Dr. Farnsworth interrupted him. "Colonel, let's go into the lounge,
shall we? Aside from the fact that standing around in an empty chamber
like this isn't the most comfortable way to discuss the fate of mankind,
this room is scheduled for other work."
Colonel Mannheim grinned, caught up by the touch of lightness that the
biophysicist had injected into the conversation. "Very well. I could do
with some coffee, if you have some."
"All you want," said Dr. Farnsworth, leading the way toward the door of
the chamber and opening it. "Or, if you'd prefer something with a little
more power to it...."
"Thanks, no," said Mannheim. "Coffee will do fine. How about you,
Stanton?"
Bart Stanton shook his head. "I'd love to have some coffee, but I'll
leave the alcohol alone. I'd just have the luck to be finishing a drink
when our friend, the Nipe, popped in on us. And when I do meet him, I'm
going to need every microsecond of reflex speed I can scrape up."
They walked down a soft-floored, warmly lit corridor to an elevator
which whisked them up to the main level of the Neurophysical Institute
Building.
Another corridor led them to a room that might have been the common room
of one of the more exclusive men's clubs. There were soft chairs and
shelves of books and reading tables and smoking stands, all quietly
luxurious. There was no one in the room when the three men entered.
"We can have some privacy here," Dr. Farnsworth said. "None of the rest
of the staff will come in until we're through."
He walked over to a table, where an urn of coffee radiated soft warmth.
"Cream and sugar over there on the tray," he said as he began to fill
cups.
The cups were filled and the three men sat down in a triangle of chairs
before any of them spoke again. Then Bart Stanton said:
"I made the remark that if the Nipe doesn't have time to eat his victims
he just beats them to death, and you started to say something, Colonel."
Colonel Mannheim took a sip from his cup before he spoke. "Yes. I was
going to say that, according to the evidence we have, he _always_ beats
his victims to death, whether he manages to eat them or not."
"Oh?" Stanton looked thoughtful.
"Oh, he's not cruel about it," the colonel said. "He kills quickly and
neatly. The thing is that he never, under any circumstances, uses any
weapons except the weapons that nature gave him--hands or feet or claws
or teeth. He never uses a gun or a knife or even a club. Dr. Yoritomo
has some theories about that which I won't go into now. He'll tell you
about them pretty soon."
Stanton thought about the Japanese scientist and smiled. "I know. Dr.
Yoritomo has threatened to tell me all kinds of theories."
"And believe me he will," said Mannheim with a soft chuckle. He took
another sip of his coffee and then looked up at Stanton. "You've been
through five years of hell, Mr. Stanton. In addition, you've been pretty
much isolated here. Dr. Farnsworth, here, has tried to keep you
informed, but, as I understand it, it has only been during the last few
months that you've actually been able to absorb and retain information
reliably. At least, that's the report I get. How do you feel about it?"
Bart Stanton thought for a moment. It was true that he'd been out of
touch with what had been going on outside the walls of the Neurophysical
Institute for the past five years. In spite of the reading he'd done and
the newscasts he'd watched and the TV tapes he'd seen, he still had no
real feeling for the situation.
There had been long hazy periods during that five years. He had
undergone extensive glandular and neural operations of great delicacy,
many of which had resulted in what could have been agonizing pain
without the use of suppressors. As a result of those operations, he
possessed a biological engine that, for sheer driving power and nicety
of control, surpassed any other known to exist or to have ever existed
on Earth--with the possible exception of the Nipe. But those five years
of rebuilding and retraining had left a gap in his life.
Several of the steps required to make the conversion from man to
superman had resulted in temporary insanity; the wild, swinging
imbalances of glandular secretions seeking a new balance, the erratic
misfirings of neurons as they attempted to adjust to higher
nerve-impulse velocities, and the sheer fatigue engendered by cells that
were acting too rapidly for a lagging excretory system, all had
contributed to periods of greater or lesser abnormality.
That he was sane now, there was no question. But there were holes in his
memory that still had to be filled.
He admitted as much to Colonel Mannheim.
"I see." The colonel rubbed one hand along the angle of his jaw,
considering his next words. "Can you give me, in your own words, a
general summary of the type of thing the Nipe has been doing?"
"I think so," Stanton said.
