"Thank God you didn't figure it was just a bluff!" Wilmer exclaimed. "Pulling that trigger would have been the greatest blunder in history."
"Move and countermove," Flinn mused. "It was our gambit and we were checked before we started."
"So I got on the open line and told the boys to fetch Flinn as quickly as possible," Hayes went on. "But I still don't understand. I'd swear that man read my mind."
"I don't think so," Flinn said. "I've had two mental contacts with Dobbs, and neither time did I get the least suggestion that he was telepathic."
"No need for him to be," Wilmer said. "It doesn't take a smart man to put two and two together and arrive at four. And this man is more than merely smart."
"I suppose you're right," Hayes said, "but it sure knocked the props out from under me."
They were all in attendance, most of them looking rumpled and gritty from lack of sleep and the realization that they had been beaten.
"I just don't know," a senator said wearily. "First a man who can influence matter, then one who reads minds, and now the latter tells us the former is inviolable. It's too much for me."
"I refuse to accept defeat!" a fleet admiral thundered, bringing his fist down upon the table explosively. He was an erect, bristling man with an aggressive combat record in two wars. "We've lost the first round—so what? There will be others."
"I quite agree," the Presidential assistant said. "This man must be destroyed. Already he's beginning to make impossible demands."
"But how do we go about it?" a congressman said. "Personally, I think we're licked. As far as I can see, the best thing to do is let him have his head and hope for the best."
"Hope for the best?" a man from a security agency echoed incredulously. "It's power Dobbs wants—recognized power. He wants to be feared and worshipped. Sooner or later he'll let everyone know. His egotism will force it. Can you conceive of what that would mean? For myself, I'd rather see the entire human race disappear in one flash of fire without ever knowing what hit it than live under the thumb of the fear of destruction!"
"Gentlemen!" The Presidential assistant rapped for order. "Let's examine the situation rationally and seek out the flaws. There must be some somewhere. Nothing in the mind of man is perfect."
"Well, this comes as close as anything," Wilmer interjected. "You ask what's wrong with the direct approach—why not shoot him while he sleeps? Well, I'll answer with some questions. Have any of you died as the result of a bullet in the brain? Have you ever questioned anyone who has been killed in that manner? Then how do we know there isn't a microsecond of awareness before life is extinguished? And even—or especially—on the subconscious level, isn't this enough time for a preset signal? What's the time-lag between countdown zero and the explosion of a thermonuclear bomb?"
"Apparently he has us blocked in every way," Flinn picked up Wilmer's argument. "Asleep or awake. Conscious or unconscious. It's all the same. Think of it as a special circuit in his mind. Destroy Dobbs, the circuit shorts, and this preset signal to the oxygen atoms is sent, their nuclei fuse, and that's the end of everything."
He scanned the faces of the men around the conference table. "Or think of it as a hypnotic suggestion. Under hypnosis, an individual is given a certain order that he is to carry out whenever a certain set of circumstances or stimuli occurs. No matter when this happens, no matter what he is doing or thinking when the moment arrives, the subject reacts according to the order buried in his subconscious."
"But for every move there is a countermove," the admiral argued. "This is a situation. A fantastic one, but a situation. There has to be an answer."
"I think there is," Flinn said carefully, "but it could be very risky."
It was up to the committee now. The decision rested squarely in the lap of the United States Government. Flinn had stated his ideas, presented his plan, and tried to give the odds—although in his heart he knew that was impossible—so it was now out of his hands.
Or was it?
The parapsychologist lay on the bed in his hotel room, trying to relax, trying to store up energy for the ordeal that might be imminent. Hayes and Wilmer were in the room, too, awaiting word from the heavily guarded conference chamber in the Pentagon.
The thin physicist paced up and down, his tanned face a study in strain. Wilmer had been with this as long as anyone, except Dobbs, and Flinn found himself wondering what deep inner resources the man had tapped to retain his sanity.
The big federal agent slouched in a chair, looking at nothing. He had lapsed again into the welcome protection of training and discipline.
Several times during the past thirty hours, since presenting his plan, Flinn had had to restrain himself from probing the minds of his two associates. At a time like this, no one had the right to invade another's privacy. And curiosity had to give way for another reason—just one look into either of their minds might be enough to weaken or shatter his own resolve.
The classic dilemma. Do nothing and face a living hell. Act and court destruction. The very simplicity of the alternatives made the problem intolerable.
Telehypnosis—the untried hypothesis.
Good Lord! Flinn told himself. I'm not even proficient as a telepath yet!
Outside, he could hear the murmur of the city—the traffic, the people, moving along their separate paths to their own destinations in the humid afternoon heat.
Well, anyway, once the complete curtain of security had fallen, there had been no more leaks. Proving that if a secret was big enough, it could be kept.
Another classic problem. Do the people have the right to be informed? Does forewarned really mean forearmed? And how about the other nations of the world?
An hour after the dinner dishes had been cleared away by the government agent dubbing as a room-service waiter, the telephone rang with an awful insistency.
Wilmer was the closest, but Hayes beat him to it by a full stride.
After identifying himself, Hayes listened in silence. Then he said, "All right," and replaced the receiver.
He nodded at Wilmer and Flinn.
"It's go ahead." He paused and his face seemed to change—to relent somehow. "And they wanted me to relay this message: The President says, 'May God be with you.'"
Flinn felt very alone and very close to something terrible.
In the gloom of the darkened bedroom that adjoined Dobbs', he could see Wilmer silhouetted against the meager light that came through the curtained window from the street lamp outside and Hayes was out in the hall. But the knowledge of the proximity of the two men did nothing to lessen Flinn's loneliness. The committee had even couched it as an order, trying to relieve him of that small burden, but if he failed, who would remain to accept the blame?
A few times in his forty-two years had Flinn wondered how it would feel to have the fate of the world riding upon his shoulders. Now he knew and wished he didn't.
The door opened silently and Hayes eased in.
"He's asleep," the agent breathed in a barely audible voice. "You can start anytime now."
The plan was simple, deceptively so.
Since Dobbs' block was a kind of self-hypnotic thing, why not countermand it with a deeper hypnotic suggestion introduced by telepathy? If it could be done and was strong enough, the second would counteract the first. At least for a short time.
There were terrifying flaws—the first one obvious, the second not so easily seen.
Suppose Dobbs' block had inherent within it an anti-disturbance feature that might react to any interference, including hypnotism in any form? Then the result would be an immediate "short-circuit" and—disaster.
Trembling with the responsibility that was upon him, Flinn forced himself into a deep concentration, an almost cataleptic trance. All details of the room faded from his consciousness. There was the familiar gray, swirling mist, and, for what seemed an intolerably long time, he fought to make contact with the sleeping man's mind. He almost sobbed aloud from the effort.
Then at last he found it, entered, and gradually pushed down through the subconscious.
He was seeking now, probing for the deep-seated level of the block that he had discovered the second time he had investigated Dobbs' mind.
It was very difficult with the sleeping man and, before he found it, more than once he felt himself standing on the precipice of the unknown, close to slipping away into a fright-filled nothingness.