Scanner's Note: This was scanned from a three part serial in
Analog: June, July and August 1974.

 



 

I

 

Desperate? Perhaps. I prefer to
think of it as rising to an opportunity. True, it was the only opportunity
available, but opportunity, alone or in a herd, is nonetheless opportunity.

In early March, some mogul at
Standard Design and Engineering decided to close down the Los Angeles office,
my office. If my nose had been farther from the drafting screen, I would have
seen it coming.

The ax fell the day after Dolores
agreed to marry me. I still felt smug the next morning at the office. I had no
particular reason to feel smug. I knew Dolores would accept. If she said no,
one of us would have to move out. She still had three months of law school and
the bar exam ahead of her. The original plan was for Dolores to finish law
school while I got some engineering experience. At that point, we would
re-evaluate our "relationship." If it was working, we would pick up
the option. It looked as if it would be working, so I advanced the timetable a
little.

I couldn't sleep the night I asked
her. I tossed, put the pillow over my head, heard imaginary footsteps in the
house and some real ones, the dog's. Dogthat's his surnamecouldn't sleep
either. Dolores, who can sleep through anything, lay prone beside me. She slept
through the '18 earthquake as if it were someone rocking her cradle. About
midnight, I woke her.

"Dolores."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Wake up."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Dolores."

"Is it time?"

"No. Wake up."

"Hm-m-m?"

She's like that in the morning,
too.

"I want to talk to you."


She rolled over and squinted at
me. I had the reading lamp on. She shielded her eyes from the light. "What
is it?"

"I've been thinking."

"I've been sleeping."
She rolled on her stomach, turning her head away from me, fading fast.

"Dolores."

"What?"

"You have a nice back."

"Don't wake me up, Bobby."
My mother doesn't even call me Bobby. I tolerate it.

"Dolores."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Let's get married."

"OK," she said.

I sat up and looked at her brown
back, delighted. I had expected an argument, logical, legal, irrelevant. She
gets that way studying law, picky. "Do you mean it?"

Silence answered.

"Dolores?"

She was asleep.

The next morning, I asked if she
remembered our conversation. She spread honey on a piece of toast and sprinkled
it with cinnamon before she answered.

"Sure." She bit the
toast.

"Sure what?"

"Sure I remember." She
chewed. "You asked me to marry you and I said OK." She bit the toast
again, grinning around the bite.

I was smug when I got to the
office. I liked the idea. Shacking up has its advantages, but, marriage offers
a promise. Shacking up, she can always leave. Married, the question is, will
she stay? A subtle but significant difference.

I told Bernie Mitchel, the other
engineer in my department, at coffee. Bernie is married with four kids. I
learned more about design engineering from working with Bernie for two years
than I did in seven years at school. When I graduated from Berkeley and took
the job with Standard, I thought engineering was done with a drafting screen
and my sterling imagination. You get the idea, draw it out on the screen, let
the computer redline anything that exceeds the parameters of the material you
choose and print out a blueprint. It was that simple in school. No one ever had
to build the things we designed.

Bernie took me down to the shop
with one of my first sets of prints and told me to build it. The part was a
bearing race for the swivel on an old-style Jenson Gate. People argued with me
at every step.

First, Folley, the shop computer
man, complained I cut the tolerances too close. I quoted theory. The metal
could take it. The shop computer could handle the design. What more did he
want? He grunted. Once the program was laid in, the tool-and-die-maker went
apoplectic. He stormed into my office waving the tool requisition at me. He
would have to order most of the machine tools, he informed me, inquiring
whether I knew what each one of them cost. I didn't. He told me, tool by tool.
He also informed me that a lathe was neither superhuman nor psychic. It could
do only what it had been told to do. A milling machine, I learned, had never
been trained in acrobatics. In the future, I was instructed to try, if it
wasn't too much of a burden on my b-b-sized brain, to design parts he could
make with his present equipment. There was a cross-check program in my drafting
screen for that very purpose. He left.

Four days later, I had a sample
bearing race on my desk for approval. I took it to Bernie's office. He grinned.
The grin unsettled me.

"Did you learn
anything?"

I nodded. "Quite a bit."
I told him about Folley's tolerances and machine tools, adding that the general
opinion of engineers seemed to be low.

"Just new engineers,"
answered Bernie, reaching into a desk drawer at his waist. He brought out a
bearing race and handed it to me. "Look at this. Carefully."

It could have been the race I
designed. The few differences were unimportant.

"Where'd you get this?"

"Parts catalog."

I must have blushed. He grinned.
In effect., I had re-invented the typewriter. Why design and make an item that
requires special machine programs and special tooling when you can order it
from a catalog for half the price? I learned a lot from Bernie.

On the day I got the had news, I
told Bernie I was getting married.

"Dolores?"

"Yes."

"When?" He sounded less
than enthusiastic.

"We haven't decided yet.
Soon." He nodded, absorbing the information.

"You don't seem overjoyed by
the news," I said.

"Frankly, I have some news of
my own, bad."

"Connie's pregnant
again."

"Worse."

I saw it coming. I was being
fired. "Worse?"

"They're closing the Los
Angeles office."

"I've always liked
Phoenix," I said, hoping for a transfer. The home office is in Phoenix.

"No transfers."

"When did you hear
this?"

"This morning. I'm senior
around here so I got the glad news first."

"They're canning you, too?"


"That's what the note with my
severance pay says. I've been calling around all morning. I thought it was only
fair to let you get started, too. Severance pay is two weeks for every year
with the company. You'll get a month, effective Friday."

"But"

"That's what I said.
Patterson from Phoenix will tell you sometime this afternoon."

I felt angry and upset and
defeated and confused. I had leaned out from the horse on the merry-go-round,
strained for the gold ring, grabbed at itsure I got itonly to open my hand
and find air. Patterson called that afternoon. As soon as I saw his pinched
face on the screen, I snapped, "I know, I know. Thanks a lot," and
hung up. I never liked Patterson much. He is the kind of person who enjoys
spreading bad news. I enjoyed hanging up on him.

I told Dolores that night.

"So?"

"So I don't have a job."


"So?"

"So we may not eat in the
foreseeable future."

"I'm too fat anyway. It's the
Mexican in me."

"Don't joke. This is
serious."

"You'll get another
job."

"Fat chance. Look at
this." I fluttered an engineering newspaper front of her. "These
people don't want design engineers, they want expeditors and managers. They
just call them engineers."

She studied the paper, puckering
slightly. Dolores puckers when she thinks. I have watched her study, writing
summaries of legal case reports, thinking, puckering. Finally, she looked up
from the paper, laying it on the kitchen table.

"You're right. Maybe you'll
have to take a different kind of job."

I grunted. Seven years of school
and two more working at design engineering rarely equips people to sell shoes.
Design shoes, perhaps, but sell them, no.

"What kind of job?"

She shrugged. "Look around.
We've got a couple of months. If we can stretch things past the bar exam, I can
support you."

"We'll have to postpone
getting married."

"Why?"

"Things are too"I threw
up my hands"up in the air."

"I don't see what difference
that makes. We're living together now. If we get married, we'll still be living
together, same bills, same income. It's all the same thing."

"It isn't."

"It is."

"A man should be able to
support his wife."

"But not his girl
friend?"

I grunted. Talking to Dolores, my
conversation tends to degenerate to grunts. It was different. Sending her to
law school might have been a mistake. She bickered more.

By Friday, I was reconciled to my
enforced retirement. I did very little work during the week. I spent most of my
time on the phone getting rejected by weasely-looking personnel directors. It
was hard on my ego. The man at the engineering division of Spieler Interstellar
was particularly nasty. He not only gave me one of those don't-worry-we-won't-call-you
looks, he said it. I added him to my list of hated strangers, along with the
phone company and collection agencies.

Just after I got my desk cleaned
out, Bernie walked in, beaming. He had a job. It was written on every grinning
tooth. I growled at him. His left eyebrow went up.

"Hostile."

"Wouldn't you be?"

"When a friend brings good
news? Hardly."

"This is no time for good
news, Bernie. I just talked to that creep in engineering at Spieler."

Bernie smiled and nodded. "I
hope we meet him in a dark alley some night."

"You talked to him?"

"Yesterday. A jerk."

"Who's your job with?"

"Merryweather
Enterprises."

I whistled. Merryweather
Enterprises, in spite of its eccentric owner, had a reputation. They paid well,
left people alone to work, and dumped money into some of the most imaginative
development programs around. For every ten projects they lost, one paid off and
kept them afloat. Spieler Interstellar had the better balance sheet, but
Merryweather Enterprises contributed more to the advancement of science and
technology. If all you knew about the two companies was who owned them, you
would have expected the reverse to be true. Spieler himself was somewhere
around thirty-nine, a financial whiz-kid who built twenty thousand dollars in
capital into multibillion-dollar Spieler Interstellar in seventeen years.
Merryweather, on the other hand, was nearly sixty. Age alone should have
indicated who would be receptive to innovation. Age alone was deceptive.

"Doing what?"

"Design. And"he slipped
his hand dramatically inside his coat and withdrew a sheet of paper, dangling
it before me by one corner"I have a little something for you."

"What?"

"Read it."

I read it.

Jos TITLE: Chief Project Engineer.


SALARY: $100,000 per annum.

I whistled again. It was well over
three times the salary Standard paid me.

AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY: Project
engineer and personnel director, Space Station Merryweather Enterprize in
solar orbit. Full authority and responsibility for construction project in
progress.

"What construction
project?" Bernie shrugged. "Search me."

I pointed at the sheet.
"What's this 'z' in Enterprize? A typo?"

"I think it's supposed to be
a pun. Enter-prize."

"What prize?"

"You got me. Maybe it's a
surprize."

BACKGROUND REQUIREMENTS: PhD,
Structural Engineering, Astrophysical Engineering, or Sub-nuclear Displacement
Engineering.

I looked up from the sheet.
"Matter transmitters."

"That's what it sounds
like."

"You can write everything I
know about Jenson Displacement on a pin."

"Read on."

