The magnitude of the plot amazed him. It was as nasty a frame as
he could imagine. He knew that it would be as air-tight as the
machinations of sixteen men could make it--and he wondered whether
the operations of seventeen men might not be more like the truth.
Wilks was ruined; had little to live for and knew it. He--and the
rest--a sacrifice was not too unquestionable. Their crime--justified
by themselves in the thought that better it be one of them than all of
them.
Under suspicion himself, any moves he made would be viewed with
distrust by the human race, who had cause to know him as the most hated
man on earth. Any jury, hearing of his legal trickery, knowing and
hearing the account of his masterful moves in business, which gained
him fortune upon fortune as other men fell under his steam-roller
tactics.
Any jury.
It was their crime. Yes.
But if, as, and when the truth came out truth? That was another angle
and Wanniston cursed himself for not thinking with all of his 375 I.Q.
The sixteen did not do it. Wilks must have framed murder out of suicide.
Without letting any of the others know!
For the lie detector would be used on each witness.
Even Gerd.
For he had been apprehended in Gerd Lel Rayne's home.
And Gerd would be asked the standard questions. Foolish, they were;
utterly and stupidly foolish. They asked your name; they asked the
identity of the suspected one; and--
_They asked if the suspected one might be able to outwit a lie
detector._
And Gerd Lel Rayne's answer would be a ringing, clear, and damning
"Yes!"
This, which takes time to record; to read, passed through Wanniston's
mind in no flash of staccato continuity, but as a pattern-plan. It was
like thinking of a scotch plaid, or a linoleum pattern to the ordinary
mortal; it came instantaneously to the energized intellect of John
Wanniston, and he knew the whole futile thing from upper left to lower
right before Lieutenant Alfred's voice had ceased to echo through Gerd
Lel Rayne's workshop.
He was framed.
He was IT.
And as nicely a nasty bit of connivery as ever hit the sight.
HE was IT.
Wanniston moved with rattlesnake swiftness. He hit the light cord,
pulled and twisted. A splurt of sparks came with blackness and
Wanniston faded back and down to run, stooped, across the workshop
floor avoiding the clutter of machinery and furniture by the faculty of
eidetic memory.
By sensitivity of mind, he knew where Gerd Lel Rayne kept his
spacecraft, and he went there immediately. A _whoosh!_ of passing air
and Wanniston was in the stratosphere, free and away. He dropped back
again a few minutes later to his office where he bundled his mind
machine into the spacecraft before he left Terra forever.
Terra.
A planetful of fools. They did not respect his superior intellect. They
did not even admit it. They hated him for being able to get that which
they could not get, and they resented the fact that he was capable of
doing it to their misfortune. They gambled with him--and when they
lost, they welshed, like stinking cry-babies.
But Wanniston was smart. He knew where he'd be appreciated. In the
galaxy were men of intellect that would welcome him. Give him another
month at the machine.
Gerd Lel Rayne. Now he knew the truth about Gerd. Emissary! Magnificent
creature; supergenius!
Bah! One whose intellect was moronic compared to the Galactic Ones.
One who had been placed on Terra because only a moron could be
understood by Terrans. The Galactic Ones could understand Terrans
after much painful, wearisome prodding and waiting while the Terrans,
idiotlike, stumbled through their clumsy sentence structure. But no
Terran could understand the pattern-plan of quadruple-ideas that passed
from Galactic One to Galactic One--or even the most careful effort of
the Galactic One to be patient and redundantly explicit when and if
speaking to a Terran. That is why the inbetween--Gerd Lel Rayne.
Well, Wanniston was far superior to Gerd Lel Rayne, and another month
would see him equal to any of the Galactic Ones.
* * * * *
Far, long light-years across the galaxy, Wanniston loafed along, taking
accelerated treatments and seeking, idly, one of the main planets of
the Galactic Ones. He found one, finally, and slid into the spaceport
with all the boldness of a sector governor.
He decided to brazen it out--obviously the ship would be registered and
his lack of license papers might be questioned. So he opened the space
lock and stepped to the ground to face one of the attendants.
The attendant nodded and waved hands to an approaching crew. They
nodded at Wanniston, too, and then swarmed through the ship, servicing
it. Before Wanniston was at the registry office, the ship was lifted
and slid over to the row upon row of parked spacecraft. Wanniston noted
its position and then entered the register.
