MALCOLM JAMESON: Science Fiction Collection - 17 Books in One Edition. Malcolm Jameson

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СКАЧАТЬ picture came in clearer.

      Winchester viewed a street scene in Cosmopolis, through a scanner concealed under the window ledge of a building. Workers were streaming out from one of the great plastic plants and walking toward their barracks. Operatives of the AFPA were thick among the crowd.

      Winchester saw two of them cruise up alongside a man and pin his arms. There was a whisper in his ear, and the man nodded. One of the operatives dropped astern and went after other prey. The other led the man around the next corner where a prison van was parked. The round-up was in progress.

      The American flicked the switch. There was more blinking, and then he was looking into a room from the vantage point of its molding. This was the office of the Curator-in-Chief of the Botanical Gardens, Winchester's former superior. The door opened and three helmeted men walked in.

      The old chief stood up in surprise. But as the leading operative suddenly snapped the neck of a small vial he carried in his hand, the scientist inhaled a deep breath. On the instant he sank back into his chair, with the expression of idiotic vacuity characteristic of the Lotus-eaters.

      The invading operative had just opened an ampule of the compelling Lotusol!

      The men moved swiftly then. One produced a shiny helmet and snapped it on the old man's head. Another brought forth a welding torch. At a stroke he welded the chin strap tight. Then the two hustled the botanist from the room.

      Winchester turned to the next adjacent scanner. It was on the front of the building. Through it he could see them put the old scientist into a sealed van, where the atmosphere was pure vapor of Lotus. The wagon rolled away.

      Winchester changed his tuning wave. Now he was on a special band, which emanated from telepathic transmitters incorporated in the helmets of the denizens of the Crater of Dreams. The new helmets Winchester had made were not like the ones formerly used.

      Instead of being on a single private wave, accessible only to a favorite individual Mongoloid, these helmets had a common denominator. The Master receiver Winchester wore could tune in on any of them at his discretion. Besides that, each sender had its automatic receiver, which kept a continuous record of all the thoughts that came in over it.

      The American had natural reluctance to tune in on a man's private thoughts. But it was imperative that he know just how the drug hit a man of genuine intellectual capacity.

      He soon found out. The subject was his former superior — the Curator-in-Chief at the Botanical Gardens.

      At the moment the drug struck his nostrils, the curator must have been engaged in a brown study about the Venusian drip-fern. This was a plant of rather extraordinary medicinal qualities, inasmuch as its essential oil contained three of the vital hormones found within the human body.

      Winchester gasped at the first revelation that came to him. His ex-chief, now that the workings of his mind were no longer inhibited by practical prohibitions, was speculating on the possibility of crossing the fern with the Titanian fungus!

      It was no less than revolutionary.

      The two plants were fundamentally different; the one living in humid, hot air, the other in the bleak near-vacuum of twilight Uranus, where even radon liquefies and lies in rosy pools!

      Yet Winchester saw at once the value of the dream, if it could be made practicable. Until then the oils of both plants had been blended in the pharmaceutical laboratories, but at great expense, to make a product invaluable to man — a specific against five different types of germs.

      If the plants could be crossed successfully, if would mean that the hybrid would produce the ultimate oil by natural processes. Man would have only to tap the plant's veins.

      Curious, the American tuned in on other scientists just inoculated by the Poison Squad. Not all were so productive. Many of their dreams were so wild and impracticable as to cause shudders to run down the spine. Yet here and there among them were ideas worth developing, so daring that men in their normal senses would never entertain them seriously for a moment. But once formulated, competent scientists could look these schemes over in cold calculation, separate the hopelessly fantastic from those that were soundly based.

      Again the fear of failure gripped Winchester. What scientists would look them over? In a few hours there would be no more sober and sane scientists. His dragnet had them all. It was true that robot receivers were busily recording every thought sent out by the drug-maddened victims. But who was there left to review them, to decide which deserved development and which not?

      "I must not fail," Winchester said.

      A week saw the end of the first grand sweep. The new disciplinary barracks was crammed with prisoners and its mills hummed. Regiments of guards surrounded the inmates, armed with every weapon current in that day — heat and electron guns, and the dreaded paralyzers.

      On the roof heavy lightning throwers defended the place against any conceivable effort to storm it and release the imprisoned revolutionaries. It was an impregnable fortress.

      The Crater of Dreams was packed to capacity. In it now reclined every scientist and engineer of note, as well as most of the former plant managers. They were slothful and indolent, dreaming day and night, sending out pulsations of thought that were appalling in their audacity.

      Invariably the dreamers worked from the basis of their own memories and special capacities. But their illusions were embroidered with whimsical variations, inconceivable to a man of sane mind. Whatever course the destiny of mankind might take thereafter, these drugged intellectuals were helpless to aid or hinder.

      There were no more rebels or dissenters. All had been accounted for. That is, all but Allan Winchester himself and Cynthia. And of these two, but one held the key that might with luck unlock the myriad of now helpless prisoners.

      A silver gong sounded. It was the personal call of Prince Lohan himself.

      "My lord?" said Winchester, answering promptly.

      The full-length figure of the prince appeared upon the television screen.

      "You have done well — better even than you promised. I did not know there were so many. But what of the double-crossers in my own organization?"

      "That is the next step, my lord. You will be shocked at their number, but my findings are unimpeachable. I should warn you — there are wearers of the yellow among them."

      "I know," said the prince, and his face was hard as nails. "They will be treated as they deserve. Name them."

      "The Prince Kow Foong, the Prince Ila-Ting, the woman known as Kuka San, favorite of the Khan — "

      On he went, reciting the names of many of the great. On the list were five princes of the blood, twelve grand dukes and forty-seven minor aristocrats, including the governor of Callisto. All had conspired for accession to the throne or the assassination of Lohan and his consort.

      "I will attend to them," said Lohan, and his voice was like a file biting into a resonant plateglass. "What of my agents?"

      "I am sorry to inform your Highness that of my fifteen highest-ranking associates, only two are to be trusted. These are Number Six and Number Fourteen. The rest merit death."

      "They shall die — and tonight," said Lohan with great finality. "The rest?"

      "The СКАЧАТЬ