_[22]_
The big tunnel inside the cliff was long and black, and the air wasstale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still for aminute, stretching his muscles. Crawling through that cramped littleopening had not been easy. He looked around him, trying to probe theluminescent gloom that the goggles he wore brought to his eyes.
The tunnel stretched out before him--on and on. Around him was thesmell of viciousness and death. Ahead ...
_It goes on to infinity_, Stanton thought, _ending at last at zero_.
The rat paused and looked back, waiting for him to follow.
"Okay," Stanton muttered. "Let's go."
The rat led him down the long tunnel, deep into the cliffside, until atlast they came to a stairway that led downward into the long tunnelswhere the trains had once run. They came to the platform wherepassengers had once waited for those trains. Four feet below the edge ofthe platform were the rusted tracks that had once borne those trains.
He lowered himself over the edge to stand on the rail.
"Barbell," said a voice in his ear, "Barhop here. Do you read?"
It was the barest whisper, picked up by the antennas in his shoes fromthe steel rail that ran along the floor of the dark tunnel.
"Read you, Barhop."
"Move out, then. You've got a long stroll to go."
Stanton started walking, keeping his feet near the rail, in case Greerwanted to call again. As he walked, he could feel the slight motion ofthe skin-tight woven suit that he wore rubbing gently against his skin.
And he could hear the scratching patter of the rats.
Mostly they stayed away from him, avoiding the strange being that hadinvaded their underground realm, but he could see them hiding in cornersand scurrying along the sides of the tunnels, going about theirunfathomable rodent business.
Around him, six rat-like remote-control robots moved with him, shiftingtheir pattern constantly as they patrolled his moving figure.
Far ahead, he knew, other rat robots were stationed, watching andwaiting, ready to deactivate the Nipe's detection devices at just theright moment. Behind him, another horde moved forward to turn thedevices on again.
It had, he knew, taken the technicians a long time to learn how to shutoff those detectors without giving the alarm to the Nipe's instruments.
There were nearly a hundred men in on the operation, controlling therobot rats or watching the hidden cameras that spied upon the Nipe.Nearly a hundred. And every single one of them was safe.
They were all outside the tunnel and far away. They were with Stantononly by proxy. They could not die here in this stinking hole, no matterwhat happened. But Stanton could.
There was no help for it, no other way it could be done. Stanton had togo in person. A full-sized robot proxy might be stronger, although notfaster unless Stanton was at the controls, than the Nipe. But the Nipewould be able to tell that the thing was a robot, and he would simplydestroy it with one of his weapons. A remote-control robot could neverget close enough to the Nipe to do any good.
"We do not know positively," Dr. Yoritomo had said, "whether he wouldrecognize it as a robot or not, but his instruments would show the metaleasily enough, and his eyes would be able to tell him that the machinewas not covered with human skin. The rats are small enough so that theycan be made mostly of plastic, and they are covered with real rat hides.In addition, our friend, the Nipe, is used to seeing them around. But ahuman-sized robot? Ah, no. Never."
So Stanton had to go in person, walking southward along the tracks,through the miles of blackness that led to the nest of the Nipe.
Overhead was Government City.
He had looked out upon those streets only the night before, and he knewthat only a short distance away there was an entirely different world.
Somewhere up there, his brother was waiting, after having run the gamutof publicity. He was a celebrity. "Stanley Martin, the greatestdetective in the Solar System," they'd called him. Fine stuff, that.Stanton wondered what the asteroids were like. What would it be like tolive out in space, where a man still had plenty of space to move aroundin and could fashion his life to suit himself? Maybe there would be aplace in the asteroids for a hopped-up superman.
Or maybe there would only be a place here, beneath the streets ofGovernment City, for a dead superman.
_Not if I can help it_, Stanton thought with a grim smile.
The walking seemed to take forever in one way, but, in another way,Stanton didn't mind it. He had a lot to think over. Seeing his brother'simage on the TV had been unnerving yesterday, but today he felt asthough everything had been all right all along.
His memory was still a long way from being complete, and it probablyalways would be, he thought. He could still scarcely recall any realmemories of a boy named Martin Stanton, but--and he smiled a little atthe thought--he knew more about him than his brother did, even so.
