Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/13

 "You should know best." shrugged the Angel "Now tell me what's up."

"Gladly," said Jackson, settling himself in a chair with a curiously loose-jointed gesture. "You're not very much of a superman, you know."

"Pardon the contradiction," said the Angel ominously, "But I happen to know for a fact that I'm very far above the normal human being."

"Intellectually," said Jackson. "Not emotionally. And that's very important. You don't mind my speaking plainly?"

"Not at all."

"Very well. You're much like an extremely brilliant child. You have a downright genius for mechanics and physical sciences, but your understanding of human relationships is very sub-average. That must be why you were so badly taken in by Mr. Sapphire."

"Taken in?" reflected the Angel. "I don't think he fooled me. I knew that he'd try to get me out of the way—murder or otherwise—as soon as he got what he wanted from me. I trusted myself to take care of him."

"Good, but not reasoned far enough. Did it ever strike you that Mr. Sapphire—as you persist in thinking of him—was not a free agent? That he was—ah—grinding somebody else's axe?"

"Holy smokes!" yelped Maclure. The strange discrepancies which he had bundled into the back of his mind suddenly resolved themselves into a frightening pattern.

"Exactly," smiled Jackson. "You are the key piece in the problem. Both, sides must take care of you, for if you are lost the game is at an end. Shall I begin at the beginning?"

"You'd, better," said the Angel weakly,

"Very well" began Jackson. "Our opponents are known to us as the Mortens; we are the Amters. For some thousands of your years there has been an intermittent warfare going on between us. You must take my word for it that it is they who are bent on destroying us and that we act only in self defense. They are situated about nine parsecs away from us, which makes attack, a difficult and dangerous undertaking, yet they have not hesitated to risk their entire generations in desperate attempts to wipe us out.

"Of late there had been little of that; when our spies reported they informed us that an intensive psychological campaign was going on. against us. This we could repulse with ease. But we could not very well block their attempts to gain mental domination of Earth and its solar system. They did not, of course, control every individual, but they reached sufficient key-persons like Mr. Sapphire to be nearly masters of your world."

"One moment," interrupted the Angel. "I can assure you that Mr. Sapphire, knew that they were at work on him. I also believe that he only pretended submission. His ends were his own."

"Perhaps," Jackson shrugged. "At any rate, what they needed was mechanical and physical genius. And you, Angel Maclure, are the outstanding mechanical and physical genius of the universe. You can solve problems that no other mind could, even approach. And the first of such problems was the one of Dead Center, which we have been investigating for many generations."

"Investigating?" snapped Angel "How?"

"Purely psychological investigations. such as the projection of minds within the region of the Center. This