He cut Bilford off and dialed another number. The image that appeared
this time was wearing the uniform of a fleet commander.
"Commander Allerdyce, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"
"Go ahead, Roysland. What is it? I hope you're not going to needle me
the way your boss does. I'd have tossed him out of my office, except
that you can't grab a solidiphone image. Best I could do was shut him
off, which was very unsatisfactory." The commander grinned wryly at
the thought.
A big grin spread itself across Roysland's blocky face. "I know how you
feel. No, commander, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions, as I
said.
"You're familiar with the details of the Enlissa attack on that medical
supply convoy?"
The fleet commander nodded.
"Well," Roysland continued, "what would happen if you were in command
of the cruiser and you found a trace on the scope that indicated an
Enlissa ship?"
"The orders cover that," said the commander. "The cruiser cuts in with
the _aJ_ guns before the Enlissa ship gets within torpedo range."
"And this always works?"
The commander shrugged. "It always has so far, the _aJ's_ knock them
out of space before they can get close enough to launch screenbuster
torpedoes accurately. But this new gadget they've got evidently has as
great a range as the _aJ_ projectors."
"Or greater," Roysland added.
"Yeah," said Allerdyce softly, "or greater."
"Is there any other possibility?" Roysland wanted to know.
The commander nodded. "One--if the Enlissa were lucky, that is. If the
enemy ship could have approached the convoy by coming in directly from
a star, the subetheric radiation from the sun behind them would blank
out their own radiation, and they could get in pretty close before they
registered on a screen.
"But in order to do that, they'd have to know the convoy's course and
lie in wait for it. If they actually did use a star to hide themselves,
it was probably pure luck on their part that they happened to be in the
right place at the right time."
Roysland nodded slowly, his eyes narrowed in thought. "I wonder--" he
said finally. "Would you do me a favor, commander? Would you check and
see if that cruiser actually fired towards a sun? That might give us
some information."
"I'll check," Allerdyce said. "It'll be on the recorders. I'll let you
know what I come up with."
"Fine," said Roysland. "I'll see you later." He cut off, and his image
disintegrated.
Roysland looked at the dark, blurred reflection of his face in the
black plastic of his desk for a moment, then grinned. "All right,
buster," he said to the face in the desk, "you're stuck for a while,
anyway. Time to call in some help."
He touched a switch plate on his desk panel and said: "Call a meeting
of the Special Weapons Staff at my home at twenty-nine hundred hours."
He touched another plate and said: "As soon as the report from the
general director comes in, have it transferred to my home."
And another: "Send all data to date on the enemy's latest weapon to my
home. Code it _Mindjammer_."
Then he got up, shut off his desk, and went out. An early meal was on
the agenda, it seemed.
Blackpool's Restaurant was, as usual, well populated, but not
over-crowded. Roysland managed to find a table in the rear, where he
sat down and ordered a tall glass of fruit juice. He liked Blackpool's;
its old-fashioned, almost primitive atmosphere was impressive without
being phony. The waiters--remote-control humanoids guided by the vast
robot brain in the basement--were dressed in the fluffy, bright,
fluorescent clothing of a style that had been worn two centuries
before, when Blackpool's had been built. The uniforms had never changed.
Roysland consulted the menu, told the waiter what he wanted, and went
back to his fruit juice.
"Roysland? Mind if I pull in?"
Roysland looked up at the short, round-faced, smiling man standing by
the table. "Not at all Osteban; sit down." Roysland didn't particularly
want to talk to him then, but it wouldn't do to offend the Galactic
News Service. Roysland waved the man to a seat and asked him if he
wanted a drink.
Osteban eyed his host's drink. "What are you drinking? Want to let
me taste it?" He took the glass, sipped at it, and made a wry face.
"F'revvinsake! Mind if I have something with life in it?"
Roysland said he didn't, and Osteban ordered something more potent.
When the waiter brought it, he took a healthy swallow and then said:
"Mind if I ask a question?"
"Ask to your heart's content," Roysland said. "You will, anyway. But I
don't guarantee any answers."
"Did you ever?" He took another swallow of liquid. "What's in this
rumor that the Enlissa have invented a gadget that drives people crazy?"
"I haven't heard any such rumor," Roysland said. It was a perfectly
true statement, if a trifle incomplete.
"Did I ask if you'd heard it?" Osteban countered.
"Tell me something, Osteban," Roysland said seriously. "Did you ever
use a declarative sentence in your life?"
"What do you mean? Let's quit the kidding, shall we? Didn't you
understand my question--or are you playing dumb?" Osteban grinned as he
said it, making it totally inoffensive.
Roysland flipped a coin, mentally. It came down tails, and Osteban
lost. "I can't speak officially, of course," Roysland said, "I'll just
have to be a 'reliable anonymous source.' But I can tell you this: We
don't know what the Enlissa may or may not have; but we haven't lost
any ships because of any insanity rays, or what have you."
"Is that a fact?" Osteban thought for a moment. "I guess it is or you
wouldn't say it, would you?"
They drank in silence for a few moments, then Osteban said: "All right,
tell me something else, will you? These new _aJ_ projectors have been
on active duty for half a year or so, haven't they? They're supposed
to be hot stuff, right? Then why is it that they haven't destroyed
any enemy ships? Why is it that all the communiques always say: 'The
Enlissa ship was finally destroyed by ultralight torpedoes.'"
Roysland frowned. "I didn't know that was the case. However, I think
I can hazard a guess. An _aJ_ projector requires the installation of
a big no-space generator, similar to the one that drives the ship.
They're expensive when they get that big, and only a few of the larger
battleships have been equipped with them.
