"Too big," said Matt. "Your pupils are too big. When somebody really isn't interested in what's going on around him, the pupils are smaller."
"What about Polly's eyes?" Hood probed. "Dilated or contracted?"
"Contracted. Very small. And so were the guards' eyes, the ones who came for me this morning." He remembered how surprised they'd been when he yanked on the handcuffs, the handcuffs that still dangled from his wrists. They hadn't been interested in him; they'd merely unlocked the chains from their own wrists. And when they'd looked at him--"That's it. That's why their eyes looked so funny. The pupils were pinpoints."
Hood sighed in relief. "Then that's all of it," he said, and got up. "Well, I think I'll see how Lydia's doing with dinner."
"Come back here." Harry Kane's voice was low and murderous. Hood burst out laughing.
"Stop that cackling," said Harry Kane. "Whatever Keller's got, we need it. Talk!"
Whatever Keller's got, we need-it. Matt felt he ought to protest. He didn't intend to be used by the Sons of Earth. But he couldn't interrupt now.
"It's a very limited form of telepathy," said Jay Hood. "And because it is so very limited, it's probably more dependable than more general forms. Its target is so much less ambiguous." He smiled. "We really ought to have a new name for it. Telepathy doesn't apply, not quite."
Three people waited patiently but implacably.
"Matt's mind," said Hood, "is capable of controlling the nerves and muscles which dilate and contract the iris of another man's eye." And he smiled, waiting for their response.
"So what?" asked Harry Kane. "What good is that?"
"You don't understand? No, I suppose you don't. It's more in my field. Do you know anything about motivational research?"
Three heads waggled No.
"The science was banned on Earth long, long ago because its results were being used for immoral advertising purposes. But they found out some interesting things first. One of them involved dilation and contraction of the pupil of the eye.
"It turns out that if you show a man something and measure his pupil with a camera, you can tell whether it interests him. You can show him pictures of his country's political leaders, in places where there are two or more factions, and his eyes will dilate for the leader of his own. Take him aside for an hour and talk to him, persuade
to change his political views, and his pupils will dilate for the other guy. Show him pictures of pretty girls, and the girl he calls prettiest will have dilated pupils. He doesn't know it. He only knows she looks interested. In him.
"I wonder," said Hood, smiling dreamily at himself. Some people love to lecture. Hood was one. "Could that be the reason the most expensive restaurants are always dark? A couple comes in, they look at each other across a dinner table, and they both look interested. What do you think?"
Harry Kane said, "I think you'd better finish telling us about Keller."
"He has," said Laney. "Don't you see? Matt's afraid of being seen by someone. So he reaches out with his mind and contracts the man's pupils whenever he looks at Matt. Naturally the man can't get interested in Matt."
"Exactly." Hood beamed at Laney. "Matt takes a reflex and works it in reverse to make it a conditioned reflex. I knew light had something to do with it. You see, Matt? It can't work unless your victim sees you. If he hears you, or if he gets a blip when you cross an electric-eye beam--'
"Or if I'm not concentrating on being scared. That's why the guard shot me."
"I still don't see how it's possible," said Laney. "I helped you do your research on this, Jay. Telepathy is reading minds. It operates on the brain, doesn't it?"
"We don't know. But the optic nerve is brain tissue, not ordinary nerve tissue."
Harry Kane stood up and stretched. "That doesn't matter. It's better than anything the Sons of Earth have put together. It's like a cloak of invisibility. Now we have to figure out how to use it."
The missing car was still missing. It was nowhere in the Implementation garages; it had not been found by the search squad, neither in the air nor on the ground. If policeman had taken it out for legitimate purposes, would have been visible; if it had not been visible, it would have been in trouble of some kind, and the pilot would have phoned a Mayday. Apparently it really had be stolen.
To Jesus Pietro, it was disturbing. A stolen car was one thing; an impossible stolen car was another.
He had associated Keller with miracles: with the miracle that had left him unhurt when his car fell into the void mist, with the miracle that had affected Hobart's memory last night. On that assumption he had sounded the "Prisoners Loose." And, lo! there were prisoners running amok in the corridors.
He had associated missing prisoners with a missing car with the miracles of Keller. Thus he had assumed a stole car where no car could have been stolen. And, lo! a car had indeed been stolen.
Then Major Jansen had called from the vivarium. No body had noticed, until that moment, that the sleep helmets were still running. How, then, had ninety-eight prisoners walked away?
Miracles! What the blazes was he fighting? One man, many? Had Keller been passenger or driver of that car? Had there been other passengers? Had the Sons of Earth discovered something new, or was it Keller alone?
That was an evil thought. Matthew Keller, come back from the void in the person of his nephew to haunt his murderer ... Jesus Pietro snorted.
He'd doubled the guard at the Alpha-Beta Bridge. Knowing that the bridge was the only way off the cliff and across the Long Fall River at the bottom, he had nonetheless set guards along the cliff edge. No normal colonist could leave Alpha Plateau without a car. (But could something abnormal walk unseen past the guards?)
And no fugitive would leave in a police car. Jesus Pietro had ordered all police cars to fly in pairs for the duration. The fugitives would be flying alone. As part colonist, Jesus Pietro had not been allowed to hear Millard Parlette's speech, but he knew it was over. Crew cars were flying again. If the fugitives stole a crew car, they might have a chance. But the Hospital would be informed immediately if a crew car was stolen. (Really? A police car had been stolen, and he'd had to find out for himself.)
Nobody and nothing had been found in the abandoned coral houses. (But would anything important have been seen?)
Most of the escaped prisoners were safe in the vivarium. (From which they had escaped before, without bothering to turnoff their sleeper helmets.)
Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts.
It would require brand new techniques.
Grimly he set out to evolve them.
The arguments began during dinner.
Dinner took place at the unconventional hour of three o'clock. It was good, very good. Lydia Hancock still looked like a sour old harridan, but to Matt, anyone who could cook like her deserved the benefit of the doubt. They had finished the mutton chops when Harry Kane turned to business.
"There are five of us left," he said. "What can we do to get the rest of us loose?"
"We could blow the pumping station," Hood suggested. It developed that the pumping station, which supplied Alpha Plateau with water from the Long Fall was the crew's only source of water. It was located at the base of the Alpha-Beta cliff. The Sons of Earth had long ago planted mines to blow it apart. "It would give us a diversion."
"And cut off the power, too," said Matt, remembering that hydrogen for fusion can be taken from water.