There were ragings and accusations and counter-accusations. A man—a domestic animal—had been able to defy transmitted thought A man—a source of food—had brought about the death of one of their number. He was still at large. He was still unsubdued. When a dozen of them concentrated their thoughts upon him, each had felt full assurance that their thoughts were absorbed in his brain. They had been absorbed! But without effect....
There came an icy, cold thought in the sunshine. Perhaps it was not a man who defied them, but a member of another non-human race, from another world still, who roved this planet and was immune to the power of their race. If that were so, he must be destroyed. The life of every one of them depended on it. But they must no longer attempt to overwhelm him with pure thought. Men must be used. They must smother him under their numbers. The lives of men did not matter. Every human under their control must search for this creature. If he could be captured by men, that must be done. And he must be handled very cautiously. He could be forced to reveal what he knew of other races able to travel from world to world. Their own race had once been masters of one planet only, long centuries ago. When a spaceship of another race landed on it, the members of the space-ship's crew were overwhelmed by the thoughts of the Things. But their ancestors had been wise. They had not been—the thought was savage—foolishly gluttonous. They had controlled the newcomers, and the newcomers took them back to their own planet, and now the race which roamed the stars was subject to the race which could transmit its thoughts. Here was a new world for them, with an infinitude of subjects to serve and nourish them. With caution, all would go well. But this single immune must be caught and the degree of danger he represented learned....
The icy thoughts went on convincingly. The other thoughts that raced back and forth changed gradually. Some still raged and some still seemed to gibber incoherently from the shock of the death of their fellow, and the manner of it. But others concentrated their thoughts upon the men under their control. They commanded a man-hunt.
It was beginning when night fell. It continued through the night. It went on through the forenoon, with weakened humans collapsing from the demands upon their strength beyond the normal requirements of their masters.
But near midday there came a triumphant icy thought again. The problem was solved! The fugitive had written a letter and put it in a box to be gathered up and taken where he wished it to go. It was directed to be taken to that entity known as Security. It had been opened by a man under control, according to his orders. And according to his orders he had communicated it to the thinker of icy thoughts. The fugitive was a man, no different from other men. He had experimented with the sending of thoughts and had been condemned to imprisonment. He had escaped, and understood the subjugation of the people about him. He had tried to send this information to the entity called Security, but it was safely intercepted. Security would not receive it. He was only a man. He was the only man who could endanger them. Because Security had forbidden any other man even to study the means by which all of mankind would be enslaved!
The manhunt must go on. If he were killed it did not matter, now. But—the icy thought was suddenly insanely hateful—if he could be left unsubjugated while he was killed very, very, very slowly, it would be more adequate revenge for his insolence in daring to kill one of Them....
10
Morning again. Men on watch at every bridge. Men patrolling every highway. Baying bloodhounds in the hills, trailing a man who had killed a girl whose parents had befriended him—so the story ran—and then when her family left their house to attend her funeral, had robbed that house and wantonly set it on fire to burn to the ground. Fury went over the countryside wherever men repeated the story to each other. The Things made them believe it, of course, but they thought it their own conviction.
Rage filled every human being. Bitter, yammering hate of a man known only as "Jim"—Sally's father told so much—and who was described as thus-and-so in appearance, and who wore a foolish cap made out of iron wire. Maybe he was a lunatic. The cap seemed to indicate it.
Sane men didn't wear caps of iron wire. It was illogical and monstrous and immoral to wear caps made of iron wire. If a man wore a cap made of iron wire, though he were your father or husband or brother, he should be seized at any cost in bloodshed and taken at once to Clearfield. No man should ever wear caps of iron wire....
Throughout all the mountains the conviction spread with the speed of flickering, racing thoughts, that no man should ever wear iron wire anywhere about his head. It was the one illogical item in the consciousness of the folk who searched ragingly for Him. But small round hairless things sent out that thought as persistently as they drove the domestic animals called man upon the quest for Him. They could give commands and impose thoughts at any distance, upon their slaves. But men could not report back to the Things except by human speech.
That was the principal drawback to the search—that and the fact that only a verbal description of Jim was available. No Little Fella knew what Jim looked like, save by the description given by Sally's father and her two gangling brothers, and the other description given by two men who had been left bound with caps of iron wire upon their heads. Those two men were now dead. They had not protected the Thing that Jim destroyed so terribly. They had not obeyed Its orders. They had allowed themselves to be knocked unconscious and bound and—via the caps—to be made incapable of receiving orders. And there could be no excuse for failure to serve and protect their master. So they were dead, and two Things had greedily indulged their gluttony in bringing about their death.
But all the skill and wisdom of men and Things was directed to the quest for Jim. The Things sent thoughts to guide the search and keep it at fever heat. Men were told to hate him, and they hated. They were told that he was a monster of criminality, and they believed it. They searched and searched with unflagging zeal, though the bodies of many of them were over-thin and weakened by their masters' other demands upon their strength.
Fresh men arrived to join in the search. They came in heavy lumbering busses, which discharged their loads at first in Clearfield. They continued to arrive as the morning wore on to midday. Sometimes one bus-load at a time. Sometimes a fleet of three or four. Human headquarters were set up in the village. Then couriers were needed, and presently motorcyclists roared into the village, wearing police uniforms. All were raging. All were filled with bitter hate. And all were passionately convinced that any man who wore a cap of iron wire upon his head was somehow sub-human, somehow monstrous, somehow an individual to hate with a poisonous loathing.
Jim Hunt watched the arrival of these outside reinforcements for the hunt with, at first, a blank amazement He began to suspect the truth only when a fleet of six huge interurban busses lumbered down a dirt road on the way to Clearfield, and he saw them from the brushwood beside the highway. Every bus was jammed with men, civilians all. He saw their faces, and he had not seen too many of the Little Fellas' subjects, but he recognized a certain expression worn by every one. It meant that someone listened regularly to a soundless insinuating thought in his own mind, saying, "Nice.... Nice.... Everything is nice.... Everyone is happy...." It meant that a look of unearthly tranquility was a sign that its wearer served loathsome pinkish hairless monsters, and was passionately convinced that he did so of his own will.