“Dick, you’ve been jittering like a witch,” she said one evening, “about something I can’t see any reason for. But you have a reason, or you wouldn’t be doing it. So break down and tell me.”
“I can’t, confound it. I know I’m always in a rush to get a thing done, but not like this. I’m all of a twitter inside. I can’t sleep…”
Dorothy snickered. “You can’t? If what you were doing last night wasn’t sleeping it was the most reasonable facsimile thereof I’ve ever seen. Or heard.”
“Not like I ought to, I mean. Nightmares. Devils all the time sticking me with pitchforks. Do you believe in hunches?”
“No,” she said, promptly. “I never had any. Not a one.”
“I never did, either, and if this is one I never want to have another. But it could be a hunch that we ought to be investigating that alien galaxy of DuQuesne’s. Whatever it is, I want to go somewhere and I haven’t the faintest idea where.”
“Oh? Listen!” Dorothy’s eyes widened. “I’ll bet you’re getting an answer to that message we sent out!”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Can’t be. Telepathy has got to be something you can understand.”
“Who besides you ever said it would have to be telepathy? And who knows what telepathy would have to be like? Come on, let’s go tell Martin and Peggy!”
“Huh?” he yelped. “Tell M. Reynolds Crane, the hardest boiled skeptic that event went unhung, that I want to go skyshooting to hellangone off into the wild blue yonder just because I’ve got an itch that I can’t scratch?”
“Why not?” She looked him steadily in the eye. “We’re exploring terra incognita, Dick. How much do you really know about that mind of yours, the way it is now?”
“Okay. Maybe they’ll buy it; you did. Let’s go.”
They went; and, a little to Seaton’s surprise, Crane agreed with Dorothy. So did Margaret. Hence three hours later, the big sky-rover was on her way.
Four days out, however, Seaton said, “This isn’t the answer, I don’t think. The itch is still there. So what?”
There was silence for a couple of minutes, then Dorothy chuckled suddenly. Sobering quickly, she said, with a perfectly straight face, “I’ll bet it’s that new department head girl-friend of yours, Dick; the pistol-packing mama with the wiggle. She wants to see the big, bold, handsome Earthman again. And if it is, I’ll scratch…”
Seaton jumped almost out of his chair. “You’re not kidding half as much as you think you are, pet. That crack took a good scratch at exactly where it itches.” He put on his remote-control helmet and changed course. “And that helps still more.” He thought for minutes, then shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’m not getting a thing… not anything more at all. How many of you remember either ReeToe Prenk or the girl well enough to picture either of them accurately in your minds?”
They all remembered one or both of the Rayseenians.
“Okay. This’ll sound silly. It is silly, for all the tea in China, but let’s try something. All join hands, picture either or both of them, and think at them as hard as we can. The thought is simply ‘we’re coming.’ Okay?”
More than half sheepishly, they tried it — and it worked. At least Seaton said, “Well, it worked, I guess. Anyway, for the first time in weeks, it’s gone. But I didn’t get a thing. Nothing whatever. Not even a hint either that we were being paged or that our reply was being received. Did any of you?”
None of them had.
“Huh!” Seaton snorted. “If this is telepathy they can keep it — I’ll take Morse’s original telegraph!”
A week or so after the Skylark of Valeron left the neighborhood of Ray-See-Nee, that planet’s new government began to have trouble. Ree-Toe Prenk had said and had believed that whoever controlled the capital controlled the world, but that was not true in his case. It had always been true previously because the incoming powers had always been of the same corrupt-to-the-core stripe as those who were ousted — and when corruption has been the way of life for generations it is deep-rooted indeed.
There were, of course, other factors behind the unrest. But neither Prenk nor any other human knew about them then.
All the district bosses had always gone along with the Big Boss as a matter of course.
Not one of them cared a whit who ran the world, as long as his own privileges and perquisites and powers and takes were not affected. Prenk, however, was strictly honest and strictly just. If he should succeed in taking over Ray-See-Nee’s government in full, every crook and boodler on the planet would lose everything he had; possibly even his life. Thus, while the new Premier held the capital — in a rapidly deteriorating grip — his influence outside that city’s limits varied inversely as about the fourth power of the distance.
This resistance, while actual enough, was in no sense overt. Every order was ostensibly obeyed to the letter; but everything deteriorated at an accelerating rate and Prenk could do nothing whatever about it. Whenever and wherever Prenk was not looking, business went on as usual gambling, drugs, prostitution, crime and protection — but he could not prove any of it. Neither uniformed police nor detectives could find anything much amiss.
They made arrests, but no suspect was ever convicted: The prosecution’s cases were weak. The juries brought in verdicts of “innocent”, usually, without leaving the box.
Even when, in desperation, Prenk went — supposedly top secretly — to an outlying city, fully prepared to stage a questioning that would have made Torquemada blush, he did nothing and he learned nothing. Every person on his list had vanished tracelessly and every present incumbent had abundant proof of innocence. Nor did any of them know why they had been promoted so suddenly. They were just lucky, they guessed.
It was indeed baffling. It would have been less so if Prenk had had any notion of the universe-wide stir of mighty events just beginning to bubble — if he had been able, as we are now able, to fit together all these patchwork stories into one nearly Norlaminian fabric of universal history.
But he wasn’t — and, for his peace of mind, perhaps that was just as well!
Premier Ree-Toe Prenk sat at his desk in the Room of State. Kay-Lee Barlo, shapely legs crossed and pistol at hip, sat at his left. Sy-By Takeel, the new Captain-General of the Guard, stood at ease at his right.
“Whoever is doing this is a smooth, shrewd operator,” Prenk said. “So much so that you two are the only people I can trust. And I don’t suppose either of you will ever be approached. Probably neither of you would be bought even if you offered yourselves ever so deftly for sale.”
“I wouldn’t be, certainly,” Takeel said. “Captains general of mercenaries don’t sell out. I wouldn’t answer for any of my lieutenants, though, if there’s loot to be had. There is here, I take it?”
“Unlimited quantities, apparently. So you, too, are subject to assassination?”
The soldier shrugged. “Oh, yes, it’s an occupational hazard. How about you, Exalted Barlo? No chance either, I’d say?”
“None at all. My stand is too well known. Half my people would stab me in the back if they dared to and they all look me in the eye and lie in their Mi-Ko-Ta-cursed teeth. I wish Ky-El Mokak and his people would get back here quick,” Kay-Lee said wistfully.
“So do I,” Prenk said, glumly. “But even if we had a sixth-order tightbeamer and could use it, we haven’t the slightest idea of where he came from or where he went to.”