"Not too long, sir." Kinnison's smile was a trifle forced. "Here's your Release and your kit, and a request signed by the whole Galactic Council that you go to work on whatever it is that is going on. We rather think that it heads up somewhere in the Second Galaxy, but that is little more than a guess."
"I can start out from Klovia, then? Good—I can go home with you."
"That's the idea, and on the way there you can study the situation. For your information we have made up a series of tapes, carrying not only all the available data, but also our attempts at analysis and interpretation. Complete and up to date, except for one item which came in this morning.... I can't figure out whether it means anything or not, but it should be inserted—" Kinnison paced the room, scowling.
"Might as well tell me. I'll insert it when I scan the tape."
"QX. I don't suppose that you have heard much about the unusual shipping trouble we have been having, particularly in the Second Galaxy?"
"Rumor—gossip only. I'd rather have it straight."
"It's all on the tapes, so I'll give you the barest possible background. Losses are twenty-five percent above normal. A few highly peculiar derelicts have been found—peculiar in that they seem to have been wrecked by madmen. Not only wrecked, but gutted, and with every mark of identification obliterated. We can't determine even origin or destination, since the normal disappearances outnumber the abnormal ones by four to one. On the tapes this is lumped in with the other psychoses you'll learn about. But this morning they found another derelict, in which the chief pilot had scrawled 'WARE HELL HOLE IN SP' across a plate. Connection with the other derelicts, if any, is obscure. If the pilot was sane when he wrote that message, it means something—but nobody knows what. If he wasn't, it doesn't, any more than the dozens of obviously senseless—excuse me, I should say apparently senseless—messages which we have already recorded."
"Hm-m-m. Interesting. I'll bear it in mind and tape it in its place. But speaking of peculiar things, I've got one I wanted to discuss with you—getting my Release was such a shock that I almost forgot it. Reported it, but nobody thought it was anything important. Maybe ... probably ... it isn't. Tune your mind up to the top of the range ... there, did you ever hear of a race that thinks upon that band?"
"I never did—it's practically unreachable. Why—have you?"
"Yes and no. Only once, and that only a touch. Or, rather, a burst; as though a hard-held mind-block had exploded, or the creature had just died a violent, instantaneous death. Not enough of it to trace, and I never found any more of it."