It made very little difference now. That Martin Stanton was gone. Ineffect, he had been demolished--what little there had been of him--and anew structure had been built on the old foundation.
And yet, it was highly probable that the new structure was very likethat that would have developed naturally if the accident so early inMartin Stanton's life had never occurred.
Stanton kept walking. There was a timeless feeling about his marchthrough the depths of the ground, as though every step through theblackness was exactly like every other step, and it was only the samestep over and over again.
He skirted a pile of rubble on his right. There had been a station here,once; the street above had caved in and filled it with brick, concrete,cobblestones, and steel scrap, and then it had been sealed over whenGovernment City was built.
A part of one wall was still unbroken, though. A sign built of tile said125TH STREET, he knew, although it was hard to make it out in the dimglow. He kept on walking, ignoring the rats that scampered over therubble.
A mile or so farther on, he whispered: "Barbell to Barhop. How'severything going?"
"Barhop to Barbell," came the answer. "No sign of any activity fromTarget. So far, none of the alarms have been triggered."
"What's he doing?" Stanton whispered. It seemed only right to keep hisvoice low, although he was fairly certain that his voice would not carryto the Nipe, even through these echoing tunnels. He was still milesaway.
"He's still sitting motionless," said Captain Greer. "Thinking, Isuppose. Or sleeping. It's hard to tell."
"All right. Let me know if he starts moving, will you?"
"Will do."
_Poor unsuspecting beastie_, Stanton thought. _Ten long years of hardwork, of feeling secure in his little nest, and within a very short timehe's going to get the shock of his life._
Or maybe not. There was no way of knowing what kind of shocks the Nipehad taken in the course of his life, Stanton thought. There was no wayof knowing whether the Nipe was even capable of feeling anything likeshock, as a matter of fact.
It was odd, he thought, that he should feel a strong kinship toward boththe Nipe and his brother in such similar ways. He had never met theNipe, and his brother was only a dim picture in his old memories, butthey were both very well known to him. Certainly they were better knownto him than he was to them.
And yet, seeing his brother's face on the TV screen, hearing his voice,watching the way he moved about, watching the changing expressions onhis face, had been a tremendously moving experience. Not until thatmoment, he thought, had he really known himself.
Meeting him face to face would be much easier now, but it would still bea scene highly charged with emotional tension.
His foot kicked something that rattled and rolled away from him. Hestopped, freezing in his tracks, looking downward, trying to pierce thedully glowing gloom. The thing he had kicked was a human skull.
He relaxed and began walking again.
There were plenty of human bones down here. Mannheim had told him thatthe tunnels had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb
had hitthe island during the Holocaust. Men, women, and children by thethousands had crowded underground after the warning had come--and theyhad died by the thousands when the bright, hot, deadly gases had roareddown the ventilators and stairwells.
There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them stillperfectly sealed after all this time. The hordes of rats, wiser thanthey knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the thin tinplate. And, after a while, oxidation would weaken the can to the pointwhere some lucky rat could gnaw through the rusty spot and find himselfa meal. Then he would move the empty can aside and begin gnawing at thenext in line. He couldn't get through the steel, but he would scratchthe tin off, and the cycle would begin again. Later, another rat wouldfind that can weak enough to bite through. It kept the rats fed almostas well as an automatic machine might have.
The tunnel before him was an endless monochromatic world that was bothartificial and natural. Here was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramictile that was obviously man-made; over there, on a little hillock ofearth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms. In several places he had toskirt little pools of dark, stagnant water; twice he had to climb overlong heaps of crumbling rust that had once been trains of subway cars.
He kept moving--one man, alone, walking through the dark toward asuperhuman monster that had terrorized Earth for a decade.
A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been very useful, but tosynthesize such a drug would have required a greater knowledge of thebiochemical processes of the Nipe than any human scientist had. The sameapplied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or supersonics. Therewas no way of determining how much would be required to knock him out orhow much would be required to kill. There were no easy answers.
The only answer was a man called Stanton.