"Name?" asked the official.
"Wan Nes Stan," said he, putting the Galactic pronunciation to his own
name.
"You have the ship formerly registered with Emissary Gerd Lel Rayne.
Has he another?"
Wan Nes Stan was stopped momentarily, but his plan to brazen it out
laid another pathway. "Not that I know of," he said.
"I'll see that another is delivered to him. You'll not be returning
that way?"
"If I do," said Wan Nes Stan boldly, "I shall go in the way I got there
before."
"Naturally."
Wan Nes Stan almost gulped visibly. He wondered for a moment whether
the Galactic was having sport at his expense, or being sarcastic, or
whether he was completely taken in by the boldness.
Wan Nes Stan entered his first Galactic city. To any Terran, it would
have been nonunderstandable in scope, but to Wan Nes Stan it was
beautiful as it should be, and yet not perfect. Color combinations
were there beyond the concept of any Terran, all blended in a mad,
ever-moving kaleidoscope of sheer symphony. Faint, stirring music
emanated from everywhere--there seemed to be no focal point--and the
blend of music with color matched exactly. Either would have been
unfinished without the other, and both would have been incomplete
without the senses of smell, taste, and feel that were excited ever so
delicately.
There was no sign of the bustle and hustle of a mighty city. The
indolent and the loafer all moved in a precision pattern that gave the
impression of smooth machinery that wasted no motion in accomplishing
its end.
Its end?
What could any such perfection need with an end? Was this not the end?
No, Wan Nes Stan knew that this was not the end. This was not
perfection, any more than any Terran city was the ultimate in combined
beauty and utility. This was not the least of the Galactic cities, nor
was it the best. It--was average.
This was home.
He no longer looked down upon the crawling, struggling race of
creatures that called themselves _homo sapiens_ any more than any
Terran looked derisively at a dog. They knew the dog's place in the
scheme of things and Wan Nes Stan and the rest of the Galactic Ones
knew homo sap's place. There was no scorn in his mind now. The fact
that he had once aspired to rule Terra did not appear to him to be a
lowly ambition; Wan Nes Stan knew that it was a laudable ambition at
one time in his rise--
"... _When he became of age he put away childish things._"
Wan Nes Stan checked into a hotel, using his assumed name. It was
accepted without question, which pleased him greatly since he had need
of procuring some Galactic currency so that he could pay bills. It gave
him a place to stay until he could swing a deal, make a move, or steal
a pocketfull of whatever the Galactic Ones used for money.
Assuming that the Galactic Ones were running their hotels in a manner
similar to Terran establishments, Wan Nes Stan ordered newspapers, a
library list, and dinner. Ordering these, he found, was to his liking.
There was complete rapport. The steak he ordered by projecting it as
a whole, giving the waiter a complete mental impression from sight to
texture. It was superb, just as he had pictured.
Then he addressed himself to the papers.
There was no price listed on the paper. He looked. He'd hoped to
establish the parity value of a newspaper for price-scaling.
He sought the financial section. There was none. There were sports,
news items that interested him not one bit because not one of them
pertained to the robbery of anything--the latter would have given him
an initial idea of the value of things.
The newspaper was thin and uninteresting. A society column listed the
comings and goings of people and their associations. He found among
the new arrivals column a notation of his own arrival--sketchy and
uninformative--in Gerd Lel Rayne's ship; and a statement to the effect
that Wan Nes Stan might be able to give some information as to the
struggle of Terra in their advancement to the Galactic state.
The latter was too close to home for Wan Nes Stan. It sounded a little
as though he might be known; that his masquerade was understood.
It was.
* * * * *
A knock came at the door an hour later, and as Wan Nes Stan opened the
door, the Galactic who stood there smiled and said: "Wan Nes Stan?
Formerly Terran of Terra?"
"I ... must admit it."
"Think nothing of it," replied the Galactic affably. "I am Len Dor
Vale, sector overseer."
"My masquerade is known?"
The Galactic laughed. "Known and appreciated. Look, my friend, when the
substitute becomes as efficient as the real thing, we no longer look
down upon it. You are no longer a Terran, you are as much a Galactic
One as the rest of us."
"I am?"
"Aren't you?"