Randall Garrett

“ No one had yet determined the nature of the Enlissa language, but Bilford had worked out a method of getting yes-no answers out of him, and had, by the process of elimination, arrived at a star system that contained a planet which had been seeded by the aliens. And all Roysland wanted was a sample of the Enlissa animals.
There's an old saying which goes: "Some people have all the luck." It has echoed down the corridors of human history and human thought for a thousand centuries, in one form or another. ”

“ Allerdyce was still shaking his head. "How? They've been treated mentally against probing. They won't tell us where their home planets are, any more than our own men would—or could—tell them."
Roysland, in turn, shook his head. "That's not what I'm looking for. I'm not a military man; I'm a scientist—at least I think I am. I'm not looking for military bases; I'm looking for a planet where the Enlissa have planted their flora and fauna. That's what we do with a planet, isn't it? ”

“ Roysland said, "mankind has known for centuries the old dictum that 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,' but we sometimes forget how it works in practice. We still tend to look from cause to effect and from effect to cause. ”

“ The solidiphone image of General Director Eckisster stood in the center of the room. He looked around and then focused his gaze on Roysland Dwyn. "Listen here, Roysland," he said belligerently, "why haven't you done anything? What's the situation now?"
Roysland looked at the general director and put on his nastiest grin. "You've got the report; we haven't done anything. We've fired the Enlissa projector six times. There is only a residual backwash that is harmless. You could fire the thing in your living room if you wanted to. Meanwhile, we want to know what the effect of the beam is." ”

“ The X-69 now possessed no armament except the aJ guns.
The first volley of screenbusters left the ship and slammed suddenly into the ultravelocity that only an unmanned torpedo is capable of. Even an antiacceleration field isn't one hundred per cent perfect. In no-space drive, a ship can accelerate at the spatial equivalent of better than a hundred thousand gravities without hurting the crew. ”

“ Roysland, still grinning, looked at the subelectronics man. "How about it, Kiffer?"
Kiffer shook his head. "I doubt it. There's a backwash, of course, as there is to any kind of no-space generator. But it's almost indetectable, even with subelectronic instruments. There's certainly not enough to hurt anyone. Besides, the emission would be from the exciter in the gun, and it would hit the men in one direction; that might slow their neural currents up a little for a fraction of a second, but it wouldn't do anything like what we have here, even if it were strong enough." ”

“ So it wasn't to be wondered at that the Special Weapons technicians couldn't figure out for the life of them what the projectors from the Enlissa ship did, or why they worked. If they had been the type of men to be stymied by seemingly-unbreakable barriers, they would have gone off their collective rockers in the first three weeks.
One by one, Roysland Dwyn called in the best analysts from every sector of the human-controlled galaxy. And slowly the information began to build up. ”

“ That chin-rubbing gesture was significant to Kiffer; he knew Roysland well enough to know that the big man was thinking. Kiffer kept his mouth shut and waited.
Finally, Roysland snapped his fingers. "Look," he said sharply, "why aren't these things tested the way they're used?"
Kiffer looked puzzled. "The way they're used?" He paused a moment. "Oh, I see what you mean. Why aren't they test-fired while the ship is in no-space drive? That's easy. They have to be connected up to the trackers, and the trackers can't fire at indetectable objects. And you can't detect a meteorite in no-space drive. ”

“ Roysland lay back again and closed his eyes. "Obsidian," he said. Then, after a moment, "One: Why do they sacrifice a crew—even if it's only for a short time? Two: Why don't they use such an efficient weapon against ships that blast them out of the sky? Three: Why do they come in at a ship without firing anything at all?
"Until your hypothesis answers all of those questions—and a lot more besides—it isn't worth a damn."
Kiffer chewed at his upper lip and then looked at his wrist watch. "If you're going to test that thing in an hour, you'd better call Eckisster now." ”

