation—some nation powerful enough to do so—should be in a position to warn France at two thirty that France would not be permitted to attack. Suppose this warning were backed up with a show of force to prove the warning meant business.”
“Isn’t that the job of the U.N.?”
The man’s face was only inches now from Dale’s. The Bryd shivered in its figurative boots. This man was a master hypnotist. Only they wouldn’t call him a hypnotist in these days. They’d call him a psyche-man. Psyche-control was much more powerful than hypnosis. Psyche-control touched the moral inhibitions, which hypnosis never had been able to do.
Dale was lost. In the end he agreed, for a cash-on-delivery fee of one hundred thousand dollars, to concentrate his sodium mirror beam on Paris at two thirty of the morning designated, and thereby, with a smoking path of fire and ruin, help the other nation to warn France that she must keep hands off Spain.
Perhaps Dale’s jealousy of Georges Raoul Dumont had a bearing on the agreement.
Dale had been so much under the foreign agent’s influence that he had not considered the ethics of the idea at all until time to press the button that would concentrate the sun-energy into a consuming column of fire. The time was now … and it was only now, with the hypnosis just beginning to wear off at the edges, that he found himself wondering vaguely about angles of the situation that previously had not occurred to him.
Who was the man who had talked to him? Whom did he represent? Why hadn’t he gone to the U.N. if he knew so much?
But then it was true, as the man had said—if France planned to start dropping atomic bombs at three o’clock, it would be too late to appeal to the U.N. Dale didn’t like Frenchmen anyway.
Altogether, the Bryd concluded, Dale Stevenson was pretty muddled up in his mind. The man needed a rest, but that could be worked out later. Right now his finger was on the firing-button, and the psyche-control, though weakened, was pushing him to finish the job.
Oh dear, these humans certainly could muddle things.
The Bryd decided to have a look at Ann Wondra’s mind. And there it got somewhat startled, for Ann’s, which previously had been all warm and cozy as toast, was very low indeed. She was looking at a snapshot of Dale, and it wasn’t even a very good picture, but it exhilarated her and at the same time it depressed her, because she wanted Dale but couldn’t have him.
Ann was sitting cross-legged on a thick rug, drinking Darjeeling tea, and talking to her mother.
“I’m glad M. Dumont has gone back home,” she said, and the Bryd noted that there wasn’t any jump in her blood-pressure when she mentioned Georges’ name—well, not much, anyway.
“He’s very handsome,” said her mother, knitting busily. The old lady’s blood-pressure jumped more than Ann’s.
“But he isn’t as nice as Dale Stevenson.”
“My sakes, Ann, I hope you don’t grow to be an old maid, mooning over that tongue-tied—”
“Mother!” Ann got to her feet. She was long-legged and clean-limbed. The Bryd approved of her. It could imagine by now what she had done to Dale’s mind. It didn’t see how it had slept through it.
So the Bryd took a quick transition back to America and had a look at the mind of the doctor who took care of Marillyn Stevenson. The physician was having lunch with a consultation expert.
“You know,” the doctor said, fingering a Manhattan—“I don’t know what to do about young Dale Stevenson. He’s still trying to cure his sister.”
“Maybe there’s a reason.”
“Sure there’s a reason. He has this feeling of gratitude and loyalty and all. That’s all there is to it, but he’s butting his head against the infinite inertia. He’s spending two thousand a month on that girl—and the worst of it is, she doesn’t want him to. She knows what the score is and she’s resigned to it.”
“Well, loyalty is a wonderful thing, but I suppose it can go too far, and overshadow reason, especially in the young. Is there any chance at all for the girl?”
“No possibility. Progressive degeneration of the brain-tissue.” He tossed off the Manhattan and the Bryd shuddered—it preferred Martinis, itself. “The only thing would be a miracle, and you know how scarce they are in the medical world.” He smiled. They both smiled. The Bryd mentally snorted. Who were they, to laugh at miracles? They thought they were pretty damn smart, didn’t they?
The Bryd decided it had better look in on Marillyn.
It found her in a glassed-in porch of the sanatorium, with her reclining chair facing south, and the sun pouring down through the magnolias. The Bryd liked this. Everything was restful and peaceful and pleasant—
But something was wrong as hell in Marillyn’s mind.
She had a small bottle of something in one hand under the light blanket, and she was lying back running over everything in her mind. Dale loved Ann and Ann loved Dale.
