"It is true," the man said, watching him intently.
"Why are you telling me?"
The man cleared his throat significantly. "You might be in a position
to save the world from an atomic war."
Dale stiffened. "You must know," he said coldly, "what my position is.
I am in the employ of the United Nations, and any attempt to control my
actions is coercion and the penalty is death."
The man did not back away. He moved closer, and his eyes became black
points of force. The Bryd saw that the man had mental powers unusual
for that period of Earth's history.
"Look at me, Dale Stevenson."
Dale fought against it, but the man's will was powerful. Dale's
resistance weakened. The man's eyes never wavered from Dale's. He moved
still closer and spoke in a low tone. "Our information is that France
will drop atomic bombs on Spain's principal cities at three a.m. one
week from today. Suppose--just suppose--that some other nation--some
nation powerful enough to do so--should be in a position to warn France
at two-thirty that France would not be permitted to attack. Suppose
this warning were backed up with a show of force to prove the warning
meant business."
"Isn't that the job of the U.N.?"
The man's face was only inches now from Dale's. The Bryd shivered
in its figurative boots. This man was a master hypnotist. Only
they wouldn't call him a hypnotist in these days. They'd call him
a psyche-man. Psyche-control was much more powerful than hypnosis.
Psyche-control touched the moral inhibitions, which hypnosis never had
been able to do.
Dale was lost. In the end he agreed, for a cash-on-delivery fee of
one hundred thousand dollars, to concentrate his sodium mirror beam
on Paris at two-thirty of the morning designated, and thereby, with a
smoking path of fire and ruin, help the other nation to warn France
that she must keep hands off Spain.
Perhaps Dale's jealousy of Georges Raoul Dumont had a bearing on the
agreement.
* * * * *
Dale had been so much under the foreign agent's influence that he had
not considered the ethics of the idea at all until time to press the
button that would concentrate the sun-energy into a consuming column of
fire. The time was now ... and it was only now, with the hypnosis just
beginning to wear off at the edges, that he found himself wondering
vaguely about angles of the situation that previously had not occurred
to him.
Who was the man who had talked to him? Whom did he represent? Why
hadn't he gone to the U. N. if he knew so much?
But then it was true, as the man had said--if France planned to start
dropping atomic bombs at three o'clock, it would be too late to appeal
to the U.N. Dale didn't like Frenchmen anyway.
Altogether, the Bryd concluded, Dale Stevenson was pretty muddled up in
his mind. The man needed a rest, but that could be worked out later.
Right now his finger was on the firing-button, and the psyche-control,
though weakened, was pushing him to finish the job.
[Illustration: Dale Stevenson's finger was just starting to move the
button....]
Oh dear, these humans certainly could muddle things.
The Bryd decided to have a look at Ann Wondra's mind. And there it got
somewhat startled, for Ann's, which previously had been all warm and
cozy as toast, was very low indeed. She was looking at a snapshot of
Dale, and it wasn't even a very good picture, but it exhilarated her
and at the same time it depressed her, because she wanted Dale but
couldn't have him.
Ann was sitting cross-legged on a thick rug, drinking Darjeeling tea,
and talking to her mother.
"I'm glad M. Dumont has gone back home," she said, and the Bryd noted
that there wasn't any jump in her blood-pressure when she mentioned
Georges' name--well, not much, anyway.
"He's very handsome," said her mother, knitting busily. The old lady's
blood-pressure jumped more than Ann's.
"But he isn't as nice as Dale Stevenson."
"My sakes, Ann, I hope you don't grow to be an old maid, mooning over
that tongue-tied--"
"Mother!" Ann got to her feet. She was long-legged and clean-limbed.
The Bryd approved of her. It could imagine by now what she had done to
Dale's mind. It didn't see how it had slept through it.
So the Bryd took a quick transition back to America and had a look
at the mind of the doctor who took care of Marillyn Stevenson. The
physician was having lunch with a consultation expert.
"You know," the doctor said, fingering a Manhattan--"I don't know what
to do about young Dale Stevenson. He's still trying to cure his sister."
"Maybe there's a reason."
"Sure there's a reason. He has this feeling of gratitude and loyalty
and all. That's all there is to it, but he's butting his head against
the infinite inertia. He's spending two thousand a month on that
girl--and the worst of it is, she doesn't want him to. She knows what
the score is and she's resigned to it."
"Well, loyalty is a wonderful thing, but I suppose it can go too far,
and over-shadow reason, especially in the young. Is there any chance at
all for the girl?"
"No possibility. Progressive degeneration of the brain-tissue." He
tossed off the Manhattan and the Bryd shuddered--it preferred Martinis,
itself. "The only thing would be a miracle, and you know how scarce
they are in the medical world." He smiled. They both smiled. The Bryd
mentally snorted. Who were they, to laugh at miracles? They thought
they were pretty damn' smart, didn't they?
The Bryd decided it had better look in on Marillyn.
* * * * *
It found her in a glassed-in porch of the sanatorium, with her
reclining chair facing south, and the sun pouring down through the
magnolias. The Bryd liked this. Everything was restful and peaceful
and pleasant--
But something was wrong as hell in Marillyn's mind.
She had a small bottle of something in one hand under the light
blanket, and she was lying back running over everything in her mind.
Dale loved Ann and Ann loved Dale. But they couldn't get married
because of Dale's exaggerated sense of duty.
Marillyn didn't want to keep them apart. She could adjust herself to a
very pleasant life in a place like this, but Dale wouldn't let her. As
fast as he could save some money, he'd dream up some new scheme to get
her cured.
Well, Marillyn reasoned, she wasn't of any use to anybody. Why should
she stay in Dale's way? The Bryd was puzzled. What did she think she
could do?
She had the little bottle under the blanket, she was thinking. A few
drops of that and--the Bryd was positively flabbergasted. The girl
was getting ready to kill herself. The Bryd probed into her mind for
an instant and discovered that she wasn't being a martyr and had no
complexes; she was just trying to straighten things out for Dale and
Ann.
Oh, beans, thought the Bryd. If humans weren't the dumbest beings ever!
It watched Marillyn raise the bottle to her lips. It simultaneously
took the form of a nurse, standing there at Marillyn's side, and
Marillyn gasped and said, "Oh, nurse, I didn't know you were there."
"I am," said the Bryd in its best contralto voice. "Did you wish
something, Miss?"
The hand with the bottle of poison fell back under the blanket. "No, I
didn't call."
"May I move your chair out of the sun, Miss?"
"It isn't in the sun," Marillyn said.
The Bryd raised its eyebrows. It did some quick work on the wind, and
there was the sun, shining steadily through an opening in the magnolia
trees.
"Perhaps it _is_ too bright," said Marillyn. "If you'd just move it
over there--"
The Bryd was delighted. In the process of moving the chair, it got its
figurative hands on the bottle and disintegrated it. Then it said,
"Miss, don't you think you will get well?"
Marillyn said calmly, resignedly, "There's no chance. None whatever.
When brain-tissue is gone, there is nothing medical science can do.
They can't build tissue, you know."
"Oh?" said the Bryd.
"Only a miracle," said Marillyn. "And miracles don't happen in medical
science."