The guard nodded. You never could tell when the League would pop up
like that.
Even after the collapse of Communism after the war, the world hadn't
learned anything, it seemed. The Eurasian League had seemed, at first,
to be patterned after the Western world's United Nations, but it
hadn't worked out that way.
The League was jealous of the UN lead in space travel, for one thing,
and they had neither the money nor the know-how to catch up. The UN
might have given them help, but, as the French delegate had remarked:
"For what reason should we arm a potential enemy?"
After all, they argued, with the threat of the UN's Moonbase hanging
over the League to keep them peaceful, why should we give them
spaceships so they can destroy Moonbase?
The Eurasian League had been quiet for a good many years, brooding,
but behaving. Then, three years ago, Moonbase had vanished in a flash
of actinic light, leaving only a new minor crater in the crust of
Luna.
There was no proof of anything, of course. It had to be written off as
an accident. But from that day on, the League had become increasingly
bolder; their policy was: "Smash the UN and take the planets for
ourselves!"
And now, with Carlson Spacecraft going up in flames, they seemed to be
getting closer to their goal.
* * * * *
Karnes accepted his weapon and billfold from the guard and led them
back down the stairway. "Would one of you guys phone the State Police?
They'll want to know what happened."
The State Police copters came and went, taking Karnes and the late Mr.
Avery with them, and leaving behind the now dying glow of Carlson
Spacecraft.
There were innumerable forms to fill out and affidavits to make; there
was a long-distance call to UN headquarters in New York to verify
Karnes' identity. And Karnes asked to borrow the police lab for an
hour or so.
That evening, he caught the rocket for Long Island.
As the SR-37 floated through the hard vacuum five hundred miles above
central Nebraska, Karnes leaned back in his seat, turning the odd
cigarette case over and over in his hands.
Except for the neat, even checking that covered it, the little
three-by-four inch object was entirely featureless. There were no
catches or hinges, or even any line of cleavage around the edge. He
had already found that it wouldn't open.
Whatever it was, it was most definitely _not_ a cigarette case.
The X-ray plates had shown it to be perfectly homogeneous throughout.
_As far as I can see_, thought Karnes, _it's nothing but a piece of
acid-proof plastic, except that the specific gravity is way the hell
too high_. _Maybe if I had cut it open, I could have--_
Karnes didn't push anything on the case, of that he was sure. Nor did
he squeeze, shake, or rub it in any unusual way. But something
happened; something which he was convinced came from the case in his
hands.
He had the definite impression of something akin to a high-pressure
firehose squirting from the interior of the case, through his skull,
and into and over his brain, washing it and filling it. Little rivers
of knowledge trickled down through the convolutions of his brain,
collected in pools, and soaked in.
* * * * *
He was never sure just how long the process took but it was certainly
not more than a second or two. Afterwards, he just sat there, staring.
From far across the unimaginable depths of the galaxy, fighting its
way through the vast, tenuous dust clouds of interstellar space, came
a voice: "Are you ill, sir?"
Karnes looked up at the stewardess. "Oh. Oh, no. No, I'm all right.
Just thinking. I'm perfectly all right."
He looked at the "cigarette case" again. He knew what it was, now.
There wasn't any English word for it, but he guessed "mind impressor"
would come close.
It had done just that; impressed his mind with knowledge he should not
have; the record of something he had no business knowing.
_And he wished to Heaven he didn't!_
_This_, Karnes considered, _is a problem_. _The stuff is so_ alien!
_Just a series of things I know, but can't explain. Like a dream; you
know all about it, but it's practically impossible to explain it to
anybody else._
At the spaceport, he was met by an official car. George Lansberg, one
of the New York agents, was sitting in the back seat.
"Hi, sleuth. I heard you were coming in, so I asked to meet you." He
lowered his voice as Karnes got in and the car pulled away from the
parking lot. "How about our boy, Avery?"
Karnes shook his head. "Too late. Thirty million bucks worth of
material lost and Avery lost too."
"How come?"
"Had to kill him to keep him from getting away with these."
He showed Lansberg the microfilm squares.
"The photocircuit inserts for the new autopilot. We'd lose everything
if the League ever got its hands on these."
"Didn't learn anything from Avery, eh?" Lansberg asked.
"Not a thing." Karnes lapsed into silence. He didn't feel it necessary
to mention the mind impressor just yet.
Lansberg stuck a cigarette into his mouth and talked around it as he
lit it.
"We've got something you'll be getting in on, now that Avery is taken
care of. We've got a fellow named Brittain, real name Bretinov, who is
holed up in a little apartment in Brooklyn. He's the sector head for
that section, and we know who his informers are, and who he gives
orders to. What we don't know is who gives orders to him.
"Now we have it set up for Brittain to get his hands on some very
honest-looking, but strictly phony stuff for him to pass on to the
next echelon. Then we just sit around and watch until he does pass
it."
