‘No visual stimuli?’
For a moment she hesitated then said, ‘Not that anyone will admit to. As far as it goes those in the auditorium are the only ones who actually saw anything unusual. And not everyone will admit to that now.’
A self-protective refusal to accept the evidence of their own senses and a natural one. Hallucinations were always worrisome and no one would be willing to admit they suffered from them. And yet Maddox had no doubt as to what he had seen and heard.
Neither had Claire but Manton, oddly, had less certainty.
‘I was in the projection booth,’ he explained. ‘As you know the ghost was a hologram projected on a cloud of controlled vapour — we used a gas with a high metallic content and managed to shape and move it by the use of powerful magnetic fields. Rather effective, do you agree?’
‘Wonderful,’ said Maddox dryly. ‘But the voice?’
‘Projected through electronic filters. The sonic emitters were set facing the auditorium, of course. The strength of projection was two degrees above the lower level of conscious awareness. An application of subliminal influence, you understand.’ He broke off, coughing, suddenly aware that he had been rambling. ‘I’m sorry to be a poor witness, Carl, but if we caused what happened then I am totally unaware of how it was done. The energies involved simply don’t lend themselves to such a conclusion.’
‘What you are saying is that what happened could not have been caused by any actions of our own. Is that it?’
Manton drew in his breath. ‘Yes, Carl. That is what I’m saying.’
‘Claire?’
‘I’ve checked Eric’s figures as far as I’m able and I must agree with him,’ she said. ‘Certainly the sonic projectors could never have affected the entire ship and we do know that all personnel experienced the sudden emotional panic though in a greater or lesser degree. The node seems to have been the auditorium. It was also the point of greatest visual derangement — at least more people were willing to admit they saw something there than anywhere else.’
‘And the words?’ Maddox stared from one to the other as neither made comment. ‘I take it that we did hear the words?’
‘We did, Carl, yes,’ admitted Claire.
‘We? You mean you and I? How about the others? Eric?’ Maddox frowned as Manton shook his head. They had met in his office, the wide doors leading to Mission Control now closed. Rising from behind his desk he crossed the floor with short, impatient strides. The lines of his face were deep, the contours set in rigid planes.
He said, curtly, ‘There’s a mystery here and I want to solve it. A fictional ghost turns into a bearded prophet and —’
‘Bearded?’ Claire looked startled. ‘Carl, that figure didn’t have a beard. It was clean-shaven and wore a dress suit with a decoration of some kind.’
‘It was bearded,’ said Maddox. ‘At least the thing I saw had a beard and a robe of some kind. You say it wasn’t — which means?’
‘If the both of you looked at the same thing and each saw a different image then there is only one thing it can mean.’ Manton was positive. ‘What you saw was subjective, not objective. In other words, it wasn’t really there, you only imagined it was.’
‘Claire?’
‘I agree with Eric. It is the only way to explain the differing reports I’ve received. Even accounting for hysteria and natural diversity in recounting a traumatic experience there is too much divergence. Some are too vague to be even logical; others mention octopod and polypoidal creatures as if they were recounting the stuff of nightmare. Nonsense, of course, but illuminating.’
‘Nightmare,’ said Maddox. He looked at his left hand, the fingers were clenched and, deliberately, he forced himself to spread them, flexing them, easing the tension, masking the fear they had betrayed. ‘We each saw something, a creature of authority or nightmare which could, psychologically, mean the same thing. Most of us, in our time, have been scared by authority so it is merely a transference of symbols. Never mind that for the moment. Let’s take a look at what we have. Something, some external force, caused a form of mass hallucination. Right?’
‘Until we have a better explanation, Carl, that will serve as a working hypothesis,’ said Manton. ‘Claire?’
‘I agree.’
‘The next question,’ said Maddox, grimly, ‘is just what the hell caused it. And how?’
‘What I don’t know,’ said Claire. ‘But I can take a guess as to how. I think it was done, or caused, by direct stimulation of the brain. Normally we see something and the image is carried via the optic nerve to the brain where it is resolved into a recognisable shape and subject. Now, if we stimulate the correct centres of the brain the reverse can happen. A subject can be made to see something which isn’t actually there. The same applies to hearing, of course. In fact, I can produce exactly those results in my laboratory.’
