Chapter 20

The arrival of the great Stanley Martin was a three-day wonder in the public news channels. His previous exploits were recounted, with embellishments, several times during the next seventy-two hours. The “arrival” itself was very carefully staged. A special ship belonging to the World Police brought him in, and he was met by four Government officials in civilian clothes. The entire affair was covered live by news cameras. No one on Earth suspected that he had been on Earth for weeks before; a few knew it, but it never even occurred to the rest.

Later, a special interview was arranged. Philip Quinn, a news interviewer who was noted for his deferential attitude toward those whom he had the privilege of interviewing, was chosen for the job.

Stanley Martin’s dynamic, forceful personality completely overshadowed Quinn.

But in spite of all the publicity, not one word, not one hint about the method by which Stanley Martin intended to bring the Nipe in was released. There were all kinds of speculations, ranging from the mystically sublime to the broadly comical. One self-styled archbishop of a California nut cult declared that Martin was a saint appointed by God to exorcise the Demon Nipe that had been plaguing Mankind and that the Millennium was therefore due at any moment. He was, he said, sending Stanley Martin a sealed letter which contained a special exorcism prayer that would do the job very nicely. Why hadn’t he used it himself? Because if anyone other than a saint or an angel used it, it would backfire on the user and destroy him. Naturally the archbishop did not claim himself to be a saint, but he knew that Martin was because he had plainly seen the halo around the detective’s head when he saw him on TV.

An inventor in Palermo, Sicily, solemnly declared that he had sent Stanley Martin the plans for a device that would render him invisible to the Nipe and therefore make the Nipe easy to conquer. No, there was no danger that the device might fall into the wrong hands and be used by human criminals, since it did not render a person invisible to human eyes, only to Nipe eyes.

The first item was played up big in the newscasts. The second was quashed--fast!--for the very simple reason that the Nipe just might have believed it.

One note throbbed in the background of every interview with responsible persons. It was the unobtrusive note of a soft clarinet played in a great symphony, all the more telling because it was never played loudly or insistently, but it was there all the same. Whenever the question of the Nipe’s actual whereabouts came up, the note seemed to ring a trifle more clearly, but never more loudly. That single throbbing note was the impression given by everyone who was interviewed, or who expressed any views on the subject, that the Nipe was hiding somewhere in the Amazonian jungles of South America. It was the last place on Earth that had still not been thoroughly explored, and it seemed to be the only place that the Nipe could hide.

Only a small handful of the vast array of people who were dispensing this carefully tailored propaganda knew what was going on. More than ninety-nine percent of the newsmen involved in the affair thought they were honestly giving the news as they saw it, and none of them saw the invisible but very powerful hand of Stanley Martin shifting the news just enough to give it the bias he wanted.

The comedians on the entertainment programs let the whole story alone for the most part. There were no clever skits, no farcical takeoffs on the subject of Stanley Martin and the Nipe. One comedian, who was playing the part of a henpecked husband, did remark: “If my wife gets any meaner, I’m going to send Stan Martin after her!” But it didn’t get much of a laugh. And the Government organization had nothing to do with that kind of censorship; it was self-imposed. Every one of the really great comics recognized, either consciously or subconsciously, that the Nipe was not a subject for humor. Such jokes would have made them about as popular as the Borscht Circuit comedian who told a funny story about Dachau in 1946.

Aside from the subtle coloring given it by the small, Mannheim-trained group of propaganda experts, the news went out straight.

The detective himself, after that one single interview, vanished from sight. No one knew where he was, though, again, there were all kinds of speculations, all of them erroneous. Actually, he was a carefully guarded and willing prisoner in a suite in one of the big hotels in Government City.

On the fourth day, the big operation began without fanfare. The actual maneuvering to capture the alien that had terrorized a planet began shortly after noon.

At a few minutes before three that afternoon, the man whom the world knew as Stanley Martin suddenly suffered a dizzy spell and nearly fainted.

Then, almost like a child, he began to weep.

FINAL INTERLUDE

Colonel Walther Mannheim said: “It will take five years, Stanton.”

He was looking at the young man seated in one of the three chairs in the small, comfortable room. There was a clublike atmosphere about the room, but none of the three men were relaxed.

“Five years?” said the young man. He looked at the third man.

Dr. Farnsworth nodded. “More or less. More if it’s a partial failure--less if it’s a complete failure.”

“Then there is a chance of failure?” the young man asked.

“There is always a chance of failure in any major surgical undertaking,” Dr. Farnsworth said. “Even in the most routine cases, things can go wrong. We’re only men, Mr. Stanton. We’re neither magicians nor gods.”

“I know that, Doctor,” the young man said. “Nobody’s perfect, and I don’t expect perfection. Can you give me a--an estimate on the chances?”

“I can’t even give you any kind of guess,” said Farnsworth. He smiled rather grimly. “So far, we have had no failures. Our mortality rate is a flat zero. We have never lost a patient because we’ve never had one. As I told you, this will be the first time the operation has ever been performed on a human being. Or, rather,” he corrected himself, “I should say series of operations. This is not one single--er--cut-and-suture job, like an appendectomy.”