Vanaman found her in Medical Section on the third day, a red-eyed, bitter Vanaman, obviously exhausted, obviously fighting for the last vestige of control, obviously helpless to thwart the creeping paralysis in the ship under his command “You’ve got to hit Eberle with something,” he said harshly. “I can’t make him budge.”
“Who is Eberle?” the girl wanted to know.
“The Analogue dispatcher. He won’t send an Analogue down.”
“I thought you weren’t going to.”
“I’ve got to do do something, Relief or no Relief, but Eberle is dragging his feet.”
She found John Eberle in the Analogue Banks, working by himself, quietly and efficiently and foolishly, testing wires, testing transmission, dismantling the delicate electronic units and reassembling them in an atmosphere of chaos around liim. The operative cubicles were empty, the doors hanging open, alarm signals winking unheeded.
“What are you doing with them?” Dorie asked, staring down at the dismantled Analogues.
Eberle grinned foolishly. “Testing them,” he said “Just testing.”
“But Vanaman says we need them down on the surface now. Can’t you see that?”
Eberle’s smile faded. “I can’t send them down there.”
“Why not?”
“Who’s going to operate them?” the dispatcher asked. “What will the operators due for Relief?” His eyes narrowed. “Would you want to take one down?”
“I’m not trained to take one down. But there are operators here who are.”
Eberle shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you’re DepPsych, maybe you’ve got some magic formula to make the men go down without any Relief to count on. I can’t make them. I’ve already tried it.”
She stared at him, and felt a wave of helplessness sweep over her. It was as though she were standing in an enormous tangle-field, and all her efforts to free herself only settled it more firmly on her shoulders. She knew it wasn’t anything as simple as fear or cowardice that was paralyzing the ship.
It was more than that, something far deeper and more basic.
Once again she was forced back to where it had all started, the only possible channel of attack.
John Provost. She headed for the isolation cubicle.
Thirty-six hours, and she had barely slept; when exhaustion demanded rest, her mind would not permit it, and she would toss in darkness, groping for land, for something solid to grasp and cling to.
Provost sucked up most of her time—wasted hours, hours that drained her physically and emotionally. She made no progress, found no chink in the brutal armor. When she was not with him she was in the projection booth, studying the monitor tapes, watching and listening, trying somehow to build a composite picture of this enigmatic Enemy that had appeared from the depths of space, struck, and then drawn back to the inaccessible surface of Saturn. There were too many pictures, that was the trouble. None of them fit. None corresponded to the others. She was trying to make sense from nonsense, and always the task seemed more hopeless than before.
And yet, slowly, a pattern began to emerge.
An alien creature, coming by intent or accident into a star system with intelligent life, advanced technology. The odds were astronomical against its ever happening. Probably not a truly unique occurrence in the universe, but very possibly unique for these alien creatures.
What then?
A pattern was inevitable . . . .
She answered a violent summons from Vanaman. He demanded progress with John Provost, and she told him there was no progress. He paced the floor, lashing out at her with all the fury that had been building up as the hours had passed. “That’s what you’re here for,” he told her harshly. “That’s why we have DepPsych—to deal with emergencies. We’ve got to have progress with that man.”
Dorie Kendall sighed. “I’m doing everything I can. Provost has a good, strong mind. He has it focussed down on one tiny pinpoint of awareness, and he won’t budge it from there.”
“He won’t!” Vanaman roared. “What about you? You people are supposed to have techniques. You can break him away from it.”
“Do you want him dead?” she asked. “That’s what you’ll get if I drive him too hard. He’s clinging to his life, and I mean that literally. To him, I am the Turner girl, and all that is sustaining him is this vicious drive to destroy me, as quickly as he can, as horribly as he can. You can use your imagination, I think.”
Vanaman stared at her. She met his haggard eyes defiantly. Vanaman broke first. It was almost pitiable, the change; he seemed to age before her eyes. The creases in his face seemed to harden and deepen, and his heavy hands—threatening weapons before—fell limp. Like a spirited dog that had been whipped and broken by a brutal master, he crumbled. “All right. I can’t fight you.” He spread his hands helplessly. “You know that I’m beaten, don’t you? I’m cornered, and there’s no place to turn. I know why Provost dreaded those long waits between shifts now. That’s all I can do—wait for the blow to fall.”
“What blow?” said the girl.
“Maybe you can tell me.” A strangled sound came from Vanaman’s throat. “Everything we’ve done against them has been useless. Our attempt to contact them, our probing for them and fighting them on the surface—useless. When they got ready to hit us here, they hit us. All our precautions and defenses didn’t hinder them.” He glared at her. “All right, you tell me. What is it we’re waiting for? When is the blow coming? From where?”
“I don’t think there’s going to be any blow,” said Dorie Kendall.
“Then you’re either blind or stupid,” Vanaman snapped. “They’ve driven a gaping hole in our defenses. They know that. Do you think they’re just going to let the advantage slide?”
“Human beings might not, but they’re not human beings. You seem to keep forgetting that.”
Words died on Vanaman’s lips. He blinked and frowned. “I don’t follow you,” he said after a moment.
“So far, everything they’ve done fits a pattern,” Dorie said. “They have physical destructive power, but the only times they’ve used it was to prevent physical contact. So then after they struck, what did they do? Press forward? Humans might, but they didn’t. Instead, they moved back to the least accessible geographical region they could find in the solar system, a planetary surface we could not negotiate, and then they waited. When we sent down Analogue probers, they fought us, in a way, but what had made that fight so difficult? Can you tell me?”
“The fact that we didn’t know what we were fighting, I suppose,” Vanaman said slowly. “The Analogue operatives didn’t know what was coming next, never two attacks the same.”
“Exactly,” said the girl. “They knocked us off balance and kept us there. They didn’t use their advantage then. Everything was kept tightly localized until the Analogue operatives began to get their feet on the ground. You saw the same tapes I did. Those men were beginning to know what they were doing down there; they knew they could count on their conditioning and the Relief rooms to keep them from breaking, no matter how powerful the onslaught. So now, only now, the Enemy has torn that to ribbons, through the Turner girl.” She smiled. “You see what I mean about a pattern?”
“Maybe so,” Vanaman conceded, “but I don’t see why.”
“Look—when you poke a turtle with a stick, what happens? He pulls in his head and sits there. Just that one little aggressive act on your part gives you a world of information about how turtles behave. You could write a book about turtles, right there. But suppose it happened to be a snapping turtle you poked, and he took the end of the stick off. You wouldn’t need to poke him a second time to guess what he would do, would you? You already know. Why bother with a second poke?”