* * * * *
Karnes found he was listening to Lansberg with only half an ear. His
brain was still buzzing with things he'd never heard of, trying to fit
things he had always known in with things he knew now but had never
known before. Damn that "cigarette case"!
"Sounds like fun," he answered Lansberg.
"Yeah. Great. Well, here we are." They had driven to the Long Island
Spaceways Building which also housed the local office.
They got out and went into the building, up the elevator, down a
corridor, and into an office suite.
Lansberg said: "I'll wait for you here. We'll get some coffee
afterwards."
The redhead behind the front desk smiled up at Karnes.
"Go on in; he's expecting you."
"I don't know whether I ought to leave you out here with Georgie or
not," Karnes grinned. "I think he has designs."
"Oh, goodie!" she grinned back.
_My, my aren't we clever!_ His thought was bitter, but his face didn't
show it.
Before he went in, he straightened his collar before the wall mirror.
He noticed that his plain, slightly tanned face still looked the same
as ever. Same ordinary gray-green eyes, same ordinary nose.
_Chum, you_ look _perfectly sane_. _You_ are _perfectly sane. But who
in hell would believe it?_
It wouldn't, after all, do any good for him to tell anyone anything he
had found. No matter what the answer was, there wasn't anything he
could do about it. There wasn't anything _anyone_ could do about it.
Thus, Karnes' report to his superior was short, to the point, and
censored.
That evening, Karnes sat in his apartment, chain-smoking, and staring
out the window. Finally, he mashed out a stub, stood up, and said
aloud: "Maybe if I write it down I can get it straight."
He sat down in front of the portable on his desk, rolled in a sheet
of paper, and put his fingers on the keys. Then, for a long time, he
just sat there, turning it over and over in his mind. Finally, he
began to type.
_A Set of General Instructions and a Broad Outline on the
Purposes and Construction of the Shrine of Earth._
_Part One: Historical._
_Some hundred or so millennia ago, insofar as the most
exacting of historical research can ascertain, our remote
ancestors were confined to one planet of the Galaxy; the
legendary Earth._
_The third planet of Sun (unintelligible number) has long
been suspected of being Earth, but it was not until the
development of the principles of time transfer that it
became possible to check the theory completely._
_The brilliant work done by--_
(Karnes hesitated over the name, then wrote--)
_--Starson on the ancient history and early evolution of the
race has shown the theory to be correct. This has opened a
new and fascinating field for the study of
socioanthropology._
_Part Two: Present Purposes and Aims._
_Because of the great energy transfer and cosmic danger
involved in too frequent or unrestricted time travel, it has
been decided that the best method for studying the social
problems involved would be to rebuild, in toto, the ancient
Earth as it was just after the initial discoveries of atomic
power and interplanetary space travel._
_In order to facilitate this work, the Surveying Group will
translate themselves to the chronological area in question,
and obtain complete records of that time, covering the years
between (1940) and (2020)._
_When the survey is complete, the Construction Group will
rebuild that civilization with as great an exactness as
possible, complete with population, fossil strata, edifices,
etc._
_Upon the occasion of the opening of the Shrine, the replica
of our early civilization will be begun as it was on
(January 3, 1953). The population, having been impregnated
with the proper memories, will be permitted to go about
their lives unhampered._
Karnes stopped again and reread the paragraph he had just written. It
sounded different when it was on paper. The dates, for instance, he
had put in parentheses because that was the way he had understood
them. But he knew that whoever had made the mind-impressor didn't use
the same calendar he was used to.
He frowned at the paper, then went on typing.
_Part Three: Conduct of Students._
_Students wishing to study the Shrine for the purpose of
(unintelligible again) must obtain permits from the Galactic
Scholars Council, and, upon obtaining such permits, must
conduct themselves according to whatever rules may be laid
down by such Council._
_Part Four: Corrective Action to be Taken._
_At certain points in the history of ancient Earth, certain
crises arose which, in repetition, would be detrimental to
the Shrine. These crises must be mitigated in order that--_
Karnes stopped. That was all there was. Except--except for one more
little tail end of thought. He tapped the keys again.
(_Continued on Stratum Two_)
_Whatever in hell that means_, he thought.
He sat back in his chair and went over the two sheets of typed paper.
It wasn't complete, not by a long shot. There were little tones of
meaning that a printed, or even a spoken word couldn't put over. There
were evidences of a vast and certainly superhuman civilization; of an
alien and yet somehow completely human way of thinking.
But that was the gist of it. The man he had seen in that new building
at Carlson Spacecraft was no ordinary human being.
That, however, didn't bother Karnes half so much as the gray globe the
man had disappeared into after he had been shot at. And Karnes knew,
now, that the shots probably hadn't missed.
The globe was one of two things. And the intruder had been one of two
groups.
(A) One of the Surveyors of Ancient Earth, in which case the globe had
been a--well, a time machine. Or
(B) A student, in which case the machine was a type of spacecraft.
The question was: Which?
If it were (A), then he and the world around him were real, living,
working out their own destinies toward the end point represented by
the man in the gray globe.