_Boots! Boots! Boots! Boots! Marchin' up and down again! And there's no discharge in the war!_
Stanton hummed the song in his mind. It seemed that he had been walkingforever through the Kingdom of Hades, while around him twittered theghosts of the dead.
_Poor shades_, he thought, entertaining the fancy for a brief moment,_will I be one of you in a short while?_
There was no answer, though the squeaking continued. The sound of hisfeet and the snarling chirping of the rats were the only sounds in theworld.
"Barhop to Barbell," said a voice suddenly, sounding very loud in hisear, "this is where you have to make your change to the other tunnel."
"Barbell to Barhop. I know. I've been watching the markers."
"Just precaution, Barbell," Captain Greer said. "How do you feel?"
"I'd like to rest for a few minutes, frankly," Stanton said.
"Feeling tired?" There was just the barest tinge of alarm in thecaptain's voice.
"No," Stanton said. "I just want to sit down and rest my feet for a fewminutes."
There was a pause. Then the captain's voice came again. "Okay, go aheadand relax, Barbell. Take ten. But be ready to move fast if I yell. Thesealarm systems are tricky things to hold. And don't start moving againwithout letting me know."
"Right."
Stanton lifted himself out of the trench in which the tunnel ran and saton the edge of the boarding platform. It wasn't far now. There was onlyone more of the old entranceways between himself and the Nipe. Thisparticular one was a transfer point, where two different parts of thetunnel network met and it was possible to transfer from one to another.It required going up a couple of flights of stairs to the next higherlevel, and changing to another tunnel going southward.
There were other ways. This tunnel, the one he had been following for solong, branched a little farther south. If he took one branch, he wouldend up to the east of the Nipe; the other would bring him to a point onthe west. From either, he would have to travel laterally throughanother set of tunnels, but neither route offered anything that thisone didn't have, and the most direct route would be best.
"Barbell to Barhop," he whispered, "I'm ready to go."
"It's only been five minutes."
"I know. But I rest pretty fast, too. Let's move out."
There were a few seconds of silence, then Captain Greer said: "All set,Barbell. Move out."
Stanton got to his feet and walked toward the stairway that led up tothe next level. Minutes later, he was in another tunnel exactly similarto the first one, walking southward again.
But now he was more careful. He watched the ground carefully, makingsure that he didn't step on anything that would snap or rattle. The Nipewas still quite a distance away--three-quarters of a mile, or so--buttaking the chance that the beast couldn't hear him might be deadlydangerous. The robot rat that he was following led him along a path thathad been unobtrusively cleared of rubble by the robot rats over a periodof months, but the robots weren't the only rats in the place. He kepthis eyes on the path.
A while later, the voice in his ear said: "A hundred yards to go,Barbell."
"I know," Stanton whispered. "He hasn't moved?"
"No. I'll yell if he does. You don't need to talk any more. His earsmight pick up even that whisper."
_He hasn't moved_, Stanton thought. _Not for all this time. Not since Icame down into his private domain. All this time, he has been sittingmotionless--waiting. Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead? If his hearthad stopped, or something. Wouldn't that be absolutely hilarious?Wouldn't that be a big joke on everybody? Especially me._
Ahead was the large area that had been one of the major junction pointsof the tunnel network. This was the area that the Nipe had taken over tobuild his home-away-from-home. Here were his workshops, hislaboratories, his storerooms.
And somewhere here was the Nipe.
He came out of the tunnel into another passenger-loading area. Just tohis left was another short stairway that led up to a slightly higherlevel. He moved slowly and quietly. He didn't want to fight down here onthe tracks, and he didn't want to be caught just yet.
Cautiously he lifted himself to the platform where long-gone passengershad once waited for long-gone trains.
The quality of the illumination at the head of the stairs was differentfrom that which he had been used to for the past three hours. He liftedoff the infra-red goggles. Enough light spilled over from the Nipe'slair to give him illumination to see by. Silently, he put the goggles onthe floor of the platform. He wouldn't need them again.
Then, step by step, he walked up the concrete stairway.
At the head of the stairs, he paused to get his bearings.
The illumination was not bright, but it was enough to--
"Barbell! He's heard you! Watch it!"
