Rainbolt said stubbornly, "Then, sir, it can do you no good at all to
torture me. I simply don't have such information. We do plan to make
the stardrive freely available to Earth. But not while Earth is ruled
by the organization of the Machine."
This time, Menesee did not observe the motion of the spokesman's hand.
Instead he saw Rainbolt jerk violently to the right. At the same
moment, a blast of intense, fiery, almost unbearable pain shot up his
own arm. As he grasped his arm, sweat spurting out on his face, he
heard screams from the box on his left and realized it was Director
Cornelius who screamed.
There were answering screams from around the hall.
[Illustration]
Then the pain suddenly subsided.
* * * * *
Menesee started about, breathing raggedly. The pain-reaction had been
severe enough to affect his vision; the great hall looked momentarily
darker than it should have been. And although the actual pain had
ended, the muscles of his arm and shoulder were still trying to cramp
into knots.
There was no more screaming. From the right came Director Ojeda's
gasping voice. "What happened? Did something go wrong with the
stimulating devices? We might all have been killed--!"
Menesee didn't reply. Wherever he looked, he saw faces whitened with
shock. Apparently everyone in the Tribunal Hall, from the
administrator and Spokesman Dorn on down to the directors' attendants
and the two guards flanking the prisoner's area, had felt the same
thing. Here and there, men who had collapsed were struggling awkwardly
back to their feet. He heard a hoarse whisper behind him. "Sir,
Director Cornelius appears to have fainted!"
Menesee glanced around, saw Cornelius' attendant behind the box, then
Cornelius himself, slumped forward, face down and motionless,
sprawling half across his table. "Let him lie there and keep quiet,
fool!" Menesee ordered the man sharply. He returned his attention to
the center of the hall as Spokesman Dorn announced in a voice which
held more of an edge than was normal but had lost none of its strength
and steadiness, "Before any moves are suggested, I shall tell you what
has been done.
"The Tribunal Hall has been sealed and further events in it will be
monitored from without. No one will be able to leave until the matter
with which we are now concerned here has been settled to the
satisfaction of the Machine.
"Next, any of you who believe that an instrument failure was involved
in the experience we shared can disabuse themselves. The same effect
was reported immediately from two other auditoriums on the Great
Circuit, and it is quite possible that it was repeated in all of
them."
Rainbolt, grimacing and massaging his right arm vigorously, nodded.
"It was repeated in all of them, sir!"
The spokesman ignored him, went on. "The Tribunal Hall has, therefore,
been cut out of the Grand Assembly Circuit. How circuit energies could
have been employed to transmit such physical sensations is not clear.
But they will not be used in that manner again."
Menesee felt a flash of admiration. His own thoughts had been turning
in the same direction, but he couldn't have approached Spokesman
Dorn's decisive speed of action.
Dorn turned his attention now to Rainbolt. "What happened," he said,
"apparently was caused by yourself."
Rainbolt nodded. "Yes, sir. It was. It was an application of Oneness.
At present, I'm acting as a focal point of Oneness. Until that
condition is changed, whatever I experience here will be
simultaneously experienced by yourselves."
Menesee thought that the effects of the Machine's discipline became
splendidly apparent at that point. No one stirred in the great hall
though it must have been obvious to every man present that Rainbolt's
words might have doomed them along with himself.
Rainbolt went on, addressing Spokesman Dorn.
"There is only one mistake in your reasoning, sir. The demonstrated
effect of Oneness is not carried by the energies of the Grand Assembly
Circuit, though I made use of those energies in establishing an
initial connection with the other auditoriums and the people in them.
"You see, sir, we learned from the two men captured on Mars about your
practice of having the two highest echelons of your organization
attend significant hearings in the Tribunal Hall through the Assembly
Circuit. Our plan was based on that. We knew that if anything was to
be accomplished with the Oneness principles on Earth, it would have to
be through a situation in which they could be applied simultaneously
to the entire leadership of the Machine. That has now been done, and
the fact that you had the Tribunal Hall taken out of the Assembly
Circuit did not change the Oneness contact. It remains in full
effect."
Spokesman Dorn stared at him for an instant, said, "We can test the
truth of that statement immediately, of course; and we shall!" His
hand moved on the desk.
* * * * *
Menesee felt pain surge through his left arm. It was not nearly as
acute a sensation as the previous pulse had been, but it lasted
longer--a good ten seconds. Menesee let his breath out carefully as it
again ebbed away.