His verbal summary was succinct and accurate. The loot that the Nipe had
been stealing had, at first, seemed to be a hodgepodge of everything. It
was unpredictable. Money, as such, he apparently had no use for. He had
taken gold, silver, and platinum, but one raid for each of these
elements had evidently been enough, with the exception of silver, which
had required three raids over a period of four years. Since then, he
hadn't touched silver again.
He hadn't yet tried for any of the radioactives except radium. He'd
taken a full ounce of that in five raids, but hadn't attempted to get
his hands on uranium, thorium, plutonium, or any of the other elements
normally associated with atomic energy. Nor had he tried to steal any of
the fusion materials--the heavy isotopes of hydrogen or any of the
lithium isotopes. Beryllium had been taken, but whether there was any
significance in the thefts or not, no one knew.
There was a pattern in the thefts and robberies, nonetheless. They had
begun small and had increased. Scientific and technical
instruments--oscilloscopes, X-ray generators, radar equipment, maser
sets, dynostatic crystals, thermolight resonators, and so on--were
stolen complete or gutted for various parts. After a while, he had gone
on to bigger things--whole aircraft, with their crews, had vanished.
That he had not committed anywhere near all the crimes that had been
attributed to him was certain; that he _had_ committed a great many of
them was equally certain.
There was no doubt at all that his loot was being used to make
instruments and devices of unknown kinds. He had used several of them on
his raids. The one that could apparently phase out any electromagnetic
frequency up to about a hundred thousand megacycles--including
sixty-cycle power frequencies--was considered a particularly cute item.
So was the gadget that reduced the tensile strength of concrete to about
that of a good grade of marshmallow.
After he had been operating for a few years, there was no installation
on Earth that could be considered Nipe-proof for more than a few
minutes. He struck when and where he wanted and took whatever he needed.
It was manifestly impossible to guard against the Nipe, since no one
knew what sort of loot might strike his fancy next, and there was
therefore no way of knowing where or how he would hit next.
Nor could he ever be found after one of his raids. They were plotted and
followed through with diabolical accuracy and thoroughness. He struck,
looted, and vanished. And he wasn't seen again until his next strike.
Colonel Mannheim, who had carefully puffed a cigar alight and smoked it
thoughtfully during Stanton's recitation, dropped the remains of the
cigar into an ash receptacle. "Accurate but incomplete," he said
quietly. "You must have made some guesses. I'd like to hear them."
Stanton finished the last of his coffee and glanced at Dr. Farnsworth.
The biophysicist was thoughtfully looking down at his own cup, his
expression unreadable.
_All right_, Stanton thought, _he's looking for something. I'll let him
have both barrels and see if I hit the target_.
"I've thought about it," he admitted. He got up, went over to the coffee
urn, and refilled his cup. "I've got a pet theory of my own. It's just a
notion, really. I wouldn't dare reduce it to syllogistic form, because
it might not hold much water, logically speaking. But the evidence seems
conclusive enough to me."
He walked back to his seat. Colonel Mannheim was watching him, a look of
interest on his face, but he said nothing.
"To me," Stanton said, "it seems incredible that the combined
intelligence and organizational ability of the UN Government is
incapable of finding anything out about one single alien, no matter how
competent he may be. Somehow, somewhere, someone must have gotten a line
on the Nipe. He must have a base for his operations, and someone should
have found it by this time.
"I may be faster and stronger and more sensitive than any other living
human being, but that doesn't mean I have superhuman powers, or that I'm
a magician. And I'm quite certain that you, Colonel, don't credit me
with such abilities. You don't believe that I can do in a short time
what the combined forces of the Government couldn't do in ten. Certainly
you wouldn't rely too heavily on it.
"And yet, apparently, you are.
"To me, that can only mean that you have another ace up your sleeve. You
_know_ we're going to get the Nipe fairly quickly. You either have a
sure way of tracing him, or you already know where he is.
"Which is it?"
Colonel Mannheim sighed. "We know where he is," he said. "We have known
for six years."
_[6]_
The Nipe prowled around the huge underground room, carefully checking
his alarms. If anyone entered the network of tunnels at any point, the
instruments would register that fact. They had to be adjusted, of
course, for the presence of the small, omnivorous quadrupeds that ran
through the tunnels in such numbers, but anything larger than they would
be noted immediately.
He did not like to leave this place. Here, over a period of ten
revolutions of this planet about its primary, he had built himself a
nest that was almost comfortable. Here, too, were his workshops and his
storehouses. He had reason to believe that he was safe here, screened
and protected as he was, but each time he left or entered he ran the
chance of being observed.
