“So chances are that of this group, you would be the first to be hit by it,” Borland said. “So let’s put you at the head of the table. Now I’m comparatively stupid — at least, about fifty points below your figure, and that’s a military secret, by the way, ’cause brains are a nonsurvival trait in the Senate — and your girl here runs about ten points below that. This lad—”
“About one twenty-five,” Ivo said. “But it’s unbalanced. I have—”
“There went another military secret,” Brad muttered. “I don’t think Mr. Archer should—”
“I insist on taking my place in your theoretic lineup,” Ivo said seriously.
“Good. You’re here, and it’s a nice gradient, so might as well use you,” Borland said. “Now let’s bring in someone who sits at one hundred even to round it out.”
“There’s nobody on the station—” Afra began.
“Ask Beatryx,” Brad murmured.
“Ask — !”
“It is no insult to be average, intellectually,” Brad told her gently. “The rest of us are freaks, statistically.” Afra flushed and went out.
“High-tempered filly there,” Borland observed. “Technical secretary?”
“More — until two minutes ago.”
“Let’s get with it. You can activate that relay right now, right?”
“You seem to be assuming that we’re really going to watch it.”
“Lose your nerve, son? You knew it was coming. Step outside and leave me with it.”
“Senator, there’s no way to demonstrate the destroyer to you without destroying you. You’d be committing mental suicide.”
Borland squinted at him. “Say I see it and survive it. Say I assimilate what the aliens are trying to hide. Where would that put me, locally?”
“Either stupid enough for a chairmanship, or—”
Ivo understood the pause. The Senator was hardly stupid. If he should survive the destroyer with a whole mind, he might have at his command the secrets of the universe, literally. He could become the most powerful man on Earth. He was the type of individual willing to gamble total loss against the prospect of total victory.
He was serious. This was what he had come for. He would view the destroyer. And Brad could not allow him to make that gamble alone. The Senator’s victory might well be more costly to Earth than his defeat — unless Brad could solve the destroyer first.
Borland’s gaze was fierce. “You want it the hard way, junior?”
“Congressional subpoena?” Brad shrugged. “No, we’ll undertake this suicide pact now, together.”
“Do it, lad.”
Brad glanced at Ivo, saw that he wasn’t leaving, and slapped a button under the table. The television screen that filled the far wall burst into color. All three rotated to face it.
Ivo, astonished at the suddenness of the decision and action, realized then how neatly they had done it. The three of them constituted a bracket, to honor that pretext, and Brad would not have wanted either woman to take the risk. Afra would never have excluded herself voluntarily, had she known what was brewing.
Shape appeared, subtle, twisting, tortuous, changing. A large sphere of red — he could tell by the shading that it represented a sphere, in spite of the two-dimensionality of the image — and a small blue dot. The dot expanded into a sphere in its own right, lighter blue, and overlapped the other. The segment of impingement took on a purple compromise.
Ivo’s intuition caught on. His freak ability attuned to this display as readily as it had to the game of sprouts. This was an animated introduction to sets, leading into Boolean Algebra, with color as an additional tool. Through set theory it was possible to introduce a beginner to mathematics, logic, electronics and all other fields of knowledge — without the intervention of a specific language. Language itself could be effectively analyzed by this means. One riddle solved; the aliens had the means to communicate.
The colors flexed, expanded, overlapped, changed shapes and intensities and number and patterns in a fashion that to an ordinary person might seem random… but was not. There was logic in that patterning, above and beyond the logic of the medium. It was an alien logic, but absolutely rational once its terms were accepted. Rapidly, inevitably, the postulates integrated into an astonishingly meaningful whole. The very significance of existence was—
Ivo’s intuition leaped ahead, anticipating the denouement. The meaning was coming at him, striking with transcendent force.
He knew immediately that the sequence should be stopped. He tried to stand, to cry out, but his motor reflexes were paralyzed. He could not even close his eyes.
He did the next best thing: he threw them out of focus. The writhing image lost definition and its hold upon him weakened. Gradually his eyelids muscled down; then he was able to turn his head away.
His entire upper torso dropped on the table. He was too weak to act.
The program ground to its inevitable conclusion. He was aware of it, though he did not watch. There was no sound in the room.
The door burst open. “Brad!” Afra cried, distracted. “You didn’t wait!”
Ivo was jarred out of his trance. Strength returned. He lurched to his feet, finding his balance. He lumbered along the table, reaching for the button Brad had touched. He scratched under the surface, his fingers uncoordinated, trying to make it work, and finally the image cut off.
Afra unfroze in stages. She had been hooked already by the destroyer, just entering its second cycle, but had not been exposed to more than a few seconds of it. There had not been time for her mind to go.
Others were crowding into the room, intent on the seated men. Now Ivo allowed himself to look at his friend.
Bradley Carpenter sat silently, oblivious to Afra’s fevered ministrations. His eyes gazed without animation and his jaw was slack and moist. Already the station doctor was shaking his head negatively.
The Senator was slumped farther down the table. The doctor went to him next and performed an intimate check.
“He’s dead,” he said.
CHAPTER 3
A persistent rapping at the door brought Ivo out of an uncomfortable sleep. He was not used to the hammock, and the shock of what had happened was too fresh and raw. He had not forgotten that he occupied the apartment of a man whose mind was virtually dead; he felt like an intruder.
He righted himself and stumbled across the compartment. He crashed open the sliding door, rubbing his eyes.
Afra stood there, lovely in bathrobe and slippers. Her sunburst hair was tied under a nebulous kerchief, up and back in the manner of a busy housewife, and she wore no makeup, but to Ivo she was dazzling.
Her blue gaze smote him. “Special delivery,” she said without humor. “Telegram.” She held out an envelope.
Ivo accepted it, then became abruptly aware of his condition. He was standing before this beautiful girl in sleep-rumpled jockey shorts. “I — thanks. Must change.”
She put her hand against the door, preventing closure. “Is it yours?”
He looked at the address. It was a stylized representation of an arrow. Nothing else.
“Now that just might signify entropy,” she said, stepping forward and so forcing him to jump back. “Time’s Arrow, as it were. But I remembered that your first name, Ivo, is a variant of the Teutonic Ivon, meaning a military archer. And your last name—”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, ill at ease. If only he had something on!
“The feminine form would be Yvonne,” she continued blithely, pushing him back another step. “Names always derive from something interesting. Mine means ‘A greeter of people’ — Teutonic, again.”