Chapter IV: Face to Face

Slowly, the initial thought that filtered through the velvety, comfortable blackness was that he was James Forrest Carroll. That established, the rest came with a swift flow of fact and acceptance in chronological order that brought him to the present date.

It seemed almost instantaneous, this return to reality. Yet in his drugged state, or rather the state of fighting off the last dregs of the potion, Carroll did not recognize the long interim periods of slumber. Actually it took him six hours to return to a full state of wakefulness. He was unaware of the slumber periods and they subtracted from his time-consciousness.

When finally he did come fully awake, it was to look into the faces of the two men who had abducted him.

"Wh--?" he grunted, believing that he uttered a complete sentence asking what the score was.

"You know too much," said the man on the left.

The implication did not filter in at first. It came very slowly that one who knew too much was often prevented from telling it to the right people.

Then he said, "What are you going to do to me?"

"Eliminate you," came the cold answer.

The other man shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "Not at once."

The first one turned abruptly. "Look, Kingallis," he snapped, "This one is a definite threat."

"And there may be others," smiled Kingallis. "We could easily eliminate him. And we will but only after we locate exactly what there is about him that permits him to be a threat to us. There may be others. We must stop them."

Sargenuti nodded in a sardonic manner. "Even in the face of a threat the great Doctor Kingallis must experiment!"

"I'll have none of your sarcasm!" snapped Kingallis. "You are not my equal by four groups. You are my underling and will therefore do my bidding with no quarrel."

"Yes, master," sneered Sargenuti.

Kingallis stepped forward and slapped the other across the face with the back of his hand. Sargenuti stood four inches taller than the doctor and outweighed him by at least thirty pounds. He could have broken Kingallis in half with his bare hands but he accepted the insult across his face without flinching nor attempt to retaliate.

"Because we are isolated here, far from our normal surroundings, you have become slovenly in your attitude," snapped Kingallis. "You are no planner, Sargenuti. Your method is acceptable in some cases but you have not the intellectual equipment to cope with a situation as involved as this is.

"Whether you continue as you are, advance in your work or are dropped a group depends upon the future. Suppose there were several people involved that have his power?"

"There cannot be," returned Sargenuti.

"Fool! If there is one there may be others. Now do as I say without argument!"

Carroll listened to this discussion with interest. From it he learned that there was obviously some plot against the Solar System and that he, Carroll, was possessed of some factor that made his continuance dangerous to their plotting.

He half-smiled and said, "There are many like me."

Kingallis turned back to his captive and shook his head.

"No," he said. "There are not! Sargenuti had no trouble until he ran into James Forrest Carroll. That is why he is bloated with delusions of grandeur. He thinks because he has had no competition that he is supreme.

"He forgets the platitude, 'It is a sharp blade that cuts but cheese!' It is notable, however, that the first time he met James Forrest Carroll he was forced to call for help."

"I was puzzled," admitted Sargenuti.

"A slightly more intelligent moron would have known that this man was capable of avoiding your block," snapped Kingallis. "When he came forward to interfere the first time. That is when you should have caught him. Instead you ignored him for too long. Idiot!"

"All right," grumbled Sargenuti. "But this is just telling Carroll things he wants to know."

* * * * *

Kingallis smiled sourly. "Perhaps it is better that way," he said. "When he sees what he is up against he may be less violent."

"And if he again escapes?"

"He will not escape."

Sargenuti laughed roughly. "It would be drastically amusing to find that James Forrest Carroll is smarter than the great Doctor Kingallis."

"Shut up!" snapped Kingallis angrily.

He turned to Carroll. "You know too much," he said. "Yet I have no qualms about telling you more. It is our job to prevent the spread of knowledge about the Lawson Radiation, to discourage research and to cause the importance of the Radiation to diminish.

"We employ mass hypnotism to intercept the reports, to read them, to make the minor changes that prevent correlation of certain data that would lead to some discovery of importance. This happens only once in a few months.

"We can tell by the title of the experiment whether it may or may not include a clue. When someone comes upon a real find we erase his mind."

"And I came upon something?"

"You did."

"What was it?"

Kingallis smiled tolerantly. "You wouldn't expect me to tell you?"

Carroll shrugged. "I suppose not," he said. "But just why do you think I am a basic threat to your plans?"

"Obvious. Of all, you are the first that ever came back to full control of his faculties after we erased your mind. The others have pain syndromes every time they consider research at all. You do not.

