Akers was watching her sharply as she stood staring at the strange,
unearthly organ lying in the brain pan of the dead Dragboran.
But it was not strange. She knew its constitution and anatomy and the
complex nerve hook-up that connected it with the brain. They were as
clear as if she had studied them for many years.
A surge of gladness and confidence filled her. She was alone in this
yes, but that did not matter any more. She alone possessed the ability
to perform the operation, and a world awaited the results.
Her scalpel entered the incision and touched the flesh with a pinpoint
of destruction that sheared away the tissue from the delicate white
nerve channels serving the _abasic_ organ.
For a full hour, and then another, Akers watched in un-believing
fascination as Illia freed the twelve separate nerve filaments serving
it, then cut the artery and filled the vessels with the chemical
solution that would feed the cells until Underwood's blood could be
sent pouring through it.
At last all that remained was the severing of the connecting tissues
that held the organ in place. Illia cut them and plunged her hands into
the sterilizing, protecting compound that had been prepared at Jandro's
instructions. She salved the organ and lifted it out, then thrust it
quickly into the corresponding cavity in Underwood's brain pan.
This phase of the operation was less than half over. Blood vessels had
to be prepared to serve the new organ in Underwood's body, and the
twelve nerves had to be connected into the Great Sympathetic where no
such nerves had ever been connected before.
* * * * *
Another two hours passed before the final sutures closed the wound in
Underwood's head.
When at last she laid the needle down, Illia's hand suddenly trembled
and she quivered throughout her body.
"Can't we postpone the others for a time?" asked Akers. "You surely
can't go on with two more like that."
"I'm afraid the tissues will degenerate too much if we delay. If I were
only as fast as those Dragboran surgeons. What men they must be! Get me
a shot of neostrene and better have one yourself. We'll go on."
Akers was willing, but he didn't believe that Illia could stand more
hours of exacting surgery. After a moment's rest, however, and a shot
of the stimulant drug, she stepped back to the operating tables to
perform the adbominal operation. Once again, Akers made the preliminary
incisions.
In the control room the group leaders waited for news in nerve-racking
inactivity. Terry Bernard paced about, his flaming disheveled hair
like a signal flare swinging through the room. Phyfe stood at one of
the observation panels watching the inexorable approach of Demarzule's
fleet. Dawson sat at his Captain's position fingering the inactive
switches on the panel before him. Most placid of all, Dreyer simply
sat in the navigation chair and smoked cigars so unrelentingly that it
taxed the ventilating system of the ship.
* * * * *
Terry glanced at the clock anxiously and stopped his pacing. "It's been
over thirteen hours since Underwood went in there. Don't you think we
ought to ask Illia--"
"There are only two alternatives," said Dreyer. "Success or failure.
Our questioning will not assure success. We had best keep out of the
way."
Mason kept anxious watch of the progress of the fleet. No one knew
what would happen when the battleships arrived and surrounded the
_Lavoisier_, but they had not long to wait. The ships were hardly more
than minutes away from the planet.
As if guided by a single mind, the ships turned slowly in the black
sky as their navigators and lookouts spotted and set a course for the
luminous bubble that marked the force shell hiding the _Lavoisier_.
To the crewmen watching from within, it was a fearful sight to
witness the sudden plunging flight of those twenty mighty ships.
Simultaneously, a score of fearful Atom Streams were turned upon the
bubble, apparently not in the futile hope of burning through the
protection, but to destroy the minute sensory probes and prevent the
ship from navigating away from the planet.
In spatial combat, where the ship was free to wheel and turn and defend
itself, it would not have been so easy to destroy the probes. But
with the ship motionless upon the surface of the planet, the streams
of incomprehensible fire washed over every square millimeter of the
surface of the shell, probing, destroying and setting off the multitude
of relays within the _Lavoisier_, closing the hairlike openings in the
shell as the probes were burned away.
Mason moved away as one after another of the segments on his plates
went dead until there was no vision whatever of the outside world.
He turned to the others and motioned toward the dead plates. "This is
it."
The spell that fell upon them was broken minutes later by Illia's
abrupt voice on the interphone.
"The operation is finished."
_CHAPTER SIXTEEN_
Consciousness came to Underwood as if he were responding to the
persistent voice of some unseen speaker. It called him out of the
depths of eternal existence into the realm of conflict and reality.
Curiously, it sounded like Jandro.
He opened his eyes. Illia was there, her face white and strained. But
as he looked at her, her blue eyes glistened and she bent down. "Del!
Oh, Del--!"
Terry, Phyfe, Mason and Akers were standing near the bed, watching with
anxious faces.
Pain was beginning to show itself in burning streamers, but he managed
a quick smile to those about him. "Looks like we made it all right,"
he said. "I wonder what I can do with these gadgets now. Think they'll
work, Illia?"
She raised up, brisk and businesslike once more. "You aren't going
to find out for a while. I intend to knock you out for a good, cold
twenty-four hours. Give me your arm."
She reached for a hypo needle on the table beside the bed.
It was like stumbling around in the dark at first, trying to run from
an unseen pursuer. But all at once, Underwood knew he didn't need to
run at all. The hypo was blocking the sensory equipment in other parts
of his body, but it couldn't affect the _abasic_ organs if he didn't
want it to. He stopped running and watched the ordinary faculties of
his body give way while he stood aside in complete immunity. It was as
if he could step outside and look at himself.
