An invisible force seemed to twitch at Johnson's skin, nipping it here
and there with a multitude of tiny pinches, like invisible fleas biting
him.
"This is it!" a voice whispered in his mind. "This is what you came to
Venus to see. This ... this...." The first voice went into silence.
Another voice took its place.
"This is another damned vision!" the second voice said. "This ...
this is something that is not real, that is not possible! No Venusian
Dreamer, and no one else, can levitate, can defy the laws of gravity,
can float upward toward the ceiling. Your damned eyes are tricking you!"
"We are not tricking you!" the eyes hotly insisted. "It is happening.
We are seeing it. We are reporting accurately to you. That Venusian
Buddha is levitating. We, your eyes, do not lie to you!"
"You lied about the space ship!" the second voice said.
"We did not lie about the space ship!" the eyes insisted. "When our
master saw that ship we were out of focus, we were not reporting. Some
other sense, some other organ, may have lied, but we did not."
"I--" Johnson whispered.
"I am your skin," another voice whispered. "I am covered with sweat."
"We are your adrenals. We are pouring forth adrenalin."
"I am your pancreas. I am gearing you for action."
"I am your thyroid. I...."
A multitude of tiny voices seemed to whisper through him. It was as if
the parts of his body had suddenly found voices and were reporting to
him what they were doing. These were voices out of his training days
when he had learned the names of these functions and how to use them.
"Be quiet!" he said roughly.
The little voices seemed to blend into a single chorus. "Action,
Master! Do something."
"Quiet!" Johnson ordered.
"But hurry. We are excited."
"There is a time to be excited and a time to hurry. In this situation,
if action is taken before the time for it--if that time ever comes--we
can all die."
"Die?" the chorus quavered.
"Yes," Johnson said. "Now be quiet. When the time goes we will all go
together."
The chorus went into muted silence. But just under the threshold the
little voices were a multitude of tiny fretful pressures.
"I hear a whirring sound," his ears reported.
"Please!" Johnson said.
In the front of the room Unger floated ten feet above the floor.
"Master, we are not lying!" his eyes repeated.
"I sweat...." his skin began.
"Watch Unger!" Johnson said.
The Dreamer floated. If wires suspended him, Johnson could not see
them. If any known force lifted him, Johnson could not detect that
force. All he could say for certain was that Unger floated.
"Yaaah!" The silence of a room was broken by the enraged scream of a
Venusian being jarred out of his dream.
"Damn it!" A human voice said.
A wave as sharp as the tip of a sword swept through the room.
Unger fell.
He was ten feet high when he started to fall. With a bone-breaking,
body-jarring thud, the Dreamer fell. Hard.
There was a split second of startled silence in the Dreaming Room. The
silence went. Voices came.
"Who did that?"
"What happened?"
"That human hidden there did it! He broke the Dreaming!" Anger marked
the voices. Although the language was Venusian, Johnson got most of the
meaning. His hand dived under his coat for the gun holstered there. At
his left, Caldwell was muttering thickly. "What--what happened? I was
back in the lab on Earth--" Caldwell's voice held a plaintive note, as
if some pleasant dream had been interrupted.
On Johnson's right, Vee Vee seemed to flow to life. Her arms came up
around his neck. He was instantly prepared for anything. Her lips came
hungrily against his lips, pressed very hard, then gently drew away.
"What--" he gasped.
"I had to do it now, darling," she answered. "There may not be a later."
Johnson had no time to ask her what she meant. Somewhere in the back
of the room a human screamed. He jerked around. Back there a knot of
Venusians were attacking a man.
"It's Martin!" Caldwell shouted. "He _is_ here!"
In Johnson's hand as he came to his feet the zit gun throbbed. He fired
blindly at the mass of Venusians. Caldwell was firing too. The soft
throb of the guns was not audible above the uproar from the crowd.
Struck by the gas-driven corvel charges, Venusians were falling. But
there seemed to be an endless number of them.
"Vee Vee?" Johnson suddenly realized that she had disappeared. She had
slid out of his sight.
"Vee Vee!" Johnson's voice became a shout.
"To hell with the woman!" Caldwell grunted. "Martin's the important
one."
Zit, zit, zit, Caldwell moved toward the rear, shooting as he went.
Johnson followed.
* * * * *