ALTERNATE EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENT:
PhD, Design Engineering with minimum two years' experience in Jenson Gate
design or equivalent. Apply: Merryweather Enterprises, 1422 Campus Dr., Newport
Beach, Calif. AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER.

I put the sheet on my bare desk.
"The PhD I have. The two years' experience I have, but not with Jenson
Gates."

Bernie waved away my objection,
shooing it like a fly. "Details. You worked on that bearing race for a
Jenson Gate."

"Because I can design door
knob doesn't mean I can build a house."

"Engineering's engineering.
You'll get the hang of it. You're a bright boy."

"Thanks. But this thing may
not be engineering. It says personnel director."

"It's engineering."

"How do you know?"

"They offered it to me."


I narrowed my eyes. Bernie is a,
good engineer. He also runs his life better than most engineers. If he rejected
the job, it had a catch. I asked what it was.

"No catch."

"You're sure."

"Sure, I'm sure." He
tapped his chest. "My heart."

"I never knew there was
anything wrong with your heart."

"There isn't, now. But nobody
goes into space after open heart surgery."

I picked up the job sheet and re
read it. It still seemed out of my league. Bernie interrupted me.

"I made an appointment for
you next Thursday. I also did a little paving the way for you."

"What kind of paving the
way?"

"They think an engineering
Albert Einstein's coming to the interview."

"Thanks."

"Think nothing of it."
He grinned, leaving.

I told Dolores about it that night
at dinner. We decided to celebrate my unemployment with an expensive dinner
out. We went to Don Martin's. Over a steaming pile of frijoles refritos and
a pair of plump beef enchiladas, ordered by Dolores with that faintly supercilious
air of the bilingual, I told her.

 



 

"It sounds wonderful,
Bobby."

"I'm not so sure."

"Why?"

I handed her the job sheet. She
read it, holding a forkful of beans aloft. She looked up, blinked and ate the
beans.

"What do you think?" I
asked.

"Frankly, I don't understand
it."

"What don't you
understand?"

She returned the paper to me.
"The whole thing. It's gibberish."

I looked at the sheet. It seemed
perfectly clear to me. I started to explain Subnuclear Displacement
Engineering. She waved a taco at me, cutting off my exposition.

"Just tell me what it means,
not what it is." She bit the taco.

"As far as I can determine,
Merryweather's working with matter transmitters on their space station. They
need a project engineer."

"You'll make a lovely project
engineer."

"Do you know what a project
engineer does?"

"No, but you'll make a lovely
one."

"He shuffles people and
papers. The closest I'd get to a drafting screen would be watching someone else
run one."

"What are they doing with a
Jenson Gate on a space station?"

I shrugged. "You got me. The
government uses Gates to supply Tranquility Base, but that's the outside range.
After about a quarter of a million miles, the power-distance curve drops off
and it's cheaper to use spacecraft."

"You see, you do know
something about Jenson Gates."

"Dolores, knowing how far a
horse can walk doesn't mean you know how he works."

She chewed and swallowed the last
of her taco. "How far can a horse walk?"

"I haven't the vaguest
idea."

Over the next few days, I thought
about the job. I had plenty of time to think. Dolores spent her time either at
the UCLA law library or sequestered in the walk-in closet she used for a study.
From time to time, sounds erupted from the closet. They ranged from the
self-chastising; "Oh, no. That's wrong," to the revelatory,
"Ahhh, so that's how it works." Dolores becomes very involved
with whatever she does. I had wondered what she did all day. She talked to her
lawbooks. Dull company.

Dog and I went to the beach
several times. March is a good month for the beach, comfortable but sparsely
populated. I was still unsure about the job. I talked it over with Dog. Dog is
a slobbering Saint Bernard. He eats more than Dolores. I told Dog how little
actual design work project engineers do. He agreed with me, nodding and walking
attentively next to me, tongue out, lolling. I told him they only do broad
gauge engineering, spotting potential problem areas and making sure someone is
assigned to solve the problem. I told him about the catch: you had to see the
potential problem. I reminded him how much I had forgotten about Jenson
Displacement. He seemed to remember the paper I did in school on some of the
potential engineering problems. Dr. Miller had submitted it to a trade journal
without my knowledge. When they accepted it, he told me. I gloated at my own
brilliance for a week.

"What do you think,
Dog?"

Dog looked at me with those
bloodshot eyes, a piece of pink tongue showing, reminding me how much he ate.

"It does pay
well."

He nodded. I still had my doubts. We
went home and I boned up on Jenson Displacement. I started with my paper. It
could have been written in Serbo-Croatian. Technical material slips fast. The
mathematical explanation of the technical material slips faster. By Wednesday
night, I felt as if I was just starting.

Thursday morning, Dolores
straightened my cravat and brushed the hair out of my eyes. I stepped back from
her, displaying myself.

"How do I look?"

"Too good. They may have
secretaries there."

"I'll bring one home."

"She can help me pack my
bags. Nervous?"

"Not particularly." I
had decided the job was too much of a long-shot to worry about. Few companies
hire twenty-eight-year-old project engineers, especially engineers with only
two years of unrelated experience. "I don't even know why I'm going to the
interview."

Dolores reminded me of the salary.


Bernie had set up the appointment
for eleven o'clock. I took the South Coast Mono to Newport Beach. Seal, Sunset
and Huntington Beaches slid past below me. I began thinking about the interview,
daydreaming and staring out across the Pacific at Catalina Island. I had as
much chance of getting the job as walking to Catalina. Bin what if they did
offer it to me? The prospect intimidated me. I had never bossed any
organization more complicated than a Boy Scout patrol. I tried to imagine
myself as the square-jawed, firm-handed master of a space station. I noticed my
reflection in the mono window and laughed aloud. First I would have to get a
square jaw. A middle-aged woman across the aisle peered at methe attractive
but sadly demented young man, laughing at nothingthen returned to her magazine
viewer.

I got off at the Newport Center,
convinced even a square jaw would not prevent me from wasting my morning. I
would meet a personnel director like the one at Spieler. He would read my
resume, smile weakly and thank me for dropping by.

The Merryweather Building towered
behind the low Civic Center. In spite of its height, the building reinforced
the spacious effect the city planners wanted. Some sort of optical illusion
with the side of the building made it seem part of the sky. It only looked
imposing when you stood on the broad entrance steps, craning, your square jaw
pointing up, examining it. I craned. It imposed. A small brass plaque next to the
wide glass doors read "Merryweather" in delicate script. Otherwise,
the building was anonymous.

In the lobby, a blond receptionist
showing a distracting length of thigh inquired my business, staring priggishly
at me over the top of a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. I never saw her look at
anything through the spectacles. I suspect she wore contacts, adding the
spectacles for effect. I told her my name and was about to state my
businessher expression said, state your business or get outwhen her eyebrows
went up.

"The Mr.
Collins?"

What was I supposed to say to
that? My father and uncle are the only other Mr. Collinses I know

Neither of them was present. I
grinned. "None other."

"Mr. Merryweather will see
you in ten minutes."

"Merry" Slowly, my grin
began to feel artificially affixed to my face. It faded.

"You may wait," she
said, looking past me over her spectacles, "by the rubber plant."

"By the rubber plant."

"Yes."

The rubber plant was easy to find.
It was the only plant next to a couch. I retreated to it with as steady a step
as I could muster. By the time I sat down, the blond was busy at the phone,
intently relaying the fact of the Mr. Collins' arrival to someone on the
screen. Butterflies? Yes. Sweaty palms? Yes. Bernie, that master of
understatement, had indeed paved the way.

 

II

 

"Mr. Collins?"

"Mr. Merryweather?"

"No, Mr. Duff."

"Oh."

The man's forehead, scowling,
dominated his face. I stood up and shook hands. Though he was short, his air of
disapproval engulfed me. I wondered what I had done wrong. I had neither
pinched the receptionist nor poisoned the rubber plant. I concluded Duff must
be annoyed at something else. He led me toward the elevator, grumbling as
though I were fully con versant with his problems and more than half
responsible for them.

"I will tell you right now,
Mr. Collins," he said, letting me pass in front of him into the elevator,
"I am dead set against continuing this folly. Norton is gone. Let it go
with him." He waved one hand at me as if to brush aside my
protestations. "Oh, I know what Mr. Merryweather says. God, how I know!
'An eye to the future is an eye to windward.' Mr. Collins, I have both
eyes"he indicated them with two forked fingers"on the
present. The last quarterly report to the stockholdersthanks to Nortonlooked
as if they had ceased manufacturing black ink. It had more parentheses than Pan
Am's bankruptcy petition. Norton spent money like we were government-funded. I
tell you, Mr. Collins, deficit spending is all right for a governmentthey have
our pockets to dig deeper intobut it's got a different name in private
enterprise. A very ugly name." He glared up at me, stabbing the button for
the penthouse office. "Insolvency!"

I looked guilty. "Would a
five help?"

He grunted. "Engineers. You
people are all alike. Norton used to joke about money." He began waving
his hands, talking to the pushbuttons on the elevator panel. I suspected the
joke had misfired. "Norton had no idea whatsoever about cost. Do
you have any idea how much money Norton spent in a month?"

 



 

"No."

"Neither did he, Mr. Collins.
Neither did he. He threw more money down that orbiting rathole than"he
threw up his hands, unable to find the right analogy, then glared at
me"than you can imagine." He returned to staring at the
pushbuttons. My ears popped with the altitude.

"Norton had Mr.
Merryweather's ear," said Duff, emphasizing the name to indicate that I
would not only never get the ear, I would be lucky to get a lobe. "But
Norton is gone now and if I have my way, Merryweather Enterprises will
cut its lossesdo you hear me?"

"Cut them."

"We will look elsewhere for
profit."

The elevator slowed and stopped.
The doors slid open, exposing a long, carpeted corridor. The object of Duff's
tirade, passionately felt as it was, eluded me. I still felt I should give some
sort of intelligent response. Walking down the corridor next to him, noticing a
series of abstracts on the wallPicassos, CavaliersI gave what I thought
passed for one.

"What would you suggest as an
alternative?"

