The Friendly Killers
By S. M. Tenneshaw
How do you fight an alien race invisible
to Terran eyes? Particularly when you suspect
your enemy is really masquerading as an ally!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1958
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"_Mankind never learned where the Kel came from. They were, apparently,
a remnant of some uncontacted island culture._
"_The first hint the FedGov had of their existence was the sudden
appearance of their strange silver globeships off Cadar. Sweeping down
with not even an effort to communicate with the helpless inhabitants,
the Kel desolated the entire planet. Other outlying worlds met the same
fate._
"_Then the FedGov rallied. A rigid defense net was set up, and the
controversial compulsory conditioning laws enacted._
"_But since the Kel maintained no fixed base of operations, it seemed
impossible to strike any really damaging blow against them._
"_The result was a stalemate, in which neither side appeared able to
gain any real advantage._
"_This situation continued for well-nigh two hundred years, until
a disastrous break through in which the Kel wiped out the entire
population of Bejak II._
"_The next four years saw a whole series of renewed assaults on the
human race. Interplanetary shipping was disrupted so badly that in many
areas worlds were virtually without mutual contact save through the
limited and highly restricted facilities of FedGov space-warp._
"_The final climax developed on the bastion world of Rizal, when it
became apparent that in this struggle man was faced with enemies
within...."_
--Hedikawa, GALACTIC HISTORY
CHAPTER I
THE LUCKY ONES
Outside the space-warp chamber, Rizal's great green sun had already
set. Thick olive dusk eddied through the interplanetary transit center.
I swore under my breath and slammed shut the warp-hatch switch.
Locking bars whispered back. The hatch revolved on its axis, slow as an
asteroid eroding. I threw another quick glance at my chrono.
It still read the same as before: six Earth hours more ... six hours to
ferret out the truth or be forever reconditioned.
--Six hours, that is, if Controller Alfred Kruze didn't cut it shorter.
And if he did, Rizal might very well change status. Today, it was
billed as the FedGov's outermost bastion against the Kel. Tomorrow, it
could prove man's fatal flaw, the Achilles heel in our whole system of
defenses.
In which case--
Involuntarily, I shivered.
And still the hatch's cylinder moved at its same snail's pace.
Then, abruptly, there was a click of gears meshing. Tenons dovetailed.
The hatch slid inward on its thick, girder-rigid tracks, back between
the island banks of micromesh transistors.
Not waiting further, I squeezed between cylinder and slot and scrambled
out into the night.
"Agent Traynor--?"
The voice came from the shadows. A dull, phlegmatic, tranquilized,
conditioned voice. I stopped short; turned fast. "Who's asking?"
The man shrugged stolidly, not even picking up my tension. "I'm a port
rep, Agent Traynor. Port rep second, that is--"
"So who told you to come out here? Who said you should meet me?"
"Oh...." A pause. "Well, you see, there's this sigman, Agent Traynor.
Up in the Interworld Communications section. He had a regular 7-D
clearance report that a FedGov Security investigation agent was warping
in--you have to file a 7-D on all warpings, you know, Agent Traynor,
on account of restrictives. So--well, the rep first was out to eat, so
I just notified Rizal Security, just a routine report, and the unit
controller there, an Agent Gaylord, he said for me to meet you, and--"
I bit down hard and shifted my weight, both at once, wondering if a
broken jaw would interfere with the work of a port rep second.
Only then, all at once, I caught the unmistakable _whish_ of a grav-car
sweeping in.
The lights hit us almost in the same instant. Two seconds later a man
who said he was Agent Gaylord was jumping down and locking wrists with
me in Rizal's traditional greeting.
Even that wrist-lock set my teeth on edge. It was too solid, too
stolid, too thorough a job of conditioning.
Or was it maybe, just a trifle over-done?
Thoughtfully, I studied Gaylord.
A tiny vein was twitching, up close to his hair-line. He seemed to have
a tendency to nibble at his lower lip also. His nails--
We got into the grav-car. The routine began almost before we were off
the ground: "Sorry I wasn't here to meet you, Traynor. But we didn't
get a copy of your assignment order, or even of your warping clearance."
