"I'm out of it--thank heaven."
"Amen. But listen, things have taken a nasty turn."
"What's happened?"
"We've questioned that prisoner. The outfit behind this trouble is
Trans-Space. But they don't have the control center. Instead, they've
got the headquarters of the election committee that controls the
referendum. Trans-Space is representing itself as the government of an
interstellar league of planets. They have everything set up to falsify
the vote tomorrow."
Dan frowned. "What of it? I can still plant the mataform transceivers
and we can bring men down from above."
"Yes, but Trans-Space has a mataform terminal set up in the terminal
election headquarters. It hooks into the local system and connects with
an outpost in the jungle on the surface. Trans-Space has been building
up to this day for over three years. The election headquarters is
manned like a fortress. It's in immediate touch with the outpost on the
surface where they've got an army of reinforcements."
Dan stood still, thinking. He remembered the official with the carrying
case in the corridor overhead, who had said to the angry crowd, "Go to
the War Ruler." Dan mentioned the incident and said, "What about this
War Ruler and his emergency powers?"
* * * * *
Kielgaard said, "It looked promising to us at first, but actually
that's as if someone should say, 'England is in peril. Go to King
Arthur.'"
"What?" said Dan, puzzled.
"The War Ruler is a myth. A thousand years or more ago, after a
terrific internal war, they had a famine. They also had a huge army
to disband, headed by a very popular leader. The army apparently
threatened to take over the planet, but by a clever gimmick, the
government put off the crisis. They announced that their scientists had
discovered a way to halt the flow of time after the famine--and the War
Ruler marched the whole army loyally into a kind of big mausoleum where
they presumably killed the lot of them with a quick-acting gas. That is
the War Ruler's Control Center.
"Ever since then, they've been making ritual gestures. They stock new
arms of standard design nearby, and recruit a number of fresh soldiers
to join the old--as a population control measure. To make the illusion
complete, they say that any man or woman who sincerely believes the
state to be in peril can enter the control center, by passing through
a lethal field that kills the insincere and lets the sincere through
alive. A number of people have tried it and got killed, so now they
don't try any more."
"Where is this place?" asked Dan.
"If we read your map rightly, that wall in front of you marks the edge
of the field surrounding it."
Dan set down one of the mataform units and mentally pronounced a
keyword.
He was in the shelter under the river.
An instant later he was back by the wall, a glider and the control
helmet in his hands. He clipped a transceiver to the glider and guided
it toward a huge, dark-stained building with the look of a fortress.
He sent the glider around to the front of the building and saw two
huge bronze doors, one of which stood open. There was a totally still,
motionless look about the place that Dan did not care for. But the
glider had come to a closed inner door and that was as far as it could
go. Dan took off the control helmet, drew a deep breath and said a key
word.
He was standing in the huge hall, before the closed door. He opened the
door.
Before him was a room with tall slit windows, and as Dan went in, he
could see dimly, but, like a man in a hall of mirrors, what he saw did
not make sense.
Distorted shapes and forms, with bright points and blots of light,
shifted as he moved, and shifted again as he moved closer, to see one
leg of what looked like a very old, faded table. A heavy cable ran up
the leg to the top, where there was a switch, and a bronze plate with
the words, "Open Switch."
Dan reached for the switch, and hesitated. If Kielgaard's theory was
right, he would now be electrocuted, or otherwise disposed of.
He swallowed hard, reached the rest of the way, and opened the switch.
A pall of choking dust spread over the room, with the sound of coughing
all around him and the rustle of clothing and stamping of feet.
Dan wiped his streaming eyes, and saw a man in uniform behind the desk,
all but one corner of which looked new.