But Stanton had already heard the movement of the Nipe. He jerked offthe communicator and threw it down the stairs behind him. He wanted noencumbrances now!
He ran quickly out into the center of the big underground room, awayfrom the open stairwell.
And then, as fast as any express train that had ever moved through thesesubterranean ways, the Nipe came around a corner thirty feet away, hisfour violet eyes gleaming, his limbs rippling beneath his centipede-likebody.
From fifteen feet away, he launched himself through the air, hisoutstretched hands ready to kill.
But Stanton's marvelous neuromuscular system was already in action.
At this stage of the game, it would be utter suicide to let the Nipeget in close. Stanton couldn't fend off eight grasping hands with hisown two. He leaped to one side, and the Nipe got his first surprise inten years when Stanton's fist slammed against the side of his snoutedhead, knocking him in the direction opposite that in which Stanton hadmoved.
The Nipe landed, turned, and charged back toward the man. This time hereared up, using his two rearmost pairs of limbs for locomotion, whilethe two forward pairs were held out, ready to kill.
He got surprise number two when Stanton's fist landed on the tip of hisrather sensitive snout, rocking his head back. His own hands met nothingbut air, and by the time he had recovered from the blow, Stanton waswell back,
out of the way.
_He's so small!_ Stanton thought wonderingly. Even when he reared up,the Nipe's head was only three feet above the concrete floor.
The Nipe came in again--more cautiously this time.
Stanton punched again with a straight right. The Nipe moved his headaside, and Stanton's knuckles merely grazed the side of the alien'shead, just below the lower right eye.
At the same time, one of the Nipe's hands swung in in a chopping righthook that took Stanton just below the ribs. Stanton leaped back with agasp of pain.
The Nipe didn't use fists. He used his open hand, fingers together, likea judo fighter.
The Nipe came forward, and, as Stanton danced back, the Nipe made a grabfor his ankle, almost catching it. There were too many hands to watch!
Stanton had two advantages: weight and reach. His arms were almost halfagain as long as the Nipe's.
Against that, the Nipe had all those hands; and with his low center ofgravity and four-footed stance, it would be hard to knock him down. Onthe other hand, if Stanton lost his footing, the fight would be overfast.
Stanton lunged suddenly forward and planted a left in the Nipe's rightupper eye, then followed it with a right uppercut to the Nipe's jaw ashis head snapped back. The Nipe's four hands cut inward from the sideslike sword blades, but they found no target.
Backing away, Stanton realized he had another advantage. The Nipecouldn't throw a straight jab! His shoulders--if that's what they shouldbe called--were narrow and the upper arm bones weren't articulatedproperly for such a blow. The alien could throw a mean hook, but he hadto get in close to deliver it.
On the other side of the coin was the fact that the Nipe knew plentyabout human anatomy--from the bones out. Stanton's knowledge of Nipeanatomy was almost totally superficial.
He wished he knew if and where the Nipe had a solar plexus. He wouldlike to punch something soft for a change.
Instead, he tried for another eye. He danced in, jabbed, and danced out.The Nipe had ducked again, taking the blow on the side of his head.
Then the Nipe came in low, at an angle, trying for the groin. For histroubles, he got a knee in the jaw that staggered him badly. Onegrasping hand clutched at Stanton's right thigh and grabbed hard.Stanton swung his fist down like a pendulum and knocked the arm aside.
But there was a slight limp in his movements as he back-pedaled awayfrom the Nipe. That full-handed pinch had hurt like the very devil!
Stanton was angry now, with the hot, controlled anger of a fighting man.He stepped in quickly and slammed two fast hard jabs into the point ofthe Nipe's snout, jarring the monster backward. And this time it wasthe Nipe who scuttled back out of the way.
Stanton moved in fast to press his advantage and landed a beaut on theNipe's lower left eye. Then he tried a body blow. It wasn't toosuccessful. The alien had an endoskeleton, but he also had a tough hidethat was somewhat like thick, leathery chitin.
Stanton pulled back, getting out of the way of the Nipe's open-handedjudo cuts.