I shrugged. "I'm not surprised. The whole thing was pretty sudden."
"Oh?" Unit Controller Gaylord sounded as if he were trying to sound
casual. "Just what is the 'whole thing,' Traynor? Are you allowed to
tell me about it?"
"Glad to, if you'll promise not to turn me in for a psych check." I
made a business of chuckling with wry good humor. "As a matter of fact,
I'm here to become the recipient of good fortune."
"The re--What--?" The grav-car rocked as Gaylord swung round, staring
at me.
"The recipient of good fortune," I repeated. "Rizal's a lucky planet
these days: that's the word. So I'm here to see if I can hook one of
the prizes."
* * * * *
Gaylord faced front again--a trifle abruptly, it seemed. The grav-car
speeded up.
I said "They're clever gadgets, Gaylord. Have you picked up any more of
them?"
My companion's face stayed expressionless as a mask. "Any more of what?"
I shrugged. "Thrill-mills, obviously."
"Thrill-mills--?"
I leaned back in my seat, full of the satisfaction that comes of
drawing the right card. "A thrill-mill," I observed, assuming a
mock-academic tone, "is a fantastically expensive little device known
technically as a perceptual intensifier. It's given away, not bought or
sold, and is found only on Rizal. No one knows where it comes from, or
why. Neither is there any certainty as to its true purpose. But whether
as primary function or by-product, it shatters the wall of tranquillity
established by our Educational Psych Department's inhibitory
conditioning program and supplies the user with sensory, emotional and
intellectual experiences of his selection, also vividly communicated as
to render his earlier, conditioned contacts with reality as flat and
insipid as so many pale grey shadows."
No response from Gaylord. Banking not too steadily, he slowed the
grav-car and, dropping down a hundred feet or so, eased it to a landing
on a roof emblazoned with the FedGov Security insignia.
I waited till the little craft slid to a halt. Then, quite casually, I
asked, "How about it, Gaylord? Do those gadgets really jolt you as hard
as they say?"
My companion stopped short with the grav-car's door half open. His
voice grew suddenly shriller than before. "What are you talking about?
How would I know?"
"That's plain enough, isn't it? Obviously, you've used one."
For a taut second, Gaylord sat unmoving. Then, savagely, he snatched
for the front of my tunic.
I didn't even draw back.
Gaylord's face seemed to sag. Breathing fast and shallow, he let go of
me and began chewing at his lower lip.
Still pointedly casual, I smoothed my tunic. "Take a good look at
yourself, Controller," I suggested. "How would you diagnose a man whose
temper flares, in a world where temper can't exist? How would you judge
someone who jumps and jerks and jitters under pressure?"
No response.
I leaned forward. "You know the answer, of course, as well as I do.
When the thrill-mills began to come in, you thought you'd experiment
with one a little--try it out, see how it worked.
"Next thing you knew, your patterns were cracking. You found you
couldn't stand the drabness of conditioned living. The world was too
bright, too vivid; reality was just too wonderful to give up.
"So, instead of turning yourself in for reconditioning, you've tried to
hide the truth and pretend to be just as dull and unresponsive as you
were before...."
Gaylord's face had grown paler and paler as I talked. Now suddenly, he
spun in his seat and tried to throw himself out the grav-car's open
door.
I caught his shoulder; slammed him back. "Controller, I've got news for
you! Run out on me now, and I'll see that Kruze has you blocked back to
Drudge Third."
Gaylord stared at me for so long my arm was beginning to ache with the
strain of holding him.
Finally, then, in a sullen voice, he said, "What do you want me to do?"
"That's better." I released his shoulder; gestured him out of the
grav-car. "Let's go inside where we can talk."
The office we ended up in--Gaylord's own, I gathered--had two doors,
a desk big enough to skate on, three chairs, psychostructor and
reel-case, and a custom voco equipped with scanner and scriber.
As a matter of policy, of maintaining control on all levels, I left my
host standing while I took the chair behind the desk.
