Dominic Flandry meets Merseians, then Ydwyr, a Merseian disciple of Aycharaych, before meeting Aycharaych himself, whom meanwhile we have seen in another novel. For their final confrontation, Flandry must wreck the mind of his son with a full hyphoprobe to get the coordinates of Aycharaych's home planet, Chereion. Even then, Aycharaych is not physically apprehended and might have escaped the bombardment of Chereion.
James Bond spends most of a novel confirming that Emilio Largo and his "shareholders" are SPECTRE, then neutralizes them only to learn that the top man, called Blofeld, has got away. Bond then spends a year looking everywhere for Blofeld. Following some very tenuous leads, he finally confronts him only to have him escape again. After a second confrontation, Blofeld is dead and so, apparently, is Bond...
Conan Doyle fitted the entire search for the villain and final confrontation into a single short story although he then added both a prequel and a sequel. See here.
Ydwyr, Aycharaych and Blofeld all use the ultimate manipulation of hypnosis.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember the case of Dominic Hazeltine. Flandry thought his son might know the coordinates of Aycharaych's home star, one of the deepest secrets held by the Roidhunate. Hazeltine's EXTREMELY deep conditioning about revealing what ever secrets he knew confirmed something important was known by him.
I also recall how the Terrans did not like to use deep conditioning for any of their own people, except for a few rare, ultimate secrets. Deep conditioning would not prevent an experienced hypnoprobe team from digging out whatever the secret was. So why waste a good agent that way? You could hope to get him back in a prisoner exchange, after all.
Ad astra! Sean
There’s an old joke about a fan telling Doyle that the experience at the Falls must have been truly horrible because “Holmes, he were never the same man after that”.
Someone might think so! I didn't discern any difference. Of course, there are sequels with all sorts of theories: that Holmes did not return and subsequent stories by Watson are fictions; that it was an imposter that "returned"; that both Holmes and Moriarty survived; etc.
Kaor, Gentlemen!
And Doyle must have wondered more than once: "What kind of monster have I created? I only started writing stories about Holmes because I got so few patients consulting me about eye problems!"
Ad astra! Sean
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