Somewhere a bell began to ring shrilly. Saxon saw an expression of
annoyance pass across the Moderator's wrinkled visage. He pressed a
button set in the table top. The bell stopped ringing. A voice began
to speak in an alien tongue directly behind Saxon. The burly nuclear
physicist spun around in surprise.
He was looking into the control room of a small private space yacht!
The deception was so realistic that Saxon gasped before he noticed
the three beams of light converging from lenses in the wall, focusing
at a point directly behind him to form the solid appearing image. A
three-dimensional televisor complete with sound!
Then all speculation was driven from his mind as he recognized the
figure who was speaking.
Mustapha IX, Supreme Autocrat of the Terran Empire!
The image of Mustapha sat stiffly in an acceleration chair before the
control panel of the space yacht. His voice, rattling away in the
strange language, was high, tense, frightened.
Saxon, unable to understand, looked over his shoulder at the seven old
men. They were all on their feet, staring in disbelief at the three
dimensional image. The Moderator's hands began to tremble. He sat down
as if his knees had turned to water.
The voice rattled on and on.
At last Mustapha IX quit talking. The Moderator pressed the button. The
image dissolved.
A stunned silence followed, as one by one the old men sank back to
their seats. Saxon, devoured with curiosity, asked, "What was it?"
The Moderator gave him a level glance. "That was the man you know as
Mustapha IX, Supreme Autocrat of the Terran Empire. He was reporting
from his private yacht which has just emerged from the time field and
is decelerating. It'll be a week before he lands on Vark."
"Mustapha IX?" Saxon burst out. "Here on Vark? But that's impossible.
What's he doing--"
"There's been civil war," the Moderator interrupted savagely. "General
Atomic has overthrown Government. General Atomic is the Terran
Government now!"
"But I don't see ..." protested Saxon.
"Bah! I spoke of controls. Naturally our first necessity has been to
control the humanoid's government. The Supreme Autocrats have all been
Varkans, our governors, which we sent to Earth!
"Now Mustapha IX has had to flee for his life. Most of our agents on
Earth have been murdered. Only a handful escaped with him!"
The Moderator pressed another button, began to speak rapidly,
tonelessly in the alien language into a microphone. The thoughts of the
seven old men were flashing back and forth like streaks of light behind
their mental barrier. The crisis, Saxon realized, had arrived with a
vengeance!
Suddenly the guard came running through the door in answer to a summons
by the Moderator. For the first time Saxon intercepted a thought as the
Moderator directed the guard to take the prisoners away.
"_Send the girl to Zara_," he commanded the guard. "_Confine the man
here until we can check results!_"
"Come along," said the guard in a tight voice to Saxon and Ileth. He
took hold of Ileth's arm. The girl shrank away from him, frightened by
the swift and ominous change which had come over their captors.
Saxon's eyes went bleak. The guard jerked back as he caught a glimpse
of Saxon's intentions, but he wasn't quick enough.
Saxon's balled fist caught him on his left cheek bone, sent him
sprawling to the checkered pavement. Saxon was on him like a wolf.
Wrenching the cylinder from the stunned guard's belt, he backed off
swinging the unfamiliar weapon in a menacing arc.
[Illustration: _He backed off, swinging the unfamiliar weapon._]
He saw the withered faces of the Elders blanch. They pressed stiffly
against the back of their chairs, jaws sagging. The guard scrambled
to his feet. He shook his head groggily but made no move to attack
Saxon.
Triumph welled up inside Jon Saxon. He said, "The shoe's on the other
foot. I don't know how this damned thing works, but there's a button.
Unless you start answering my questions straight we'll see what happens
if I press it."
He paused. The seven old men glared at him but said nothing.
"How did General Atomic discover your agents? Why didn't their
invisibility protect them?"
The Moderator moistened his lips. "The humanoids devised a machine that
detects us. An adaption of the thought projector, which enabled them to
detect our telepathic potential. Once they could isolate our thought
waves, they were able to trace them to their source by a process
similar to locating the source of a radio beam."
Saxon narrowed his eyes, recalling the thought projector which
the radiation branch of Government's Bureau of Research had been
experimenting with. So that's how General Atomic had uncovered the
Aliens.
"General Atomic," the Moderator was saying, "suspected the existence of
mutants, telepaths, ever since an agent of theirs by the name of Emil
turned in a report on you!"
Saxon started.
The Moderator's first fright was over, he realized. The old man was
regarding him with a faint smile.
Saxon glanced behind him in alarm; but there was nothing there. He
clenched his fist until the knuckles whitened. "What other methods did
you use to keep the humanoids in check?"
There was a subtle change in the voice of the Moderator when he
answered. It was ringing, hard. "As I said, we foresaw this crisis. To
discourage stellar travel we planted a pathologic fear of deep space in
the humanoid subconscious.
"Certain of their discoveries we have suppressed. Notably, the
space-time stellar drive. The Little Death, as you call it, has been
discovered three separate times in the past thousand years."
"What?"
"Yes. Are you surprised? Once by an unknown scientist, once by a
physicist, Dr. Walter, and lastly by Dr. Villainowski."
Although Saxon still held the alien weapon, he had the uncomfortable
sensation that a trap had been sprung and the Moderator was only
waiting for it to close on him.