'You would, said Daniels, 'if those two didn't work. Let's say, just for argument, that not only the androids failed to return, but likewise the ships that they were on. That they just blasted off into nothingness and there was no further word of them. Not only would no more of the androids be made, but the record of the failure would be buried deep inside the files. It wouldn't be anything that Space Administration would want someone digging out.
'But they couldn't know the androids had anything to do with the disappearance of the ships. In the old days, and even now, there are ships that don't come back.
Daniels shook his head. 'One ship maybe. Anything could happen to a single ship. But two ships with one thing in common, each ship with an android aboard — then it wouldn't take anyone long to figure the android might have been the reason. Or that the android set up a certain circumstance…
'I don't like it, complained the chief of staff. 'I don't like the smell of it. I don't want to get tangled up with Space. They swing a lot of weight and they wouldn't like it if we tried to pin it on them. And, anyhow, I don't see how all this would tie up with Blake turning, as you seem to think, into a wolf.
'I told you once before, said Daniels. 'Not a wolf. Into an alien that has the appearance of a wolf. Say the werewolf principle didn't work the way it was thought it would. The android was intended to turn into an alien form, utilizing the data extracted from a captured alien, and to live as that alien for a time. Then the alien data would be erased and the android would be a man again, ready to be changed into something else. But suppose…
'I see, said Winston. 'Suppose it didn't work. Suppose the alien data couldn't be erased. Suppose the android stayed both alien and human — two creatures and either one it wished.
'That, sir, said Daniels, 'is what I have been thinking. And there is something else. We took an electro-encephalogram of Blake and it showed up something strange. As if he had more minds than one. Like shadows of other minds showing in the tracings.
'Shadows? You mean more than one extra mind?
'I don't know, said Daniels. 'The indications were not pronounced. Nothing that you could be sure of.
Winston got up from behind the desk and paced up and down the floor.
'I hope you're wrong, he said. 'I think you are. It's crazy.
'It's one way, Daniels told him, stubbornly, 'that we can explain what happened.
'But one thing we don't explain. Blake was found frozen, in a capsule. No sign of the ship. No other debris. How do we figure that one out?
'We don't, said Daniels. 'There is no way that we can. We can't know what happened. When you talk about debris, you are presuming the ship was destroyed and we don't know if that happened. Even if it had been, over a couple of centuries the debris would have drifted apart, It might even have been in the vicinity of the capsule and not been seen. In space, visibility is poor. Unless something picks up light and reflects it, you wouldn't know that it was there.
'You think perhaps the crew got on to what had happened and grabbed Blake and froze him, then shot him out into space inside the capsule? One way of getting rid of him? An unmessy way to do it?
'I wouldn't know, sir. There is no way that we can know. All we can do is speculate and there are too many areas of speculation for us to be certain we have concentrated on the right one. If the crew did what you said, getting rid of Blake, then why didn't the ship come back? You explain one thing and then you have another to explain and perhaps another and another. It would seem a hopeless task to me.
Winston stopped his pacing, came back to the desk and sat down in the chair. He reached out his hand for the communicator.
'What was the name of this man who testified?
'Lukas. Dr Lukas. I don't recall his first name. It would be in the papers. The switchboard operator more than likely has one.
'I suppose we'd better get the senators down here, too, if they can come. Horton — Chandler Horton. Who is the other one?
'Solomon Stone.
'OK, said Winston. 'we'll see what they think of this. Them and Lukas.
'Space, too, sir?
Winston shook his head. 'No. Not right at the moment. We'll need more to go on before we start tangling with Space.
16
The den was small and close — a projecting ledge of rock with a space eroded out beneath it. Above it the ground rose sharply, below it the ground fell steeply away. At the foot of the hill a stream of water ran raggedly over a pebbly bed. On the slope, at the lip of the cave, the ground was littered with tiny slabs of rock — the shards that through the years had been eroded out of the face of the stone. The slabs shifted treacherously under Quester's paws as he scrambled for the cave, but he managed to squeeze himself into it, twisting around until he could face outwards.
For the first time now he felt a measure of safety, with his flanks and back protected, but he knew that it was an illusory safety. The creatures of this planet, even now, perhaps, were hunting him and it would not be long, he was certain, before they'd be combing through the area. Certainly he had been seen by the metallic creature which had come charging after him with its howling windstorm and its glaring eyes that shot out light before it. He shuddered as he recalled how he had barely gained the shelter of the trees just ahead of it. Another three lengths of his body to have gone and it would have overrun him.
He relaxed, willing his body to grow limp in every muscle.
His mind went out, checking, seeking, prying. There was life, more life than one would expect — an overcrowded planet, a place that swarmed with life. Tiny resting life, unthinking, unintelligent, existing but doing little more. There were small intelligences that rustled, restless, alert, afraid — but their intelligence so thin and barren that they were little more than aware of life and the dangers that might threaten it. One thing ran, seeking, hunting, with the red streak of killing pulsating in its mind, vicious and terrible and a very hungry thing. Three life forms were huddled in one place, some safe and hidden place, for their minds were snug and smug and warm. And others — many, many others. Life and some of the life with intelligence. But nowhere the sharp, bright, terrifying sense of the things that lived in the above-ground caves.
A messy planet, thought Quester, untidy and unneat, with too much life and water and too much vegetation, its air too thick and heavy and its climate far too hot. A place that gave one no rest at all, no sense of security, the sort of place where one must sense and watch and listen, and fear that, even so, an undetected danger might come slipping through the net and fasten on one's throat. The trees were moaning gently and he wondered, as he listened to them, if it were the trees themselves, or if the moaning came from the moving atmosphere that was blowing through them.
And as he lay there wondering, he knew that it was the friction of the wind against the substance of the trees and the rustling of the leaves, the groaning of the branches, that the trees themselves had no way to make a sound, that the trees and all the other vegetation upon this planet, which was called the Earth, were alive, but with no intelligence and no perceptive senses. And that the caves were buildings and that the humans were not tribal members, but formed sexual units which were known as families, and that a building in which a family lived was called a home.
The information bore down upon him like a tidal wave that curled above him and overwhelmed him in a moment of blind panic and he came battling out of it and the tidal wave was gone. But in his mind, he knew, lay all the knowledge of the planet, every shred of information which lay in the mind of Changer.