“ Kiffer said: "Could it be some kind of subetheric vibration that does the trick?"
"You're the subelectronics man," Roysland said. "What do you think?"
Kiffer shrugged. "Subetherics are dangerous; near a projector, they can foul up electrical currents, provided the currents aren't too strong. They can knock a man out, or even kill him; but I never heard of any effect like this."
"What would it take to get an effect like this?" Roysland asked. "Figure it from that angle."
Taddibol looked excited. "Could it be that the enemy doesn't even have such a weapon?" ”

“ About the same number of our ships are equipped with aJ projectors.
"When a death-ray ship comes in on an aJ ship, the aJ guns cut it down and the crew is mindjammed. But if a death-ray ship comes in on one of our conventionally armed ships, they're blasted out of the sky because they figure that everyone aboard the ship is dead and they don't bother to fire any torpedoes. Our own torpedoes come as a pretty rude surprise. So the enemy has lost one hundred per cent of their death-ray equipped vessels in every engagement!" ”

“ But the tremendous acceleration of a war torpedo would crush any human body to a monomolecular film.
The torpedoes had to be small; only a very small no-space generator could achieve such velocities in so short a time. But their small capacity was capable of carrying enough subnuclear explosive to smash through the energy screens of the enemy ship.
They could not, however, breach the vodium hull itself or kill personnel within. That was where the "flies" came in. Their job was to smash through the breach in the energy screen, open the hull, and destroy life within. ”

“ Eckisster's type of needling might make a man work harder, it might even make him think harder—but it won't make him think in a different way or look at data from a new angle. Even when your theories are wrong, you use them in such a way that they uncover the data which proves them wrong. ”

“ Kiffer Samm looked up at the great frame of his superior, and grinned sardonically. "O.K. Now we've got the effect and the weapon that causes it. Can we correlate the two?"
Roysland shrugged his broad shoulders. "Sure we can. But how long will it take us?"
The laws of the universe may not differ from place to place, but the methods of using them do; and the particular laws that may be discovered in one place aren't necessarily the same ones that are discovered in another. No two human beings think alike ”

“ A ship traveling above the velocity of light cannot detect a material body unless there is subetheric radiation coming from the detected body. A star, naturally, can be detected. At those velocities, a star's subetheric radiation can be seen as ordinary light. But there is no way to detect a nonradiating body; in order to fire at a target, it's necessary to cut out the drive and use ordinary detectors to find a nonradiating body such as a meteorite. ”

“ But our own system is so different that the beam doesn't even effect us."
"The answer's been right in front of our eyes for a long time," Kiffer said. "The backwash from the aJ's has too long a wave length to be effective, and the Enlissa's death ray is too short. But the complex harmonic of the two is just right. It creates a momentary field that causes the loop-feedback to start in the prefrontal lobes. From what we can gather, the effect is one of intense, overpowering curiosity—inwardly directed." ”

“ Men in ships had been killed, of course, but no civilian had yet lost his life as a direct result of the Enlissa-Human war. The Enlissa hadn't gotten in close enough to occupied planets—yet.
But, until a year ago, it had seemed inevitable that they would. The screen of ships that ranged around the periphery of the human-inhabited section of the galaxy was getting thinner all the time. The Enlissa had more ships, and, rather than make a direct attack, they seemed to prefer to punch at the screen, weakening it steadily. ”

“ He reached out to snap off the solidiphone switch, but Eckisster, still smiling benevolently, was already fading. Roysland got the impression that his smile, Cheshirelike, still lingered after he had gone.
The crew of the Enlissa ship were the first live aliens ever seen by human beings. Their corpses had been dissected by the thousands, but the living organism had never been investigated before.
"This gives us a jump on them," one of the biologists said. "As far as we know, no living human has ever been caught by the Enlissa." ”

