The Brain-Stealers

17

Jim's reasoning was sound. It was wiser to get money and buy essentials than try to pilfer the essentials separately. So that night Jim, who had been a promising scientist once upon a time, and Brandon who was a leading citizen in his own home town, held up a tavern just outside a little city. They marched in with handkerchiefs over their faces, overawed four customers and the bartender, and went out with the contents of the cash-register. They roared away to the southward in their car.

Half a mile away they stopped, splashed the car frantically with mud, Brandon adjusted the fuel-injector to be slightly out of phase, and then turned back and limped past the tavern they had robbed just as visiphoned police-cars arrived in a rush. They drove placidly on with their faltering motor as the squad-cars roared off in pursuit.

Then they readjusted the fuel-injector, went into the small town nearby, and parked their car near a public visi-receiver, tuned to the nearest station and listened to advertisers on the visicasts so that nobody could escape their advertising campaigns even by leaving home.

The newscast that came on in minutes told briefly of a search continuing, downstate, for a homicidal maniac whose delusions caused him to wear an iron-wire cap upon his head. He was now charged with three murders and arson. The newscast did not speak of any search for Brandon. It did not mention that Jim was known to have possessed himself of a car.

The omissions might be intentional, to lull Jim and Brandon, separately, into a feeling of false security if they listened to the 'casts. But Jim's feat of kidnapping a Thing and tricking a farmer and his wife into continued life and the loss of a car might simply not be known. Certainly the junction of Jim and Brandon wasn't likely to have been suspected. It wasn't even likely that they were credited with the holdup of a few minutes since, or that they would be. This was two hundred and fifty miles from where Jim was hunted, and far off the direct route to Brandon's home—which would be where he was looked for.

The two of them drove all night again. They spent the early part of the next morning making Brandon presentable. Before noon he went out of their hiding-place, grandly hailed an interurban bus, and went into a town some seventy-five miles from the one in which he lived. Jim Hunt bit his nails in savage apprehension for hours. Brandon couldn't be forced to talk, of course, and no one would think to question him about Jim. But it was ticklish!

He came back shortly after three. He carried neatly-wrapped parcels and he looked half-sick.

"Clothes for you," he said. "I told them they were for my boy at school. 'Hope they fit you. A suit for myself. I didn't dare change in the shop. The things you listed from the electrical place. 'Said I had a youngster who liked to tinker with such stuff. The groceries. We can eat."

Jim said, "Well?"

"I called my home town," said Brandon very quietly. "I was afraid you were right, so I didn't call my home. I called one of my employees—not too bright, but loyal. I told him I'd gotten into trouble down-state, and hinted at a woman, and that the insanity story had been started to cover me up and had gotten out of hand. I said I'd ducked out before the man who wanted to get even with me could railroad me to an insane asylum."

Jim said again, "Well?"

"My family believes in the dented-metal-plate story," said Brandon bitterly. "They've been told my delusions in detail. There are police hidden in the house to grab me if I manage to slip back, because I believe there are little non-human things who hide in boiler-rooms and attics and intend to enslave humanity! My employee mentioned them. He was suspicious until he'd referred to them and I made a show of being angry and asked him what the devil he was talking about! Now he thinks I got into trouble, pulled the insanity gag to get out, and that it got out of my control."

Jim said, "And—"

"That's all," said Brandon. "He's going to try to reassure my wife privately that I'm not insane. I told him not to, but he will! So—" His face was taut and gray. "I can't go home. If I did, they'd not only get me, but they'd take my wife along—all very plausibly—she'd insist on going—"

Jim breathed more easily.

"I was afraid you'd call your wife," he admitted, "and we'd be sunk. Now I've got a thousand-to-one chance I want to play before I take that Thing to Security. If I know Security officials, they'll be inclined to turn the Thing over to somebody who'll let it out without precautions, and while it's raising hell and started a slave-empire of its own, I'll be shipped off to life custody and my information will be referred through channels with the endorsement, 'Report made by certified homicidal maniac' So nothing whatever will result. I'll try this trick first. Did you get the bandages?"

He changed his clothes. They ate voraciously. Brandon bandaged Jim's head and put one arm in a sling, which somehow automatically ended all likelihood of anyone suspecting him of wearing an iron cap. They drove off in broad daylight now, and as they passed through a small town Jim made a mental note of the license-plate number of a wrecked car in a garage. If he changed the plates on this car to that number it would add a little to their slender margin of safety.

A hundred miles away, Brandon bought more electrical parts. They slept again in a side-road and took turns standing watch. This night Brandon said suddenly, "That Thing in the car-trunk. You haven't fed it. Won't it die?"

"It's a blood-feeder," said Jim hardly. "Do you want to feed it? No, it won't die. Bloodfeeders have to be able to fast long times between meals. Like ticks and bedbugs. Ticks can go six months and bedbugs longer. I'm not worried about the health of the poor Little Fella just because he hasn't any human slaves!"

They had one more day's journey to the destination Jim had in mind. Toward nightfall of the next day he turned aside from any obviously useful highway and began to thread his way along an overgrown, almost-obliterated road. The little car forded streams. They went into wilderness which grew more and more pronounced. Once, they had to move a fallen tree-trunk out of the way. Just at sundown they came to a place where there were no trees or else only small ones, and where creeping vines grew over certain shapeless mounds upon the ground. The nature of the mounds was shown by a roofless, empty-windowed one-storey brick building in their midst.

"It's a sort of ghost town," said Jim without zest. "There used to be a lot of farming up here, but hydroponics and low transportation cost wiped it out. This was what they called a crossroads village. One summer when I was a kid my Scout troop camped up here. It's fallen down a lot since then but there—"—he pointed to the brick shell— "that used to be the bank. The vault's still there. We'll need it. I give myself a week. If I don't get what I want by then, I'll try the only thing that's left. But I haven't much hope of Security."

He loaded up to transfer their living aparatus to the place where they would sleep. But he left the Thing in the car-trunk. In its cage, the Thing would neither be warm, nor lie soft, nor have anything on which to feed, but Jim could feel no concern. Early the next morning he set to work to try to destroy all the power of the Things without recourse to Security.

For materials, he had some small gadgets bought in electrical shops. For laboratory, he would use the abandoned, rusty vault of a bank that had closed down thirty years before and left its building to rot. But for motive, he had the future of the human race.