"Let's be entirely rational about it," Wilmer said. "Dobbs is a
brilliant man, granted. But he is also a lecher and a coward."
"There's some of the pig and the wolf in every man," Flinn said.
"Depends on the extent," Wilmer went on. "Dobbs is way overboard.
And he's a craven. I know it's hard to picture a man who voluntarily
crosses a bridge into the unknown as anything but brave. I suppose
there is a sort of bravado in it. But when he turns that bridge into a
club to threaten the rest of mankind--is this courage?" He turned to
the FBI man. "What do you think about it, Fred?"
Hayes pulled himself out of the shell of disciplined impassivity
into which he had retreated shortly after passing his own unofficial
death sentence upon Dobbs. He looked at the physicist and the
parapsychologist.
"Nothing," Hayes said bluntly. "Absolutely nothing. I'm just one of the
expendables."
"Aren't we all?" Wilmer said. He shrugged at Flinn. "That's why we were
chosen originally. Me because I was there at the atoll when all this
started, and was acquainted with Dobbs, and capable of understanding
the implications of his acts. Hayes because--"
"Because I've a good enough record to be above suspicion, and because
I'm young enough not to be missed," the agent said.
"And you, Pat," the physicist said to Flinn, "because of your unique
talents. But now we're all under the gun."
* * * * *
There was a lapse in the background noise, and the three turned to see
the President's representative rise and signal for order. He was a
tall, graying man, beautifully dressed, and, as he spoke, there was a
note of sad resignation in his voice.
"So, gentlemen, since reasoning with Dobbs has proven to be useless, we
find ourselves in agreement. All that remains is to select the time and
the method. And, by the way, Mr. Hilliard--" he nodded at the Director
of the FBI--"has assured me there is no need to deviate from our
original plan, at least so far as the human element is concerned. Agent
Hayes will remain our--messenger. He seems to be ideally suited for the
job."
There was a visible stir down the length of the table as the top men
from the government tried not to look at Fred Hayes. None of them
succeeded. Under their brief, self-conscious but probing scrutiny,
Hayes' hard face betrayed not a flicker of emotion.
"And now the time and the method." The Presidential assistant cleared
his throat and scanned the faces of the men before him. "I should think
as soon as possible." A murmur of assent swept the room. "There remains
the problem of method. Dr. Wilmer cautions that it must be done very
efficiently. If Dobbs even suspects that his life is to be forfeit at
a predictable time--well, I hardly need tell you the danger. Director
Hilliard suggests that we leave it up to Agent Hayes, since he knows
his own capabilities better than anyone else. Mr. Hayes?"
The tall, athletic agent rose, reached under his coat to his right hip
and produced a short-barreled revolver. He held it up. "With this," he
said laconically. "In the head. Death will be instantaneous."
There were sudden protests from the military representatives.
Hayes holstered the revolver and looked at his chief. Hilliard nodded,
and Hayes walked to the end of the room. From a carton, he lifted a
small bullet trap and placed it against the wall. The safe area inside
the trap was about the size of an opened magazine. Then he moved to the
conference table, picked up one of the ashtrays, returned to the trap,
and propped the tray against it.
Appropriately, the tray was about the width of a man's head.
Agent Hayes stood up, buttoned his coat and began walking leisurely
away from the trap. At twenty paces, he whirled. It was almost too fast
for the eye to follow, but the individual actions were these:
With his left hand, Hayes unbuttoned his coat. With his right, he swept
open the coat, turned in a crouch, simultaneously drew the revolver,
and fired. The ashtray assumed a new identity--a scattered pile of
broken glass.
It all happened in measurably less than a second.
There was a collective expiration of breath from the men around the
table.
* * * * *
Before breakfast the next morning, there wasn't a single one of the
small group of men intimately involved with the top-priority problem
who did not know that Hayes had failed.
This was shocking enough in itself, but what made it even more so was
the fact that Hayes was still alive to tell it--and that anyone else
was there to hear him.
"I came as close as hell to swearing," Hayes said dully to Wilmer and
Flinn.
Neither of them needed any special powers of observation to see that
the young agent was shaken. The three sat in the small Pentagon
office. Coffee had been served, and they were waiting now for a quorum
of the governmental officials to gather.