Still, there was no help for it. Thus far, he had been hampered by
technical problems. There were things he needed that he could not make
for himself. Even his own vast memory, with its every bit of information
instantly available, could only contain what had been acquired over a
lifetime, and even his long life had not been long enough to acquire
every bit of knowledge he needed.
His work had been long and tedious. There were many things that could
neither be made in his workshops nor obtained from the natives, things
he did not know how to make and which the local species had not yet
evolved in their own technology. Or, more likely, which had not been
allowed them. In such cases, he had had to make do with other, lesser
techniques, which added to the complexity of his job.
But now another problem had intruded itself into his schedule.
He had a name. Colonel Walther Mannheim. The meaning of the verbal
symbolism was unknown to him. The patterns of the symbolism were even
more evasive than the patterns of the language itself. "Colonel" seemed
simple enough. It indicated a certain sociomilitary class that was
rigidly defined in one way and very hazy in another. But the meanings
and relationships of both "Walther" and "Mannheim" were beyond him. What
difference, for instance, was there between a "Walther" and a "William"?
Did a "Mannheim" outrank a "Mandeville", or the other way around? What
functions differentiated a "John Smith" from a "Peter Taylor"? He knew
what a "john" was and what a "smith" was, but "John Smith" was not,
apparently, necessarily associated with sanitary plumbing. The meaning
of some other names eluded him entirely.
But that made little difference at the moment. The meaning of Colonel
Walther Mannheim's symbolic nomenclature was secondary in comparison
with his known function.
That required that the Nipe must eventually find and confront Colonel
Walther Mannheim.
It meant time lost, of course. It meant that precious time, which should
be given to building his communicator, must be given over to what was
merely a protective action.
But there was nothing to do but go on. It would never have occurred to
the Nipe to give up, for to quit meant to die. And to die--here,
now--was unthinkable.
His alarms were all functioning, his defenses all set. He could now
leave his hideaway knowing that if it were broken into while he was away
he would be warned in time. But he had no real fear of that. He had done
everything he could do. And no intelligent creature, to the Nipe's way
of thinking, would waste time worrying about a situation he could not
improve upon.
Taking with him the equipment he needed for the job he had to do, he
entered the tunnel that ran southward from his base of operations. Once,
as he moved along, one of the little quadrupeds approached him, its
teeth bared. With an almost negligent flip of one powerful, superfast
hand, he slammed it against a nearby wall. It dropped and lay still.
Another of its kind approached it cautiously. The Nipe noticed the
approach with approval. The quadrupeds had no real intelligence, but
they had the proper instincts.
At last the Nipe came to another of the many places where the tunnels
met with others of the network. He crossed through several rooms, all
very large and cluttered with the dusty, long-dead bones of hundreds of
the local intelligent life-form--if (and he was not sure in his own mind
of this) they could actually be called intelligent. But he moved
carefully, stepping over the human bones and the empty, staring skulls.
They had apparently been properly devoured, although he could not be
sure whether it had been done by their own kind or by the little
quadrupeds. Nonetheless, he would not willingly disturb their repose.
He went on into the tunnel that led westward and followed it as it began
to angle down. Finally he came to the water's edge.
To a human being, the cold expanse of water that gleamed like ink in the
light of the Nipe's illuminator would have been a barricade as
impenetrable as steel. But to the Nipe the tidal pool was simply another
of his defenses, for it concealed the only entrance he ever used. He
went in after adjusting his scuba mask and began swimming toward the
opening that led to the estuary of the sea, his eight strong limbs
working in unison in a way that would have been the envy of a rowing
team.
At the jagged hole in the tunnel wall, the gap that led into open water,
he paused to check his instruments. Only after he was certain that there
were no sonar or other detector radiations did he propel himself onward,
out into the estuary itself.
An hour later, he was warily circling the spot where his little
submarine was hidden. He pressed a button on a small device in his hand,
and a signal was sent to the submarine. The various devices within it
all responded properly. Nothing had been disturbed since the Nipe had
set those devices weeks before.
This was the touchiest part of any of his expeditions. There was always
the chance, unlikely as it might be, that some one of the bipedal
natives had found his machine. He dared not use it too close to his base
because of the possibility of its drive vibrations being detected in the
narrow estuary. Out here in the open sea there was far less likelihood
of that, but leaving his submarine concealed out here increased the
danger he exposed himself to every time he left his hidden nest.
