"You mean Sherman? I'm afraid I can't tell you." The Squadron Leader
turned to Carter's captive. "Did you attack this man?"
"No," Sherman said. "He jumped me first."
"That's a lie!" snapped Carter. "I came out of my ship to see where you
people were, and he hit me from behind."
Gendron glanced at him quizzically. "That's hard to believe. Sherman's
one of my most reliable men. Lieutenant Carter, I'm inclined to doubt
your entire story. Would you mind explaining yourself?"
Carter began to feel a growing sense of exasperation. "Look," he said.
"I was minding my own business when this SOS came. I'm on leave now;
I'm wasting my precious free time fooling with you people. So I picked
up your SOS, and I landed. Then this man hit me. That's all I can tell
you."
"I'm completely at a loss to clarify," said the Squadron Leader. "So
far as I know, we sent out no SOS. We're in no danger here. We haven't
even begun to complete our work. I'm sorry if we've caused you some
inconvenience."
Carter shook his head. _Maybe I'm going batty_, he thought. _Maybe that
blast aboard the_ Alpha C _juggled my brains as well as cracked my
skull. Maybe I didn't hear any SOS after all._
"Okay," he said finally. "I'll go back to my ship and blast off. Forget
the whole thing."
"That might be the best idea," Gendron agreed. "Would you want Sherman
to show you the way?"
"I think I can find it myself," Carter said. He turned and headed out
of the clearing, trying to convince himself that he still had a little
of his sanity left.
He moved about three steps. Then something struck him a ringing blow
on the back of his head, and he toppled to the ground.
* * * * *
Carter woke, feeling as if a mountain had fallen on him. His head
ached miserably, his eyes wouldn't focus, his tongue felt thick and
sand-papery.
He tried to move his hands, and discovered that he was securely bound.
His arms were strapped together with what looked like leather thongs,
and his ankles were tied as well.
He was in a dark, windowless room--probably somewhere in the squat
building in the clearing.
He struggled to get his mind functioning again. All he could think of
was the way his head hurt.
Gendron had hit him from behind. That seemed to be the rule, on this
planet. After denying everything about the SOS, Gendron had clubbed him
when he wasn't looking. It didn't figure.
And there was that faint tickling in his skull, beside the raw pain of
the bruise. He didn't understand that either.
Carter sat up against the cold wall of the dark room, and yanked at his
bonds. They didn't give. He was trussed like a Christmas turkey--for
what?
Suddenly, he stopped moving, and listened.
Voices.
They were speaking in the same cold, metallic tones the spaceman
Sherman had used when Carter first landed.
"I don't understand it," someone said. "He walked right through the
control."
"It was peculiar, all right. He came within the sphere of radiation and
it didn't have any effect at all. Gendron had to club him or he would
have gotten away."
"We couldn't have that," the first voice said. "We need all the men we
can get for The Project."
_Project? What project?_ Carter asked himself. _What the blazes is
this, anyway?_
The voices stopped, leaving Carter alone in the darkness. Conjectures
ran through his mind, none of them adding up to anything but the
obvious fact that the Survey Squad of the _Vanguard_ was up to
something fishy.
His head still throbbed, but not as badly as before. The itchy tickling
still continued. It was--it was almost as if something were trying to
enter his mind! He fought a desperate desire to break his bonds and
rip open the front of his skull and scratch away the tickling before it
drove him insane.
_If I'm not insane already_, he thought grimly.
A light flickered somewhere in the distance, and then the door of his
cell opened. Someone came in. Carter blinked as light flooded in. It
was a few moments before he could see.
Gendron stood there.
"I see you're awake, Lieutenant Carter."
"Damned perceptive of you, Gendron. I'll bet you see I'm breathing,
too."
Gendron chuckled hollowly. "I've come to apologize for hitting you
yesterday. It was a misunderstanding."
"Oh? Like the phony SOS was a misunderstanding?"
* * * * *
Gendron seemed to scowl. He turned and gestured to someone beyond
Carter's view, and two more men entered the cell.
"Well? How does it look?" one of them asked.
"Not so good," said Gendron. "I don't think he's under control yet. I
don't know how he can resist so well."
"You sure he's still under his own will? How can you tell?"
"He's belligerent," said Gendron. "He's the same as he was last night."
"The Khethlani never fails," said one of the two men. "How could it go
wrong?"
Carter frowned. Apparently they expected him to have been taken over by
someone or something--and he hadn't been.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Gendron. Your whatever-it-is just hasn't
taken hold."
"Very strange, Carter. We may have to kill you."
"You know the Khethlani doesn't like to lose men," one of the others
reminded Gendron. "We ought to do everything we can to bring him under
control."