Part 18 (1/2)

Not a thinking man, Steve Hanardy; nor a reader. The four books on board were repair manuals. He had thumbed through them a hundred times, but now he got them out and examined them again. Every page was, as he had expected, dully familiar. After a slow hour he used up their possibilities.

Another day, and still he was wide-eyed and unsleeping, but there was a developing restlessness in him, and exhaustion.

As a s.p.a.ceman, Hanardy had received indoctrination in the dangers of sleeplessness. He knew of the mind's tendency to dream while awake, the hallucinatory experiences, the normal effects of the unending strain of wakefulness.

Nothing like that happened.

He did not know that the sleep center in his brain was timelessly depressed and the wake center timelessly stimulated. The former could not turn on, the latter could not turn off. So between them there could be none of the usual interplay with its twilight states.

But he could become more exhausted.

Though he was lying down almost continuously now, he became continually more exhausted.

On the fourth ”morning” he had the thought for the first time: this is going to drive me crazy!

Such a fear had never before in his whole life pa.s.sed through his mind. By late afternoon of that day, Hanardy was scared and dizzy and hopeless, in a severe dwindling spiral of decreasing sanity. What he would have done had he remained alone was not at that time brought to a test.

For late on that fourth ”day” Pat Ungarn came through the airlock, found him cowering in his bunk and said, ”Steve, come with me. It's time we took action.”

Hanardy stumbled to his feet. He was actually heading after her when he remembered Sween-Madro's orders to him, and he stopped, ”What's the matter?” she demanded.

He mumbled simply, ”He told me not to leave my s.h.i.+p. He'll kill me if I do.”

The girl was instantly impatient. ”Steve, stop this nonsense.” Her sharp words were like blows striking his mind. ”You haven't any more to lose than we have. So come along!”

And she started back through the airlock. Hanardy stood, stunned and shaking. In a single sentence, spoken in her preemptory fas.h.i.+on, she challenged his manhood by implication, recognized that the dumb love he felt for her made him her slave and so re-established her absolute ascendancy.

Silently, tensely, he shuffled across the metal floor of the airlock and moments later was in the forbidden meteorite.

Feeling doomed.

The girl led the way to what was, in effect, the engine room of the meteorite.

As Steve trailed reluctantly behind her, Professor Ungarn rose up from a chair and came forward, smiling his infinitely tired smile.

His greeting was, ”Pat wants to tell you about intelligence. Do you know what your I.Q. is?”

The question barely reached the outer ramparts of Hanardy's attention. Following the girl along one corridor after another, a fearful vision had been in his mind, of Sween-Madro suddenly rounding the next corner and striking him dead. That vision remained, but along with it was a growing wonder: Where was the Dreegh?

The professor snapped, ”Steve do you hear me?”

Forced to look at him, Hanardy was able to remember proudly that he belonged in the 55th percentile of the human race, intelligence-wise, and that his I.Q. had been tested at 104.

”The tester told me that I was above average,” Hanardy said in a tone of pleasure. Then, apologetic again, he added, ”Of course, beside you guys I'm nothing.”

The old man said, ”On the Klugg I.Q. scale you would probably rate higher than 104. We take into account more factors. Your mechanical ability and spatial relations skill would not be tested correctly by any human I.Q. test that I have examined.”

He continued, ”Now, Steve, I'm trying to explain this all to you in a great hurry, because some time in the next week you're going to be, in flashes, the most intelligent man in the entire solar system, and there's nothing anybody can do about it except help you use it. I want to prepare you.”

Hanardy, who had anxiously stationed himself so that he could keep one eye on the open door--and who kept expecting the mighty Dreegh to walk in on the little conspiratorial group of lesser beings--shook his head hopelessly.

”You don't know what's already happened. I can be killed. Easy. I've got no defenses.”

He glumly described his encounter with the Dreegh and told how helpless he had been. ”There I was on my knees, begging, until I just happened to say something that made him stop. Boy, he sure didn't think I was unkillable.”

