The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Read online

  * * * *

  He was never sure just how long the process took but it was certainly not more than a second or two. Afterwards, he just sat there, staring.

  From far across the unimaginable depths of the galaxy, fighting its way through the vast, tenuous dust clouds of interstellar space, came a voice: “Are you ill, sir?”

  Karnes looked up at the stewardess. “Oh. Oh, no. No, I’m all right. Just thinking. I’m perfectly all right.”

  He looked at the “cigarette case” again. He knew what it was, now. There wasn’t any English word for it, but he guessed “mind impressor” would come close.

  It had done just that; impressed his mind with knowledge he should not have; the record of something he had no business knowing.

  And he wished to Heaven he didn’t!

  This, Karnes considered, is a problem. The stuff is so alien!Just a series of things I know, but can’t explain. Like a dream; you know all about it, but it’s practically impossible to explain it to anybody else.

  At the spaceport, he was met by an official car. George Lansberg, one of the New York agents, was sitting in the back seat.

  “Hi, sleuth. I heard you were coming in, so I asked to meet you.” He lowered his voice as Karnes got in and the car pulled away from the parking lot. “How about our boy, Avery?”

  Karnes shook his head. “Too late. Thirty million bucks worth of material lost and Avery lost too.”

  “How come?”

  “Had to kill him to keep him from getting away with these.”

  He showed Lansberg the microfilm squares.

  “The photocircuit inserts for the new autopilot. We’d lose everything if the League ever got its hands on these.”

  “Didn’t learn anything from Avery, eh?” Lansberg asked.

  “Not a thing.” Karnes lapsed into silence. He didn’t feel it necessary to mention the mind impressor just yet.

  Lansberg stuck a cigarette into his mouth and talked around it as he lit it.

  “We’ve got something you’ll be getting in on, now that Avery is taken care of. We’ve got a fellow named Brittain, real name Bretinov, who is holed up in a little apartment in Brooklyn. He’s the sector head for that section, and we know who his informers are, and who he gives orders to. What we don’t know is who gives orders to him.

  “Now we have it set up for Brittain to get his hands on some very honest-looking, but strictly phony stuff for him to pass on to the next echelon. Then we just sit around and watch until he does pass it.”

  * * * *

  Karnes found he was listening to Lansberg with only half an ear. His brain was still buzzing with things he’d never heard of, trying to fit things he had always known in with things he knew now but had never known before. Damn that “cigarette case”!

  “Sounds like fun,” he answered Lansberg.

  “Yeah. Great. Well, here we are.” They had driven to the Long Island Spaceways Building which also housed the local office.

  They got out and went into the building, up the elevator, down a corridor, and into an office suite.

  Lansberg said: “I’ll wait for you here. We’ll get some coffee afterwards.”

  The redhead behind the front desk smiled up at Karnes.

  “Go on in; he’s expecting you.”

  “I don’t know whether I ought to leave you out here with Georgie or not,” Karnes grinned. “I think he has designs.”

  “Oh, goodie!” she grinned back.

  My, my aren’t we clever! His thought was bitter, but his face didn’t show it.

  Before he went in, he straightened his collar before the wall mirror. He noticed that his plain, slightly tanned face still looked the same as ever. Same ordinary gray-green eyes, same ordinary nose.

  Chum, you look perfectly sane. You are perfectly sane. But who in hell would believe it?

  It wouldn’t, after all, do any good for him to tell anyone anything he had found. No matter what the answer was, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.

  Thus, Karnes’ report to his superior was short, to the point, and censored.

  That evening, Karnes sat in his apartment, chain-smoking, and staring out the window. Finally, he mashed out a stub, stood up, and said aloud: “Maybe if I write it down I can get it straight.”

  He sat down in front of the portable on his desk, rolled in a sheet of paper, and put his fingers on the keys. Then, for a long time, he just sat there, turning it over and over in his mind. Finally, he began to type.

  A Set of General Instructions and a Broad Outline on the Purposes and Construction of the Shrine of Earth.

  Part One: Historical.

  Some hundred or so millennia ago, insofar as the most exacting of historical research can ascertain, our remote ancestors were confined to one planet of the Galaxy; the legendary Earth.

  The third planet of Sun (unintelligible number) has long been suspected of being Earth, but it was not until the development of the principles of time transfer that it became possible to check the theory completely.

  The brilliant work done by—

  (Karnes hesitated over the name, then wrote—)

  —Starson on the ancient history and early evolution of the race has shown the theory to be correct. This has opened a new and fascinating field for the study of socioanthropology.

  Part Two: Present Purposes and Aims.

  Because of the great energy transfer and cosmic danger involved in too frequent or unrestricted time travel, it has been decided that the best method for studying the social problems involved would be to rebuild, in toto, the ancient Earth as it was just after the initial discoveries of atomic power and interplanetary space travel.

  In order to facilitate this work, the Surveying Group will translate themselves to the chronological area in question, and obtain complete records of that time, covering the years between (1940) and (2020).

  When the survey is complete, the Construction Group will rebuild that civilization with as great an exactness as possible, complete with population, fossil strata, edifices, etc.

