Chapter 30 Chapter Twenty Eight

Ordinarily, I have reached the age where I can withstand emotional blows.However, as I got older, instead of being tougher, I became milder.This has nothing to do with falling in love with someone.The thought of my dearest Mary floating in that artificial womb, neither dead nor alive, kept in it like a pickled grasshopper--it was too much for me. I heard the old man say, "Don't worry, kid, she's all right." I said, "Go ahead." Although Mary's past is mysterious, it is very simple to say.She was discovered in the swamp near Catherwell, the North Pole of Venus. At that time, the little girl couldn't tell who she was, only that her name was Ellyukor.No one noticed the meaning of the name, and she was apparently a child, at an age that made it impossible to connect her with the Whitmans in any way. The supply ship in 1980 did not find a single survivor in their "new ideal country" settlement. The plantation they cultivated became a swamp, and the residence became a broken shell, hidden in the dense vegetation.More than ten years, plus more than two hundred miles of jungle, cut off the connection between the unaccompanied Catherwell waif and the God-punished New Republic immigrant.

On Venus at the time, an unidentified terrestrial child would have been inconceivable, like finding a cat locked in a refrigerator, requiring a plausible explanation.Yet no one around was wise enough or curious enough to inquire further.Catherwell's reputation is still not good. At that time, the only people in this place were miners, prostitutes and representatives of the two major planetary companies.Shoveling radioactive mud in swamps doesn't leave much energy left to fuss about other things, I suppose. Poker chips were her toys, and she grew up that way.She referred to every woman who came to the children's bedside as "Mama" or "Auntie."Accordingly, they also shortened her name to one word, "Lucky One."

The old man didn't go into detail about who paid for her return to Earth for what reason, and he didn't answer my questions.The real crux of the matter was where exactly the Venusian jungle had begun to engulf the New Republic, and what had happened to their colony. The only clue to these things was buried deep in Mary's memory, locked away with fear and despair. Sometime before 1980, about the same time as or about a year earlier than the flying saucers reported in Siberia, Russia, the Titans discovered the settlement of the New Utopia.If the time of their invasion of the earth is pushed forward by one Saturn year, these times coincide exactly.It seems that the Titans are not looking for Earthlings on Venus, they are more likely to be investigating Venus, just as they have been monitoring the Earth for a long time.Maybe they already know where to look, because we know they have been abducting people from time to time for more than two centuries, so maybe they have captured people on Earth who know where the New Republic colonies are.There is no clue about this in Mary's chaotic memory.

Mary has seen the colony taken over and her parents turned into slug puppets who can no longer care for her.She herself was clearly not possessed by the slugs, or maybe she was possessed and then freed again because the Titans felt that such a weak and ignorant little girl was not suitable for slavery.Either way, it was an endless time for her infantile mind.She spends her days doing nothing in the enslaved colony.No one wanted her, no one cared for her, and she was not disturbed, scavenging like a rat to keep her alive.The slugs invaded Venus in large numbers, and their main slaves were the Venusians, and it was purely accidental that the immigrants of the New Republic were enslaved by them.Mary must have seen her parents put into suspended animation, unconscious.Are they doing this to invade the earth in the future?Likely, but not too sure.

A short time later, she was picked up and put in a sink.Is the specific location in the flying saucer of the Titans or in the base of the Titans on Venus?The latter is more likely, since she was still on Venus when she woke up.Many similar mysteries need to be solved.Are the slugs riding the Venusians the same as the slugs that invaded the New Republic colonies?Maybe it's the same - since the earth and Venus are both carbon and oxygen modes of operation.The slug seems to be forever able to change freely, but it must adapt itself to the biochemical environment of the host.If Venus has an oxygen-silicon pattern like Mars, or a fluorine pattern, then the same parasitic slug cannot parasitize on two different types of hosts.

The core of the question is, what happened when Mary was taken out of the artificial hatcher?The Titans' invasion of Venus has failed, or is about to fail.They almost certainly took hold of her as soon as she was taken out of the sink, except that Mary outlived the slugs attached to her. Why did the slug die?Why did the invasion of Venus fail?These were the clues the Don and Dr. Stilton were looking for in Mary's brain. I asked, "Is that the case?" He replied, "Isn't that enough?" I complained and said: "It means that no questions have been answered, but many doubts have arisen."

"Of course there are more clues," he told me, "much more important than that. But you are neither a Venus expert nor a psychologist, so you don't need to make assessments and judgments. The reason I tell you Some situations are to let you understand why we have to find a breakthrough in Mary, so that you won't pester Mary endlessly. Child, be kind to her, she has suffered enough grief." I ignored his advice.How to get along with my wife, I don't need others to dictate.I said, "What I don't understand is, how did you associate Mary with flying saucers from the beginning? I understand now that you took her on a tour of Iowa on purpose. Are you Yes, I admit it. But why? Don't put me off."

The old man himself seemed a little hesitant. "Son, have you ever had a premonition?" "My God, of course there is!" "What's that 'hunch'?" "Well, just feeling like something is or isn't for no reason. Or a premonition that something's going to happen, or an irresistible urge to do something." "It's all sloppy definitions. I think that a hunch is a subconscious automatic reasoning based on information that you have without knowing it." "It sounds like a black cat in a black coal mine in the middle of the night. It's confusing. You didn't have any information at the time. Could it be that your subconscious automatic reasoning can use the information you won't get until the next week as a basis for reasoning. This nonsense I won't believe it."

"Ah, but I do have some information." "Oh?" "What is the final process our department goes through to certify a candidate for special agent?" "Be cool with you." "No, not right!" "Oh—it's the situation analysis under hypnosis." The reason why I forgot the hypnosis analysis is because the subjects can never remember how this kind of analysis is done, and they can't remember what they did when they fell asleep. "You mean, you got the information from Mary. In that case, it wouldn't be a hunch at all."

"You are wrong again. I did get some information, but very little—because Mary's resistance is very strong. And I also forgot the little information. But I know that Mary is suitable for this job I later replayed her sleep analysis test, and that's when I realized there must be something more going on. We tried to get more information, but it didn't work. But I knew we had to try a few more times." After thinking for a while, I said, "You must feel that you are absolutely sure that this matter is worth exploring. For this, you must have made things difficult for Mary."

"I had to, I'm sorry." "Okay. Okay." After waiting for a while, I asked again, "You said—what's in my sleep analysis record?" "It's an unreasonable request." "nonsense!" "I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to, because I've never heard your analysis, kid." "what?" "I asked my assistant to listen to it, and then asked him if there was anything I should know, and he said no, so I never played it again." "Really? Well—thanks." He only muttered, but I felt closer to him.I haven't felt this way for a long time.We, father and son, were always embarrassing each other.