He held out a sheaf of typewritten pages. "Won't you at least look through it?"

Darrig accepted the papers and put them in his pocket. "When I get time."

"I suggest you give it a try," the Amba.s.sador said. "You must be near the crisis point now. Why not give it up?"

"Not yet," Cercy replied tonelessly.

"Don't forget to read the philosophy," the Amba.s.sador urged them.

The men hurried from the room.

"Now look," Malley said, once they were back in the control room, "there are a few things we haven't tried. How about utilizing psychology?"

"Anything you like," Cercy agreed, "including black magic. What did you have in mind?"

"The way I see it," Malley answered, "the Amba.s.sador is geared to respond, instantaneously, to any threat. He must have an all-or-nothing defensive reflex. I suggest first that we try something that won't trigger that reflex."

"Like what?" Cercy asked.

"Hypnotism. Perhaps we can find out something."

"Sure," Cercy said. "Try it. Try anything."

Cercy, Malley and Darrig gathered around the video screen as an infinitesimal amount of a light hypnotic gas was admitted into the Amba.s.sador's room. At the same time, a bolt of electricity lashed into the chair where the Amba.s.sador was sitting.

"That was to distract him," Malley explained. The Amba.s.sador vanished before the electricity struck him, and then appeared again, curled up in his armchair.

"That's enough," Malley whispered, and shut the valve. They watched.

After a while, the Amba.s.sador put down his book and stared into the distance.

"How strange," he said. "Alfern dead. Good friend ... just a freak accident. He ran into it, out there. Didn't have a chance. But it doesn't happen often."

"He's thinking out loud," Malley whispered, although there was no possibility of the Amba.s.sador's hearing them. "Vocalizing his thoughts. His friend must have been on his mind for some time."

"Of course," the Amba.s.sador went on, "Alfern had to die sometime. No immortality--yet. But that way--no defense. Out there in s.p.a.ce they just pop up. Always there, underneath, just waiting for a chance to boil out."

"His body isn't reacting to the hypnotic as a menace yet," Cercy whispered.

"Well," the Amba.s.sador told himself, "the regularizing principle has been doing pretty well, keeping it all down, smoothing out the inconsistencies--"

Suddenly he leaped to his feet, his face pale for a moment, as he obviously tried to remember what he had said. Then he laughed.

"Clever. That's the first time that particular trick has been played on me, and the last time. But, gentlemen, it didn't do you any good. I don't know, myself, how to go about killing me." He laughed at the blank walls.

"Besides," he continued, "the colonizing team must have the direction now. They'll find you with or without me."

He sat down again, smiling.

"That does it!" Darrig cried. "He's not invulnerable. Something killed his friend Alfern."

"Something out in s.p.a.ce," Cercy reminded him. "I wonder what it was."

"Let me see," Darrig reflected aloud. "The regularizing principle.

That must be a natural law we knew nothing about. And underneath--what would be underneath?"

"He said the colonization team would find us anyhow," Malley reminded them.

"First things first," Cercy said. "He might have been bluffing us ...

no, I don't suppose so. We still have to get the Amba.s.sador out of the way."

"I think I know what is underneath!" Darrig exclaimed. "This is wonderful. A new cosmology, perhaps."

"What is it?" Cercy asked. "Anything we can use?"

"I think so. But let me work it out. I think I'll go back to my hotel.

I have some books there I want to check, and I don't want to be disturbed for a few hours."

"All right," Cercy agreed. "But what--?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"No, no, I could be wrong," Darrig said. "Let me work it out." He hurried from the room.

"What do you think he's driving at?" Malley asked.

"Beats me," Cercy shrugged. "Come on, let's try some more of that psychological stuff."

First they filled the Amba.s.sador's room with several feet of water.

Not enough to drown him, just enough to make him good and uncomfortable.

To this, they added the lights. For eight hours, lights flashed in the Amba.s.sador's room. Bright lights to pry under his eyelids; dull, clashing ones to disturb him.

Sound came next--screeches and screams and shrill, grating noises. The sound of a man's fingernails being dragged across slate, amplified a thousand times, and strange, sucking noises, and shouts and whispers.

Then, the smells. Then, everything else they could think of that could drive a man insane.

The Amba.s.sador slept peacefully through it all.

"Now look," Cercy said, the following day, "let's start using our d.a.m.ned heads." His voice was hoa.r.s.e and rough. Although the psychological torture hadn't bothered the Amba.s.sador, it seemed to have backfired on Cercy and his men.

"Where in h.e.l.l is Darrig?"

"Still working on that idea of his," Malley said, rubbing his stubbled chin. "Says he's just about got it."