The Stardroppers by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page A

in danger of getting hooked yourself, call me, and I’ll get one of our specialists to give you a posthypnotic against listeningto stardroppers. Or was that part of your preparation for this mission? I’ve been told the Special Agency uses hypnosis quite a lot.”
    “True, it does.” Dan admitted, frowning. “But—actually no. I don’t suppose anybody expected it to be necessary.”
    “If you’re lucky, it won’t be,” Redver shrugged. “I can tell you personally, though, that it sometimes is. I had to have it done myself. My work was suffering. You probably noticed just now what a state I got into when that car went by.”
    Dan gave him a surprised glance. “Oh, you have firsthand experience, do you? I hadn’t realized.”
    “Set a thief to catch a thief,” Redvers grunted. “I didn’t exactly plead to be put in charge of investigating the stardropper problem, you know. They picked on me because I was already involved.”
    Dan thought about that for a while, as Redvers threaded the silent little car through the dense traffic. He said at length, “So it wasn’t merely the fact that I’m an Agency operative which put you on to me. It was my being an Agency operative who also happened to be carrying a stardropper.”
    “That’s right. Not a very subtle kind of clue, hm? But don’t worry—we like the Agency fine, and anyone on its staff is welcome to the free run of this tired old island. Stardropper, on the other hand, give us nightmares. Can you wonder?”
    “After what I’ve seen in less than twenty-four hours, no.” Dan helped himself to a lighted cigarette from the dashboard dispenser; it was a brand he didn’t know, British-made, and he drew on it musingly. “But it surprises me that you already have a special department to deal with this alone.”
    “We’ve grown almost paranoidally suspicious in the past ten years,” Redvers sighed. “We create special departments to deal with absolutely anything that suggests it might one day lead to a major problem. Which, naturally, implies that people who picked on the wrong subject are furious when their nice private empires are hauled out from under them.… Sometimes I wonder whether we may not be guilty of making pessimistic prophecies fulfill themselves by giving them official recognition! But I don’t think thatapplies in my case. Stardropping is a genuine headache for us.”
    “But what made you start regarding it as such—the disappearances?”
    “No, not at first. It was the insanity problem, and then the question of addicition—or psychological dependence, as you prefer to call it.” The words were tinged with sarcasm. “Oh, speaking of disappearances,” he added, “watch your tongue with Dr. Rainshaw.”
    “Why?”
    “His son Robin was one of the first to disappear.”
    Apart from the fact that the watchman at the main gate of the research station wore a gun—a rare sight in this counry where even policemen went unarmed—the establishment Dan found himself being taken to might have passed for a stately home, open to visitors at twenty-five pence a head. They were expected, and were smilingly waved through toward a wide gravel drive fringed with well-kept lawns. One of Dan’s strongest impressions since coming to Britain was a sense that people here liked to take trouble over keeping up appearances—the streets were cleaner than in New York, for instance, and the grass of Hyde Park yesterday afternoon he’d found to be almost free of litter. This place was no exception. It wasn’t until they’d reached a fork in the driveway and made a sharp right turn that he saw modern, single-story prefabricated buildings half-hidden among flourishing spring shrubs, identified by a sign as the scientific section of the premises. Prior to that, he’d had a fine view of a late-eighteenth-century manor house in exceptional condition, with a few cars parked in front of it.
    Now, all of a sudden, he was back in modern times. He pondered this