And, suddenly, that was what he was doing!
* * * * *
He could see the room, the watching scientists, and Illia carefully
checking his heartbeat and respiration. He could see himself lying
still with eyes closed. Curiously, he could not identify the point
of view. He thought for a moment that he was up near the ceiling
somewhere, looking down, but that wasn't right, either, because he
could see the ceiling just as well as the floor or the four walls. The
scene was like a picture taken with a lens having a solid angle of
perception of three hundred and sixty degrees.
He wondered if he could go beyond the limits of the room, tried it
and found it quite easy to do. There was some clumsiness due to
inexperience and conditioning that stopped him at the walls, where
he had a moment's claustrophobic fright of being trapped between the
metal panels, but it was over in an instant and he was through. He
went toward the control room and found it occupied only by Dreyer, who
remained placidly smoking a cigar in the navigator's chair.
Underwood wanted to communicate with the semanticist, only he wasn't
sure how to go about it. It was like trying to talk with a mouth full
of dry crackers.
But Dreyer stared around with a sudden start. He removed the cigar from
his mouth and looked agape for an unseen speaker.
"Dreyer, can you hear me?"
"Underwood! You succeeded!"
"After a fashion. So far it's like walking around in deep mud, but I'm
getting used to it gradually."
"This is wonderful--_wonderful_!" Dreyer breathed. "I hadn't dared hope
that I would ever hear your voice again. Where are you?"
"That's a tough question. Theoretically, I'm unconscious back in sick
bay with a shot of neo-morph that will keep me out for twenty-four
hours. Illia and the others are back there watching me. The _abasic_
senses aren't at all affected by the drug. I seem to be able to wander
anywhere I wish about the ship. The funny part is that I can't pin down
a point of view. I don't seem to be anywhere. Nevertheless, my
senses perceive distant sounds and objects--including my own corpus."
"Can you detect my thoughts when I don't speak? Jandro didn't seem able
to do that."
Underwood laughed. "I don't know whether I can or not. I try, but all
I get is a fuzzy static. I'm sure that these organs have dozens of
functions that we haven't even dreamed of yet. I hope that I can learn
to use them all."
"What do you plan now? Do you need a period of exercise and study?"
"Some, but not nearly as much as I would have needed if it hadn't been
Jandro's mature organs that were grafted into me. There is something
that we never thought of before, though."
"What is that?"
"We can still search for the Dragboran weapon we came here for. I can
go outside the ship with these new senses. I don't know whether I can
cover the whole planet or not, but if not, we can move to keep in range
of my powers. It will be slow because I am the only one who can do it,
but it may be faster in the end because I can get around more quickly."
"I wonder if it will be possible in the presence of the fleet--or
didn't you know that they had arrived?" Dreyer pointed toward the
blank viewplates.
* * * * *
"I didn't know. What are they doing there?"
Underwood realized immediately the absurdity of the question. Dreyer
could know no more about it than he, since all communication with the
outside was destroyed.
With all the strength he could gather, he hurled his new powers beyond
the scope of the ship, out into the contrasting heat and cold of the
barren planet. It was as if he had hurled himself high into space, for
he was viewing the broad expanse of the Dragboran world and the busy
fleet of Demarzule.
Underwood's senses revolted at what he saw. Completely surrounding the
ship was utter, flaming destruction. The great city of the Dragbora
had been turned into molten ruin by the twenty ships, which spiraled
slowly, their powerful beams of the Atom Stream turned upon the
buildings below. Even as Underwood watched, they completed their work
upon that city and traveled toward another great city less than a
hundred miles away.
What purpose was behind the wanton ruin, Underwood could not
comprehend. Perhaps now that the scientists had been cornered, the
Terrestrians hoped to destroy the super-weapon that could unseat
Demarzule.
Within hours, the major cities of the planet would be shapeless mounds
of frozen lava.
He debated trying to enter those vessels and overpowering members of
their crews. At once his reason told him no, for he was still a toddler
in the use of the new faculties he possessed. But there was a greater
reason, too. If he should expose himself by such attacks, the ships
would send word to Earth, and Demarzule would easily identify the
methods used against his men and be prepared. Underwood knew how this
destruction of archeological treasures would affect Phyfe and Terry,
but more important was the loss of any chance to search for the weapon.
* * * * *
He turned his senses toward the bubble of the shell that hid the
_Lavoisier_. Its shining surface was the only thing in all that broad
city that did not reek of destruction.
As Underwood regarded it, a shock of comprehension hit him. In the
impetuousness of his flight above the planet, he had overlooked the
most significant point of all.
He--his senses, at least--_had passed through the impenetrable force
shell_.
Sudden fear mingled with that devastating realization. Could he get
back through it? How had he passed the barrier in the first place? It
was mathematically impossible for matter or energy to be transferred
across it.
Did his senses represent neither one?
He impelled himself toward it, waited for the impact--and felt none.
Then he was through, looking at the interior of the shell and the ship
within it.
His mind was afire with the significance of his discovery as he burst
into the control room. The others had rejoined Dreyer there. Mason and
some of his men were struggling to replace some of the probes now that
the attack upon the ship had ceased for the moment.
"We've found it!" Underwood shouted. "We've got the weapon that Dragbor
turned upon Sirenia!"
Illia screamed at the sudden impact upon her worn nerve cells.