He heard the spokesman saying, "Rainbolt's claim appears to be
verified. I've received a report that the pulse was being experienced
in one of the auditoriums ... and, yes ... now in several."
Rainbolt nodded. "It was a valid claim, believe me, sir!" he said
earnestly. "The applications of our principles have been very
thoroughly explored, and the effects are invariable. Naturally, our
strategem would have been useless if I'd been able to maintain contact
only long enough to provide you with a demonstration of Oneness. Such
a contact can be broken again, of course. But until I act deliberately
to break it, it maintains itself automatically.
"To make that clear, I should explain that distance, direction and
intervening shielding materials do not change the strength of the
contact. Distance at least does not until it is extended to
approximately fifty thousand miles."
"And what happens then?" the spokesman asked, watching him.
"At that point," Rainbolt acknowledged, "Oneness contacts do become
tenuous and begin to dissolve." He added, almost apologetically,
"However, that offers you no practical solution to your problem."
"Why not?" Dorn asked. He smiled faintly. "Why shouldn't we simply
lock you into a spaceship and direct the ship through the defense
fields and out into the solar system on automatic control?"
"I sincerely hope you don't try it, sir! Experiments in dissolving
contacts in that manner have been invariably fatal to all connected
individuals."
The spokesman hesitated. "You and every member of the Machine with
whom you are now in contact would die together if that were done?"
"Yes, sir. That is certain what the results of those experiments
show."
Administrator Bradshaw, who had been staring coldly at Rainbolt, asked
in a hard, flat voice, "If you do nothing to break the contact, how
long will this situation continue?"
Rainbolt looked at him. "Indefinitely, sir," he said. "There is
nothing I need to do about it. It is a static condition."
"In that case," Bradshaw said icily, "_this_ should serve to break the
contact through you!"
As his hand came up, leveling a gun, Menesee was half out of his
chair, hands raised in alarmed protest. "Stop him!" Menesee shouted.
But Administrator Bradshaw already was sagging sideways over the
armrest of this chair, head lolling backwards. The gun slid from his
hand, dropped to the platform.
"Director Menesee," Dorn said coolly from beside Bradshaw, "I thank
you for your intended warning! Since the administrator and the
spokesman are the only persons permitted to bear arms in the Tribunal
Hall, I was naturally prepared to paralyze Administrator Bradshaw if
he showed intentions of resorting to thoughtless action." He looked
down at Rainbolt. "Are Director Menesee and I correct in assuming that
if you died violently the persons with whom you are in contact would
again suffer the same experience?"
"Yes, sir," Rainbolt said. "That is implicit in the principles of
Oneness." He shrugged. "Under most circumstances, it is a very
undesirable effect. But here we have made use of it--"
* * * * *
"The situation," Spokesman Dorn told the directors in the Tribunal
Hall some minutes later, "is then this. There has been nothing
haphazard about the Mars Convicts' plan to coerce us into accepting
their terms. Considering the probable quality of the type of minds
which developed both the stardrive and the extraordinary 'philosophy'
we have encountered today, that could be taken for granted from the
start. We cannot kill their emissary here, or subject him to serious
pain or injury, since we would pay a completely disproportionate
penalty in doing it.
"However, that doesn't mean that we should surrender to the Mars
Convicts. In fact, for all their cleverness, they appear to be acting
out of something very close to desperation. They have gained no
essential advantage through their trick, and we must assume they made
the mistake of underestimating us. This gentleman they sent to Earth
has been given thorough physical examinations. They show him to be in
excellent health. He is also younger by many years than most of us.
"So he will be confined to quarters where he will be comfortable and
provided with whatever he wishes ... but where he will not be provided
with any way of doing harm to himself. And then, I believe, we can
simply forget about him. He will receive the best of attention,
including medical care. Under such circumstances, we can expect his
natural life span to exceed our own.
"Meanwhile, we shall continue our program of developing our own
spacedrive. As the Mars Convicts themselves foresee, we'll gain it
eventually and will then be more than a match for them. Until then the
defense fields around Earth will remain closed. No ship will leave
Earth and no ship will be admitted to it. And in the long run we will
win."
The spokesman paused, added, "If there are no other suggestions, this
man will now be conducted to the hospital of the Machine where he is
to be detained for the remainder of his days."
Across the hall from Menesee, a figure arose deliberately in one of
the boxes. A heavy voice said, "Spokesman Dorn, I very definitely do
have a suggestion."