“ Eckisster said testily, "you want a human volunteer to test the Enlissa mindjammer on."
"That's right," Roysland said. "So far, all we've proven is that the backwash from the projector has no effect on humans or animals; but we don't know what happens to a man who's hit by the beam itself."
"Oh? We don't? I rather assumed that the fleet hospital's psychiatric wards were full of men who have been hit by the beam." ”

“ Report from Kiffer Samm: "I've done the checking you suggested. There is a definite effect on the brain, but it isn't permanent, nor noticeable. The backwash of the aJ guns causes a slight retardation of nerve impulses. But it isn't enough to cause any reaction—either mental or physiological. It doesn't last enough, in the first place; and it isn't powerful enough, in the second. I don't know what would happen if a person were subjected to such a field over a long period of time, but the situation corrects itself so rapidly that there is no danger of cumulative effects. ”

“ It's easier to prevent something from getting to you than to figure out a way of getting to the other guy. Arms theory shows—"
Eckisster glowered at the man. "Theory, hogwash! I want a defense against the mindjammer, and I want it yesterday! Get busy!"
Roysland was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his chest. When Eckisster had completed his outburst, Roysland said, calmly: "Are you quite through, sir?"
"I am," said the general director. "I doubt if you mudheads can come up with anything before we are all reduced to gibbering idiots, but God knows I've done my best." ”

“ Since the psychological department has now discovered a method of bringing back the functional ability of the brain after exposure to the mindjammer effect, I didn't think it would be harmful to allow two of the aliens to be subjected to it again. Unfortunately, they died."
"They what?" Bilford shouted the question.
"Died, Bilford, died," Eckisster said. "They are both as dead as the surface of Syndor."
"Good God!" Bilford said. "Perhaps a second exposure—" Suddenly he jammed a finger down on his cutoff, and his image vanished from the conference room. ”

“ There was no need for the Viwil to use evasive action, since the enemy ships did not fire a single torpedo!
"There have been other instances of similar action.
"In other small skirmishes, the aJ guns have proven their effectiveness; they've shot up Enlissa ships before they were in torpedo range. Oddly enough, no human ship equipped with aJ's has ever been hit by a torpedo."
Roysland went back and reread one of the sentences. "Is it possible there's a backwash from their mindjammer?"
It's possible, sure. Until we know what the mindjammer is, we'll have to admit that anything's possible. ”

“ There's a difference between the lack of testing of the aJ gun and the Enlissa's not thoroughly testing the mindjammer. There's a difference between looking for something you could logically expect and not finding something that you don't even suspect the existence of. ”

“ Roysland pushed his muscular bulk up the stair to the control bridge. Above him rose the hard, transparent dome of the ship's nose. He stood for a moment, watching the stars move slowly by. Then he walked over to where Kiffer and the ship's officers were standing, near the main control area.
"Captain Dobrin," he said, "we've got our instruments set up; we'd like to find some targets to test-fire at." He paused for a moment and looked at the officer. "You know what we're up against, don't you?" ”

“ I think everybody needs a little needling now and then."
Bilford nodded. "I know you agree with him. You're a bigger needler than he is, any day."
"Me?" Roysland looked surprised.
"Yes, you. Eckisster's needling is effective in a limited way, but yours is not only effective, but efficient. You ask the kind of questions that make people think instead of the kind that make people mad. Where Eckisster jabs in all directions and people jump, you use your needle with the deftness and precision of a physician using a hypodermic. Eckisster doesn't know what he wants and he doesn't know how to get it. ”

“ When the second jeep pulled up, Kiffer said: "You men stop at the gun emplacement and take a look at the weapon. We'll go on to the target tower and pick up Roysland."
The men nodded their agreement, and the two vehicles started rolling.
Theoretically, it was "evening," but the great, blue-white blaze of Kandoris still hung in the eternally black sky. The jeep went by the gun emplacement where the Enlissa weapon had been set up for testing. Kiffer noticed that the snout of the ugly-looking tube was aimed at the squat steel tower where the animal subjects had been exposed to its radiations. ”