Eric Russell - Three to Conquer

This was confirmed ten minutes later when Jameson phoned long distance. “Seen the news?”

“I’ve just been reading it.”

“It should have been on the dawn radiocast, but we kept it off. We’re having a heck of a time persuading news services to minimize such items. Naturally they want to know why, and we can’t tell them.”

“What happened?” asked Harper.

“I can’t say too much, even on an officially cleared line. In brief, one of our men picked up Langley’s trail and followed it to the Rankovic farm. Langley must have moved out during the short lapse of time between our man’s report and the raid. Anyway, we didn’t get him. The fox had bolted, leaving the hole still warm.”

“More’s the pity.”

“Two are dead. Their bodies are being shipped out for examination,” Jameson went on. “Of the four we captured, three emphatically deny that they took any part in the battle. They say they merely happened to be in the house when the shooting started, and took cover until it ended. We’ve given them the paraffin test and the result is negative.”

“What about the fourth?”

“He’s a brother of one of the casualties. Says he was in bed, woke up when the ruckus started. Pulled on his pants and ran downstairs, joined his brother and another guy in slinging slugs out the windows. He swears that none of them knew they were firing upon the law.”

“Sounds plausible,” commented Harper.

“He gave up when tear gas got him. By that time, the other two were going cold. All four captives recognize Langley’s picture, but know nothing about him except that he’d been rooming there a couple of days. He left at ten-forty, or not much more than an hour before the raid.”

“Almost seems as if he’d been tipped off.”

“He couldn’t possibly have been. He was just lucky. Anyhow, I haven’t called merely to tell the story; there’s more to it than that. When we made the raid we surrounded the place, knocked and demanded entry. Somebody fired back through the door. Therefore, although Langley wasn’t present, it made little difference—the house still concealed someone anxious not to be grabbed. What does that suggest to you?”

“Langley had made himself a pal.”

“Yes, and he may have made himself more than one. Some fellow named Waggoner pulled out at the same time as Langley. We know nothing about him, except that he and Langley are teamed up. We have a good description and, of course, the search is continuing for both.”

“You learned nothing about the other two?” Harper asked.

“McDonald and Gould? No, not in that locality. They appear to have split up. They’re trying to make it harder for us by keeping apart.” He paused, while the screen showed him to be consulting a document below the level of the distant scanner. “I want these four captives put to the test without delay. They may not be what they appear to be.”

“Want me to come there?”

“No. It would spoil that setup at your end. We’re flying the four to you. Give them the penetrating eye, and say whether they are or they aren’t

“I’ll do that.”

“Thanks a lot. There’s something else, too. So far, nobody has taken a bite at you. As you said yourself, it all depends on whether they knew the identity of that girl, and whether the filling station murder was a coincidence. To date, we have no evidence to show that they actually know they’re being sought, or that they know we have learned of the ship’s return. So it’s—”

“Has the ship been found yet?” interjected Harper.

“Not a sign of it. It couldn’t have been destroyed beyond recognition; a professional breaking-up yard, with gas-cutters and furnaces, would take a month to get rid of that mass of metal. Latest theory is that it’s concealed somewhere in subarctic wastes or has been dumped in the ocean. The latter seems the more likely. In that case, the crew must have got ashore by using their rubber raft. We’re raking the coasts in an effort to discover it.”

“Well, it’s an idea. What were you saying about nobody biting me?”

“I was pointing out that, up to last night, they may not have known for sure that the hunt is already in full cry. But the newspaper specifically mentioning the Rankovic farm could be a giveaway, if Langley reads it. You’d do well to be extra wary from now on.”

“I’ll tell Norris,” said Harper. “He’s my nursemaid.”

“There’s no need to. If he isn’t actually listening in, he’ll soon be informed by somebody who is listening. All your calls are being monitored.”

“Solely as a measure of protection?” inquired Harper.

“Yes,” said Jameson, without hesitation. He cut off. The visiscreen clouded, went blank.

“Lousy liar!” Harper glowered at the wall. “They are more bothered about my big ears than my whole skin.”

The suspected quartet arrived a few minutes before the office was due to close. Norris lined them up in the machine shop, where they stood manacled together, staring around, openly puzzled by their presence in such a place as this. Half a dozen agents shared their company and watched them, narrow-eyed.

Norris went into the office and said, “They’re here. How about it?”

“No luck,” Harper told him. “They are normal enough to be downright dull.”

“Okay.” He went out, came back. “I’ve had three of them taken away. Jameson wants your report on the remaining guy. He admits taking part in the shooting, claims that he didn’t realize what he was doing. Is he telling the truth?”

Shoving aside the papers with which he’d been dealing, Harper appeared to lie back while he pondered the question. He listened, picked up a worry that nagged like toothache, but failed to provide an answer. So he probed, drove the mind in the other room away from its present anxiety and onto the recent cause.

“It’s true enough; he got a scare that sent him into a panic.”

“That’s all we want to know.”

At three o’clock the following afternoon, Harper was taking it easy, his chair tilted on its back legs, his feet on the rim of the desk, his mind wide open as idly he watched Moira sorting invoices.

His mental faculty had two distinct methods of functioning, which he liked to symbolize as radio and radar. When he was playing at radio, he merely listened and put up with whatever programs were being broadcast in “the vicinity. If he switched to radar, he transmitted a pulse of his own which stimulated some other mind into producing a required response.

When he listened, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it was stuff not worthy of a moment’s attention. But when he probed, he got what he wanted by nudging the other mind into thinking of it. So far as ordinary human beings were concerned, it made no difference which method he adopted because they were unconscious of both.

With a Venusian mind it wasn’t the same; that had been his first lesson, learned when he contacted the entity owning the Whittingham girl. In some subtle way the Venusians differed. He could listen to one, radio-fashion, without it realizing that it was being overheard. But if, radar-like, he prodded one to compel release of a wanted fact, it felt the prod and took immediate alarm.

Right now, Harper was slowly and rhythmically rocking the chair and straining its hind legs, which gave forth protesting squeaks. Over the last few days he had not listened continuously; it was impossible to do that and give attention to other matters. Besides, it was sufficient for his mind to make a two-seconds sweep around the neighborhood every couple of minutes, much like a lighthouse beam circling across dark and stormy seas.

He rocked and made his umpteen hundredth or thousandth sweep, ceased punishing the chair, sat erect. Moira glanced at him expectantly, saw that his attention was not on her, and resumed her sorting. He listened again to something far away, perhaps a thousand yards or more, half-hidden in the general hubbub. It grew nearer, slowly but steadily, at a rate corresponding with walking pace. It was an inhuman mind gaggling like an angry gander.