"Now, actually, what are the odds that any particular ship will make
shooting contact with the enemy? Very small. The probable reason that
no enemy ships have been destroyed by _aJ_ projectors is that no _aJ_
ships have come in contact with the enemy."
"Do you think that's it?" The reporter grinned and took a final sip
from his glass, draining it. "Well, I guess I can't get a story out of
you, can I? O.K., then; will I see you around?"
"Sure," said Roysland. "Take it easy."
But the reporter had ruined his dinner. What was there about the
casualty statistics that was unusual? Was there any more information in
that area? He'd have to check and see.
* * * * *
The executive staff of Special Weapons assembled in Roysland Dwyn's
study via solidiphone at 2900 that evening. There were five of them
at the table. Kiffer, Mardis, Taddibol, and Vanisson were actually
thousands of parsecs away, on four widely scattered bases of the fleet.
Roysland Dwyn, himself, was the fifth man.
"I'm going to make this short and sweet," Roysland said. "I don't want
much discussion until you've all had a chance to mull over the data in
your minds for a while."
He spent fifteen minutes telling them what he'd picked up so far. When
he was finished, Vanisson asked: "Have you tried running this through a
computer?"
Roysland shook his head. "It can't be done. We don't have enough
symbolizable data. Only the human mind can take incomplete data
and come up with the right answer; we're going to have to do this
ourselves. We'll have to probe into what we have and see if we come up
with anything."
"I've got a question," Mardis said. "Why does the enemy only pick on
_aJ_ ships?"
Roysland nodded. "And why do they invariably fire _immediately_ after
the _aJ_ projectors fire?"
Kiffer said: "Could it be some kind of subetheric vibration that does
the trick?"
"You're the subelectronics man," Roysland said. "What do you think?"
Kiffer shrugged. "Subetherics are dangerous; near a projector, they can
foul up electrical currents, provided the currents aren't too strong.
They can knock a man out, or even kill him; but I never heard of any
effect like this."
"What would it take to get an effect like this?" Roysland asked.
"Figure it from that angle."
Taddibol looked excited. "Could it be that the enemy doesn't even have
such a weapon?"
They all looked at him. Roysland was grinning. "Maybe you've got the
same hunch I have," Roysland said. "Let's hear it."
"We know: one, it only happens on _aJ_ ships; two, it happens at
the instant of firing. Could it be some sort of backlash from the
projectors that's doing it?"
Roysland, still grinning, looked at the subelectronics man. "How about
it, Kiffer?"
Kiffer shook his head. "I doubt it. There's a backwash, of course,
as there is to any kind of no-space generator. But it's almost
indetectable, even with subelectronic instruments. There's certainly
not enough to hurt anyone. Besides, the emission would be from the
exciter in the gun, and it would hit the men in one direction; that
might slow their neural currents up a little for a fraction of a
second, but it wouldn't do anything like what we have here, even if it
were strong enough."
All the time he had been talking, Mardis had been nodding his head in
agreement. When Kiffer finished, Mardis said: "And besides that, we've
tested the things, remember? We fired those projectors under every
condition we could think of, and we didn't get any feedback lobotomies."
Taddibol nodded. "That's right. We mounted four projectors on the
X-69, and melted asteroids for six months before we released the weapon
to the fleet."
"Anybody got any more questions?" Roysland asked.
There were none.
* * * * *
"All right, I have some I want you to think over. First: Is this really
an enemy weapon? Second: If so, how is it generated and projected at
_aJ_ ships? Third: If it isn't an enemy weapon, what is it? Fourth:
Regardless of what it is, _where_ is it generated? Fifth: If we--"
He didn't finish. The solidiphone signal was blinking. He activated the
instrument, and Eckisster coalesced into the room, his chubby face dewy
with perspiration.
"Ah!" he said. "I'm glad to find you at home. I'm glad to see you're
working on this thing at last. Why didn't you call in your staff two
days ago? Maybe they can figure something out, even if you can't; this
thing has suddenly become dangerous."
Roysland looked dangerous, so the general director patted the air
with a hand. "I've got the stuff for you right here, Roysland, so
don't give me any of your lip. In the first place, there was a convoy
attack yesterday out near the periphery. It turned out to be one of
the biggest battles of the war so far. The enemy lost five ships to
fire from _aJ_ projectors, and four to torpedoes. We lost two ships
to torpedo fire and six ships to the ... what did you call it? ...
mindjammer.
"Fortunately, we had them out-numbered and were able to recover the
crews and ships we'd lost to the mindjammer.
"But it doesn't look good. If they start using that weapon on a big
scale, we'll be sunk. If they ever hit a planet with it--Well, you can
imagine what it would be like to take care of a city full of morons."
Eckisster paused, squinted his eyes at Roysland, and jabbed at him with
a finger. "Now, I've got an idea," he said. "We've got to develop some
sort of screen that will take care of the mindjamming effect. You ought
to be pretty good at defensive screening by now; until you worked out
the _aJ_ projector, Special Weapons has been strictly on the defensive
side."
Vanisson said: "Naturally, sir. It's easier to prevent something from
getting to you than to figure out a way of getting to the other guy.
Arms theory shows--"
Eckisster glowered at the man. "Theory, hogwash! I want a defense
against the mindjammer, and I want it yesterday! Get busy!"
Roysland was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his
chest. When Eckisster had completed his outburst, Roysland said,
calmly: "Are you quite through, sir?"
"I am," said the general director. "I doubt if you mudheads can come up
with anything before we are all reduced to gibbering idiots, but God
knows I've done my best."
"You _are_ finished then?" Roysland's voice was still calm. Then, quite
suddenly, it became savage. "Then leave us alone, so we can think!
Good-by!" He snapped off his receiver switch, and Eckisster's image
vanished before the director had a chance to say anything.