"Not only that, you were capable of avoiding the block. We used mass hypnosis on the people within a visible radius of that corner. Of them all, you alone can see the black sedan and the resulting interception."

"But when I went with Sally you intercepted me, too."

"Of course. But you were then right in the main focus of the control beam."

Kingallis turned to Sargenuti. "I thank you for not killing him under the beam," he said. "Your unimaginative mind might have done that. It would have erased a danger, true, but would have prevented our study of the danger at first hand."

Then he turned back to Carroll. "We might not have been able to kill you, at that," he said. "I don't know. You seem to have become stronger each time you underwent the control instead of becoming weaker like the average subject of hypnotism."

"But--?"

Kingallis shrugged. "Most interesting," he said reflectively. "Most interesting."

"What is so interesting?" grunted Sargenuti.

"Consider," said Kingallis. "He finally entered direct control alone. He was the focus. You did succeed in controlling him to a certain point but James Forrest Carroll--mentally living in a perfect dream--recognized the fact that this was not true.

"He broke the dream, the power of our beam. His unaided will-power, Sargenuti, came up from below a sensory delusion and forced recognition of the truth against the evidence presented by his physical senses."

"So?"

"So," concluded Kingallis, "We shall find out what it is about this man's mind that is powerful enough to overcome the power of our beam. For, Sargenuti, we may encounter others."

* * * * *

In the days that followed, one upon the next in a never varying monotony, James Forrest Carroll increased both his store of knowledge and his judgment. It has been said that wide experience is a condition wherein the possessor can fall back upon some personal precedent for any situation that arises.

Carroll, however, could have no such precedent, nor is it likely that any man or all men combined could piece together a reasonable decision based on piecemeal precedent. Therefore Carroll faced the situation with a complete lack of experience.

He realized that making any decision now would be so much tossing of a coin. Lacking the full particulars, the reasons, the understanding of the other race's motives, he could make no plans.

Yet he did know from experience that the best way to lay a cornerstone upon which to build a plan was to wait, to study and then, when the final returns were in, to decide.

Kingallis had confirmed Carroll's suspicion that an Extrasolar agency was doing its utmost to prevent the spread of knowledge about the Lawson Radiation.

Kingallis had not mentioned why.

The facts that Carroll had were sketchy. He knew only what he had already suspected. He had been kidnaped. He knew why. The latter reason was both logical and also a perfect answer to a paranoid question.

He shied away from it, and recognized his own unwillingness to face the fact. That in itself bothered Carroll because he disliked to think himself insane, even though he often questioned his sanity.

Carroll found that none of this was reassuring. There was no equitable yardstick that the mind could apply to itself. It is often said that the insane cannot question their own sanity--that to question your own sanity is a sign of stability.

Yet it may be quite true that a clever paranoid might question his own sanity regularly as a means of proving to himself that he is sane. Carroll played with this mad spiral often and found it a vicious circle.

So in between his sessions of study, James Forrest Carroll tried to delve into his own mind. He had come to only one conclusion: That so long as Kingallis was studying him, he was able also to study Kingallis.

The problem of why bothered Carroll.

Mankind has never ceased to study anything that might prove dangerous. Almost any discovery made is dangerous in some manner. It is just that mankind has learned to handle its discoveries with care as they became useful. Or else--

He tried broaching the why to Kingallis and was brushed off openly with, "It is of no consequence."

Carroll considered two possible answers. One, of course, was that Kingallis and his people were suppressing all study to prevent the Terrans from learning about interstellar travel for purely personal reasons. You do not give away your military secrets to a people you hope to destroy.

The other reason was the complete opposite--the other race, knowing the dangers of research, were trying to keep Terra from becoming involved until Terra grew up. Handing the secrets of nuclear fission to a race not yet ready for it was one example, though a bad one, for it takes considerable technical excellence to handle it.

A simpler case is plain black gunpowder--sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate. Boys in chemistry class have lost their hands and their eyes because they played with that which they did not understand well enough. The nitration of glycerine is not too hard to perform, yet in the hands of an amateur it may take the house skyward before the project is finished.

For, strangely enough, the amateur at any science feels that he must make a large batch in order to do it at all. In electricity he wants excessive powers and lethal voltages to do that which a trained technician can accomplish with less deadly items.

However--was the motive avarice or altruism?

James Forrest Carroll studied them as they studied him.