Triplanetary by E. E. Smith (good novels to read TXT) 📕

“I say no, you.⁠ ⁠…” Bradley roared. He intended to give an unexpurgated classification, but was rudely interrupted.

“Hold on a minute!” snapped Costigan. “How about Miss Marsden?”

“She has nothing to do with this discussion,” returned Roger, icily. “I do not bargain⁠—in fact, I believe that I shall keep her for a time. She has it in mind to destroy herself if I do not allow her to be ransomed, but she will find that door closed to her until I permit it to open.”

“In that case, I string along with the Chief⁠—take what he started to say about you and run it clear across the board for me!” barked Costigan.

“Very well. That decision was to be expected from men of your type.” The gray man touched two buttons and two of his creatures entered the room. “Put these men into two separate cells on the second level,” he ordered. “Search them; all their weapons may not have been in their armor. Seal the doors and mount special guards, tuned to me here.”

Imprisoned they were, and carefully searched; but they bore no arms, and nothing had been said concerning communicators. Even if such instruments could be concealed, Roger would detect their use instantly. At least, so ran his thought. But Roger’s men had no inkling of the possibility of Costigan’s “Service Special” phones, detectors, and spy-ray⁠—instruments of minute size and of infinitesimal power, but yet instruments which, working as they were below the level of the ether, were effective at great distances and caused no vibrations in the ether by which their use could be detected. And what could be more innocent than the regulation personal equipment of every officer of space? The heavy goggles, the wristwatch and its supplementary pocket chronometer, the flash-lamp, the automatic lighter, the sender, the money-belt?

All these items of equipment were examined with due care; but the cleverest minds of the Triplanetary Service had designed those communicators to pass any ordinary search, however careful, and when Costigan and Bradley were finally locked into the designated cells they still possessed their ultra-instruments.

In the hall Clio glanced around her wildly, seeking even the narrowest avenue of escape. Before she could act, however, her body was clamped as though in a vise, and she struggled, motionless.

“It is useless to attempt to escape, or to do anything except what Roger wishes,” the guide informed her somberly, snapping off the instrument in her hand and thus restoring to the thoroughly cowed girl her freedom of motion.

“His lightest wish is law,” she continued as they walked down a long corridor. “The sooner you realize that you must do exactly as he pleases, in all things, the easier your life will be.”

“But I wouldn’t want to keep on living!” Clio declared, with a flash of spirit. “And I can always die, you know.”

“You will find that you cannot,” the passionless creature returned, monotonously. “If you do not yield, you will long and pray for death, but you will not die unless Roger wills it. Look at me: I cannot die. Here is your apartment. You will stay here until Roger gives further orders concerning you.”

The living automaton opened a door and stood silent and impassive while Clio, staring at her in horror, shrank past her and into the sumptuously furnished suite. The door closed soundlessly and utter silence descended as a pall. Not an ordinary silence, but the indescribable perfection of the absolute silence, complete absence of all sound. In that silence Clio stood motionless. Tense and rigid, hopeless, despairing, she stood there in that magnificent room, fighting an almost overwhelming impulse to scream. Suddenly she heard the cold voice of Roger, speaking from the empty air.

“You are overwrought, Miss Marsden. You can be of no use to yourself or to me in that condition. I command you to rest; and, to insure that rest, you may pull that cord, which will establish about this room an ether wall: a wall to cut off even this my voice.⁠ ⁠…”

The voice ceased as she pulled the cord savagely and threw herself upon a divan in a torrent of gasping, strangling, but rebellious sobs. Then again came a voice, but not to her ears. Deep within her, pervading every bone and muscle, it made itself felt rather than heard.

“Clio?” it asked. “Don’t talk yet.⁠ ⁠…”

“Conway!” she gasped in relief, every fiber of her being thrilled into new hope at the deep, well-remembered voice of Conway Costigan.

“Keep still!” he snapped. “Don’t act so happy! He may have a spy-ray on you. He can’t hear me, but he may be able to hear you. When he was talking to you you must have noticed a sort of rough, sandpapery feeling under that necklace I gave you? Since he’s got an ether-wall around you the beads are dead now. If you feel anything like that under the wristwatch, breathe deeply, twice. If you don’t feel anything there, it’s safe for you to talk, as loud as you please.”

“I don’t feel anything, Conway!” she rejoiced. Tears forgotten, she was her old, buoyant self again. “So that wall is real, after all? I only about half believed it.”

“Don’t trust it too much, because he can cut it off from the outside any time he wants to. Remember what I told you: that necklace will warn you of any spy-ray in the ether, and the watch will detect anything below the level of the ether. It’s dead now, of course, since our three phones are direct-connected; I’m in touch with Bradley, too. Don’t be too scared; we’ve got a lot better chance than I thought we had.”

“What? You don’t mean it!”

“Absolutely. I’m beginning to think that maybe we’ve got something he doesn’t know exists⁠—our ultra-wave. Of course I wasn’t surprised when his searchers failed to find our instruments, but it never occurred to me that I might have a clear field to use them in! I can’t quite believe it yet, but