"I had it lined," Hayes continued. "I'd waited half the night for
everything to be just right. I was in a good position, close and to one
side. Dobbs was as relaxed as I've ever seen him. I was just telling
myself '_Now_' when Dobbs looked directly at me and grinned. 'If you're
planning on doing anything rash, my friend, don't. You can't possibly
kill me swiftly enough to keep from destroying yourself, every person
in this room, every man, woman, and child in this city, and every
living thing on the face of this Earth.' _What could I do?_"
"Thank God you didn't figure it was just a bluff!" Wilmer exclaimed.
"Pulling that trigger would have been the greatest blunder in history."
"Move and countermove," Flinn mused. "It was our gambit and we were
checked before we started."
"So I got on the open line and told the boys to fetch Flinn as quickly
as possible," Hayes went on. "But I still don't understand. I'd swear
that man read my mind."
"I don't think so," Flinn said. "I've had two mental contacts with
Dobbs, and neither time did I get the least suggestion that he was
telepathic."
"No need for him to be," Wilmer said. "It doesn't take a smart man to
put two and two together and arrive at four. And this man is more than
merely smart."
"I suppose you're right," Hayes said, "but it sure knocked the props
out from under me."
* * * * *
They were all in attendance, most of them looking rumpled and gritty
from lack of sleep and the realization that they had been beaten.
"I just don't know," a senator said wearily. "First a man who can
influence matter, then one who reads minds, and now the latter tells us
the former is inviolable. It's too much for me."
"I refuse to accept defeat!" a fleet admiral thundered, bringing his
fist down upon the table explosively. He was an erect, bristling man
with an aggressive combat record in two wars. "We've lost the first
round--so what? There will be others."
"I quite agree," the Presidential assistant said. "This man _must_ be
destroyed. Already he's beginning to make impossible demands."
"But how do we go about it?" a congressman said. "Personally, I think
we're licked. As far as I can see, the best thing to do is let him have
his head and hope for the best."
"_Hope for the best?_" a man from a security agency echoed
incredulously. "It's power Dobbs wants--recognized power. He wants to
be feared and worshipped. Sooner or later he'll let everyone know. His
egotism will force it. Can you conceive of what that would mean? For
myself, I'd rather see the entire human race disappear in one flash of
fire without ever knowing what hit it than live under the thumb of the
fear of destruction!"
"Gentlemen!" The Presidential assistant rapped for order. "Let's
examine the situation rationally and seek out the flaws. There must be
some somewhere. Nothing in the mind of man is perfect."
"Well, this comes as close as anything," Wilmer interjected. "You ask
what's wrong with the direct approach--why not shoot him while he
sleeps? Well, I'll answer with some questions. Have any of you died as
the result of a bullet in the brain? Have you ever questioned anyone
who has been killed in that manner? Then how do we know there isn't
a microsecond of awareness before life is extinguished? And even--or
especially--on the subconscious level, isn't this enough time for a
preset signal? What's the time-lag between countdown zero and the
explosion of a thermonuclear bomb?"
"Apparently he has us blocked in every way," Flinn picked up Wilmer's
argument. "Asleep or awake. Conscious or unconscious. It's all the
same. Think of it as a special circuit in his mind. Destroy Dobbs, the
circuit shorts, and this preset signal to the oxygen atoms is sent,
their nuclei fuse, and that's the end of everything."
He scanned the faces of the men around the conference table. "Or think
of it as a hypnotic suggestion. Under hypnosis, an individual is given
a certain order that he is to carry out whenever a certain set of
circumstances or stimuli occurs. No matter when this happens, no matter
what he is doing or thinking when the moment arrives, the subject
reacts according to the order buried in his subconscious."
"But for every move there is a countermove," the admiral argued. "This
is a situation. A fantastic one, but a situation. There has to be an
answer."
"I think there is," Flinn said carefully, "but it could be very risky."
* * * * *
It was up to the committee now. The decision rested squarely in the lap
of the United States Government. Flinn had stated his ideas, presented
his plan, and tried to give the odds--although in his heart he knew
that was impossible--so it was now out of his hands.
Or was it?
The parapsychologist lay on the bed in his hotel room, trying to
relax, trying to store up energy for the ordeal that might be imminent.
Hayes and Wilmer were in the room, too, awaiting word from the heavily
guarded conference chamber in the Pentagon.
The thin physicist paced up and down, his tanned face a study in
strain. Wilmer had been with this as long as anyone, except Dobbs, and
Flinn found himself wondering what deep inner resources the man had
tapped to retain his sanity.
The big federal agent slouched in a chair, looking at nothing. He had
lapsed again into the welcome protection of training and discipline.