His fists were beginning to hurt, and his leg was paining him badlywhere the Nipe had clamped onto it. And his ribs were throbbing wherethe Nipe had landed that single blow.
And then he realized that, so far, the Nipe had only landed that oneblow!
_One punch and one pinch_, Stanton thought with a touch of awe. _Theonly other damage he's inflicted has been to my knuckles!_
The Nipe charged in again, then he leaped suddenly and clawed forStanton's face with his first pair of hands. The second and third pairschopped in toward the man's body. The last pair propelled him off thefloor.
Stanton stepped back and drove in a long, hard right, hitting him justbelow the jaw, where his throat would have been if he had been human.
The Nipe arced backward in a half somersault and landed flat on hisback.
Stanton backed up a little more, waiting, while the Nipe wiggled feeblyfor a moment. _The Marquis of Queensberry should have lived to seethis_, he thought.
The Nipe rolled over and crouched on all eight limbs. His violet eyeswatched Stanton, but the man could read no expression on that inhumanface.
"_You did not kill._"
For a moment, Stanton found it hard to believe that the hissing,guttural voice had come from the crouching monster.
"_You did not even_ try _to kill._"
"I have no wish to kill you," Stanton said evenly.
"_I can see that. Do you ... Are you ..._" He stopped, as if baffled."_There are not the proper words. Do you follow the Customs?_"
Stanton felt a surge of triumph. This was what George Yoritomo hadguessed might happen!
"If I must kill you," Stanton said carefully, "I, myself, will do thehonors. You will not go uneaten."
The Nipe sagged a little, relaxing all over. "_I had hoped it was so. Itwas the only thinkable thing. I saw you on the television, and it wasonly thinkable that you came for me._"
Stanton sighed inwardly. That part of Colonel Mannheim's strategy hadworked, too. The Nipe had seen all the publicity releases that had beenso carefully tailored for him.
"_I knew you were out on the asteroids_," the Nipe went on. "_But I haddecided that you had come to kill. Since you did not, what are yourthoughts, Stanley Martin?_"
"That we should help each other," Stanton said.
It was as simple as that.
_[23]_
Stanton sat in his hotel room, smoking a cigarette, staring at the wall,and thinking.
He was alone again. All the fuss and feathers and foofaraw were over.Dr. Farnsworth was in another room of the suite, making his plans for acomplete physical examination of the Nipe. Dr. George Yoritomo washaving the time of his life, holding a conversation with the Nipe,drawing the alien out, and getting him to talk about his own race andtheir history.
And Stanley Martin was plotting the next phase of the capture--thecover-up.
Stanton smiled a little. Colonel Mannheim had been a great one forplanning, all right. Every little detail was taken care of. It hadsometimes made his plans more complex than necessary, Stanton suspected.Mannheim had tended to try to account for every possible eventuality,and, after he had done that, he had set aside a few reserves here andthere, just in case they might be useful if something unforeseenhappened.
All things considered, the Government had certainly done the rightthing. And, in picking Mannheim, they had picked the right man.
Stanton got up, walked over to the window, and looked down at thestreets of Government City, eight floors below.
What would those people down there think if they were told the truestory of the Nipe? What would the average citizen say if he discoveredthat, at this very moment, the Nipe was being treated almost as anhonored guest of the Government? More, what would he say if he suspectedthat the Nipe--the horrible, murderous, man-eating Nipe--could have beenkilled easily at any time during the past six years?
Would it be possible for anyone to explain to the common average manthat, in the long run, the knowledge possessed by the Nipe wastremendously more valuable to the race of Man than the lives of a fewindividuals?
Could those people down there, and the others like them all over theworld, be made to understand that, by his own lights, the Nipe had beenbehaving in the most civilized and gentlemanly fashion he knew? Couldthey ever be made to understand that, because of the tremendous wealthof priceless information stored in that alien brain, the Nipe's life hadto be preserved at any cost?
Or would they scream for blood?
Dr. Farnsworth assumed that Stanley Martin was going to spread a storyabout the Nipe's death--a carefully concocted story about how StanleyMartin had found the beast and the police had killed it. There might,Farnsworth assumed, be a carefully made "corpse" for the mob to hiss at.Maybe Farnsworth was right. But Stanton had the feeling that Martin andGeorge Yoritomo had something else up their collective sleeve.
