Part 20 (1/2)

Hanardy stumbled to his feet. He was actually heading after her when he remembered Sween-Madro's orders to him, and he stopped, ”What's the matter?” she demanded.

He mumbled simply, ”He told me not to leave my s.h.i.+p. He'll kill me if I do.”

The girl was instantly impatient. ”Steve, stop this non-sense.” Her sharp words were like blows striking his mind. ”You haven't any more to lose than we have. So come along!”

And she started back through the airlock. Hanardy stood, stunned and shaking. In a single sentence, spoken in her preemptory fas.h.i.+on, she challenged his manhood by implica-tion, recognized that the dumb love he felt for her made him her slave and so re-established her absolute ascendancy.

Silently, tensely, he shuffled across the metal floor of the airlock and moments later was in the forbidden meteorite.

Feeling doomed.

The girl led the way to what was, in effect, the engine room of the meteorite.

As Steve trailed reluctantly behind her, ProfessorUngarnrose up from a chair and came forward, smiling his infinitely tired smile.

His greeting was, ”Pat wants to tell you about intelligence. Do you know what your I.Q. is?”

The question barely reached the outer ramparts of Hanardy's attention. Following the girl along one corridor after another, a fearful vision had been in his mind, of Sween-Madro suddenly rounding the next corner and strik-ing him dead. That vision remained, but along with it was a growing wonder:Where was the Dreegh?

The professor snapped, ”Steve do you hear me?”

Forced to look at him, Hanardy was able to remember proudly that he belonged in the 55th percentile of the human race, intelligence-wise, and that his I.Q. had been tested at 104.

”The tester told me that I was above average,” Hanardy said in a tone of pleasure. Then, apologetic again, he added, ”Of course, beside you guys I'm nothing.”

The old man said, ”On the Klugg I.Q. scale you would probably rate higher than 104. We take into account more factors. Your mechanical ability and spatial relations skill would not be tested correctly by any human I.Q. test that I have examined.”

He continued, ”Now, Steve, I'm trying to explain this all to you in a great hurry, because some time in the next week you're going to be, in flashes, the most intelligent man in the entire solar system, and there's nothing anybody can do about it except help you use it. I want to prepare you.”

Hanardy, who had anxiously stationed himself so that he could keep one eye on the open door-and who kept expect-ing the mighty Dreegh to walk in on the little conspiratorial group of lesser beings-shook his head hopelessly.

”You don't know what's already happened. I can be killed. Easy. I've got no defenses.”

He glumly described his encounter with the Dreegh and told how helpless he had been. ”There I was on my knees, begging, until I just happened to say something that made him stop. Boy,he sure didn't think I was unkillable.”

Pat came forward, stood in front of him, and grabbed his shoulders with both hands.

”Steve,” she said in an urgent voice, ”above a certain point of I.Q. mind actually isover matter. A being above that intelligence level cannot be, killed. Not by bullets, nor by any circ.u.mstance involving matter.

Now listen: in you is a memory of such an intelligence level. In manhandling you, the Dreegh was trying to see what limited stress would do. He found out. He got the message from the Great Galactic out of you.

”Steve, after that he didn'tdare put a bullet into you, or fire a death-level energy beam. Because that would force this memory to the surface!”

In her intense purposefulness she tried to move him with her hands. But that only made Hanardy aware of what a girlish body she had. So little body, so much imperious woman-it startled him for she could barely budge him, let alone shake him.

She said breathlessly, ”Don't you see, Steve? You're going to be king! Try to act accordingly.”

”Look-” Hanardy began, stolidly.

Rage flashed into her face. Her voice leaped past his inter-jection. ”And if you don't stop all this resistance, in the final issueI'll put a bullet into your brain myself, and then you'll see.”

Hanardy gazed into her blue eyes, so abruptly furious. He had a sinking conviction that she would do exactly what she threatened. In alarm, he said, ”For Pete's sake, what do you want me to do?”

”Listen to what dad has to say!” she commanded. ”And stop looking the other way. You need a high-speed educa-tion, and we haven't got much time.”

That last seemed like a total understatement to Hanardy. His feeling was that he had no time at all.

Awareness saved him, then. There was the room with its machinery, and the old man and his daughter; and there was he with his mind jumping with the new fear of her threat. Hanardy had a flitting picture of the three of them lost forever inside this remote meteorite that was just one tiny part of Jupiter's colossal family of small, speeding particles of matter-a meaningless universe that visibly had no morality or justice, because it included without a qualm, creatures like the Dreeghs.

As his skittering thought reached that dark depth, it suddenly occurred to Hanardy that Pat couldn't shoot him. She didn't have a gun. He opened his mouth to tell her of her helplessness. Then closed it again.

Because an opportunity might open up for her to obtain a weapon. So the threat remained, receded in time ... but not to be dismissed. Nonetheless, he grew calmer. He still felt compelled, and jittery. But he stayed there and listened, then, to a tiny summary of the story of human intelligence and the attempts that had been made to measure it.

It seemed human intelligence tests were based on a curve where the average was 100. Each test ProfessorUngarn had seen revealed an uncertainty about what const.i.tuted an intelligence factor, and what did not. Was the ability to tell left from right important to intelligence? One test included it. Should an individual be able to solve brain twisters? Many testers considered this trait of great importance. And almost all psychologists insisted on a subtle understanding of the meaning of words and many of them.

Skill at arith-metic was a universal requirement. Quick observation of a variety of geometric shapes and forms was included. Even ageneral knowledge of world conditions and history was a requirement in a few tests.

”Now, we Kluggs,” continued the professor in his melan-choly voice, ”have gone a step beyond that.”

The words droned on through Hanardy's mind. Kluggs were theory-operating people ... theories based on primary and not secondary abilities. Another race, ”higher” than the Kluggs-called the Lennels-operated on Certainty ... a high harmonic of Authority.

”Certainty, with the Lennels,” said the old man, ”is of course a system and not an open channel. But even so it makes them as powerful as the Dreeghs.”

On an I.Q. curve that would include humans, Kluggs, Lennels and Dreeghs, the respective averages would be 100, 220, 380, and 450. The Dreeghs had an open channel on control of physical movement.

”Even a Great Galactic can only move as fast as-he cannot move faster than-a Dreegh,” Professor Ungarncommented and explained. ”Such open channels are path-ways in the individual to a much greater ability than his standard I.Q. permits.”

Musical, mathematical, artistic, or any special physical, mental or emotional ability was an open channel that opera-ted outside the normal human, Klugg, or even the Dreegh curve. By definition, a Great Galactic was a person whose I.Q. curve included only open channels.

It had been reported that the open channel curve began at about 80. And, though no one among the lesser races had ever seen anything higher than 3,000-the limits of the s.p.a.ce phenomenon-it was believed that the Great Galactic I.Q. curve ascended by types to about 10,000.

”It is impossible,” said the Professor's melancholy voice, ”to imagine what kind of an open channel that would be. An example of an 800 open channel is Pat. She can deceive. She can get away with a sleight of hand, a feint, a diver-sion-”

The old man stopped suddenly. His gaze flicked past Hanardy's right shoulder and fastened on something behind him that Hanardy couldn't see.

6.

The s.p.a.ceman froze with the sudden terrified conviction that the worst had happened, and that the Dreegh Sween-Madro was behind him.

But it couldn't be, lie realized. ProfessorUngarn waslooking at the control board of the meteorite. There was no door there.