"A drone fleet, of
course," snapped Duff, implying by his tone of voice that my own sense of
reality was as seriously in danger as the infamous Norton's. Spieler Interstellar's
drone fleet had given its stock the most glamorous luster of the glamor stocks.
Of course, a load of pig iron from across the stars, even if it cost a billion
dollars to obtain, is still only pig iron. But one hundred thousand tons of
high-grade niobium is worth the trip and then some. It has to be. Only one ship
in five returns. Duff had a point. There was only one catch. If they eliminated
the Merryweather Enterprize, they eliminated the job I wanted.

Duff led me down the corridor,
past three secretariesintent on their workand into the office, a room only
slightly larger than my living room and bedroom combined.

Mr. Merryweather stood at the
glass wall, hands clasped behind his back. Surveying his empire? Perhaps,
mentally. The closer we got to the office, the stupider I got. Once inside, I
was close to a low-grade moron. My tongue felt like a whole plum in my mouth.
Try talking with a plum in your mouth. Interviews seldom frighten me. I
consider personnel directors as dwarf peers, stunted personalities but with
enough power to make them equals. Mr. Merryweather, neither stunted nor equal,
awed me.

Duff cleared his throat. "Mr.
Merryweather."

Mr. Merryweather answered without
looking around. "What is it, Phillip?"

"Mr. Collins is here."

Mr. Merryweather turned from the
window and brightened. "Mr. Collins." He glanced at Duff. "Why
didn't you say so, Phillip?"

Before Duff could answer, Mr.
Merryweather dropped down the two steps to the sunken well of the office floor
with unexpected agility. A large-framed athletic man, he looked younger than
sixty. He pumped my hand and guided me to a low black couch. It sighed under my
weight, exuding the smell of leather. He plucked a single sheet of paper from
his desktop and sat opposite me in an easy-chair. I sat, watching him, numb.

"Mr. Mitchel," he said,
perusing the sheet, "has said good things about you."

Mr. Mitchel? Slowly, I remembered
Bernie. I nodded.

Mr. Merryweather looked at me.
"Carrot juice?"

"Pardon me?"

"Carrot juice?
Pineapple?"

"PluI mean pineapple,"
I stammered, annoyed with myself for being intimidated. Merryweather was only
human. A few billion dollars do nothing to change that.

"Relax, Mr. Collins."

I tried. The body remained tense,
the brain frozen. Somewhere inside me, my winning personality hid in fright.

Duff left to get the juice. Mr.
Merryweather glanced over the sheet of paper, a copy of my resume. Bernie had
thought of everything.

"Was your PhD dissertation
published, Mr. Collins?"

Published? PhD? I cleared my
throat, forming my answer carefully. My brain began to thaw. Thawing, it
emitted steam, a persistent fog out of which I had to pull the relevant data
and assemble as complete an answer as possible. I assembled the answer. I
uttered it.

"No."

"Too bad. We could use a copy.
Could you get us one?"

One what? I had forgotten the
title. I could look it up. Yes, that was possible. But the authorwho remembers
authors?

"Yes."

"Practical Engineering
Aspects of Controlled-Laser Fusion Reactors."

Yes. That was it. Now I remembered.


"You spent time at the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory?"

Livermore? "Yes."

Duff returned with the pineapple
juice. I took mine, thanked him and downed half of it. My head started to
clear. Mr. Merryweather pointed to the resume, showing it to Duff. "Impressive."


Duff scowled. I cringed. I wanted
to explain. I only put the Alameda County Ping-Pong Championship in as a joke.
I was angry, angry at Standard for forcing me to have a resume at all, angry,
at all the personnel directors who wanted my life spread out neatly on a sheet
of paper, angry at myself for submitting to them. I started to explain. Mr.
Merryweather cut me off, reading.

"Practical Aspects
of" He glanced up and smiled. "You certainly like Practical
Aspects in your titles."

"It's an escape if I miss
something. Aspects aren't the whole thing."

He laughed. My voice cracked
halfway through the sentence, but I got it out intact. A start. I felt better.

"Practical Aspects of
Engineering Jenson Displacement Gates." He lowered the resume.

"It was just a course
paper," I said, self-conscious, "that got published."

"But it did get
published. Frankly, Mr. Collins, you're the first engineer I've talked to who
even knows what a Controlled-Laser Reaction is, much less basic Gate
principles. Did you see my model over there?" He nodded toward a
waist-high mahogany cabinet against the wall. On it, a foot-diameter concrete
doughnut rested on its edge next to an old analog minicomputer, its six-inch
display panel dead. I shook my head no.

"Examine it."

I got up and walked to the model.
Moving calmed me. The concrete doughnut was connected to the computer by an
inch-thick cable. Mr. Merryweather hoisted himself from his chair and joined
me.

"Recognize it?"

"No."

"It's the original Jenson Gate
model. One of our affiliates recovered it in Mexico."

He touched the computer panel. It
lit, feeding out data in each square of the display. A one-inch circle
shimmered in the air at the center of the doughnut.

"Try it. It still
works." He handed me my resume. I rolled it into a half-inch tube and
passed it through the shimmering air at the center of the doughnut. Jenson Gate
parameters are a function of their size and power. This one had a range of two
feet. Half my resume was in my hand and half floated two feet from the
projection surface. I pushed the resume through. It fell on the cabinet and
uncurled. Mr. Merryweather smiled.

"There's beauty in it, Mr.
Collins."

I agreed. Even taking a commercial
Gate to San Francisco, I am struck with its beauty. Walking to the portal,
waiting for the girl to nod, stepping through. No sensation, just one step, a
subnuclear dematerialization and reassembly, you're in San Francisco. Simple.

We discussed Jenson Displacement.
I tried not to sound like the texts I had just reviewed. By one o'clock, we
were into the range limitation problems. My brain, long since defrosted, felt
overheated. He glanced at his watch.

"That late. I'm afraid we'll
have to postpone the rest of this discussion, Mr. Collins. Would tomorrow
morning interfere with your schedule?"

"Schedule? No, not at
all."

"Do you have any
questions?"

"Just one."

"What's that?"

"What's the job?"

He smiled. "I thought Mr.
Mitchel explained that to you."

"He just gave me your job
sheet."

"We'll talk about it
tomorrow. In the meantime, Phillip will give you transcripts of Norton's
progress reports. They should explain most of it. They are accurate up to two
weeks ago, just before poor Norton passed away."

"Dead?"

"Yes, unfortunately."

"I was under the
impression" paused, unsure whether to raise the subject.

"You were under what
impression?"

"I thought you had, ah,
terminated him for spending too much." Mr. Merryweather laughed.
"You've been talking to Phillip, I see. No, Mr. Collins, development is
expensive, but I am in business. The essence of business is risk. I take
risks with capital. I take risks on people. In both situations, it is
expensive. Sometimes I win, sometimes not. But once committed, I remain
committed. I trust my judgment. I enjoy finding new fish in deep water, Mr.
Collins. That the fish are sometimes rare and valuable lets me continue the
search. To put the matter into a more conventional platitude, you must spend
money to get money. The idea frightens Phillip."

 



 

"Mr. Merryweather"
protested Duff.

Mr. Merryweather waved him aside,
standing and shaking my hand. "Make sure Mr. Collins gets Norton's
reports, Phillip."

Outside the office, Duff loaded me
up with Norton's reports, a three-inch stack of thin paper. He accompanied me
down the elevator, silent, disapproving. Listening to the interview, Duff had
evidently become convinced the project would continue. No drone fleet. No
profits. I noticed the bags under his eyes. Duff probably slept poorly.

In the lobby, I asked him what
happened to Norton.

"He died."

"So I gathered. What
of?"

"Egomania, probably."

The look he gave me indicated my own
ego was being scrutinized. I held up my thumb and forefinger, spacing them a
half-inch apart

"My ego's minuscule."

"I certainly hope so."

He left me. Had I made an enemy?

The receptionist beamed at me on
the way out.

"Ciao; Mr.
Collins."

And a friend?

Dolores found me in her closet
when she got home.

"How'd it go?"

I looked up from one of Norton's
progress reports and rubbed my eyes. The more I read, the more convinced I
became of Norton's right to egomania. The man was brilliant. He knew more about
Jenson Displacement than Jenson. In fourteen months on the Merryweather
Enterprize, orbiting the Sun in the asteroid belt, Norton had solved
problems I only dimly knew existed. The texts I read had never heard of them.
Phase shift at the interface, for one. I looked at Dolores, groggy from
thought.

"Pardon me?"

"How'd it go?"

"What?"

"Your interview, silly."


"Oh, that"

I told her. She listened, intent,
puckering.

"It sounds like Merryweather
Enterprises has a new project engineer. What's all that junk on my desk?"

"What?"

"That stuff on my desk, what
is it?"

"No. I meant what was that
about project engineer?"

"You, of course."

"Me?" Until that moment,
the possibility of actually getting the job had never seemed real. Somehow,
hearing it from Dolores embodied it.

"I"

"What's the matter with you?"

"I"

"Bobby?"

"I"

"Do you want some water or
something? You look absolutely white."

"Ah"

"Just a minute."

She went out and returned with a
glass of water. I drank some.

"Now, what's the
problem?" she asked.

"Me."

"I agree. You're a
problem."

"It could be me."

Fortunately, Bernie called at that
moment. Otherwise, I might have hurt myself with the water glass. I went into
the living room to take the call.

He grinned out of the screen at
me. "Hi, boss."

I must have looked blank.

"You do realize you're
going to be my boss."

First Dolores. Now Bernie. I
appreciate the confidence people have in me. I just find it misplaced.

"You're a little
premature."

"What happened?"

I told him. He nodded, listening.

"That squares with the
grapevine, except they got your age wrong. They said you were
middle-aged." He grinned again, enjoying it.

"I feel middle-aged. I've
been reading Norton's progress reports. If they're ticketing me for that
genius' job, they've got the wrong train on the wrong track. That guy makes
Leonardo da Vinci look like a draftsman."

"He was."

"Bernie, I can no more fill
his shoes than Dolores'."

"Wear your own. You'll do all
right."

"You, and Dolores, and
Merryweather are all nuts. No, I take that back. Merryweather isn't nuts. He
hasn't hired me yet."