‘By hypnotism?’ Manton was interested.
‘That is one method, but I was thinking of electrical cortical stimulation with the use of probes.’
‘Hypnotism,’ said Maddox. Returning to the desk he leaned on it, resting the flats of both hands on the surface. ‘We were entranced, enamoured, concentrating on the play. Everyone was. The ghost was a shifting, flickering image, exactly what would lead to a hypnotic trance-condition. Am I making sense?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Claire. ‘Our concentration would have made us vulnerable to group suggestion and equally so to response to cortical stimulation, but we can rule out simple hypnotism. There would have had to be a director or directive of some kind. A prompter to tell us what to see. And you are forgetting the words.’
The warning. Maddox straightened and glanced towards the closed doors. Beyond them, he knew, sensitive instruments were sending their findings to digital readouts, to dials, to shifting graphs all to be studied and correlated by skilled personnel and the mammoth abilities of the main computer. Yet despite all their skill and technology, they had found nothing.
‘Halt,’ he said, thickly. ‘Retreat. Withdraw. Return. Death and devastation lie ahead. Did you all get it?’
‘In one form or another, yes.’ Claire touched the fullness of her lower lip with the tip of her tongue as if even thinking of the episode had dried the natural saliva. ‘It could be a natural accompaniment to the hallucination. We are afraid of what could lie ahead and we would all like to return, to go back, to be safe.’
An answer, but not a good one; the mystery remained and with it the fear and anxiety. Maddox didn’t believe in natural happenings, for each event there had to be a reason and to find explanations in the realm of philosophical abstractions was to dodge the issue. At times such dodging was of no importance — on Earth, for example, odd accounts of strange sightings and inexplicable events had been dismissed or ignored without apparent detriment. But they were not on Earth. They had little or no reserves. A mistake, any mistake, could be the last they would make.
On the Ad Astra there was simply no room for the unknown.
‘Eric, run that projection again and repeat the sequence up and down forward and back with varying strengths of sonic projection. Ask for volunteers. I want to check there was no possibility that the occurrence wasn’t of our own doing.’
‘I’ve already checked, Carl.’
‘Then do it again!’ Maddox made no attempt to soften his tone. ‘Claire, you do the same. Tests on all together with cross-questioning. Hypnotic recall if you think it necessary. With enough information we might come up with the true answer.’
‘We may already have it,’ she said, bleakly. ‘We received a warning, remember?’
‘Yes,’ he said, harshly. ‘To halt. To return. To withdraw. To go back. Now tell me how the hell we can possibly obey it!’
*
The bottle was half-empty and Gordon Kent scowled at it remembering a joke he had once been told, a philosophical concept which hadn’t amused him then and didn’t now. A bottle half-empty was just that and calling it one half-f didn’t alter the amount of the contents. Well, to hell with it, when it was all gone maybe he could get more or, at least, would be out of the ward, the bed, the whole damned prison the Medical Section had become.
Lifting the bottle, he drank, swallowing the neat alcohol it contained; surgical spirit intended to ease the pain of bedsores, to clean surface areas of skin. A product of the yeast vats which helped to provide their food and which he had stolen to use as an anodyne for boredom.
He glowered at the lowered level and gently moved his injured leg. Days now and still the damned thing hadn’t healed. Alan Guthrie had gone, smiling, eager to get back to work, making a joke as he left to see about getting a crutch. A joke in bad taste — surely it couldn’t come to that, a broken leg, a gash which was slow in healing.
Quickly he took another drink.
The nurse, damn her, had closed the door so that he couldn’t see out of the ward and so was left in a form of solitary confinement foreign to his nature. He had always liked company, the boisterous comradeship of his fellow crewmen, the challenge of gymnastic activity. A big man, proud of his body, enjoying the euphoria of fitness, of using the fine engine of flesh and blood which was his own.
Again he moved his leg, wincing at the stab of pain. Throwing back the cover he examined it, frowning at the ugly red streaks running from the wound, the skin distended and tender. The doctors had seen it, had muttered over it, and had filled him with antibiotics and other assorted junk all with no apparent success. Tomorrow, so he had heard, he was to be given a complete blood-change and after that, if necessary, immersion in an amniotic tank where new tissue would be grown to replace that they would have to cut away.
