Had van Ryberg fewer troubles on his hands, he would have found it entertaining to study the press reactions to Stormgren’s disappearance. For the past month, the world’s papers had divided themselves into two sharply defined groups. The Western press, on the whole, approved of Karellen’s plan to make all men citizens of the world. The Eastern countries, on the other hand, were undergoing violent but largely synthetic spasms of national pride. Some of them had been independent for little more than a generation, and felt that they had been cheated out of their gains. Criticism of the Overlords was widespread and energetic: after an initial period of extreme caution, the Press had quickly found that it could be as rude to Karellen as it liked and nothing would happen. Now it was excelling itself.
Most of these attacks, though very vocal, were not representative of the great mass of the people. Along the frontiers that would soon be gone forever the guards had been doubled — but the soldiers eyed each other with a still inarticulate friendliness. The politicians and the generals might storm and rave, but the silently waiting millions felt that, none too soon, a long and bloody chapter of history was coming to an end.
And now Stormgren had gone, no one knew where. The tumult suddenly subsided as the world realized that it had lost the only man through whom the Overlords, for their own strange reasons, would speak to Earth. A paralysis seemed to descend upon the press and radio commentators, but in the silence could be heard the voice of the Freedom League, anxiously protesting its innocence. It was utterly dark when Stormgren awoke. For a moment he was too sleepy to realize how strange that was. Then, as full consciousness dawned, he sat up with a start and felt for the switch beside his bed.
In the darkness his hand encountered a bare stone wall, cold to the touch. He froze instantly, mind and body paralyzed by the impact of the unexpected. Then, scarcely believing his senses, he kneeled on the bed and began to explore with his finger tips that shockingly unfamiliar wall.
He had been doing this only for a moment when there was a sudden click and a section of the darkness slid aside. He caught a glimpse of a man silhouetted against a dimly lit background; then the door closed again and the darkness returned. It happened so swiftly that he had no chance to see anything of the room in which he was lying.
An instant later, he was dazzled by the light of a powerful electric torch. The beam flickered across his face, held him steadily for a moment, then dipped to illuminate the whole bed — which was, he now saw, nothing more than a mattress supported on rough planks.
Out of the darkness a soft voice spoke to him in excellent English, but with an accent which Stormgren could not at first identify.
“Ah, Mr. Secretary — I’m glad to see you’re awake. I hope you feel quite all right.”
There was something about the last sentence that caught Stormgren’s attention, so that the angry questions he had been about to ask died upon his lips. He stared back into the darkness, then replied calmly: “How long have I been unconscious?”
The other chuckled.