Several times during the past thirty hours, since presenting his
plan, Flinn had had to restrain himself from probing the minds of
his two associates. At a time like this, no one had the right to
invade another's privacy. And curiosity had to give way for another
reason--just one look into either of their minds might be enough to
weaken or shatter his own resolve.
The classic dilemma. Do nothing and face a living hell. Act and court
destruction. The very simplicity of the alternatives made the problem
intolerable.
Telehypnosis--the untried hypothesis.
_Good Lord!_ Flinn told himself. _I'm not even proficient as a
telepath yet!_
Outside, he could hear the murmur of the city--the traffic, the people,
moving along their separate paths to their own destinations in the
humid afternoon heat.
Well, anyway, once the complete curtain of security had fallen, there
had been no more leaks. Proving that if a secret was big enough, it
could be kept.
Another classic problem. Do the people have the right to be informed?
Does forewarned really mean forearmed? And how about the other nations
of the world?
* * * * *
An hour after the dinner dishes had been cleared away by the government
agent dubbing as a room-service waiter, the telephone rang with an
awful insistency.
Wilmer was the closest, but Hayes beat him to it by a full stride.
After identifying himself, Hayes listened in silence. Then he said,
"All right," and replaced the receiver.
He nodded at Wilmer and Flinn.
"It's go ahead." He paused and his face seemed to change--to relent
somehow. "And they wanted me to relay this message: The President says,
'May God be with you.'"
Flinn felt very alone and very close to something terrible.
In the gloom of the darkened bedroom that adjoined Dobbs', he could
see Wilmer silhouetted against the meager light that came through the
curtained window from the street lamp outside and Hayes was out in the
hall. But the knowledge of the proximity of the two men did nothing
to lessen Flinn's loneliness. The committee had even couched it as an
order, trying to relieve him of that small burden, but if he failed,
who would remain to accept the blame?
A few times in his forty-two years had Flinn wondered how it would feel
to have the fate of the world riding upon his shoulders. Now he knew
and wished he didn't.
The door opened silently and Hayes eased in.
"He's asleep," the agent breathed in a barely audible voice. "You can
start anytime now."
The plan was simple, deceptively so.
Since Dobbs' block was a kind of self-hypnotic thing, why not
countermand it with a deeper hypnotic suggestion introduced by
telepathy? If it could be done and was strong enough, the second would
counteract the first. At least for a short time.
There were terrifying flaws--the first one obvious, the second not so
easily seen.
Suppose Dobbs' block had inherent within it an anti-disturbance
feature that might react to any interference, including hypnotism
in any form? Then the result would be an immediate "short-circuit"
and--disaster.
Trembling with the responsibility that was upon him, Flinn forced
himself into a deep concentration, an almost cataleptic trance. All
details of the room faded from his consciousness. There was the
familiar gray, swirling mist, and, for what seemed an intolerably long
time, he fought to make contact with the sleeping man's mind. He almost
sobbed aloud from the effort.
Then at last he found it, entered, and gradually pushed down through
the subconscious.
* * * * *
He was seeking now, probing for the deep-seated level of the block that
he had discovered the second time he had investigated Dobbs' mind.
It was very difficult with the sleeping man and, before he found
it, more than once he felt himself standing on the precipice of the
unknown, close to slipping away into a fright-filled nothingness.
Finally, he had it, clear and cold. The strange, unhuman, inscrutable
area that was in diabolical rapport with the basic stuff of one element
of the atmosphere. Flinn lingered there for a while, wondering again
why he could not read it completely, then forced himself on and on,
deeper and deeper, until at last he felt the limit had been reached.
His own warning thought intruded, telling him that this was the place.
And the time for the first test was at hand. He could not afford the
luxury of another pause. His resolve might crack....
The thought arced like a high-voltage spark, the preamble of the
counter-suggestion: _You are to do nothing. No matter what happens, no
matter what is done to you, you are to take no action whatsoever. You
are not to react. You are to do nothing. You are to disregard every
thought but this._
The battle had been joined. The interference had bridged the gap--yet
the block remained dormant!
The first hurdle had been cleared.
For the better part of three hours, Flinn continued to transmit the
counter-suggestion. Although he was not aware of it, sweat rolled from
every pore of his body and his nerves spasmed in unfelt agony.
Something happened.
Flinn lost contact as a shrill of warnings welled through Dobbs' mind.