The phone hummed. Stanton walked over, thumbed the answer button, andwatched George Yoritomo's face take shape on the screen
.
"Bart! I have just had the privilege of viewing the tapes of your fightwith our friend, the Nipe. Incredible! I watched the original on thescreen, of course, but I had to run the tapes. I wanted to slow it down,so that I could see what actually happened. Magnificent, that right ofyours! _So!_" He jabbed a fist out, shadowboxing with Stanton over thephone circuit.
"Awww, it weren't nuthin', Maw," Stanton drawled. "I jes' sorta flangout a fist an' he got in the way."
"Of course! But such a fling! Seriously, Bart, I want to run those tapesover again, and I want you to tell me, as best you can, just what wenton in your mind at each stage of the fight. It will be mostinformative."
"You mean right now? I have an appointment--"
Yoritomo waved a hand. "No, no. Later. Take your time. But I am honestlyamazed that you won so easily. I knew you were good, and I was certainyou'd win, but I must admit that I honestly expected you to beinjured."
Stanton looked down at his bandaged hands and felt the ache of hisbroken rib and the pain of the blue bruise on his thigh. In spite of theway it looked, he had actually been hurt worse than the Nipe had. Thatboy was _tough_!
"The trouble was that he couldn't adapt himself to fighting in a newway, just as you predicted," he told Yoritomo. "He fought me, I assume,in just the way he would have fought another Nipe. And that didn't work.I had the reach on him, and I could maneuver faster. Besides, he can'tthrow a straight punch with those shoulders of his."
"It appeared to me," Yoritomo said with a broad grin, "that you werefighting him as you would fight another human being. Eh?"
Stanton grinned back. "I was, in a modified way. But I wasn't confinedto a pattern. Besides, I won--the Nipe didn't. And that's all thatcounts."
"It is, indeed. Well, I'll let you know when I'm ready for yourimpressions of the fight. Probably tomorrow some time--say, in theafternoon?"
"Fine."
George Yoritomo nodded his thanks, and his image collapsed and fadedfrom the screen.
Stanton walked back over to the window, but this time he looked at thehorizon, not the street.
George Yoritomo had called him "Bart". It's funny, Stanton thought, howhabit can get the best of a man. Yoritomo had known the truth all along.And now he knew that his pupil--or patient--whichever it was--was awareof the truth. And still, he had called him "Bart".
_And I still think of myself as Bart_, he thought. _I probably alwayswill._
And why not? Why shouldn't he? Martin Stanton no longer existed--in asense, he had never existed. And in actual fact, he had never had muchof a real existence. He was only a bad dream. He had always been a baddream. And now that the dream was over, only "Bart" was real.
He thought back, remembering George Yoritomo's explanation.
"Take two people," he had said. "Two people genetically identical.Damage one of them so badly that he is helpless and useless--to himselfand to others. Damage him so badly that he is always only a step awayfrom death.
"The vague telepathic bond that always links identical twins (they'think alike', they say) becomes unbalanced under such conditions.
"Normally, there is a give-and-take. One mind is as strong as the other,and each preserves the sense of his own identity, since the twodifferent sets of sense receptors give different viewpoints. But if oneof the twins is damaged badly enough, then something must happen to thattelepathic linkage.
"Usually it is broken.
"But the link between you and your brother was not broken. Instead, itbecame a one-way channel.
"What happens in such a case? The damaged brother, in order to escapethe intolerable prison of his own body, becomes a receptor for thestronger brother's thoughts. The weaker feels as the stronger feels. Theexperience of the one becomes the experience of the other--the thrill ofrunning after a baseball, the pride of doing something clever with thehands, the touch of a girl's kiss upon the lips--all these become theproperty of the weaker, since he is receiving the thoughts of thestronger. There is, of course, no flow in the other direction. Thestronger brother has no way of knowing that his every thought is beingduplicated in his brother's mind.