Satisfied that the machine was just as he had left it, he entered it and
started its engines. He moved slowly and cautiously until he was well
out to sea, well away from the continental shelf and over the ocean
deeps. Then and only then did he accelerate to full cruising speed.
* * * * *
The full moon was in the west, hiding behind an array of low, scudding
clouds, revealing its radiance in fitful bursts of silvery splendor that
died again as another clotted cloud moved before the face of the white
disk. The shifting light, shining through the breeze-tossed leaves of
the palm trees on the beach below, made strange shadows on the sand,
ever-changing patterns of gray and black on a background of white,
moonlit sand.
But the strangest shadow of all was one that did not change as the
others did--a great centipede-like shape that seemed to wash slowly
ashore on the receding tide. For a short while, it remained at the
water's edge, apparently unmoving in the wash of the waves.
Then, keeping low and balancing himself on his third pair of limbs, the
Nipe moved in across the beach. The specially constructed sandals he
wore left behind them a set of very human-looking footprints--prints
that would remain unnoticed among the myriad of others that were already
on the beach, left there by daytime bathers.
It required more time yet to reach the city, and still more time to find
the place he was looking for. It was almost dawn before he managed to
find a storm sewer in which to hide for the day.
It was partly his difficulty in finding a given spot in a city--almost
any city--that had convinced the Nipe that the pseudo-intelligence of
the bipeds of this planet could not really be called true intelligence.
There was no standardized method of orienting oneself in a city. Not
only were no two cities alike in their orientation systems, but the same
city would often vary from section to section. Their co-ordinate systems
meant almost nothing. Part of a given co-ordinate might be a number, and
the rest of it a name, but the meanings of the numbers and names were
never the same. It was as though some really intelligent outside agency
had given them the basic idea of a co-ordinate system, and they, not
having the intelligence to use it properly, had simply jumbled the whole
thing up.
That the natives themselves had no real understanding of any such system
had long been apparent to him. The dwellers in any one area would
naturally be familiar with it; they would know where each place was,
regardless of what meaningless names and numbers might be attached to
it. But strangers to that area would not know, and could not know. The
only thing they could possibly do would be to ask directions of a local
citizen--which, the Nipe had learned, was exactly what they did.
Unfortunately, it was not that simple for the Nipe. There was no way for
him to walk up to a native and inquire for an address. He had to prowl
unseen through the alleys and sewers of a city, picking up a name here,
a number there, by eavesdropping on street conversations. He had found
that every city contained certain uniformed individuals whose duty it
was to direct strangers, and by focusing a directional microphone on
such men and listening, it was possible to glean little bits of
knowledge that could eventually be co-ordinated into a whole
understanding of the city's layout. It was a time-consuming process, but
it was the only way the job could be done. Reconnaissance took a
tremendous amount of time away from his serious work, but that work
could not proceed without materials to work with, and to get those
materials required reconnaissance. The dilemma was unavoidable.
And, being what he was, the Nipe accepted the unavoidable and pursued
his course with phlegmatic equanimity.
Overhead, the city was beginning to waken. The volume of sound began to
increase.
* * * * *
Police Patrolman John Flanders relieved his fellow officer, Patrolman
Fred Pilsudski, at a few minutes of eight in the morning.
It was a beautiful day, even for Miami. In the east, the morning sun
shone brightly through the hard, transparent pressure glass that covered
the street, making the smooth, resilient surface of the street itself
glow with warm light. Overhead, Patrolman Flanders could see the aircars
in their incessant motion--apparently random, unless one knew what the
traffic pattern was and how to look for it. It was Patrolman Flanders'
immediate ambition to be promoted to traffic patrol, so that he could be
in an aircar above the city instead of watching pedestrians down here on
the streets.
"Morning, Fred," he said to his brother officer. "How'd the night go?"
"Hi, Johnny. Pretty good. Not much excitement." He looked at his
wristwatch. "You're a couple minutes early yet."
"Yeah. The baby started singing for his breakfast at a God-awful hour.
Harriet woke up to feed him, which woke me up, so here I am. If you want
to give me the call button, I'll take over. You can go get yourself a
cup of coffee."
"I'm up to here with coffee," Pilsudski said, indicating a point just
below his left ear. "I'll have a beer instead."
He touched a switch at his belt and said: "Area 37 HQ, this is 13392
Pilsudski."