sunbathing patients and into the elevator.
Going down it was dead empty. He got out on the fifty-second floor and showed his credentials to a nurse.
They were all in one ward. Miday, Sandier, Buzin, Katz- there were twenty-eight of them, the men who had been closest to Kzanol when he threw his tantrum. Seven were buried in plastic cocoons. The alien had forgotten to order them to cover, and they had been in the way of the blast when the Golden Circle took off. The others were under sleep-inducers. Their faces twisted sometimes with the violence of their dreams.
'I'm Jim Skarwold,' said a blond, chubby man in an intern's uniform. 'I've heard of you, Mr. Garner. Is there anything I can do for you?'
'There better be.' Garner sent his glance down the line of treatment tanks. 'Can any of these men stand a dose of scopolamine? They may have information I need.'
'Scop? I don't think so. Mr. Garner, what happened to them? I took some psychiatry in college, but I never heard of anything like this. It isn't- withdrawal from reality, it isn't straight or crooked fear… They're in despair, but not like other people.
'I was told they got this way from contact with an ET. If you could tell me more about it, I'd have a better chance of treating them.'
'Right. Here's what I know,' said Garner. He told the doctor everything that had happened since the statue was retrieved from the ocean. The doctor listened in silence.
'Then it isn't just a telepath,' he said when Garner finished. 'It can control minds. But what could, it have ordered them to do that would produce this?' He gestured at the row of sleeping patients.
'Nothing. I don't think he was giving orders at the time. He just got a helluva shock and started feeling out loud.' Luke dropped a huge hand on the doctor's shoulder, and Skarwold twitched his surprise at the weight. 'Now, if I were planning to treat them, I'd find out first who they think they are. Themselves? Or the alien? The ET may have superimposed his own emotional pattern on theirs, or even his memory pattern.
'Being me, and an Arm, I want to know why both Greenberg and the ET separately stole spaceships and went rocketing off. They must know they've got interplanetary ships, not interstellar colony craft. Is there an alien base somewhere in the solar system? What are they after?
'Perhaps we can scratch both problems at the same time, Dr. Skarwold.'
'Yes,' said Skarwold slowly. 'Perhaps you're right. Give me an hour to find the man with the strongest heart.'
That was why Luke always carried paperbacks in the glove compartment of his chair. His career involved a lot of waiting.
Arthur T. Katz, qualified ramjet-rocket booster pilot (types C, D, and H-1), thrashed violently. His arms flailed without purpose. He began to make noises.
'It'll be a few minutes,' said Skarwold. 'He's out of the sleep-inducer, but he has to wake up naturally.'
Garner nodded. He was studying the man intently, with his eyes narrowed and his lips tightened slightly. He might have been watching a strange dog, wondering whether it wanted to lick his face or tear his throat out.
Katz opened his eyes. They became very round, then closed desperately tight. Cautiously Katz opened them again. He screamed and waved his arms meaninglessly in the air. Then he started to choke. It was horrible to watch. Whenever he somehow managed to catch his breath he would gasp for air for a few seconds, open his mouth, and begin to choke again. He was terrified, and, thought Garner, not merely because he might suffocate.
Skarwold pushed a switch and Katz's autodoc sprayed sedative into his lungs. Katz flopped back and began to breathe deeply. Skarwold turned on Katz's sleep-inducer.
Abruptly Garner asked, 'Are any of these people the least bit psychic?'
Arnold Diller, fusion drive inspector (all conventional types), took a deep breath and began turning his head back and forth. Not gently. It seemed he was trying to break his own neck.
'I wish we could have found someone with a high telepathic aptitude,' said Garner. Between the palms of his hands he rolled the sawdust fragments of a cigarette. 'He would have stood a better chance. Look at the poor guy!'
Skarwold said, 'I think he's got a good chance.' Garner shook his head. 'He's only a poor man's prescient. If he were any good at that he'd have been running instead of hiding when the ET blew up. How could it protect him against telepathy anyway? He-' Skarwold joggled his arm for silence.
'Diller!' said Skarwold, with authority. Diller stopped tossing his head and looked up. 'Can you understand me, Diller?'
Diller opened his mouth and started to strangle. He closed it again, and nodded, breathing through his nose.
'My name is Skarwold, and I'm your doctor.' He paused as if in doubt. 'You are Arnold Diller, aren't you?'
'Yes.' The voice was rusty, hesitant, as if from long disuse. Something inside Garner relaxed, and he noticed his handful of sawdust and dropped it.
'How do you feel?'
'Terrible. I keep wanting to breathe wrong, talk wrong. Could I have a cigarette?' Garner handed him a lighted one. Diller's voice began to sound better, more proficient. 'That was strange. I tried to make you give me a cigarette. When you just sat there I wanted to get mad.' He frowned. 'Say, how do I rate a human doctor, anyway?'
'What happened to you isn't programmed into the 'docs,' Skarwold said lightly. 'It's a good thing you had the sense to hide when you did. The others were closer. They're in much worse shape. Is your prescient sense working?'
'It's not telling me anything. I can never count on it anyway. Why?'
'Well, that's why I picked you. I thought if you missed it you could get over the notion that you were a certain alien.'
'A certain-' Diller started strangling. He stopped breathing entirely for a moment, then resumed slowly, through distended nostrils. 'I remember,' he said. 'I saw this thing coming across the field, with a bunch of people trailing after it, and I wondered what it was. Then something went wrong in my head. I didn't wait any more. I just ran like hell and got behind a building. Something going on in my head kept bugging me, and I wanted to get closer to it but I knew that was wrong, and I wondered if I was going crazy, and then, aarrrghgh-' Puller stopped and swallowed; his eyes were mad with fear until he could breathe again.
'All right, Diller, it's all right,' Skarwold kept repeating. Diller's breathing went back to normal, but he didn't talk. Skarwold said, 'I'd like to introduce Mr. Garner of the United Nations Technological Police.'
Diller gave a polite nod. His curiosity was plain. Garner said, 'We'd like to catch this alien before he does any more damage. If you don't mind, I think you may have some information that we don't.'
Diller nodded.
'About five minutes after that telepathic blast hit you, the alien took off for outer space. An hour later he was followed by a man who has reason to believe that he is the alien. He has false memories. They're both headed in the same general direction. They're after something. Can you tell me what it is?'
'No,' said Diller.
'You may have gotten something in that mental blast. Please try to remember, Diller.'
'I don't remember anything, Garner.'
'But»
'You old fool! Do you think I want to choke to death? Every time I start to think about what happened I start strangling! I start thinking funny too; everything looks strange. I feel surrounded by enemies. But worst of all, I get so depressed! No. I don't remember anything. Get out.'
Garner sighed and ostentatiously put his hands on the chair controls. 'If you change your mind-'
'I won't. So there's no need to come back.'
'I won't be able to. I'm going after them.'
'In a spaceship? You?'
'I've got to,' said Garner. Nevertheless he glanced involuntarily at his crossed legs crossed this morning, by
