Alan could not speak. He was remembering things he had not been able to remember, the voice and what it had told him, the night that it called him from bed to come to the terrible lamps, and—
"Yes, it was me, it was all me, Alan. I was the voice in your head at the telecast, I called you in the night; I worked the lights in the shed on Project Star. There are plenty of us out there, but I wanted you for my own personal sidekick. You're smart and a good scientist, and you'll make a good lieutenant when we go home." The words made no sense and yet Alan seemed to catch a glimmering of the understanding that was to come.
He said, "I guess I ought to exclaim, 'You're mad!' but I know you're not. You can pilot this thing and you can move faster than a cheetah, and everything's gone mad this past week and I want to know why. Don't lie to me, Mac. For the love of God, don't lie to me. One more wrong theory implanted in my skull and I'll blow my stack for good."
"I won't lie. I'm all through lying, to you at any rate. The others can't hear me at the moment, but I suppose I may as well tune them in too." His homely face, with its great prow of a nose and the half-shut green eyes, looked a little sad. "I'm afraid they're all going to die, Alan. Except Win, that is. You see, the speeds at which I'm going to fly this disk will kill a human being. On the turns, if I get into dogfights, the 'G' forces will be terrific. You and Win can stand 'em, because you've been conditioned. Brave and Rob and Bill will be smashed to jelly under the 'G' impact. I'm sorry. I like Brave and I admire Rob's intelligence. I'd like to save them. But they got aboard because you were slow, and now they're done for. I can't land and put 'em out. Time is precious. I have to maneuver this ship until I know I can do stunts with her like the ones I did at home. A long time ago, Alan." He grinned ruefully. "A long time even to me."
"What do you mean, I was slow getting aboard?" Alan fastened on this small facet of the affair, frightened of finding out too much of the truth at once.
"Man, you can move as fast as I if you try. You've had three long treatments under the lamps. Your energies are stepped up, if you learn to use them correctly, your reflexes are as fast as those of the cat on your shoulder, and you're almost deathless compared to your friends. Might as well start there," he mused. "They can hear us in the other room." On the viewplate, Win and Brave nodded. Jim clicked shut a switch. "Now they can see us. Okay, you four, I'm going to do some explaining. I can hear you now, but if you start to interrupt I'll switch you off."
Brave said, "Alan, are you all right?"
"He's ginger-peachy," said Mac. "In fact he'll be all right two hundred years from now.
"There's no use in explaining the rays to you; it would take hours and you would scarcely grasp the principle even then. I'll tell you what they do. They lengthen your life span—my own is about a thousand years, but Alan's will be nearer four hundred, for I caught him late. Generations of my ancestors were exposed to them, too; it affects the genes eventually and we're born long-lived. They quicken your reflexes through a process of strengthening the nerves and certain cells of the brain. They also affect the portions of the brain which send and receive telepathic stimuli. After one treatment it's easy to control a man over a long distance.
"The effect of the rays on the muscles is unique. They become almost rubbery, not loose, you understand, but capable of stretching and flexing in directions that look uncanny to a non-initiate. That's how poor Grady escaped being sliced down the middle when he rammed up his ship. He drew all his muscles to the sides and flattened out like a plaster on the chair. You couldn't do that; your skeletons are thicker and more immovable than ours. I'd show you how I can ooze out sideways and make my ribs about as level as a picket fence—but I'm afraid you wouldn't like the sight. It must be pretty gruesome to an Earthman."