"That isn't the way I heard
it. He liked you. After you left, he told one of his secretaries he was
thinking about hiring a ping-pong champion to run the Merryweather
Enterprize project."

"Bernie, why didn't you
strike that off the resume?"

"I liked it. See you in the
sweatshop, boss." He hung up.

By the next morning, I knew the
job was out of my league. Norton's reports boggled me more than the interview
with Mr. Merryweather. Perhaps Norton could boss five hundred men and a
ten-billion-dollar annual budget with one hand while he practiced the most
inspired engineering since Archimedes with the other, but the Mr.
Collins had trouble bossing one small Chicano. Or is it Chicana?

"Why?" asked Dolores,
fixing coffee, angry.

"Why what?"

"Why aren't you going?"

"Look at this!" I
waved one of Norton's reports at her. "I can't do this! That's all there
is to it!"

"You can do it."

"What do you know
about it?" I threw the report down and stalked into the bathroom. Slapping
depilatory on my face and staring at Baby Face Collins in the mirror, I knew I
was right. In his right mind, Mr. Merryweather would never hire me. Once hired,
I would turn their space station into an orbiting monkey cage. I had resolved
to mail back the reports and go to the beach with Dog. I glanced out the
bathroom window. It was raining. Dolores came into the bathroom.

"Isn't there any privacy
around here?"

"No."

I grunted and rinsed my face.

"Robert."

I knew I was in for it.
"What?" "If you don't go to that interview, I'm leaving."

"So leave. I can see what
kind of a wife you'd make right now. 'Robert, you're thirty-four years old and
not President of the United States. What's the matter with you?' "

She mumbled something.

"What was that crack?"


"I said, you have to
be thirty-five."

I laughed. Dolores smiled at my
reflection in the mirror and came up behind me. She circled my waist with her
arms and rested her cheek on my back.

"Bobby."

"What?"

"I love you."

"I love you, too. What's that
got to do with anything?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to
say it. Why aren't you going back to the interview?"

I turned around and took her in my
arms. "I told you. Even if they hire me, I can't do the job."

"Bernie thinks you can."


"What does he know
about it? He's the one who got me into this in the first place."

"He knows more than you
do."

"Says who?"

"That's what you're always
saying."

Logic. She had me.

"So?" It was the best I
could do. She pulled her head away from my chest, looking at me.
"Unless"

"Unless what?"

"You're afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Responsibility. Five hundred
people, ten billion dollars. You could fail."

"Yes," I said quietly,
"I could fail."

She looked at me. "You are."


"I am what?"

"Afraid!" It delighted
her.

"No, I" I stopped
talking. Dolores was right. Five hundred people, ten billion dollarsit scared
me stiff. And Norton, that hovering presence of genius, the thought of him
scared me as much as anything. Yet, confronting it, verbalizing it with
Dolores, shrank it. I needed a job. Merryweather Enterprises had a job. The
five hundred people were hired to help, not hinder. Mr. Merryweather knew my
background. If he hired me, he could take the responsibility for my inevitable
failure. It was an opportunity, the only one around, true, but nonetheless an
opportunity. More than that, it was a challenge. If I could carry through
Norton's project, I could do anything. I could be President at thirty-four.

"OK, I'll go."

 

III

 

When I got to the Merryweather
Building, I had to wait by the rubber plant. The blond glanced at me several
times and smiled once. From time to time, she got up and left the lobby. I
enjoyed watching her come and go. I even enjoyed watching her stand still. It
passed the time.

I was about to ask when Mr.
Merryweather would be free when I saw Duff, overcoat flapping, hurrying up the
broad entrance steps into the building. He burst into the lobby, shouting for
the blondPamelato tell Mr. "M" he was on his way up with an
emergency.

He started toward the elevator,
then halted, brought up short by my presence.

"You."

I grinned, displaying as many
teeth as possible. "None other." "You'd better come, too. This
concerns you."

"Me?"

"Come on." He
charged off toward the elevator.

I got Norton's reports and
followed. In the elevator, he mumbled to the pushbuttons, ignoring me.

"I told her not to make a
scene

". . . too late now . . .
much too late . . ."

"For what?"

"Good thing she did, though .
. ."

"Who?"

"Great man . . ." He
spat out the words. "Oh, yes, he was a great man, but not great enough for
Mr. "M" to go himself . . ."

"Who?"

"He had to send me . .
."

"You?"

"Ah, here we are. Open up,
damn it! Slowest elevator in the building!"

The doors slid open. Duff surged forward,
leading me by ten feet. He paused at the secretary's desk closest to Mr.
Merryweather's office.

"Who's he with?"

Startled, the girl blinked.
"No one at the moment, but Mr. Collins has an appointoh, I see you have
Mr. Collins with you."

"I've got Collins."

Duff started for Mr.
Merryweather's office door. I followed. By his tone, I felt as if I was being
fired, that malefactor Collins, caught with his fingers in the till again. I
reminded myself they had to hire me to fire me.

Duff barely paused for the office
doors. They opened. Mr. Merryweather looked up from a pile of papers on his
desk, recognizing me.

"Ah, Mr. Collins." He
rose and started around the desk toward us, stepping into the well area and
extending his hand.

"Mr. Merryweather," interrupted
Duff. "I must talk to you."

"Can't it wait? Mr. Collins
and I"

"No."

Mr. Merryweather looked at me,
lifting one eyebrow. "I sent Phillip to poor Norton's funeral this
morninga great man, Norton. A fine engineer. Have you had an opportunity to
look over his reports, Mr. Collins?"

"Yes, and I agree."

Duff, his face contorted in
anxiety, fidgeted, trying to break in. "What is it, Phillip?"

"Norton."

"What about him?"

"The funeral."

Duff launched into a frantic
account of the funeral. He had arrived late. The service, eulogizing Nortonan
activity Duff apparently found repugnant on general principleswas already
under way. Inconspicuously, he had edged in the side door of the church. The
pews were full.

"I didn't know Norton had so
many friends," said Duff. "He must have belonged to a lodge."

Duff had made his way to the rear
of the church and sat on a collapsible metal chair by the aisle, Norton's
casket clearly in view. The minister, a young man with a goatee, was intoning
the standard thesaurus of virtues. Duff had stopped listening, thankful for
Norton's closed casket. Seeing Norton again, he said, especially in the
beneficent posture composed by the morticians, would have spoiled his lunch. He
had spotted Sharon Norton in the front pew, with a black pillbox hat on her
head and a black veil covering her face.

"I remember that hat
especially," Duff said. "Every time the minister said something like,
'Though Edward is gone from us now, he is not forgotten,' a moan went up from
Sharon'sI mean Mrs. Norton's pew and that hat tilted back. It was horrible,
just horrible. I knew she would make a scene."

"How is Mrs. Norton,
Phillip?" interrupted Mr. Merryweather.

Duff stopped, blushed, looked at
me with a pained expression, shaking his head from side to side as if denying
the innuendo's truth. Mr. Merryweather persisted.

"She did quash the divorce
proceedings after his death, didn't she?"

Duff looked uncomfortable,
shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Yes."

"Go on, Phillip."

Duff had listened to her moaning
from his place at the rear of the church. The minister had continued, saying
that all men were mortal, that Norton was a man, that therefore Norton was
mortal. "Very logical," said Mr. Merryweather.

Sharon Norton had wailed, the
volume increasing with each mention of Norton's name.

"I knew she'd make a
scene," said Duff. "I knew it."

"Just tell us what happened,
Phillip."

The minister had intoned that no
one would see Norton's likes again. Sharon Norton had wailed and stood in the
pew. She must, she had said. The minister had assured her she would not.
She must, she had shouted, one last time! Barely evading
outstretched hands, she had bolted from the pew and stepped to the casket. A
murmur had risen from the congregation as she pulled at the upper lid of the
coffin.

"Unseemly," commented
Mr. Merryweather.

"Indeed. I kept thinking, Why
is SharonMrs. Nortondoing this? She couldn't expect to get the casket open.
They secure them. Frankly, it struck me as overacting. Playing the bereaved
widow is one thing. Improvising on the role is something else."

"You can skip the editorial,
Phillip."

"Yes, sir."

The minister had abandoned his
pulpit, approaching Sharon Norton from behind, his compassionate hands
extended. She had her fingers between the coffin and the lid, prying. An
instant before the minister reached her, the lid had come up. A gasp had
erupted from the congregation. Duff, telling it, flinched, grimacing.

Holding up the lid, Sharon Norton
had thrust her veiled face toward the opening. She peered. She groaned. She
dropped the lid. It slammed into place. Duff, half out of his collapsible chair
at the time, had stood up. She had turned to the congregation, and her voice,
when it came, was shaken but audible: "He's gone."

"Gone?" said Mr.
Merryweather. "That's what she said."

"Was he?"

"Yes."

Mr. Merryweather nodded and began
pacing the room, stroking his chin and watching his path. He glanced up at Duff
from time to time.

"Nothing else?"

"Pardon me?"

"She didn't say anything
else, either there or, uh, privately?"

"I haven't talked to her
yet."

Mr. Merryweather continued his
pacing. Eventually, he stopped, looking at Duff. "He was gone."


"Yes."

"Where?"

Duff threw up his hands. "I
haven't the vaguest idea. It's probably some joke of Norton's. He never was
very considerate of other people."

"I don't think it was a joke,
Phillip."

Duff snorted, indicating his
disbelief.

"He died by accident,"
continued Mr. Merryweather. "It gave him very little time to prepare
jokes."

"I still wouldn't put it past
him," said Duff.

I stood there, listening to their
discussion and wondering why Duff had said it concerned me. Unless I was
supposed to have Norton's body socked away at home, I was unable to see how.
Duff had no idea where Norton was. I had no idea why it was important.
Interesting, yes. But important? Only to Mrs. Norton, if to her.

Finally, Mr. Merryweather looked
at Duff and sighed. "All right, Phillip. Find out what you can. Call
around. And get me an up-to-date list of all Spieler's projects, not
just that fossilized drone fleet of his."

"Yes, sir."

Duff left.