Pat came forward, stood in front of him, and grabbed his shoulders with both hands.

”Steve,” she said in an urgent voice, ”above a certain point of I.Q. mind actually is over matter. A being above that intelligence level cannot be, killed. Not by bullets, nor by any circ.u.mstance involving matter. Now listen: in you is a memory of such an intelligence level. In manhandling you, the Dreegh was trying to see what limited stress would do. He found out. He got the message from the Great Galactic out of you.

”Steve, after that he didn't dare put a bullet into you, or fire a death-level energy beam. Because that would force this memory to the surface!”

In her intense purposefulness she tried to move him with her hands. But that only made Hanardy aware of what a girlish body she had. So little body, so much imperious woman--it startled him for she could barely budge him, let alone shake him.

She said breathlessly, ”Don't you see, Steve? You're going to be king! Try to act accordingly.”

”Look--” Hanardy began, stolidly.

Rage flashed into her face. Her voice leaped past his interjection. ”And if you don't stop all this resistance, in the final issue I'll put a bullet into your brain myself, and then you'll see.”

Hanardy gazed into her blue eyes, so abruptly furious. He had a sinking conviction that she would do exactly what she threatened. In alarm, he said, ”For Pete's sake, what do you want me to do?”

”Listen to what dad has to say!” she commanded. ”And stop looking the other way. You need a high-speed education, and we haven't got much time.”

That last seemed like a total understatement to Hanardy. His feeling was that he had no time at all.

Awareness saved him, then. There was the room with its machinery, and the old man and his daughter; and there was he with his mind jumping with the new fear of her threat. Hanardy had a flitting picture of the three of them lost forever inside this remote meteorite that was just one tiny part of Jupiter's colossal family of small, speeding particles of matter--a meaningless universe that visibly had no morality or justice, because it included without a qualm, creatures like the Dreeghs.

As his skittering thought reached that dark depth, it suddenly occurred to Hanardy that Pat couldn't shoot him. She didn't have a gun. He opened his mouth to tell her of her helplessness. Then closed it again.

Because an opportunity might open up for her to obtain a weapon. So the threat remained, receded in time ... but not to be dismissed. Nonetheless, he grew calmer. He still felt compelled, and jittery. But he stayed there and listened, then, to a tiny summary of the story of human intelligence and the attempts that had been made to measure it.

It seemed human intelligence tests were based on a curve where the average was 100. Each test Professor Ungarn had seen revealed an uncertainty about what const.i.tuted an intelligence factor, and what did not. Was the ability to tell left from right important to intelligence? One test included it. Should an individual be able to solve brain twisters? Many testers considered this trait of great importance. And almost all psychologists insisted on a subtle understanding of the meaning of words and many of them. Skill at arithmetic was a universal requirement. Quick observation of a variety of geometric shapes and forms was included. Even a general knowledge of world conditions and history was a requirement in a few tests.

”Now, we Kluggs,” continued the professor in his melancholy voice, ”have gone a step beyond that.”

The words droned on through Hanardy's mind. Kluggs were theory-operating people ... theories based on primary and not secondary abilities. Another race, ”higher” than the Kluggs--called the Lennels--operated on Certainty ... a high harmonic of Authority.

”Certainty, with the Lennels,” said the old man, ”is of course a system and not an open channel. But even so it makes them as powerful as the Dreeghs.”

On an I.Q. curve that would include humans, Kluggs, Lennels and Dreeghs, the respective averages would be 100, 220, 380, and 450. The Dreeghs had an open channel on control of physical movement.

”Even a Great Galactic can only move as fast as--he cannot move faster than--a Dreegh,” Professor Ungarn commented and explained. ”Such open channels are pathways in the individual to a much greater ability than his standard I.Q. permits.”

Musical, mathematical, artistic, or any special physical, mental or emotional ability was an open channel that operated outside the normal human, Klugg, or even the Dreegh curve. By definition, a Great Galactic was a person whose I.Q. curve included only open channels.