  Upon the occasion of the opening of the Shrine, the replica of our early civilization will be begun as it was on (January 3, 1953). The population, having been impregnated with the proper memories, will be permitted to go about their lives unhampered.

  Karnes stopped again and reread the paragraph he had just written. It sounded different when it was on paper. The dates, for instance, he had put in parentheses because that was the way he had understood them. But he knew that whoever had made the mind-impressor didn’t use the same calendar he was used to.

  He frowned at the paper, then went on typing.

  Part Three: Conduct of Students.

  Students wishing to study the Shrine for the purpose of (unintelligible again) must obtain permits from the Galactic Scholars Council, and, upon obtaining such permits, must conduct themselves according to whatever rules may be laid down by such Council.

  Part Four: Corrective Action to be Taken.

  At certain points in the history of ancient Earth, certain crises arose which, in repetition, would be detrimental to the Shrine. These crises must be mitigated in order that—

  Karnes stopped. That was all there was. Except—except for one more little tail end of thought. He tapped the keys again.

  (Continued on Stratum Two)

  Whatever in hell that means, he thought.

  He sat back in his chair and went over the two sheets of typed paper. It wasn’t complete, not by a long shot. There were little tones of meaning that a printed, or even a spoken word couldn’t put over. There were evidences of a vast and certainly superhuman civilization; of an alien and yet somehow completely human way of thinking.

  But that was the gist of it. The man he had seen in that new building at Carlson Spacecraft was no ordinary human being.

  That, however, didn’t bother Karnes half so much as the gray globe the man had disappeared into after he had been shot at.
And Karnes knew, now, that the shots probably hadn’t missed.

  The globe was one of two things. And the intruder had been one of two groups.

  (A) One of the Surveyors of Ancient Earth, in which case the globe had been a—well, a time machine. Or

  (B) A student, in which case the machine was a type of spacecraft.

  The question was: Which?

  If it were (A), then he and the world around him were real, living, working out their own destinies toward the end point represented by the man in the gray globe.

  But if it were (B)—

  Then this was the Shrine, and he and all the rest of Earth were nothing but glorified textbooks!

  And there would come crises on the Shrine, duplicates of the crises on old Earth. Except that they wouldn’t be permitted to happen. The poor ignorant people on the Shrine had to be coddled, like the children they were. Damn!

  Karnes crumpled the sheets of paper in his hands, twisting them savagely. Then he methodically tore them into bits.

  * * * *

  When the first dawnlight touched the sea, Karnes was watching it out the east window. It had been twenty-four hours since he had seen the superman walk into his gray globe and vanish.

  All night, he had been searching his brain for some clue that would tell him which of the two choices he should believe in. And he couldn’t bring himself to believe in either.

  Once he had thought: Why do I believe, then, what the impressor said? Why not just forget it?

  But that didn’t help. He did believe it. That alien instrument had impressed his mind, not only with the facts themselves, but with an absolute faith that they were facts. There was no room for doubt; the knowledge imparted to his mind was true, and he knew it.

  For a time, he had been comforted by the thought that the gray globe must be a time machine because of the way it had vanished. It was very comforting until he realized that travel to the stars and beyond didn’t necessarily mean a spaceship as he knew spaceships. Teleportation—

  Now, with the dawn, Karnes knew there was only one thing he could do.

  Somehow, somewhere, there would be other clues—clues a man who knew what to look for might find. The Galactics couldn’t be perfect, or they wouldn’t have let him get the mind impressor in his hands. Ergo, somewhere they would slip again.

  Karnes knew he would spend the rest of his life looking for that one slip. He had to know the truth, one way or another.

  Or he might not stay sane.

  * * * *

  Lansberg picked him up at eight in a police copter. As they floated toward New York, Karnes’ mind settled itself into one cold purpose; a purpose that lay at the base of his brain, waiting.

  Lansberg was saying: “—and one of Brittain’s men got the stuff last night. He hadn’t passed it on to Brittain himself yet this morning, but he very probably will have by the time we get there.

  “We’ve rigged it up so that Brittain will have to pass it to his superior by tomorrow or it will be worthless. When he does, we’ll follow it right to the top.”

  “If we’ve got every loophole plugged,” said Karnes, “we ought to take them easy.”

  “Brother, I hope so! It took us eight months to get Brittain all hot and bothered over the bait, and another two months to give it to him in a way that wouldn’t make him suspicious.

  “It’s restricted material, of course, so that we can pin a subversive activities rap on them, at least, if not espionage. But we had to argue like hell to keep it restricted; the Spatial Commission was ready to release it, since it’s really relatively harmless.”

  Karnes looked absently at the thin line of smoke wiggling from Lansberg’s cigarette.

  “You know,” he said, “there are times when I wish this war would come right out in the open. Actually, we’ve been fighting the League for years, but we don’t admit it. There have been little disagreements and incidents until the devil won’t have it. But it’s still supposed to be a ‘worry war’.”

  Lansberg shrugged. “It will get hot just as soon as the Eurasian League figures they are far enough along in spacecraft construction to get the Martian colonies if they win. Then they’ll try to smash us before we can retaliate; then, and not before.

