senses were no subtler than Man's. The Supervisor could have detected nothing, for there was no change in his voice as he said goodbye and spoke the familiar code-words that opened the door of the chamber. Yet Stormgren still felt like a shoplifter leaving a department store under the eyes of the house-detective, and breathed a sigh of relief when the smooth wall had sealed itself behind
“I admit,” said van Ryberg, “that some of my theories haven't been very successful. But tell me what you think of this one.”
“Must I?” sighed Stormgren.
Pieter didn't seem to notice.
“It isn't really my idea,” he said modestly. “I got it from a story of Chesterton's. Suppose the Overlords are hiding the fact that they've got nothing to hide?”
“That sounds just a little complicated to me,” said Stormgren, beginning to take slight interest.
'What I mean is this,” van Ryberg continued eagerly. “I think that physically they're human beings like us. They realize that we'll tolerate being ruled by creatures we imagine to be—well, alien and super-intelligent. But the human race being what it is, it just won't be bossed around by creatures of the same species.”
“Very ingenious, like all your theories,” said Stormgren.
“I wish you'd give them opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one—” But at that moment Alexander Wainwright was ushered in.
Stormgren wondered what he was thinking. He wondered too, if Wainwright had made any contact with the men who had kidnapped him. He doubted it, for he believed Wainwright's disapproval of violence to be perfectly genuine. The extremists in his movement had discredited themselves thoroughly, and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again.
The head of the Freedom League listened carefully while the draft was read to him. Stormgren hoped he appreciated this gesture, which had been Karellen's idea. Not for another twelve hours would the rest of the world know of the promise that had been made to its grandchildren.
“Fifty years,” said Wainwright thoughtfully. “That is a long time to wait.”
“For mankind, perhaps, but not for Karellen,” Stormgren answered. Only now was he beginning to realize the nearness of the Overlords' solution. It had given them the breathing space they believed they needed, and it had cut the ground from beneath the Freedom League's feet. He did not imagine that the League would capitulate, but its position would be seriously weakened. Certainly Wainwright realized this as well.
“In fifty years,” he said bitterly, “the damage will be done. Those who remembered our independence will be dead: humanity will have forgotten its heritage.”
Words—empty words, thought Stormgren. The words for which men had once fought and died, and for which they would never die or fight again. And the world would be better for it.
As he watched Wainwright leave, Stormgren wondered how much trouble the Freedom League would still cause in the years that lay ahead. Yet that, he thought with a lifting of his spirits, was a problem for his successor.
There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.
“Here's your case,” said Duval. “It's as good as new.”
“Thanks,” Stormgren answered, inspecting it carefully none the less. “Now perhaps you'll tell me what it was all about, and what we are going to do next.”
The physicist seemed more interested in his own thoughts.
“What I can't understand,” he said, “is the ease with which we've got away with it. Now if I'd been Kar —”
“But you're not. Get to the point, man. What did we discover?”
“Ah me, these excitable, highly-strung Nordic races!” sighed Duval. “What we did was to make a type of low-powered radar set. Besides radio waves of very high frequency, it used far infrared—all waves, in fact, which we were sure no creature could possibly see, however weird an eye it had.”
“How could you be sure of that?” asked Stormgren, becoming intrigued by the technical problem in spite of himself.
“Well—we couldn't be quite sure,” admitted Duval reluctantly. “But Karellen views you under normal lighting, doesn't he? So his eyes must be approximately similar to ours in spectral range. Anyway, it worked. We've proved that there is a large room behind that screen of yours. The screen is about three centimetres thick, and the space behind it is at least ten metres across. We couldn't detect any echo from the far wall, but we hardly expected to with the low power which was all we dared use. However, we did get this.”
He pushed across a piece of photographic paper on which was a single wavy line. In one spot was a kink like the autograph of a mild earthquake.
“See that little kink?”
“Yes; what is it?”
“Only Karellen.”
“Good Lord! Are you sure?”
“It's a pretty safe guess. He's sitting, or standing, or whatever it is he does, about two metres on the other side of the screen. If the resolution had been a bit better, we might even have calculated his size.”
Stormgren's feelings were very mixed as he stared at that scarcely visible inflexion of the trace. Until now, there had been no proof that Karellen even had a material body. The evidence was still indirect, but he accepted it without question.
“The other thing we had to do,” said Duval, “was to calculate the transmission of the screen to ordinary light. We think we've got a reasonable idea of that—anyway it doesn't matter If we're out even by a factor of ten.
You'll realize, of course, that there's no such thing as a truly one-way glass.
It's simply a matter of arranging the lights. Karellen sits in a darkened room; you are illuminated—that's all.” Duval chuckled.
“Well, we're going to change that!”
With the air of a conjurer producing a whole litter of white rabbits, he reached into his desk and pulled out an overgrown flashlight. The end flared out into a wide nozzle, so that the whole device looked rather like a blunderbuss. Duval grinned.
“It's not as dangerous as it looks. All you have to do is to ram the nozzle against the screen and press the trigger. It gives out a very powerful beam lasting ten seconds, and in that time you'll be able to swing it round the room and get a good view. All the light will go through the screen and it will floodlight your friend beautifully.”
“It won't hurt Karellen?”
“Not if you aim low and sweep upwards. That will give his eyes time to adapt—I suppose he has reflexes like ours, and we don't want to blind him.”
Stormgren looked at the weapon doubtfully and hefted it in his hand. For the last few weeks his conscience had been pricking him. Karellen had always treated him with unmistakable affection, despite his occasional devastating frankness, and now that their time together was drawing to its close he did not wish to do anything that might spoil that relationship. But the Supervisor had received due warning, and Stormgren had the conviction that if the choice had been his, Karellen would long ago have shown himself. Now the decision would be made for him: when their last meeting came to its end, Stormgren would gaze upon Karellen's face.
If, of course, Karellen had a face.
The nervousness that Stormgren had first felt had long since passed away. Karellen was doing almost all the talking, weaving the intricate sentences which he was occasionally prone to use. Once this had seemed to Stormgren the most wonderful and certainly the most unexpected of all Karellen's gifts. Now it no longer appeared quite so marvellous, for he knew that like most of the Supervisor's abilities it was the result of sheer intellectual power and not of any special talent.
Karellen had time for any amount of literary composition when he slowed his thoughts down to the pace of human speech.
“There is no need for you or your successor to worry unduly about the Freedom League, even when it has recovered from its present despondency. It has been very quiet for the past month, and though it will revive again it will not be a danger for some years. Indeed, since it is always valuable to know what your opponents are doing,