For an instant his jaw tightened angrily. Then, dodging my eyes and
turning quickly, he said, "I'll get the file-reels."
I stopped him midway to the door: "What file-reels, Gaylord?"
"Why, the ones on the thrill-mills, of course." Perplexity at the
question drew his brows together as he said it.
"Why?"
"Why--?" Openly startled now, he groped. "Well, it's just--I mean, I
thought--"
* * * * *
I said, "Let me tell you the story, Gaylord. Then you decide if we need
the reels.
"Forty-three Rizal days ago, a man named Frederick Zubin got a voco
call. It was from a woman--a beautiful woman he'd never seen before.
She congratulated him on it being his sixty-first birthday, and said an
anonymous well-wisher wanted to send him a little present.
"A messenger popped in almost before the woman hung up. He gave Zubin
a package about the size of a pound box of candy. Unwrapped, it turned
out to be a metal case with a nameplate stamped 'Apex Perceptual
Intensifier'. Another plate, on the back, said it was 'Model DXG'!
Those were the only marks on it anywhere, inside or out. There weren't
any instructions as to what it was supposed to do or how to use it.
"Zubin was curious, in his dull, lethargic, conditioned way. He fiddled
with the switches and dials.
"Eventually the thing came on, of course. It practically sent him
through the roof. Colors, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings--all his
senses were sharpened so far beyond anything he'd ever known before
that he thought at first he was going crazy.
"If Zubin had had his way, then, we'd probably never have known about
his little present. But his wife, in the next room, caught the fringe
effect. It wasn't strong enough to hook her, the way it had Zubin
himself, but it did scare her half to death. She decided anything that
potent must be immoral, or illegal, or both, so she called your office
in a hurry.
"Your psych boys ran poor Zubin through all the tests, from A to
Izzard. They couldn't find anything wrong with him, or any harm done,
except for one key point: His conditioning had been shattered. From
a dreary, phlegmatic lump of protoplasmic tranquility, he'd been
transformed into a human being--the kind of eager, intense, raw-nerved,
inconsistent, emotional human being we used to have back two hundred
years ago, before the laws that made conditioning compulsory.
"That scared everybody. As unit controller for Rizal Security, you
ordered a full-scale check.
"In ten days, your men turned up 736 duplicates of Zubin's gadget. The
story on all of them was the same: A good-looking girl had vocoed,
congratulated whoever it was on having a birthday or anniversary or
promotion, and then sent up a thrill-mill.
"Beyond that, you didn't get far. It turned out there wasn't any Apex
syndicate or cartel or work coadunate listed anywhere. No one had ever
heard of any such device as a perceptual intensifier. The messengers
who delivered the packages worked from voco calls themselves; they
even made their pick-ups at robot sorter stations. And when you tried
to track down the girl who'd done the calling, you found her face
apparently belonged to a youngster named Celeste Stelpa who's been
certified as dead ever since the Kel blasted Bejak II four years ago.
"As for the technical end of things, nine of your lab men lost their
conditioning before they could even get a thrill-mill apart. When they
finally did tear one down successfully, they found it wasn't anything
too remarkable, really--just a routine sort of gadget that regrouped
standard circuits and miniquipment to produce interpulsational patterns
of alpha and zeta waves. Effect-wise, that erases the synaptical
threadings set up by Educational Psych's conditioning process, so that
experiences come through sharp and clear, at maximum voltage, instead
of dulled and blurred. It's a permanent change, too--though whether
that's accidental or by design, we still don't know.
"Alpha-zeta erasure isn't anything new. It's been done in the psych
labs for a hundred years or more.
"And that's where the only really interesting angle on all this comes
in: In the labs, the job took a roomful of equipment. So to get the
process down to thrill-mill size, whoever manufactured these Apex
gadgets used special thronium condenser strata and variocouplers.
"That automatically pushes the cost per thrill-mill up to twice or
three times what you'd ordinarily pay for a grav-car."