Mr. Merryweather looked at me and
smiled wearily. "There are times, Mr. Collins, when I regret giving up
teaching for business."

"You taught?"

"English. The death scene in Hamlet,
for exampleit's so much more wholesome than real life." He walked to
his desk and touched the intercom. "Hold all my calls, Sandra, except from
Mr. Duff." He turned to me, sitting lightly on the edge of his desk.
"I'm forgetting myself, Mr. Collins. Sit down, please. Juice?"

I declined and sat on the leather
couch.

"Have you had an opportunity
to examine Norton's reports?"

"Yes."

"And what do you think?"


"He was brilliant." '

Mr. Merryweather nodded. "And
the project?"

I could have lied. I could have
said the project looked excellent, that Norton had solved the major technical
problems, that success was just around the corner. Most people like approval
and confirmation of their judgment. Mr. Merryweather was not most people. I
decided to give a frank opinion.

"You could go
bankrupt."

He laughed. "Yes, I
could."

"Norton seems to have licked
the interface problem along with the size limitations. Power is the only
drawback, but a big drawback."

"I agree. Norton,
unfortunately, saved that problem for last."

"If I could look at his
working papers, perhaps"

"Working papers!" Mr.
Merryweather laughed. "Those reports are all we have." He
tapped his temple. "Norton kept everything in here. He called it a gift. I
call it a curse. He only agreed to make progress reports at all because I sent
Pamelaour receptionistyou saw her downstairs?"

"The statuesque one."

"Among other things. I sent
her to get the reports. He liked Pamela. There was nothing more to it than
that, I'm sure. I told him countless times to write things" He broke off,
shrugging. "What's done is done."

Norton's methods struck me as odd.
Most engineers only believe a thing is real when they see it on paper, or at
least laid into a drafting computer. Trying to remember thousands of
complicated specifications is like trying to memorize a Chinese dictionary. Why
memorize when you can carry the book in your pocket?

The phone glowed. Mr. Merryweather
answered.

"What is it?"

"Mr. Duff, sir."

"Thank you. Put him on."


He moved the phone around so I
could see Duff's face and turned up the volume. Duff came on, frowning. The
depth adjustment was off, exaggerating the bags under Duff's eyes.

"Mr. Merryweather," said
Duff, "I've checked everywhere. Mrs. Norton is still hystericalshe's
under sedationbut the morticians know nothing about it either. The man I
talked to"he glanced down at something on his desk"a Mr. Cunningham,
thought I was accusing him of taking it. He was extremely agitated. Apparently,
the police and media have already been there. He just snapped that the damn
thing was in the box when they shipped it out and hung up."

"What about the delivery
people?"

"Same story. They got a
closed casket from Cunningham. They delivered a closed casket to the church.
Beyond that, we are supposed to contact their attorneys."

"The church?"

"The casket was delivered and
sent directly to the chapel."

"All right, thank"

"I have the list of Spieler's
projects."

"Fine. Feed through a
copy."

The document feed light on the
phone lit and a foot-long sheet of paper emerged from a slot below the screen.
Mr. Merryweather glanced at it, reading as it emerged. Duff and I waited.

"Beats me," said Mr.
Merryweather, picking up the copy and walking over to me. "See what you
can make of it." He handed me the sheet.

Only the strictly commercial
ventures like hotels, along with one or two of the technical activities, were
comprehensible to me. The projects ranged from business to biology. Number
seven on the list, Drone Phase-Shift Elimination, caught my attention.
Drone ships used a modified Jenson Displacement system to shift themselves
across the galaxy. Because of the relatively small mass involved, stability of
the Gate field on a drone ship is critical. On short jumps, up to a quarter of
a million miles, standard Jenson Gates, grounded against the Earth or the Moon,
are sufficiently stable. For longer jumps in space, the minutest improper
phasing at the interface means permanent dematerialization. Spieler's ships
made two jumps per trip. Poor phase accounted for half the eighty-percent loss
rate. Unanticipated accidents accounted for the other forty percent. Even the
surviving twenty percent showed significant enough evidence of poor phasing to
prevent human beings aboard the ships. The effect on ore, though detectable,
was negligible. Life is less stable. What a rock or metal spacecraft can safely
do, human beings, if they want to avoid being hamburger, must decline. Drones
do their work well enough without human supervisors. I pointed to the item.

"Norton solved this."

Mr. Merryweather nodded. "For
our purposes, yes. Possibly for drone ships, too. But he doesn't know it
yet. At least he doesn't know how."

He, apparently, was
Spieler. "Norton never published?"

"As I said, Norton kept
everything in his head. I would have asked him to delay publication in any
case. For business reasons."

He must have noticed my
discomfort. It had occurred to me that if I were hired and if I
developed anything significant, I might want to publish, for the sake of my
next resume if nothing else.

"But only delay it,
Mr. Collins. We are not in the habit of suppressing matters of technological
significance, at least not after our patent lawyers have finished their work.
What do you make of the list?"

I shrugged. "Most of it's out
of my field."

"Did you notice the item
second from the bottom?"

I looked at it. Giant Molecule
Reconstitution, Organic.

"What is it?"

"I wish I knew. I try to keep
current, but the press of business" He turned to Duff. "Phillip, I
want to know what happened to Norton. I want to know if Spieler is involved. I
need this information as quickly as possible. Engage Mr. Smith to help you. Do
you understand?"

"Which Mr. Smith, sir?"

"Scarlyn."

Duff looked away from the screen.
I heard the sound of pages turning. He read something and looked up at Mr.
Merryweather.

"Mr. Smith has been retired
for ten years."

An exasperated expression
momentarily flickered across Mr. Merryweather's face. "I am aware of that,
Phillip. I said engage Mr."

"But"

"No buts."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Merryweather broke the
connection, visibly irritated. "There are times when Phillip's caution
annoys me. Perhaps his relationship with Mrs. Norton has biased his judgment. A
sense of protectiveness may be admirable in private affairs, but business is
business, to coin a phrase."

I had missed something. Mr.
Merryweather's request for information, though peculiar in itselfI still
wondered why anyone cared about the missing Nortonseemed straightforward. His
order to hire Smith, whoever he was, seemed clear. Duff's response, that Smith
was retired, sounded reasonable. Unless they knew something beyond what they
said, Duff's caution and Mr. Merryweather's irritation seemed inappropriate. I
asked about it.

"Mr. Smith," said Mr.
Merryweather, "is a man of absolute integrity."

He said nothing more. Why anyone
would be cautious about hiring a man of absolute integrity was beyond me. We
discussed Norton's reports. Mr. Merryweather seemed satisfied with my answers.
Fifteen minutes later, warming to my subject, the intercom glowed, interrupting
me.

"Yes."

"Mr. Duff, again."

"Put him on." Duff came
on, scowling. Mr. Merryweather nodded a curt greeting. "You talked to
Scarlyn."

"Not exactly."

"I warn you, Phillip. Do not
find excuses. I want Smith."

"I called. A girl
answeredhis granddaughter, I think. I told her I wanted to talk to Smith
concerning business. She said he was retired. I said I knew, but still wanted
to talk to him. She brought him to the phone."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"He listened. He nodded. That
face, I remember it. It used to give me nightmares. What if he had made a
mistake, Horaceexcuse me, Mr. Merryweather. It could have been me!"

"He didn't make a
mistake."

"But he could have.
What would we have done?"

"It would have been
difficult, Phillip. Now, tell me what he said."

"He didn't say anything. When
I finished telling him about Norton, he laughed and hung up."

I think Mr. Merryweather smiled. I
was at the wrong angle to see his face.

"All right, Phillip. I want
you to talk to Scarlyn in person. And take Mr. Collins with you."

"Me?"

Mr. Merryweather looked at me.
"You do want the job?"

"Ah"

He waited.

He peered at me.

"Iyes."

"Good. Scarlyn may have some
technical questions. Phillip would be incapable of answering them. The girl
will give you some papers to fill out at your leisure."

"At my leisure."

On the way out of the building
with Duff, the blond, Pamela. winked at me.

"Ciao, Mr. Collins,
and congratulations."

 

IV

 

In the car with Duff, I felt
shell-shocked. Duff drove, keeping the turbine Mercedes well, under the speed
limit. I stared at the road, still slick with rain, thinking. I had expected
more discussion, possibly a tour of the Merryweather Enterprize, talks
with other employees, then time to think. Instead, I got action. One minute I
was Robert Collins, hardcore unemployed. 'The next minute I was still Robert
Collinsthat fact, at least, I rememberedchief project engineer on a project I
had never seen. I asked Duff about it.

"Mr. M makes up his mind
fast," answered Duff, glancing at me. "You look a little
shaken."

"I am."

"Frankly, Mr. Collins, I have
my reservations. Even if I were in favor of this project, putting an untried
twenty-seven-year-old"

"Twenty-eight."

"in charge, notwithstanding
his technical background, strikes me as folly. Some things require more than a
purely technical understanding. Age and experience supply the judgment to
handle those things."

"Thanks for the
confidence."

"Nothing personal."

Smith lived in Seal Beach. We
drove up Pacific Coast Highway. I finally relaxed. The more I thought about it,
the more 1 wanted to get started. People like Duffactually, Duff in
particularannoyed me. Twenty-eight, I was. I considered that fact beyond my
sphere of responsibility. If Duff wanted to complain, he could take the matter
up with my parents. On the other hand, I was readyunflinchingly, as they
sayto take responsibility for my judgment and abilities. If he had doubts, he
could trot me out to the Merryweather Enterprize and test them.
Otherwise, he could shut up. I decided to change the subject. "Who's
Smith?"

Duff's relaxed posture stiffened,
his hands gripping the wheel. A fierce, thin-lipped expression suffused his
face. "A menace."

"Pardon me?"

"The man's a menace."

Mr. Merryweather seems to think
highly of him."

Duff slowed for a signal, looking
up at it. It changed. He grunted and crossed the intersection. "Mr. M is
not infallible."

"Did Smith work for
Merryweather Enterprises?"

"I'd rather not talk about
it," said Duff and subsided into glaring at the road. I could see his jaw
muscles flexing as his teeth ground.

