«But we felt the other ship blink in. That's how we spotted it. It was black, light-absorbing. We had to use radar to see it. But it was there.» Plank was feeling a vague uneasiness. «Commander Heath,» he said, «would you please return to your ship and run a check with your instruments?» «Aren't yours better?» Webb asked. «Please,» Plank said. «I'll go,» Webb said. They waited, Heath prowling, investigating, asking questions, which were answered by Plank. Then Webb was on the radio. «It's there,» Webb said. He read the coordinates. Plank searched the area and still found nothing. «Webb,» Plank said, «I can follow your radar beams. I want you to hold the beams on him for a moment.» «Right,» Webb said. Plank was computing. Atop the sphere, a weapon pod rotated. It was aimed at nothing, but the shuttle's beams said there was something. Just before Plank was about to fire Heath gasped. Not far away from them, the shuttle ship was breaking into colorful planes of chaos. Then it was gone. Plank fired at the same moment, but the release of energy from the weapon came just after he felt the blink that told of movement of the unseen ship. Then his wild searching revealed nothing. CHAPTER TEN Matt Webb was gone. Hara would not think the word, dead. He was
gone. The shuttle ship was gone, just as the last of the blink test vehicles was gone. She longed for the familiar instruments of an Earth ship, so that she might search the space around them to confirm what her eyes had told her, that the shuttle had broken into bright, geometric planes and then faded into nothing. Plank assured her that his instruments revealed nothing, but she could not see those instruments, could not read their findings. She had only Plank's word and Plank, himself, was not the Plank she had known, but a disembodied brain in a clear and beautiful crystal substance. An air of crisis hung around them. Outside, nearby as space is measured, their home system continued its eternal march around a star, which had birthed the energy to give them life. The system had not changed. The universe, save for its natural evolution, was unchanging. And yet Hara felt as if something had altered inside her, something that made her realize her life would never be the same. She stood beside
Walker Heath, staring out the viewport, willing her eyes to see the shuttle.
She felt a touch on her arm and turned to look into the almost lifelike face of Plank's mobile form. The hand on her arm was warm, humanly soft. She felt a shudder begin, but cut it off. «Help me think it out,» Plank said. She nodded. «Both of them couldn't be mistaken. I mean about seeing a ship out there, a ship my instruments can't see.» «No,» she said. «It's there,» Heath said. «Or it was.»
«Yes, it blinked out just before I fired at it,» Plank said. «I felt the blink. Why couldn't I see it?» «You're not seeing with human eyes,» Hara said. «You're seeing with ship's instruments. Wouldn't it be possible for those who built you, I mean the ship, to blank away certain areas? Leaving you blind to the ship that both Webb and Commander Heath saw?» Plank considered. «I don't think so. I am literally a part of this ship. I know every micrometer of her. I know the function of every circuit, the beginning and the end of each system.» «And yet you couldn't detect the ship,» Heath said. «But I'd know if there were tampering,» Plank said. «Would you?» Heath asked. «You've been wondering why, when you found yourself out in unknown space, you couldn't relate the position of the Sol system to any known landmark. You admitted that this was strange and you wondered how it could happen. Let's say that brain tampering could explain it. Would you know if someone had been playing about with your mind?» «I don't know,» Plank said. «No,» Heath said. «You would not know.» «Are you saying it was done?» Hara asked. «Very few people know,» Heath said. «Yes, there is a certain amount of preconditioning imposed upon every man who goes into deep space.» «When?» Hara asked unbelievingly. «Remember the final physical? Did you ever hear anyone say, coming out of the physical, that the thing seemed to last forever?» «As a matter of fact, I felt the same way myself,» Hara said, «but there was no loss of time.» «At least you were not aware of any loss of time,» Heath said. «Actually, you lost some three hours and forgetting that three hours was a minor part of the conditioning. The major purpose of the conditioning was to blank out, under certain circumstances, any knowledge of home.» «I think I understand,» Plank said. «I don't, however, like the idea of someone messing around with my mind.» «I think the secretary and others would be interested to know that in your case total memory loss did not occur,» Heath said. «But perhaps your, ah, alteration did not involve enough stress or pain to complete the job.» «Are you saying that if one of us were captured or tortured, that we would be unable to reveal the point of our origin?» Hara asked. «The program was implemented when ships began to disappear,» Heath said. «It was purely precautionary. But there were those who didn't accept the disappearances as being accidents. They feared that our ships were being seized somehow, by some rather powerful aliens. I, for one, argued that if one of our ships were captured as near to home as the Centauri systems, then anyone with a grain of intelligence would be able to cast about in near space and find the only possible source. I lost. Each man going into space was conditioned so that, under stress or torture, his mind would be wiped clean of any knowledge of the solar system, its makeup, its location, its position in relationship to anything in the galaxy.» «But it's so childish,» Hara said. «All an alien would have to do is follow a ship home.» «Man has always been a slightly paranoid creature,» Heath said. «We've always feared the unknown. And something out there, something unknown, was eating our ships. The precaution was somewhat silly, but it eased a few timid minds and allowed us to continue the space program. There were those who wanted to pull in, cease all travel outside the system.» «And you think that something similar to the mind tampering has been performed on me, on my systems,» Plank said. «It's a good guess.» «Excuse me,» Plank said. «I'll be busy for a while.» The mobile extension went off in the direction of the cargo hold. Plank was already withdrawn from it, concentrating himself, sending himself out, checking with minute care each tiny integrated part of himself. Hours later he rested, having found nothing. Hara and Heath were growing impatient. He instructed them on the use of the galley and left them again to return to the crucial area of the ship, the computer. He went painstakingly through all the circuits involved in detection of objects in space and, once again, was blanked. Reason told him than any tampering would be with those circuits involved in perceiving the outside universe. His examination told him that no tampering had been done. His knowledge told him that tampering had been accomplished in a way he could not detect. Irritable and frustrated, he directed a total probe of the volume of space around him, increasing power steadily, extending the circuits to their maximum capacity. Still nothing. The dark ship seen by both Heath and Webb had blinked away.