Free The Lost Perception by Daniel F. Galouye

cell.
    This development, of course, simplified Gregson’s newly assigned duties as officer-in-charge of the Secretariat Building’s defenses. And he found tune both on that Tuesday and Wednesday to place comviewer calls through to Helen. He wasn’t surprised that on each occasion she appeared somewhat reluctant to let the matter of the press conference enter their conversation.
    And, solicitous of the concern that threaded her normally attractive features, he did not push her. For he couldn’t know the exact circumstances that would trigger the conditioned reflex which would transform her into a raving defender of the aliens.
    Wednesday afternoon Radcliff left for Montreal, where a special detail of Guardsmen, operating on leads provided by local Canadians, had smashed a cell and broad-beamed two Valorians.
    Before leaving, he smiled and told Gregson, “We appear to have them on the run finally. Thanks to you, we know where to look. You’ve earned a vacation. Delegate your authority to a subordinate. Report in occasionally, but don’t come back until you’ve had a good rest”
*  *  *
    It was under these circumstances that Gregson, late that Thanksgiving Eve, verticaled down to the farm’s bull’s-eye and found Bill waiting in the tractor-utility truck. Driving wind, sweeping out of the northwest, tunneled through the TLTFs open cab and Forsythe zippered up his jacket, staring blindly toward the landing target.
    “Greg? That is you, isn’t it?” he called out uncertainly as he gripped the steering wheel.
    Assuring him it was, Gregson approached and said, “Move over. I’ll take us back to the house. Helen drive the TUT out here for you?”
    “Figured that’s about what you’d say. No, she didn’t Maybe I’ll never get a license. But they can’t stop me from chauffeuring myself around my own farm. Hop in.”
    Dubious, Gregson climbed into the right-hand side of the cab and studied the other’s face. There were both pride and determination in those features, capped by a profusion of grizzled hair which whipped about in defiance of the cold wind that assaulted it. Forsythe, set upon doing most of the things he had done before the accident, was apparently ready to make no concessions to his blindness.
    He backed around, then drove off, obviously unconcerned over the fact that he had no apparent way of knowing when to turn.
    “Valorians, eh?” he mused aloud. “Figured all along there was something to your brother’s reports from the Nina. Guess almost everybody did. But who’d ever think of looking in places like this?”
    “I suppose that’s the way the aliens reasoned it out too.”
    Forsythe’s arm shot up in the air outside the cab. As the TUT moved forward, his hand, closing in at an obtuse angle, intercepted a cable strung from one pole to another. So that, Gregson saw, was how he did it. If he drifted off course, he merely maneuvered until his fingers touched wire again.
    “Should’ve been around last night,” Forsythe went on. “Formed a motorcade in Stroudsburg; drove over here, and burned down Wilson’s Lodge and all the woods around it”
    Gregson watched the TUT approach the post on which its guidance cable was anchored and wondered how collision would be averted. Then he saw the knot in the wire just as the other’s upraised hand encountered it.
    They veered sharply to the right, skirting the barn, and bore ahead until Forsythe’s groping fingers located another cable, stretched out toward the house.
    “How’s Helen?” Gregson asked.
    “Don’t know. Too quiet. And nervous. Maybe she’s afraid of this Valorian stuff. Heard her up walking around last night ’til after dawn.”
    Ten yards from the back door, he reached another knot in the wire and eased on the brakes. “Well?”
    But Gregson was wondering whether his mere mentioning of the knowledge that she had had something to do with the Wilson Lodge cell, together with his identity as a Security Bureau agent, would be