"You don't like Smith?"

"I said, I'd rather
not talk about it."

We passed into Sunset Beach. Signs
on the broad highway divider advertised the upcoming Grunion Festival. I had
once known a Grunion Queen. Attractive girl, in spite of it.

I wanted to know more about Smith,
both because it irritated Duff and because I was about to meet him. Anyone so
vehemently disliked by Duff must have several redeeming traits.

"I should know
something," I said, "about the man I'm meeting."

"The less you know, the
better. I had nightmares about that man for two years"two fingers
sprouted from his grip on the wheel"after his last escapade." Duff
shivered, remembering it.

"He sounds like a wild
man."

"He is a wild man. See
this?" He pointed to his right eyebrow. An old scar showed through a thin
spot. "He gave me that. Permanent disfigurement!"

"What did he do?"

"I'd rather not talk about
it."

We found Smith jogging, heading
toward us on the far side of the Seal Beach pier, a minute but visible speck,
framed in the pier pilings. Duff had walked carefully across the beach, cursing
about the sand and hoping they would pave it soon.

"It wouldn't be much of a
beach paved," I said.

"It would be better than what
they've got now," he insisted, glancing from his shoes to the sand and
back to his shoes. He pointed at the pier.

"There."

"Sure it's him?"

"It's him," answered
Duff, moving down to the tideline and planting himself in Smith's path. The
speck enlarged into a man, arms pumping, chin extended. He passed under the
pier, disappearing momentarily into the shadows, then emerging. Duff waved his
entire arm overhead.

"Mr. Smith!"

Smith, sweat darkening his gray
sweatsuit and matting his gray hair, jogged. He either failed to see Duffan
unlikely explanation considering the wag of Duff's armor ignored him.

"Mr. Duff." I said,
leaning toward him. Smith was about ten yards away, sneakers slapping on the
wet sand, his expression set in a fierce charge. "I think we'd better get
out of the"

"Nonsense," scoffed
Duff. "He'll stop. I"

"OUT OF THE WAY,
DUFF!" roared Smith, charging.

Panicked, Duff looked frantically
from side to side, then hopped out of the way. Smith jogged between us, nodding
curtly to me. "Morning."

He looked about sixty. Scrawny,
spindly, lankyeven in the baggy sweatsuit, any of them fit. Duff began
trotting next to him. I followed.

"Mr. Smith."

Smith jogged.

"I have to talk to you."


"So talk."

Duffs bobbing head barely reached
Smith's shoulder. His width emphasized it. A wave tumbled and broke, sliding up
the beach toward us. We dodged, three athletes out for their morning roadwork,
one in a sweatsuit, two in business suits. I began to taste the salt air,
inhaling deeply.

"Here?" asked Duff.

"You're getting fat,
Duff."

Duffs step faltered. He dropped
back, giving me a shuddering look. Why, it asked, were the woes of Phillip Duff
compounded by people like Smith. Smith's shoulders, sweat-soaked, moved like a
boxer's in front of me. Duff caught up with him, starting to pant.

"Mr. Smith," persisted
Duff. "I can't . . . keep . . . this . . . up . . . for ... long."

"Back in a minute."

Smith stretched out, loping down
the beach. Duff's all-out run, matching Smith's jog, dribbled to a walk. He
stopped. He leaned on his knees, breathless, speechless, incapacitated. I
caught my breath, sweat beading on my forehead, and watched Smith run. He
dwindled, passed the near edge of a line of houses and broke his stride. He
started toward us, withdrawing something from the pocket of his sweatsuit and
looking at it.

Duff, still leaning on his knees,
made rasping noises and spat on the sand.

Smith approached, scrutinizing the
object in his hand, a jogwatch, one of those hybrids, half pedometer and half
stopwatch. He looked at me, his tan face glistening. The skin over his
cheekbones had the yellowish sheen of polished mahogany.

"You people slowed me
up," complained Smith.

"Sorry."

He nodded at Duff. "What's
his problem?"

"Winded."

Smith snorted. Duff gurgled and
spat.

"What did he want to talk to
me about?"

"Norton, I think."

Smith laughed, a gravelly,
croaking sound that subsided into a growl. "Funniest thing I've heard all
week."

Duff, recovering, stood up, his
face red from leaning on his knees. "Mr. Smith, it is not . . . in the
least funny. It is . . . quite a serious mat . . . ter."

"For you. Not me."

Smith started across the beach
toward his street, returning the jog-watch to his pocket. Duff followed him,
still catching his breath. I followed Duff. Smith pulled a bent cigar from his
pocket, straightening it with both hands.

"Mr. Merryweather,"
began Duff, walking next to Smith, "is prepared to offer"

"I'm retired,"
interrupted Smith, clamping his teeth down on the cigar and talking around it.
He struck a wooden match on his thumbnail. It flared. He lit the cigar,
puffing, sweat still shining on his face.

"Mr. Smith"

"No. Simple enough?"

"We can at least discuss the
matter."

Smith glanced at Duff, continuing
to puff his cigar, and shook his head. He had said no. What more did Duff want?
A stream of gray smoke trailed Smith. I tried to avoid the fumes. He paused
near a deadend barrier on his street, smoking, listening, saying nothing. Duff
talked quickly, trying to prevent Smith from interrupting. Smith seemed to have
no intention of interrupting. When Duff ran down, Smith extracted the cigar
from his mouth and spat. He pointed the wet end at his house.

"See that?"

Duff looked at the house,
irritated at the diversion. "Yes."

"Like it?"

"It's a very nice little
house, Mr. Smith, but"

"Looks like a bank to
me."

The house, a wide, two-story
structure in Neodoric styleplastone pillars spaced at intervals across the
façadedid look like a bank. I wondered about the abrupt transition from Norton
to Smith's house. Then I remembered Smith had already given his answer, no. If
Duff wanted to chat, Smith would chat. Smith, retired, had little else to do.
All he asked was equal time. Duff wanted to talk about Norton. OK, Smith wanted
to talk about the house. Duff missed the point.

"Mr. Smith," said Duff,
"I did not drive up here to discuss architecture."

"Too bad," said Smith,
turning to me. "What do you think?"

"It looks like a bank."

"My son-in-law owns it."
He paused, puffing. "Banker. Likes his buildings solid. Lives in a paper
empire and likes his buildings solid." Smith nodded at the house.
"There's something to it."

I laughed. Duff tried to
interrupt. Smith silenced him with a wave of the cigar. It was Smith's turn.

"Harold's motherawful
woman," continued Smith, the cigar butt poised six inches from his mouth,
"wanted him to be a banker. Can you imagine a mother wanting her
son to be a banker. Security, she said. Build not thy house on sand. She had
five husbands:" He looked at me. "Something in that, too." He
pointed with the cigar. "That's Harold's wife down there watching us!'

"Your daughter."

"More or less."

I looked at the house. The curtain
of a side window was drawn slightly aside.

"I'd invite you in,"
said Smith, "but they don't allow me to smoke inside." He
puffed. "Might spill ashes on something in my dotage."

I could see Smith enjoyed the
pose, playing the old man.

"Mr. Smith," said Duff,
his expression agitated, "at least say you'll think about it."

"I'm retired, Duff. Why
should I go traipsing around after this joker Norton's carcass? I've got
everything I need right here. All day to myself. Putter in the garden." He
paused, puffing. "If I liked puttering in gardens. No headaches. Feed the
pigeons cigar buttsplenty of things to do. Got it made. I've got everything I
need, money, cigars" He looked at the house, still playing the old man.
The curtain at the side window fell into place. When he spoke, the humor had
drained from his voice. "A loving family."

He broke off the pose, flicking
the cigar butt into the street. "Nope. Sorry, Duff. Tell Horace I'm out of
it. Tell him he ought to get out, too." The humor returned. "Three
hots and a cot. That's all us old men need."

"What can you lose,"
persisted Duff, "by saying you'll think about it?"

Smith exploded, now playing the
cranky old man. "All right! Damn it! I'll think about it! I'll
think about it and then I'll say no!"

"Fine. Fine," said Duff,
reaching out and shaking Smith's hand with both of his. "We'll contact you
later for your answer."

"Nice meeting you, Mr.,
uh"

"Collins."

We left. Duff drove me home. In
the car, turning off Smith's block, I said, "So that's your wild
man," trying to put as much irony in my voice as possible. Duff answered
yes, firmly and clearly, cursed Smith, cursed Norton and fell silent.

When I got home, Dolores was
talking to the refrigerator, mumbling about the effect of a plaintiff from
Wisconsin suing joint tortfeasors from Hawaii and New York in Nevada for
negligently transplanting a kidney in Florida. She does that, mumbles, paces,
stops, explains the situation to herself again, paces, mumbles. I asked her
where the kidney was from.

"Don't confuse meoh,
Bobby!" She closed the refrigerator. I wondered how long she had been
standing there, letting out the cold.

"Mr. Collins, please,
or Chief if you prefer."

"You got it!"

I nodded.

She grabbed me in a bear hug,
pinning both my arms to my sides and hopping up and down. She squealed.
"I'm so happy!"

"At least you'll be rid of me
for a while. Let go, please."

She stopped hopping, still
hugging. Her expression looked blank. "Be rid of you?"

"You didn't think I'd work
down here, did you? Most of it will be up there." I glanced at the
ceiling. It needed painting. "Let go, please."

"I thought"

"You thought what?"

"I don't know. I didn't
really think about it. How long will you be"she glanced at the
ceiling"up there?"

"Who knows?"

"Bobby."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Are there any
girls"she looked at the ceiling, again"up there?"

"Girls go to purgatory first.
Let go."

"Answer me. Are there any
girls?"

I tried to shrug. "I don't
have any idea."

She let go. "I hope
not."

"Why?"

"I don't want to lose you to
some free-fall floozy."

"Free-fall what?"

"Floozy."

"Where did you get a word
like that?"

"It was in an old case I
read. Or maybe it was flivver. One of them was a car and the other one was a
girl."

"Flivver sounds more like a
girl to me."

"You're distracting me. How
long will you be gone?"

