I put a lot of miles between me and my recent adventure before I stopped
to take stock. The answer to the mess was still obscure, but the
elimination of Nurse Farrow fell into the pattern very neatly.
Alone, I was no problem. So long as my actions were restricted to
meandering up and down the highways and byways, peering into nooks and
crannies and crying, "Catherine," in a plaintive voice, no one cared.
But when I teamed up with a telepath, they moved in with the efficiency
of a well-run machine and extracted the disturbing element. In fact,
their machinations had been so smooth that I was beginning to believe
that my 'Discoveries' were really an assortment of unimportant facts
shown to me deliberately for some reason of their own.
The only snag in the latter theory was the fact of our accident.
Assuming that I had to get involved in the mess, there were easier ways
to introduce me than by planning a bad crack-up that could have been
fatal, even granting the close proximity of the Harrison tribe to come
to the rescue. The accident had to be an accident in the dictionary
definition of the word itself. Under the circumstances, a planned
accident could only be accepted under an entirely different set of
conditions. For instance, let's assume that Catherine was a Mekstrom and
I was about to disclose the fact. Then she or they could plan such an
accident, knowing that she could walk out of the wreck with her hair
barely mussed, leaving me dead for sure.
But Catherine was not a Mekstrom. I'd been close enough to that satin
skin to know that the body beneath it was soft and yielding.
Yet the facts as they stood did not throw out my theory. It merely had
to be revised. Catherine was no Mekstrom, but if the Harrisons had
detected the faintest traces of an incipient Mekstrom infection, they
could very well have taken her in. I fumed at the idea. I could almost
visualize them pointing out her infection and then informing her bluntly
that she could either swear in with them and be cured or she could die
alone and miserably.
This could easily explain her disappearance. Naturally, being what they
were, they cared nothing for me or any other non-Mekstrom. I was no
menace. Not until I teamed up with a telepath, and they knew what to do
about that.
Completely angry, I decided that it was time that I made a noise like an
erupting volcano. With plans forming, I took off again towards
Yellowstone, pausing only long enough at Fort Collins to buy some
armament.
Colorado is still a part of the United States where a man can go into a
store and buy a gun over the counter just like any other tool. I picked
out a Bonanza .375 because it is small enough to fit the hip pocket,
light because of the new alloys so it wouldn't unballast me, and mostly
because it packs enough wallop to stop a charging hippo. I did not know
whether it would drill all the way through a Mekstrom hide, but the
impact would at least set any target back on the seat of his pants.
Then I drove into Wyoming and made my way to Yellowstone, and one day I
was driving along the same road that had been pictured in Dr.
Thorndyke's postcard. I drove along it boldly, loaded for bear, and
watching the Highway signs that led me nicely toward my goal.
Eventually I came to the inevitable missing spoke. It pointed to a
ranch-type establishment that lay sprawled out in a billow of dead area.
I eyed it warily and kept on driving because my plans did not include
marching up to the front door like a rug peddler.
Instead, I went on to the next town, some twenty miles away, which I
reached about dark. I stopped for a leisurely dinner, saw a moving
picture at the drive-in, killed a few at the bar, and started back to
the way station about midnight.
The name, dug from the mailbox, was Macklin.
Again I did not turn in. I parked the car down the highway by about
three miles, figuring that only a psi of doctor's degree would be able
to dig anything at that distance. I counted on there being no such
mental giant in this out of the way place.
I made my way back toward the ranch house across the fields and among
the rolling rock. I extended my perception as far as I could; I made
myself sensitive to danger and covered the ground foot by foot, digging
for traps, alarm lines, photocell trips, and parties who might be lying
in wait for me.
I encountered no sign of any trip or trap all the way to the fringe of
the dead zone.
The possibility that they knew of my presence and were comfortably
awaiting me deep within the zone occurred to me, and so I was very
cautious as I cased the layout and decided to make my entry at the point
where the irregular boundary of the dead area was closest to the house
itself.
I entered and became completely psi-blind. Starlight cast just enough
light so that I could see to walk without falling into a chuck hole or
stumbling over something, but beyond a few yards everything lost shape
and became a murky blob. The night was dead silent except for an
occasional hiss of wind through the brush.
Esperwise I was not covering much more than my eyes could see. I stepped
deeper into the zone and lost another yard of perception. I kept probing
at the murk, sort of like poking a finger at a hanging blanket. It moved
if I dug hard enough in any direction, but as soon as I released the
pressure, the murk moved right back where it was before.
I crouched and took a few more steps into the zone, got to a place where
I could begin to see the outlines of the house itself.
Dark, silent, it looked uninhabited. I wished that there had been a
college course in housebreaking, prowling and second-story operations. I
went at it very slowly. I took my sweet time crossing the boards of the
back verandah, even though the short hair on the back of my neck was
beginning to prickle from nervousness. I was also scared. At any given
moment, they had the legal right to open a window, poke out a
field-piece, and blow me into bloody ribbons where I stood.
The zone was really a dead one. My esper range was no more than about
six inches from my forehead; a motion picture of Steve Cornell sounding
out the border of a window with his forehead would have looked funny, it
was not funny at the time. But I found that the sash was not locked and
that the flyscreen could be unshipped from the outside.