He wouldn’t die and he wouldn’t lose his leg but he would lose time and the championship would have been decided and he would still be in this or another ward fitted up with life-support mechanisms of one kind or another. Time which dragged past on leaden feet. Feet — the plural.
He took another drink.
And, remembering Guthrie’s parting joke, yet another and then, because it wasn’t worth saving the little which remained, he emptied the bottle and sank back with his head on the pillow staring at the central light the ward contained.
A bright light which seemed to flicker and swell and pulse as if with a life of its own. To change even as he watched. To alter.
Bain heard him scream.
He had been studying a tissue sample from the man’s injured leg, frowning at the distortion of the cellular structure, testing a variety of agents and collating the results. The scream caught him as he was fitting a new slide and he swore as the glass shattered, a sliver cutting a finger so that blood dripped to stain the sterile instrument.
It came again as he straightened, a shriek which sounded less than human, a thing compounded of naked terror and heart-stopping fear.
‘Doctor!’ A nurse came running towards him, her eyes enormous in the pallor of her face. ‘It’s Gordon Kent. I —’
‘Get help!’ Bain thrust past her, leaving a smear of blood from his cut hand on her uniform, the scarlet bright against the white sleeve. ‘Bring sedatives. Hurry!’
He heard the scream again as he reached the ward and flinging open the door he ran inside.
To see the figure crawling on the floor, face and one hand uplifted, jagged shards of broken glass held like a dagger towards the throat. A dagger which plunged even as he watched to release a fountain of ruby, a stream of blood from severed arteries which splashed on the wall and dappled the floor with a crimson rain.
*
‘Seven injured,’ reported Claire. ‘Five in shock; two catatonics. And one dead.’
Maddox frowned, ‘Dead?’
‘Gordon Kent. He killed himself with a broken boule. Ted saw him do it. Of the injured two are hospitalised; one caught his hand in a drill press, the other was burned. The other injuries are superficial and caused by collisions.’ She added, unnecessarily, ‘Their panic caused them to run.’
And one to run further than most — right into the security of the grave. Maddox remembered the man, a fine crewman who would be missed. Not the type he would have taken for wanting nerve, but when true panic struck who could guarantee their reactions?
Remembering he said, ‘How is Ted now?’
‘He is a doctor and a good one.’
‘So?’
‘A doctor gets used to the sight of blood, Carl. He has to.’
And Bain was a good doctor — which said nothing about his potential human weakness and, doctor or not, he could have succumbed to the general panic as had the rest. Maddox drew in his breath, remembering a time of nightmare when fear had clogged his veins and he had cringed with the desire to run, to escape, to hide.
If he had been weak and worried and afraid of personal hurt would he have yielded as Kent had done?
Or was it that the man had owned a far more intense imagination?
Questions, always questions, and still there were no answers. Bleakly he looked at the screens in Mission Control again seeing nothing but the cold burn of distant stars.
‘Rose?’
‘Nothing, Commander.’ She knew the implication of his call. ‘Space, as far as all instrumentation is concerned, is totally empty ahead of us.’
‘Saha, as far as the Computer is concerned, what are the extrapolations?’
‘None, Commander. There is insufficient data on which the Computer can work.’
Maddox felt the fingers of his left hand beginning to close. It was useless to blame a machine for not having the intuitive faculty of a man — but how much data did the damn thing need?
‘Try again,’ he ordered. ‘Feed it all the information we have and, if nothing else, obtain an intelligent guess.’ An inconsistency, no machine could be intelligent despite the claims of those who served them, but Saha might find some factor he had previously overlooked. With relief he saw Manton enter Mission Control. ‘Eric! Anything?’
‘Yes, but all negative.’ Manton cleared his throat. ‘At least we can eliminate all thought of internal causes for the recent wave of panic. All equipment in the theatre was out of operation. I’ve checked all sources of electronic usage and none show any surge or loss which means we can eliminate all packets of energy-source such as spatial vortexes which could have created a high-order energy flow.’