I tried to estimate. A matter
transmission to the Tranquility relay station and from there to the Intraplanet
station took a little over two seconds. A ship from there to the Merryweather
Enterprize took a week. It would take several more weeks to familiarize
myself with Norton's project, the station, its crew and their assorted
problems. Then, perhaps, I could take a break. Somewhere I had read that the
standard Earthside rotation was three months.

"About three months."

"Three months! What am
I supposed to do for three months?"

"Study?"

"When I'm not studying?"


"Remember me?"

She made a noise something like harumpf.
"I'm not so sure this job was a good idea."

"It pays well."

"I don't care. What good's
money if there isn't anyone to spend it with?"

"You're the one who
was going to walk out if I didn't take the job."

"Maybe I was wrong."

"Dolores, it's a great
opportunity for me."

She came over and leaned her cheek
against my cravat. "I don't like the idea of being away from you that
long."

I was about to lead her into the
bedroom, when I heard the phone. I cursed and walked down the hall to answer
it. I heard the refrigerator open behind me, then Dolores shouted, "Tell
Bernie I think his idea stinks!"

It wasn't Bernie. It was a
middle-aged man with sweeping salt-and pepper sideburns. A roll of flesh under
his jaw obscured his chin. His mouth, angry, and his eyes, glowering, startled
me.

"Mr. Collins?"

I considered denying the
accusation. "Yes."

"My name is H. Winton
Tuttle." He waited. By his bearing, I knew I was supposed to react to his
name, to exclaim, "Oh, Mr. Tuttle." Presumably, to grovel.
"Nice meeting you." I started to hang up.

"I have tried, Mr. Collins,
repeatedly, to contact Mr. Duff."

"He isn't here."

"I'm aware of that." His
tone, a mincing sort of monotone, annoyed me. "After trying numerous times,
I realized Mr. Duff did not wish to speak with me."

I could see why. "What can
help you with?"

"You visited my father-in-law
this morning, did you not?"

Father-in-law? Other than Mr.
Merryweather and Duff, I had visited only Smith. H. Winton Tuttle.
"H"? It was Harold, the banker.

"Your father-in-law's
Smith?"

"Yes. I wanted to tell Mr.
Duff, and I do tell you, I absolutely forbid you to hire him for this insane
business. You know what happened the last time."

"No."

"Ask Duff. I forbid
it! Mr. Smith is an old man. He"

"He does look over
eighteen."

"What does that have to do
with anything?"

"He can make his own
decisions."

"He is seventy-five years
old, Mr. Collins . . ." It was still over eighteen. "And too old
to be taking this kind of a job."

I started to say that Smith seemed
inclined to refuse our offer, but Harold cut me off, working himself up.

"Oh, I know about the
past, Mr. Collins. Janet and I have worried ourselves sick about him. That time
in Tangierhorriblehe came home with scars all over his back and a broken
clavicle, he"

"From what?"

"He wouldn't say. He just
shrugged and said, 'You should have seen the other guy.' And that trip to
Hank'ou"

"You worried."

"We didn't even know he was gone.
Three broken fingers . . ." Harold held them up like a Boy Scout
salute. I felt like returning it but restrained myself. "And a ruptured
appendix."

"A ruptured appendix?"

"He denied it had anything to
do with the trip, but I know different."

"You do."

"Rice isn't healthy, Mr.
Collins. I tell you these things to impress upon you that I will not have it!
If you and Duff persist, remember, I have lawyers, Mr. Collins, very good lawyers!"


He hung up. Dolores wandered into
the living room with a casserole dish in one hand, packing vegetables into
place.

"Who was that?"

"Crank call." The phone
hummed again. Dolores reached for it. I intervened. "I'll get it. Busy
day. What's for dinner?"

"It's a vegetable and rice
casserole."

"Rice's unhealthy."

She glanced at the dish, frowning.
"Bobby, it is as healthy as"

"Let me get the phone."
I answered it.

It was a big day for strangers.
"Mr. Collins?"

The man's face, as corpulent as
Harold's but somehow healthier, seemed calm. I knew who it was. First one
stranger calls, irate, threatening me with his lawyer, then another stranger
calls. Two plus two. The lawyer.

"You're Tuttle's
lawyer," I snarled.

"Who?"

That got me. He really was a
stranger. "Pardon me. My mistake. What can I do for you?"

"My name's Parry. I would
like to talk to you. You are Robert Collins of Merryweather
Enterprises?"

"Yes."

"I had expected" He
shook his head. "Never mind."

"You expected what?"

"Someone older."

"Nope. Just me, the punk
kid." Having my chronological age impugned twice in one day angered me.

"I didn't mean to upset you,
Mr. Collins."

"You didn't. Talk away."


"In private, personally, if
that's possible." His tone was businesslike and efficient.

"Concerning what?"

"I may be able to offer you
certain technical assistance."

Suddenly, it hit me. I was, after
all, the Merryweather Enterprize's new chief project engineer. Project
engineers order material. Parry was a salesman, the first of how many?

"I'm not interested, Mr.
Parry. At least not now. You can leave any literature you have for me at the
Merryweather Building. I have to get my feet on the ground before"

"Off the ground,"
corrected Dolores, listening to the conversation.

"You misunderstand, Mr.
Collins. I'm not selling, I'm giving."

"What?"

"That's what I warded to talk
to you about."

"Fishy," said Dolores.

"Pardon me?" said Parry.


"This casserole dish smells
fishy."

"Mr. Collins," continued
Parry, "this will take very little of your time. Perhaps, lunch,
tomorrow."

"Actually, I have quite a few
things to do tomorrow, it"

"It will be, I promise, to
our mutual benefit. Do you know the Civic Center Shopping Mall in Newport
Beach?"

"Yes."

"I will be at the Vier
Jahreszeitenyou do like German food?"

"I prefer Mexican," I
said. Dolores smiled.

"I will be there after twelve
o'clock. I hope you will come."

"I'll think about it."

"Can I come, too?" asked
Dolores. I flapped my hand at her out of camera range, trying to get her to
shut up. I had no intention of eating sauerkraut and Schwarzwalder Rehrikken
for lunch, much less talking to Parry.

"Bobby," insisted
Dolores. "I like German food."

"You're certainly welcome to
come, Miss Gomez," said Parry.

That stopped me. He knew Dolores'
name. I had heard of salesmen researching potential customers, but Dolores was
none of his business.

"How did you"

"I'm looking forward to
seeing you, Mr. Collins." He hung up.

Dolores walked back down the hall,
singing something that would probably have passed for "Ich hab' mein
Hertz in Heidelberg verloren." Cocky. Undergraduate language
majorSpanish, German. I started after her, deciding how to explain. Lunch
tomorrow was out. The phone hummed again.

"If that's Bernie,"
shouted Dolores from the kitchen, "invite him to lunch tomorrow. With Connie
and the kids. We'll make your man Parry's expense account work for its
living."

"You think he was a
salesman?"

"What else?"

I answered the phone. It was
Smith.

 

V

 

"This is what I want you to
do between now and Tuesday," began Smith, talking even before his face
settled on the screen. "Find out everything you can about Norton's work. I
want to be able to pinpoint where he was on any given problem"

"Smith."

"Don't interruptat any given
time. I want to know who he talked to, when he talked to them and what about. I
want"

"Smith."

He stopped, staring at me, annoyed
at the interruption, "What is it?"

"Norton kept everything in
his head."

"I know. I want you to take
those progress reports and correlate them with the security recordings of his
phone calls from the Merryweather Enterprize."

"What you need is a clerk,
not an engineer."

"Then"

"Wait a minute."

"Then I want"

"Wait a minute!"

"What?"

"First of all, Norton worked
up there"I jabbed my thumb at the ceiling"for fourteen months. Say
he made ten calls a day. That's over four thousand calls. Second"

"Use the computer at the
Merryweather Building. I cleared two hours on it for you tomorrow
morning."

"Tomorrow's Saturday."

"With what they're paying
you, you don't have any Saturdays."

He had me there. "But why
me?"

"It's got to be you. No one
else would understand the conversations."

"You're assuming I would.
Second," I said before he could rumble over me. I paused to see if he
would interrupt.

"Go on."

"Second, I thought you were
retired."

His intense expression broke,
replaced by a wide grin, deep crow's-feet corrugating his temples. He leaned
back in his chair, cradling his head in his hands, grinning at me between his
elbows, a man with all the time in the world. When he spoke, his voice was
folksy and languid. "I am, my boy. Us retired folks got plenty of time on
our hands. Them pigeons can only eat so many cee-gars. I told Horacegood ol'
boy, that HoraceI told him I'd look around. Nothing like a missing cadaver to
perk up a man's interest."

"What's so important about
Tuesday?"

"That, buddy boy, is when
we're visiting your little floating junk-box." He jerked his thumb at the
top of the screen, mimicking me. "Up there."

"Tuesday."

"Yep. That is, if you can
pass the physical Monday." He beamed almost childishly. "I can."


"So can I, Smith. You said
'we'."

"I did, Roberto." I
smiled. Somewhere he had picked up my first name. Probably from Duff. He leaned
forward, lowering his arms to the table in front of him. The old man pose
disappeared, his voice returning to normal. "I want to know everything
about Norton. I want to know him better than his wife."

"That shouldn't be too
hard."

"Oh?"

"Talk to Duff about it."


"Duff?" He paused,
thought and grinned. "That old devil."

"It's just a rumor."

Smith chuckled. "OK, and tell
me anything unusual that happens to you, too. You're Norton's successor."

"Lately, that covers most
things. But there was"

"What?"

"Probably not
important."

"Who knows what's important?
Try me."

"Someone named Parry called
and wanted to make a lunch appointment with me."

"Parry." He said the
name in a flat tone, thinking. "Never heard of him."

"Neither have I."

"I'll see what I can turn
up."

"And"

"And what?"

"Harold called."

Smith exploded, this time playing
neither the retired old man nor the cranky old man. "That meddling
son-of-a-bitch! If he calls you again, hang up!"

"Sorry I mentioned it."

Smith churned a few moments,
trying to control himself, then calmed down. "Excuse me. Get that
correlation done as quick as you can."

