The Brain-Stealers

2

The guard's flashlight played on Jim Hunt for a bare instant before he let go and fell like a stone into the blackness under the dirigible. He felt a raging triumph even as the ship's huge, elongated form shrank swiftly and was blotted out against the stars. The light had played on him at just the right instant and from just the right angle. The guard would swear that he'd been empty-handed, that he'd jumped to his death from the Security patrol ship Cinquoin in the darkness and at fifteen thousand feet, rather than submit to recapture. And that was what Jim Hunt wanted.

But the odds were great that the guard would tell the exact truth. As he fell, he had the seat-pack, to be sure. After breaking out of the prison cab, he'd taken it from the crew's cabin of the ship in a desperate stealthy foray down from the maze of braces and wires and billowing, sluggish balloons within the framework of the monster airship. But he'd allowed himself to be cornered and sighted up near the bow, as if he'd been trying in the ultimate of desperation to find some hiding-place in which to conceal himself against search. With honest testimony, now, that he'd leaped to his death unequipped, it might be that the theft of the seat-pack from the other end of the ship wouldn't be noticed. It might be weeks or months before one seat-pack, emergency, type whatever-it-was, was missed and finally surveyed as expended or lost in the normal operations of the Security Patrol Ship Cinquoin. And by that time Jim Hunt would either be safely hidden—or it wouldn't matter.

Falling with the mounting velocity of a dropped stone and trying desperately to wriggle into the seat-pack's straps, he grew savagely sure that it wouldn't matter. He fell thirty-two feet the first second, and sixty-four the second, and ninety-six the third and a hundred and twenty-eight the fourth. He had one arm through one of the seat-straps, but no more. At the tenth second, he had dropped two thousand feet and was falling at the rate of a mile every sixteen seconds. At the fifteenth second the wind screamed about him as he hurtled earthward. He found himself grimacing savagely, falling through space like a meteor. The wind of his fall ran up the sleeve of his shirt and burst it. And he fought the wildly vibrating seat-pack which trailed behind him. In a nightmare of perpetual falling and blackness he knotted his hand in the strap he could not adjust and heaved....

There was a violent jerk. The pilot-chute was out and tending to check his fall. Another jerk, more violent. The first descent-chute. Then, at two-second intervals, the four horrible wrenching heaves that were the others. Seat-packs, being designed for emergency use in the most literal possible sense of the term, do not contain one large parachute, but five small ones. They open successively, making five lesser wrenchings at a man's body instead of one overwhelming yank which could snap his neck.

At twenty-five seconds after his drop into sheer blackness from the Security ship, Jim Hunt dangled below a swiftly-descending series of parachutes in the midst of a tangible darkness in which no star shone. He should, he believed, be over solid ground. But the Cinquoin might have made a detour for some unguessable reason. He might descend into icy black salt sea, or into a lake or even a pond which would serve as well to drown him as the ocean itself.

There was a faint, faint radiance above him. The Cinquoin was playing searchlights below. That was quick work, considering. Had he been able to adjust the seat-pack as quickly as its manufacturers claimed, while falling, his drop would have been checked a long way back. The searchlight beams would have caught him above the cloud-bank which now hid him. Either the ship itself would have followed him to the ground, or members of the Security Police would have jumped, too, delaying the opening of their chutes so they'd reach ground before him. Then he'd have been lost.

The radiance, dim at best, grew fainter still and died. The officers of the Cinquoin would have the honest statement of the guard that he'd simply jumped. The seat-pack had been hidden behind his body, and he was considered rebellious enough and desperate enough to have committed suicide rather than live the rest of his life in Security Custody. There was no sign of a chute beneath the ship. Everything pointed to his death. The odds were—and he neither saw nor heard anything to lessen them—that the ship had simply gone on to its destination, reporting him a suicide.

He dropped through darkness. Presently a sound like gentle surf upon a beach came up from below, but it came from a wide area. It was a wind of some force, beating upon trees. He set his jaws. He had an excellent chance of being killed in this landing. Or of losing his parachute-string when he struck—to be sighted from overhead when a routine patrol-plane search was made for his body. They wouldn't really expect to find it, unless buzzards guided them, but chutes caught in a tree-top would tell them entirely too much.

