A. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle

At that moment, it happened.

They had paused at the “glass” room on Grosvenor’s floor. It wasn’t glass, and it wasn’t, by strict definition, a room. It was an alcove of an outer wall corridor, and the “glass” was an enormous curving plate made from a crystallized form of one of the resistance metals. It was so limpidly transparent as to give the illusion that nothing at all was there. Beyond was the vacuum and darkness of space. Grosvenor had just noticed absently that the ship was almost through the small star cluster it had been traversing. Only a few of the five thousand-odd suns of the system were still visible. He parted his lips to say, “I’d like to talk with you again, Mr. Korita, when you have time.”

He didn’t say it. A slightly blurred double image of a woman wearing a feathered hat was taking form in the glass directly in front of him. The image flickered and shimmered. Grosvenor felt an abnormal tensing of the muscles of his eyes. For a moment, his mind went blank. That was followed rapidly by sounds, flashes of light, a sharp sensation of pain. Hypnotic hallucinations! The awareness was like an electric shock.

The recognition saved him. His own conditioning enabled him instantly to reject the mechanical suggestion of the light pattern. He whirled and shouted into the nearest communicator, “Don’t look at the images! They’re hypnotic. We’re being attacked!”

As he turned away, he stumbled over Korita’s unconscious body. He stopped and knelt.

“Korita!” he said in a piercing tone, “you can hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Only my instructions influence you. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“You’re beginning to relax, to forget. Your mind is calm. The effect of the images is fading. Now it’s gone. Gone completely. Do you understand? Gone completely.”

“I understand.”

“They cannot affect you again. In fact, every time you see an image, you’re reminded of some pleasant scene from home. Is that clear?”

“Very.”

“Now you’re beginning to wake up. I’m going to count to three. When I say ‘three’, you’re wide awake. One… two… three — wake up!”

Korita opened his eyes. “What happened?” he said in a puzzled tone.

Grosvenor explained swiftly, and then said, “But now, quick, come along! The light pattern keeps pulling at my eyes in spite of counter suggestion.”

He hurried the bewildered archaeologist along the corridor toward the Nexial department. At the first corner, they came to a human body lying on the floor.

Grosvenor kicked the man, not too lightly. He wanted a shock response. “Do you hear me?” he demanded.

The man stirred, “Yes.”

“Then listen. The light images have no further effect on you. Now get up. You’re wide awake.”

The man climbed to his feet and lunged at him, swinging wildly. Grosvenor ducked, and his assailant staggered past him blindly.

Grosvenor ordered him to halt, but he kept on going without a backward glance. Grosvenor grabbed Korita’s arm. “I seem to have got to him too late.”

Korita shook his head dazedly. His eyes turned toward the wall, and it was clear from his next words that Grosvenor’s suggestion had not taken full effect, or else was already being undermined. “But what are they?” he asked.

“Don’t look at them?”

It was incredibly hard not to. Grosvenor had to keep blinking to break the pattern of light flashes that came at his eyes from other images on the walls. At first it seemed to him that the images were everywhere. Then he noticed that the womanish shapes — some oddly double, some single — occupied transparent or translucent wall sections. There were hundreds of such reflecting wall areas, but at least it was a limitation.

They saw more men. The victims lay at uneven intervals along the corridors. Twice they came upon conscious men. One stood in their path with unseeing eyes, and did not move or turn as Grosvenor and Korita hurried by. The other man let out a yell, grabbed his vibrator, and fired it. The tracer beam flashed on the wall beside Grosvenor. And then he had tackled the other and knocked him down. The man — a Kent supporter — glared at him malignantly. “You damned spy!” he said harshly. “We’ll get you yet.”

Grosvenor didn’t pause to discover the reason for the man’s astounding behaviour. But he grew tense as he guided Korita to the door of the Nexial department. If one chemist could so quickly be stimulated to open hatred of him, then what about the fifteen who had taken over his rooms?

To his relief, they were all unconscious. Hurriedly, he secured two pairs of dark glasses, one for Korita and one for himself, then turned a barrage of flashing lights against the walls, the ceilings, and the floors. Instantly, the images were eclipsed by the strong light.

Grosvenor headed for his technique room and there broadcast commands intended to free those he had hypnotized. Through the open door, he watched two unconscious bodies for response. After five minutes, there was still no sign that they were paying any attention. He guessed that the hypnotic patterns of the attacker had by-passed, or even taken advantage of, the conditioned state of their minds, nullifying any words he might use. The possibility was that they might awaken spontaneously after a while and turn on him.

With Korita’s help, he dragged them into the washroom, and then locked the door. One fact was already evident. This was mechanical-visual hypnosis of such power that he had saved himself only by prompt action. But what had happened was not limited to vision. The image had tried to control him by stimulating his brain through his eyes. He was up to date on most of the work that men had done in that field. And so he knew — though the attackers apparently did not — that control by an alien of a human nervous system was not possible except with an encephalo-adjuster or its equivalent.

He could only guess, from what had almost happened to him, that the other men had been precipitated into deep trance sleeps, or else they were confused by hallucinations and were not responsible for their actions.

His job was to get to the control room and turn on the ship’s energy screen. No matter where the attack was coming from — whether from another ship or actually from a planet — that should effectively cut off any carrier beams the enemy might be sending.

With frantic fingers, Grosvenor worked to set up a mobile unit of lights. He needed something that would interfere with the images on his way to the control room. He was making the final connection when he felt an unmistakable sensation — a slight giddy feeling — that passed almost instantly. It was a feeling that usually occurred during a considerable change of course, a result of readjustment of the anti-accelerators.

Had the course actually been changed? It was something he’d have to check — later.

He said to Korita, “I intend to make an experiment. Please remain here.”

Grosvenor carried his arrangement of lights to a near-by corridor, and placed it in the rear compartment of a power-driven loading vehicle. Then he climbed on and headed for the elevators.

He guessed that, altogether, ten minutes had gone by since he had first seen the image.

He took the turn into the elevator corridor at twenty-five miles an hour, which was fast for these comparatively narrow spaces. In the alcove opposite the elevators, two men were wrestling each other with a life-and-death concentration. They paid no attention to Grosvenor but swayed and strained and cursed. The sound of their breathing was loud. Their single-minded hatred of each other was not affected by Grosvenor’s arrangements of lights. Whatever world of hallucination they were in, it had taken profoundly.