  “We can’t start it. Our only hope is that when they start, they’ll underestimate us. Say, what’s that you’re fooling with?”

  The sudden change of subject startled Karnes for an instant. He looked at the mind impressor in his hands. He had been toying with it incessantly, hoping it would repeat its performance, or perhaps give additional information.

  “This?” He covered quickly. “It’s a—a puzzle. One of those plastic puzzles.” Maybe it doesn’t work on the same person twice. If I can get George to fool around with it, he might hit the right combination again.

  “Hmmm. How does it work?” George seemed interested.

  Karnes handed it to him. “It has a couple of little sliding weights inside it. You have to turn the thing just right to unlock it, then it comes apart when you slide out a section of the surface. Try it.”

  Lansberg took it, turned it this way and that, moving his hands over the surface. Karnes watched him for several minutes, but there didn’t seem to be any results.

  Lansberg looked up from his labors. “I give up. I can’t even see where it’s supposed to come apart, and I can’t feel any weights sliding inside it. Show me how it works.”

  Karnes thought fast. “Why do you think I was fiddling with it? I don’t know how it works. A friend of mine bet me a ten spot that I couldn’t figure out the combination.”

  Lansberg looked back at the impressor in his hands. “Could he do it?”

  “A snap. I watched him twice, and I still didn’t get it.”

  “Mmm. Interesting.” George went back to work on the “puzzle.”

  Just before they landed on the roof of the UN annex, Lansberg handed the impressor back to Karnes. It had obviously failed to do what either of them had hoped it would.

  “It’s your baby,” Lansberg said, shaking his head. “All I have to say is it’s a hell of a way to earn ten bucks.”

  Karnes grinned and dropped the thing back in his coat pocket.

  By the time that evening had rolled around, Karnes was beginning to get just a little bored. He and Lansberg had been in and out of the New York office in record time. Then they had spent a few hours with New York’s Finest and the District Attorney, lining up a net to pick up all the little rats involved.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait.

  Karnes slept a couple of hours to catch up, read two magazines from cover to cover, and played eight games of solitaire. He was getting itchy.

  His brain kept crackling. What’s the matter with me? I ought to be thinking about this Brittain fellow instead of—

  But, after all, what did Brittain matter? According to the records, he was born Alex Bretinov, in Marseilles, France, in nineteen sixty-eight. His father, a dyed-in-the-wool Old Guard Communist, had been born in Minsk in nineteen forty.

  Or had he been wound up, and his clockwork started in January of nineteen fifty-three?

  The radio popped. “Eighteen. Alert. Brittain just left his place on foot. Carson, Reymann following. Over.”

  Lansberg dropped his magazine. “He seems to be heading for the Big Boy—I hope.”

  The ground car followed him to a subway, and two men on foot followed him in from Flatbush Avenue.

  * * * *

  Some hours later, after much devious turning, dodging, and switching, Brittain climbed into a taxi on the corner of Park Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, evidently feeling he had ditched any tails he might have had.

  Karnes and Lansberg were right behind him in a radio car.

  The cab headed due south on Park Avenue, following it until it became Fourth, swung right at Tenth Street, past Grace Church, across Broadway. At Sixth, it angled left toward Greenwich Village.

  “Somewhere in the Village, nickels to knotholes,
” Lansberg guessed as he turned to follow.

  Karnes, at the radio, was giving rapid-fire directions over the scrambler-equipped transceiver. By this time, several carloads of agents and police were converging on the cab from every direction. From high above, could be heard the faint hum of ’copters.

  Lansberg was exultant. “We’ve got them for once! And the goods on every essobee in the place.”

  The cars hummed smoothly through the broad streets, past the shabby-genteel apartment neighborhood. Back in the early sixties, some of these buildings had been high-priced hotels, but the Village had gone to pot since the seventies.

  A few minutes later, the cab pulled up in front of an imposing looking building of slightly tarnished aluminum paneling. Brittain got out, paid his fare, and went inside.

  As the cab pulled away, Karnes gave orders for it to be picked up a few blocks away, just in case.

  The rest of the vehicles began to surround the building.

  Karnes, meanwhile, followed Brittain into the foyer of the apartment hotel. It was almost a mistake. Brittain hadn’t gone in. Evidently attracted by the footsteps following him, he turned and looked back out. Karnes wasn’t more than ten feet away.

  Just pretend you live here, thought Karnes, and bully-boy will never know the difference.

  He walked right on up to the doorway, pretending not to notice Brittain. Evidently, the saboteur was a little flustered, not quite knowing who Karnes was. He, too, pretended that he had no suspicions. He pressed a buzzer on the panel to announce himself to a guest. Karnes noticed it was 523; a fifth floor button.

  The front door, inside the foyer, was one of those gadgets with an electric lock that doesn’t open unless you either have a key to the building or can get a friend who lives there to let you in.

  When Karnes saw Brittain press the buzzer, he waited a second and took a chance.

  “Here,” he said, fishing in his pocket, “I’ll let you in.” That ought to give him the impression I live here.

  Brittain smiled fetchingly. “Thanks, but I—”