CHAPTER 26
Perhaps it was well that Selene was now out of radio contact; it would hardly have helped morale if her occupants had known that the skis, heavily overloaded with passengers, were heading away from the site. But at the moment, no one in the cruiser was thinking of the rescue effort; Radleyas holding the center of the dimly lit stage.
“What do you mean—this is all your fault?” asked Pat in the baffled silence that followed the New Zealander's statement-only baffled as yet; not hostile, because no one could take such a remark seriously.
“It's a long story, Captain,” said Radley, speaking in a voice that, though it was oddly unemotional, had undertones that Pat could not identify. It was almost like listening to a robot, and it gave Pat an unpleasant feeling somewhere in the middle of his spine. “I don't mean to say that I deliberately caused this to happen. But I'm afraid it is deliberate, and I'm sorry to have involved you all. You see—they are after me.”
This is all we need, thought Pat. We really seem to have the odds stacked against us. In this small company we've got a neurotic spinster, a drug addict—and now a maniac. What other freaks are going to reveal themselves before we're finished?
Then he realized the unfairness of his judgment. The truth was that he had been very lucky. Against Radley, Miss Morley, and Hans Baldur (who had given no trouble after that single, never-mentioned incident), he had the Commodore, Dr. McKenzie, the Schusters, little Professor Jayawardene, David Barrett—and all the others who had done as they were asked, without making a fuss. He felt a sudden surge of affection-even of love—toward them all, for giving him their active or passive support.
And especially toward Sue, who was already one jump ahead of him, as she always seemed to be. There she was, moving unobtrusively about her duties at the back of the cabin. Pat doubted if anyone noticed—certainly Radley did not—as she opened the medicine chest and palmed one of those cigarettesized cylinders of oblivion. If this fellow gave trouble, she would be ready.
At the moment, trouble seemed the furthest thing from Radley's mind. He appeared to be completely self- possessed and perfectly rational; there was no mad gleam in his eye, or any other of the clichйs of insanity. He looked exactly what he was—a middle-aged New Zealand accountant taking a holiday on the Moon.
“This is very interesting, Mister Radley,” said Commodore Hansteen in a carefully neutral voice, “but please excuse our ignorance. Who are 'they,' and why should they be after you?”
“I am sure, Commodore, that you've heard of flying saucers?”
Flying what? Pat asked himself. Hansteen seemed better informed than he was.
“Yes, I have,” he answered a little wearily. “I've come across them in old books on astronautics. They were quite a craze, weren't they, about eighty years ago?”
He realized that “craze” was an unfortunate word to use, and was relieved when Radley took no offense.
“Oh,” he answered, “they go back much further than that, but it was only in the last century that people started to take notice of them. There's an old manuscript from an English abbey dated 1290 that describes one in detail—and that isn't the earliest report, by any means. More than ten thousand flying saucer sightings have been recorded prior to the twentieth century.”
“Just a minute,” interrupted Pat. “What the devil do you mean by 'flying saucer'? I've never heard of them.”
“Then I'm afraid, Captain, that your education has been neglected,” answered Radley in a sorrowful voice. “The term 'flying saucer' came into general use after 1947 to describe the strange, usually disc-shaped vehicles that have been investigating our planet for centuries. Some people prefer to use the phrase 'unidentified flying objects. '”
That aroused a few faint memories in Pat's mind. Yes, he had heard that term in connection with the hypothetical Outsiders. But there was no concrete evidence, of course, that alien space vessels had ever entered the solar system.
“Do you really believe,” said one of the other passengers skeptically, “that there are visitors from space hanging round the Earth?”
“Much more than that,” answered Radley. “They've often landed and made contact with human beings. Before we came here, they had a base on Farside, but they destroyed it when the first survey rockets started taking close-ups.”
“How do you know all this?” asked someone else.
Radley seemed quite indifferent to the skepticism of his audience; he must have grown used to this response long ago. He radiated a kind of inner faith which, however ill-founded it might be, was oddly convincing. His insanity had exalted him into the realm beyond reason, and he was quite happy there.
“We have—contacts,” he answered with an air of great importance. “A few men and women have been able to establish telepathic communication with the saucer people. So we know a good deal about them.”
“How is it that no one else does?” asked another disbeliever. “If they're really out there, why haven't our astronomers and space pilots seen them?”
“Oh, but they have,” Radley answered with a pitying smile, “and they're keeping quiet. There's a conspiracy of silence among the scientists; they don't like to admit that there are intelligences out in space so much superior to ours. So when a pilot does report a saucer, they make fun of him. Now, of course, every astronaut keeps quiet when he meets one.”
“Have you ever met one, Commodore?” asked Mrs. Schuster, obviously half convinced. “Or are you in the— what did Mister Radley call it-conspiracy of silence?”
“I'm very sorry to disappoint you,” said Hansteen. “You'll have to take my word for it that all the spaceships I've ever met have been on Lloyd's Register.”
He caught Pat's eye, and gave a little nod that said, “Let's go and talk this over in the air lock.” Now that he was quite convinced that Radley was harmless, he almost welcomed this interlude. It had, very effectively, taken the passengers' minds off the situation in which they now found themselves. If Radley's brand of insanity could keep them entertained, then good luck to it.
“Well, Pat,” said Hansteen, when the air-lock door had sealed them off from the argument, “what do you think of him?”
“Does he really believe that nonsense?”
“Oh yes—every word of it. I've met his type before.”
The Commodore knew a good deal about Radley's peculiar obsession; no one whose interest in astronautics dated back to the twentieth century could fail to. As a young man, he had even read some of the original writings on the subject—works of such brazen fraudulence or childish naпvetй that they had shaken his belief that men were rational beings. That such a literature could ever have flourished was a disturbing thought, though it was true that most of those books had been published in that psychotic era, the Frantic Fifties.
“This is a very peculiar situation,” complained Pat. “At a time like this—all the passengers are arguing about flying saucers.
“I think it's an excellent idea,” answered the Commodore. “What else would you suggest they do? Let's face it, we've got to sit here and wait until Lawrence starts knocking on the roof again.”
“If he's still here. Barrett may be right—perhaps the raft has sunk.”
“I think that's very unlikely. The disturbance was only a slight one. How far would you imagine we went down?”
Pat thought this over. Looking back on the incident, it seemed to have lasted a long time. The fact that he had been in virtual darkness, and had been fighting that jet of dust, still further confused his memory. He could only hazard a guess.
“I'd say—ten meters.”
“Nonsense! The whole affair only lasted a couple of seconds. I doubt if we dropped more than two or three meters.”
