Eric Russell: Three to Conquer

A pair of them dropped clutching grenades in hands that lost grip as vapor compelled their minds to swirl into unconsciousness. Released plungers walloped detonators, there came two brief eruptions of turf, dirt and flesh.

Masked men picked up the remaining six as the tank crunched forward on noisy caterpillars and filled the torn gateway. Shots and shouts sounded far away at the other side of the area, where six men had picked off two patrolling guards, climbed the fence and been trapped. It was a foolhardy tactic, depending for success in sufficient diversion at the front gate.

Five minutes after the battle had ended, a convoy of armored cars toured the countryside for fifty miles around, Harper being a passenger in the first one. It was two hours before he picked up the only trace.

’There!” he said, pointing to an abandoned farmhouse.

They kept him out of reach while they made the attack. It produced three corpses and two badly wounded captives.

No more were findable before dawn when the search became complete. Harper- arrived back red-eyed, tousle-haired and fed up.

“Gould was in that first car,” Norris informed him.

“Dead?”

“All of them, nine in number. That tank made a job of it.” He shrugged, added, “Now we’ve the task of discovering the identities of all those involved, including those whose bodies got scattered around. After that, we must trace all their contacts and bring them in for clearance by you. I can see this lasting my lifetime.”

Leeming entered the room. He was pale and drawn from lack of sleep. He said to Harper, “I’d like you to come take a look.”

Leading the other through a series of corridors in which an armed guard stood at every corner, he reached a row of strongly barred cells, pointed into one.

“What can you tell me?” he asked in strained and anxious tones.

Harper looked. Inside, clad only in socks and pants, Riley sat aimlessly on the edge of a bed. His eyes were lackluster, but his beefy face held an expression of childish amusement.

“Well?” pressed Leeming. “Is the virus conquered?”

“Yes.” He voiced it without triumph, and the other heard it without joy.

“You can say positively that it is no longer active within his system?”

“Yes.”

Leeming hesitated, spoke solemnly. “I gave him what you said he feared the most. We had to try it. We just can’t wait for a vaccine. First things come first—and humanity comes before the individual. So I called Gottlieb and Mathers of the Bacteriological Warfare Station and we tried it.”

Harper made no remark.

“It has proved a cure,” Leeming went on, “Physically there are no ill effects. He shows no symptoms of meningitis from that viewpoint. Nevertheless, he has paid a price. I know it, but I want your confirmation.” He looked at Harper as if hoping for the “one chance in a thousand that he would be pronounced wrong. “What is the price?”

“Imbecility,” said Harper.

“I hate to hear you say it.” Leeming stood silently awhile and tasted the bitter ashes of victory, then said with faint hope, “There’s another one in the next cell, A fellow named Moore.”

Harper went to the next cell, gazed in and declared, “The same.” Then something inside him gave way and he growled, “They’re better off dead. Do you hear me? They have minds like porridge, all messed up to hell, and they’re better off dead.”

“They are dead,” said Leeming, on the defensive. “They were dead when first brought to me. I cannot restore a human spirit already lost; I cannot recall an expelled soul. Science has its limits. When it gets that far, it will have ceased to be science. The best we can manage is to defend the community by destroying a source of infection. And that we have achieved.”

“I know, I know. Don’t think I’m blaming you, or anyone else.” He parted Leeming’s shoulder by way of comfort. “And don’t reproach yourself, either. It’s my illogical habit to regret the dirtier facts of life, even when they’re unalterable.”

“Everything that can be done will be done,” assured Leeming, perking up slightly. “We’re treating all of them in the same way because at least it’s swift and sure. After that, some of the country’s best mental specialists will take them over. That’s right out of my field but I wouldn’t say they’re beyond help. Maybe others can restore them to normalcy.”

“Never,” asserted Harper. “A battlefield is a torn and sterile area pock-marked with craters, Uttered with rubble and stinking of decomposition. That’s what their brains are like.”

He walked away, twitching fingers as he went.

It was two years before the last echoes of combat died away. That was when they called upon him to inspect and pass judgment on a small group of frightened people finally run down in faraway places. These were the only remaining contacts with any of the possessed. None proved subject to other-world mastery.

During that long time Harper had looked over more than eight thousand suspects, many of them shipped back from overseas by co-operation of warned and wary governments. In the first week he had discovered four men who were not men, and in the second week one woman who was not a woman. After that, there had been no more. The world had cleared itself of mental sepsis.

The missing space-vessel had been discovered lying in a hundred fathoms beyond Puget Sound, and salvage outfits were still toiling to rise it piecemeal. Scientists were busily devising positive means of protection for a second Venusian expedition and seeking an effective weapon with which to free the Wends—an agile, intelligent, lemur-like creature that could speak.

“Vat silvin, Wend?”

The Lunar Development Company had won its suit and the powers-that-be had received a legalistic rap across the knuckles. A reward of five thousand dollars had been used to start a fund for the dependents of spacemen, and already the total sum had passed the million mark. From Harper’s viewpoint, these were by far the two most pleasing items to date.

But no heavy hand bashed open his door, nobody brushed his papers aside to make seating room on his desk, nobody claimed some of his time for an exchange of insults. Riley was away in a big house in the country, helping with the gardening, doing petty chores, smiling at chirping sparrows, being gently led to his bedroom when sleepy time came. Like all the others, a little child. He would never be any different. Never, never, never.

So far as Harper personally was concerned, the aftereffects of the fracas would remain with him all his fife. Not only in memory, but also in immediate circumstances.

For instance, business had grown as he expanded into ancillary products. Forty men now worked in the plant. One of them, Weiss, was not only a highly skilled instrument maker but also a government stooge. Conway’s eye. He could blind it by firing the man—only to be watched by another. There was no way of getting rid of constant observation.

His mail was watched. There were many times when he suspected a tap on his telephone fine. Whenever he made a swift move by car or plane, he was followed. Norris or Rausch called once a month for an idle chat, designed to remind him that the memory of authority is long and unforgiving.

Yes, they feared him—but feared other things more.

Another thirty months crawled by, making four and a half years in all. Then the miracle happened. It was unbelievable. But it was true.

He was about to take his car from a parking lot when he caught a brief flicker of alien thought. It struck him like a physical blow. The direction and range were sensed automatically: from the south, about four miles away. A distance far beyond his normal receptivity.