"In effect, the damaged brother ceases to think. The thoughts in hismind are those of the healthy brother. The feeling of identity becomesalmost complete.
"To the outside observer, the damaged brother appears to be a catalepticschizophrenic, completely cut off from reality. And, in a sense, he is."
Stanton walked over to the nightstand by the bed, took another cigarettefrom the pack, lit it, and looked at the smoke curling up from the tip.
_So Martin became a cataleptic schizophrenic_, he thought.
The mind of Martin had ceased to think at all. The "Bart" part of himhad not wanted to be disturbed by the garbled, feeble sensoryimpressions that "Mart's" body provided. Like many anotherschizophrenic, Martin had been living in a little world cut off from theactual physical world around his body.
The difference between Martin's condition and that of the ordinaryschizophrenic had been that Martin's little dream world had actuallyexisted. It had been an almost exact counterpart of the world that hadexisted in the perfectly sane, rational mind of his brother, Bart. Ithad grown and developed as Bart had, fed by the one-way telepathic flowfrom the stronger mind to the weaker.
There had been two Barts--and no Mart at all.
But there had been only one human being between them. Bart Stanton hadbeen a strong, capable, intelligent, active human being. The duplicateof his mind was just a recording in the mind of a useless,radiation-blasted hulk.
And then the Neurophysical Institute had come into the picture. A newprocess had been developed by Dr. Farnsworth and his crew, by which ahuman being could be reconstructed--made, literally, into a superman.All the techniques had been worked out in careful and minute detail. Butthere was one major drawback. Any normal human body would resist theprocess--to the death, if necessary--just as a normal human body willresist a skin graft from an alien donor or the injection of an alienprotein.
But the radiation-damaged body of Martin Stanton had had no resistanceof that kind. It had long been known that deep-penetrating ionizingradiation had that effect on an organism. The ability to resist wasweakened, almost destroyed.
With Martin Stanton's body--perhaps--the process might work.
So Bartholomew Stanton, who had become Martin's legal guardian after thedeath of their mother, had given permission for the series of operationsthat would rebuild his crippled brother.
The telepathic link, of course, had to be shut off--for a time, atleast. If it remained intact, Martin would never be able to think forhimself, no matter what was done to his body. Part of that cutting-offprocess could be done during the treatment of Martin--but only ifBartholomew would co-operate. He had done his part. He had submitted todeep hypnosis, and had allowed himself to be convinced that his name wasStanley Martin, to think of himself as Stanley Martin. The Martin namewas one that the real Martin's mind would reject utterly. That mindwanted nothing to do with anything named Martin.
"Stanley Martin," then, had gone out to the asteroids. In his mind hadbeen implanted the further instructions that he was not to return toEarth nor to attempt to investigate the Nipe under any circumstances.The simple change of name and environment had been just enough to snapthe link during a time when Martin's brain had been inactivated by coldtherapy and anesthetics.
Only the sense of identity had remained. The patient was still"Bart"--but now he was being forced to think for himself.
Mannheim had used them both, naturally. Colonel Mannheim had the abilityto use anyone at hand, including himself, to get a job done.
Stanton looked at his watch. It was almost time.
Mannheim had sent for "Stanley Martin" when the time had come for him toreturn in order to give the Nipe data that he would be sure tomisinterpret. A special series of code phrases in the message hadreleased "Stanley Martin" from the hypnotic suggestions that had heldhim for so long. He knew now that he was Bartholomew Stan
ton.
_And so do I_, thought the man by the window. _We have a lot tostraighten out, we two._
There was a knock at the door.
Stanton walked over and opened it, trying not to think.
It was like looking into a mirror.
"Hello, Bart," he said.
"Hello, Bart," said the other.
In that instant, complete telepathic linkage was restored. In thatinstant, they both knew what only one of them had known before--that,for a time, the telepathic flow had been one-way again, but this time inthe opposite direction--that "Stanley Martin" had been shaken thatafternoon when his own mind had become the receptor for the other'sthoughts, and he had experienced completely the entire battle with theNipe. His release from the posthypnotic suggestion had made it possible.
There was no need for further words.
_E duobus unum._
There was unity without loss of identity.
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