There was a sudden increase in the sound of wind-tossed branches. He smelled earth and woodland. He felt branches flashing past him in the dark. Something lashed him cruelly, like a cat-o-nine tails. He struck violently in a pine-tree, and rebounded—but he thought he had broken ribs—and fell in a great, arching swoop, and suddenly he was drenched in a monstrous crashing of water all about him. Then abruptly, the parachute-harness no longer tugged at him and he was knee-deep in a pond or stream, and the sound of wind among trees was a booming sound, inextricably mixed with the swishing of many leaves. And it was overhead.

He felt savagely triumphant. Jim Hunt was dead. The Security Police would concede it without question. The future would take care of itself. But somehow he'd show them! The damned fat-heads! Security! Security! That was the watchword now! They said that science had gone too far. There were a dozen fields in which research might turn up instruments so deadly or principles capable of such monstrous applications that all research had to be supervised carefully. So the World Government was formed; really to protect humanity against the consequences of its own intelligence. Men were capable of such brilliance in dealing with the forces of the universe, and such stupidity in dealing with each other, that mankind had to be protected against itself. But unfortunately the World Government confused the hopes of the future with the real menaces to the safety of the present. Jim Hunt had been solemnly adjudged a menace to the security of humanity. He'd been on his way to a Security Custody reservation to spend the rest of his life in confinement. He'd have been gently treated, to be sure, and allowed even tools and the means of research if he chose —under constant, detailed supervision. But he was to be imprisoned for life.

Now though, he waded ashore in the darkness, pulling carefully on his parachute-lines. It took him a long time to get the billowing masses of cloth—some of it wetted— into a bundle that he could carry and ultimately hide. He neither saw nor heard any signs of human life. But he moved cautiously into utterly black forest, carrying the untidy bundle which had been the compact emergency-chute. He forced his way on at random until he realized that he might be moving in a circle.

Then he lay down to wait for dawn. He was not at ease. If there was the least suspicion that he had escaped, rather than plummeted to his death. Security would hunt him from aloft with infra-red scanners that could note the heat of his body from an incredible distance. There were so many things that could be done if his survival was suspected! And of course a man who was dangerous to Security would be hunted much more relentlessly than a mere murderer.

He could not sleep for a long time. Then he tried deliberately to relax. He would need all his strength and cunning presently. He made his taut, tense muscles relax. He made himself comfortable with parachute-silk under him on a bed of soft woods-mold, scraped together by groping fingers. He lay still and relaxed ... relaxed... Presently he knew gratefully that in a little while he would sleep....

Then there were little nibbling thoughts around the edge of his mind. Not his own thoughts. Alien, patient, insinuating thoughts that were not the product of his own brain.

"Nice...." said the thoughts. "Nice.... Everything is nice ... This is the nicest place in the world....

Everyone is happy This is nice......"

Jim Hunt made a convulsive gesture and sprang to alertness there in the darkness in an unseen forest. His hands clenched. His heart pounded horribly. Sweat poured out all over his body in streams. He hadn't sweated like this even when he jumped from the dirigible in the hope that while falling he'd be able to work himself into the harness of an emergency parachute. His heart hadn't pounded at this tempo when he was about to land, swept at breakneck speed across the surface of a forest he couldn't see.

He was panting, while his whole body turned cold from the sweat that had poured out over it. The forest was still save for the booming sound of the wind overhead. And now that he was aroused and awake and panicky, it was hard to detect the thing that had stirred him so. But he soothed himself by force of will. He waited, and he was just barely able to feel the nibbling, soothing, insinuating ideas.

"Nice....." came the thought, persuasive but very faint. "This is nice... Everything is nice. Everything feels good. Sleep is good.... Sleep is nice...."

A murderous rage surged up in Jim Hunt's whole body. The nibbling thoughts faded abruptly.

He sat grimly with his back against a tree. His eyes burned in the blackness. When dawn broke, his expression was grim and utterly formidable.