I got up, then, taking my time about it ... letting the silence grow
heavy while I came around the pond-sized desk and moved to a spot
directly in front of Gaylord.
"Controller," I said softly, "who do you know who can afford to give
away 737 thrill-mills at that kind of price?"
A shrugging, a shifting, more hostile than uneasy. "No one, I guess. At
least, no one I've ever heard of." He still sounded sullen.
"That's right," I agreed. "No one. It would dent FedGov Security's
confidential budget to bury an expense that big. Kruze himself couldn't
handle it; not without a lot of doing."
Again, Gaylord shifted. But this time, nervous tension rather than
belligerence was in the action. As earlier, perplexity furrowed his
forehead.
I said, "Now you know why I'm not going to waste time scanning
file-reels, Controller. The data we need's already in. Intelligent
interpretation is the next step.--That, and"--I paused, ever so
briefly--"working up the nerve to act."
* * * * *
For the first time, Gaylord's eyes came round to meet mine. "What do
you mean?"
I shrugged, in my turn. "I mean, Security's gone at this all wrong,
from Controller Kruze straight down to your lowest Rizalian sub-agent.
Because one and all, you've been content just to back track on those
thrill-mills."
Gaylord's frown deepened. "I don't see--"
"Nineteen of the people who've received those gadgets hold key
positions in Rizal's defense against the Kel," I interrupted coldly.
"One hundred ninety-one rank as military administrators. Forty-seven
more can be classed as vital to supplementary services."
"You mean, you think this all is some sort of crazy Kel plot?"
Controller Gaylord's brow smoothed as if by magic. A caustic note
suddenly edged his voice. "Maybe you better check those file-reels
after all, Traynor. They show 112 clerks in that group that got the
thrill-mills. There also were 98 women engaged in motherhood, 226 tech
grades, and 44 drudge grades."
"And that wouldn't strike you as protective camouflage, maybe?"
"Protective nonsense, you mean! All you're offering is a hair-brained
theory, with neither facts nor logic to back it!"
He was as bad as Kruze.
I nodded slowly. "You may be right. However, I'm still willing to bet
my record, my future, against yours on it."
"Your record--?" Gaylord stared. "What is this, anyhow? What are you
talking about?" The furrows were back in his forehead.
"It's time to cut loose, that's all. We need action--real action, not
just back-tracking." In spite of myself, anticipating, I smiled a
little, "You've got a sigman on duty here somewhere, of course?"
"A sigman--?" Gaylord's furrows deepened. "Why, sure, of course."
"All right, then." I hooked my thumbs in my tunic-sash. "I want a
message plated--an all-points, top-emergency, triple-restricted action
order."
Utter incredulity came to the unit controller's eyes. He didn't move.
He didn't speak.
"The message!" I repeated, more sharply. "Take it down. Right now."
Gaylord still didn't move.
"Would you rather I reported the fact and circumstances of your own
de-conditioning direct to Controller Kruze instead?"
Another moment of silence, while the incredulity in Gaylord's eyes
changed to sullen hate. Then, crossing to the voco, he flipped on the
scriber unit. "All right. What's your message, rack you?"
For the fraction of a second I hesitated. My hands were suddenly cold,
my lips stiff.
Then, drawing a deep breath, I spoke--slowly, distinctly:
"Attention all stations! This is Agent Mark Traynor speaking,
under special authorization of Controller Alfred Kruze, FedGov
Interplanetary Security Headquarters.
"You are hereby directed to place under close arrest within one Earth
hour any and all persons who have had possession of or contact with
the devices known as Apex Perceptual Intensifiers or, more commonly,
thrill-mills.
"A list of such persons is appended to this order. Immediately
following their arrest, they will be transported by fastest available
carrier to the nearest port area and there delivered to the port
director for prompt dispatch under guard to FedGov Interplanetary
Security Headquarters.
"No exceptions to this order will be granted. Any station controller
asking for such exception, or failing to apprehend and deliver all
listed persons within his station's prescribed jurisdiction, will
automatically be included in the shipment order.
"Immediate acknowledgment of this order will be given by all
stations...."