And Dawnay, noting the slow improvement in her patient, hardly dared to believe that she had succeeded. Only when the doctor came and made prolonged and successful tests of muscular reflexes did she admit even to herself that the near-impossible had happened.
It was Andre herself who settled the matter. 'I am getting well,' she said one morning as she waited for another injection.
'You have saved my life.'
'You have saved yourself,' Dawnay said gently. You and John and the computer calculations.'
'What will he do now - now that I'm to go on?' Andre asked.
'I don't know.' Dawnay had wondered so much herself that she had been awaiting and dreading this question. 'He's divided. One part wants to go on. The other is frightened.
We're all like that. But fear doesn't entirely stop us going forward.'
'And I stand for going forward?' Andre asked.
'For much more. Down here on our cosy little earth we used to think we were protected from the outside by sheer distance. Now we see that intelligence - pure, raw intelligence - can cross great gulfs of space and threaten us.'
'You still think of me as a threat from outside?'
'No,' Dawnay answered. 'No, I don't.'
Andre smiled. 'Thank you for that. Can't I see him soon?'
'You're strong enough to get-up,' Dawnay agreed. 'He should see you. Yes,' she went on after a pause. 'We'll go together when you can walk.'
One evening the following week Fleming went back to the computer block. Partly to ease his conscience, and partly because he needed some fairly unskilled help, he had invited Yusel to work on the computer. The salary was good, which would help Lamka and the child.
When Dawnay found them there, the Arab excused himself and she was left alone with Fleming.
'John,' she said, 'Andre's here.'
'Where ?'
'Outside.' She smiled a little grimly at Fleming's amazement.
'She's cured, John. We've done it. She'll be all right now.'
At first she thought he was not going to say anything at all. Then he asked, in a hurt voice. 'Why couldn't you have told me?'
'I wasn't sure which way it was going.'
He stared at her with amazement. 'So you've repaired her, and the first thing you do is to bring her here - back to the machine! It's all so easy, so planned, just as if we're being used.' He turned away with a frown. 'How can we go on competing with her, with this ?'
'That depends on you,' Dawnay replied. 'I can't help you.
My job here is finished. I'm flying home tomorrow.'
'You can't!' he exclaimed.
'You wanted her well,' she reminded him, but he looked at her and through at a ghost.
'You can't leave me like this,' he implored. 'Not with her here.'
She had never before seen him plead for help. 'Look, John,' she said kindly. 'You're not a child that hides behind its mother's skirts. You're supposed to be a scientist. Andre didn't use you or me. It was we who turned the world upside down. It was Andre who saved it.' She moved to the door, beckoning to the waiting girl. 'I'll see you before I go.'
Andre walked quickly towards Fleming, stopping before him and smiling like a happy schoolgirl. She was still thin and pale, and her eyes looked very big above her high, sharp cheek-bones; but she no longer looked ill. She was alive and vibrant, with a kind of fined-down beauty which touched him in spite of himself.
'I can hardly believe that you're like this,' he said.
'You're not glad?'
'Of course I'm glad.'
'Are you afraid of me?'
'So long as you're a puppet, a mechanical doll.'
Colour suffused her cheeks and she tossed her hair away from her face. 'And you're not? You still think of yourself as a divine, unique creation. Three thousand millions of you on this earth alone. They - we - are all puppets, dancing on strings.'
'Let's dance then.' He kept his hands in his pockets, his body motionless.
'I will do whatever you wish,' she told him. 'All I know is one certain thing. We cannot go separate ways.'
He put out his hand and brushed it against hers. 'Then let's leave here,' he said. He turned and looked at the grey bulk of the computer. 'After we've destroyed this. We'll make a real job of it this time. Then we'll find somewhere with peace, like that island we were on with old what's-his-name - Preen.'
'All right,' she said. 'We will do as you want. I have often told you that. But have you thought? Have you really thought? Do you think we'd be allowed to live in peace any more than Preen was? The only safe place for us is here. If we accept this and its protection we accept what is planned.'
'Planned! That damned word. And what is planned?'
'What you want. It will be done here and in the rest of the world.'
'I'm afraid I'm not cut out to be a dictator.'
'The only possible sort of dictator is someone who is not cut out for it,' she said. 'Someone who knows.'
'Knows what?' he asked.
She took hold of his arm and began to lead him across to the observation bay of the computer.
'I'll show you what I showed Mm'selle Gamboul,' she said.
'Stand close beside me.'
Obediently he stood by the panel and brought in the phase switches as she called the numbers. She sat down, alert and expectant, with a hand on his.
The computer began to purr. Relays snicked into operation, the screen glowed. Like a film coming into focus the shadows grew smaller and sharper as they took form and perspective.
'It looks like the moon,' Fleming murmured. 'Dead mountains, dust-filled valleys.'
'It isn't,' Andre whispered, without looking away from the screen. 'It isn't the moon. It's the planet from which the message came.'
'You mean they're showing us themselves?' Fleming stared at the bizarre shadows and reflections. 'The lighting's completely weird.'
'Because of the source,' she explained, 'the light from their sun is blue.'
She concentrated on the tube and the picture began to shift. The scenery moved horizontally at increasing speed until the screen became a blur of dazzling light. Again the scene slowed down and became stationary. There was a terrible stillness about it this time, the absolute rigidity of timeless age.
An enormous plain stretched into the background where it merged with the dark sky. In the foreground stood monstrous elongated shapes, placed haphazardly and apparently half buried in the level, soft-looking surface.
Fleming felt the skin on the back of his neck prickling.
'My God,' he whispered, 'what are they?'
'They are the ones,' said Andre. 'The ones who sent it.
The ones I'm suppose to be like.'
'But they're lifeless.' He corrected himself. 'They're immobile.'
She nodded, her eyes wide and fixed on the screen. 'Of course,' she said. 'Really big brains cannot move around any more than this computer. There's no need.'
'The surface of them seems solid. How do they see?'
'Eyes would be useless. The blue light would destroy all tissue and nerve fibre as you know them. They see by other means, just as their other senses are different from those people' - she hesitated - 'people like us - have developed.'
The picture began to crumble. Sections detached themselves and spun off the screen. Quickly everything faded.
'Is that all there is?' Fleming felt deprived of something.
Andre turned her face to him. It glistened with perspiration; her eyes were enormous, the pupils distended. 'Yes,'
she smiled. 'That's all. They are the ones. They wanted us to see their planet. They believed it would be enough. Perhaps as a warning. Perhaps to show what time brings and how to survive. How we could do the same.'
Fleming glanced back at the dark screen. To him those shapes still stood clear and definite in their piteous immobility against the glass. 'No,' he said.