He hung up.

I called Duff, verified Smith's
authority to give orders and my access to the Merryweather computer. A
technician would be getting overtime to help me lay in the program. When I got
off the phone, Dolores was dressed to go out.

"I thought we were having
that casserole?"

"No. We're celebrating."


Any excuse to avoid cooking. She
led me out the front door. Behind me, I thought I heard the phone hum.

Saturday morning at nine, I was
inside the Merryweather computer center. The day outsidewhat I saw of it
hurrying from the mono station to the buildinginvited anything but mental
work. I had expected a dreary morning, the technician and I, alone in a silent
building. Instead, I had trouble finding her among all the people. Merryweather
Enterprises functions twenty-four hours a day. The sun, they tell me, never
sets on the empire.

I found the technician, a
middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and the face of a Pekingese, watching a
comic viewer, chortling when the quick-witted rabbit thumped the dull-witted
dog. She proved brighter than she looked. She converted Norton's phone calls to
a program in half an hour: "to," "from," and with my help,
"subject." She seemed to think the task was a laughable waste of
valuable computer time. I admitted it was a borderline case. Too long to do by
hand, too short to do by computer. Norton made 7.23 calls per day in fourteen
months, she informed me proudly. I thanked her. I didn't care, but I thanked
her.

The progress reports were harder.
Summaries, they had to be broken into a chronological table of events for each
report, then programmed. I tried various ways of cross-indexingpeople,
subject, time of dayanything. Graphed, little knots of people clustered around
each step in development, names dropping out with each problem solved, names
being added with each new problem. Only when I asked for random
associationscalls deviating from the cluster patterndid anything startling
appear. Toward the end of the period on the timeline marked "Interface
Phase Shift," one item stood out,"lone" is always randoma
name, Parry.

"Get me this tape, will
you?"

Hilda, the technician, grumbled
about not being an errand girl and disappeared. She returned with the tape. I
dropped it into the playback slot on the phone. A split screen showed Parry and
someone I had never seen.

"Norton," I said,
adjusting to his gaunt face. Somehow, I had pictured Norton as healthy. His
mindincisive, sharp, brilliantsuggested a sound body. His appearance on the
tapehaggard, dark circles under his eyes, a nervous habit of pinching his
lower lip between his teeth and chewing itsuggested overwork and neurosis.
Would I look like that in a year?

"What do you want,
Parry?" said

Norton, his tone condescending.
"Mr. Norton. I "

"Dr, Norton."

Parry nodded, tolerant. "I
just called, Doctor, to remind you of our appointment."

"Listen, Parry I'm perfectly
capable of remembering my appointments. I am not some doddering old
imbecile."

"No one suggested you
were."

"Saturday. Noon. Four
Seasons. Right?"

"Yes. Vier Jahreszeiten. You
will be there?"

"I'll be there." Norton
hung up. I withdrew the tape. I sent Hilda home and waited for Smith.

He arrived in red and white
houndstooth slacks and an off-white shirt. Spiffy. He threaded his way through
the computer center crowd, waving and smiling when he saw me.

"What ya got there, buddy
boy?" he asked, noticing the tape disk in my hand.

"Maybe nothing."

"Play it."

I played it. Smith watched,
studying Norton as much as Parry. Concentrating, he puffed out his cheeks,
slowly releasing the air, musing. I watched over his shoulder. Parry reminded
Norton of the appointment. Norton chewed out Parry. The tape ended.

"Play it again," said
Smith.

"Again?"

"It takes a while for us
doddering old imbeciles to absorb things."

I played it. Smith watched, cheeks
puffing. The tape stopped. Smith looked up at me.

"How about lunch?"

"OK. Where?"

"Vier Jahreszeiten."

"You're sure Parry will pick
up the tab for both of us."

"I can't make it."

"But"

He rested one brown hand on the
phone. "I've got to stay here and get to know Norton."

"Don't you think you'd do
better to find out where Norton's body went?"

Smith shrugged. "What's in a
body? It's the man I want to know. First things first. First, we find
out why they snatched himassuming he wasn't just mislaidthen we know where
and who." He pulled the tape disk from the phone and began tossing it in
the air like a coin. It hopped in front of my eyes, spinning, and fell into his
palm.

"Did you know," he
began, flipping the disk, relaxing and watching it, "that Fenton Laser
Products employs Parry?"

"No."

"Did you know that Golden
Star Hotels owns the controlling interest in Fenton?"

"No."

"It does."

"Good for them."

"Did you know that Wentworth
Foundry, Inc. owns Golden Star?"

"Ducky."

He named several more companies,
each owning the next, working his way up the pyramid. I began to lose both
track and interest.

"And Farmer Electronics owns
Palmer Tantalum, did you know that?"

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?" He flipped the
disk. "How long do these begats go on?"

"A far piece, buddy boy. It
kept me up till past an old man's bedtime. I want you to appreciate that."


"Did your teddy bear get cold
without you?"

"Nope. And Farmer Electronics
is owned, predominantly, by Rosecrantz Boatyard."

"A boatyard?"

"It's a holding company. And
Rosecrantz"

"OK, OK." I flapped my
hands at him, trying to silence him. "Enough. I'm going to lunch, since
that's what you seem to want me to do."

"Yep. You'll like it as long
as" He flipped the disk, watched it spin, and caught it.

"As long as what?"

"As long as they don't have
that damn oom-pah band going. That fat burgher on the tuba can deafen at a
quarter mile."

I started across the computer
center toward the door, beginning to doubt Mr. Merryweather's wisdom in hiring
Smith. Norton's body was out there someplace. Smith was supposed to find it.
Instead, he was climbing some meaningless corporate family tree. The tree grew
without bearing fruit. At the door, I heard my name being called over the din
of voices and footsteps. I looked back. Smith was standing on his chair, hands
cupped around his mouth, shouting at me.

"What?" I yelled,
holding my hand to my ear, and feeling foolish. Smith's voice reached me.

"And Rosecrantz is owned
by Spieler Interstellar!"

The tuba oom-pahed. I looked
around the restaurant for Parry, hoping enough wax remained in my ears to
protect the drums. I checked the beerhall attached to the restaurant, looking
from face to face at the long tables of swaying bodies. Someone whooped, stood,
poured beer on his neighbor's head. Neither one was Parry. Steins, held aloft,
sloshed to the music. Groups of people, arms interlocked, rocked from side to
side. A noon beerbust is something less than my ideal spot to talk business.

Someone shouted,
"Ralph!" and staggered toward me, arms open. I retreated to the
restaurant area, cornering the maitre d'. He listened, asking me to
repeat several times to overcome the tuba. He pointed upstairs, holding up
three fingers. Someone in the beerhall was on the table in lederhosen, slapping
his thighs and hopping. I nodded to the maitre d' and went upstairs.

The tuba diminished. I found room
three and entered. Knocking would have been futile unless Parry's ear were to
the other side of the door. Even then, the band was still loud enough to drown
any response.

"Ah, Mr. Collins," said
Parry, waving me into the room with his free hand. He finished biting a small
drumstick, holding it at his mouth like a toothbrush. In person, he looked
younger than on the phone. Mid-forties possibly.

I closed the door. Faintly,
through the floor, I could hear the bands each oom-pah transmitted as vibration
to my shoes. The room, heavily hung with burgundy drapes and displaying
paintings of German stag hunts, contained only the table, heaped with fruit and
silver serving dishes, wisps of steam above two of them, and two comfortable
armchairs. Parry lowered the bone to his plate. He began daubing at a shiny
area around his mouth with his napkin, tucked into his collar outside his
cravat.

"Sit down, Mr. Collins. I'm
glad you came."

I sat across from him. "I was
in the area."

"Preparing to take up the reins,
no doubt."

"Something like that."

He scooped mashed potatoes onto
his plate, dimpled them with the silver gravy ladle and poured on brown gravy.
"What would, you like, Mr. Collins?"

"Whatever you
recommend."

"Squab?"

"Fine."

He reached over to a phone next to
the fruit bowl, punched one number and ordered squab.

"You don't mind," he
asked, "if I continue?"

"Persevere," I said.

"My perseverance ought to be
in the opposite direction." He patted his stomach and laughed. "But
then"he raised both eyebrows, hesitating"men are weak." He
scooped creamed peas and mushrooms onto his plate, watching them, eyes
glistening. "We overindulge. We take what we do not want and want what we
do not need." He returned the serving spoon, pausing to sip white wine from
a long-stemmed glass with an apple-shaped bowl. "Oh, excuse me, Mr.
Collins. Would you care for some wine?"

"Not just"

"It's excellent. A Riesling
from Schlossflalle in the Rhine Valley."

I held my index finger and thumb
an inch apart. "Just a short snort." I had to say something to
counterbalance such blatant wine snobbery.

He poured the wine, smiling. I
sipped it.

"Like it?"

"It's good."

"Straight from hell."

"Pardon me?"

He pointed at the label on the
wine bottle. "Halleit means hell. Odd thing to name a
castle, don't you think?"

"Does it have a
dungeon?"

He laughed, enjoying the idea. Of
course hell had a dungeon. He ate peas. "Your predecessor washow shall I
say ita humorless man."

"You knew Norton?"

"Quite well. We had lunch in
this very room several times."

"What sort of business did
you have with"

"Ah, here's your squab."


A waiter wheeled in a shiny cart,
parking it next to me. The band oom-pahed once as the door opened and closed.
The waiter uncovered several trays, tilting each up for my approval and placing
it on the table in front of me. I realized I was hungry. I glanced around the
table for salt. The waiter watched me.

"May I help you, sir?"

"Salt?"

One eyebrow hopped up his
forehead. He looked down his nose, or it...seemed as if he was looking down his
nose. "All seasoning is done in the kitchen, sir. If something is not to
your taste, I will return it to the kitchen, but I must warn you, the chef
himself will inquire about the difficulty."

"The chef."

"Yes, sir."

"Himself."

"Indeed."

"It's just fine the way it
is."

"Very good, sir. If you need
anything else, simply call." He indicated the phone and withdrew. The band
oom-pahed at his exit. Parry grinned.

"They're proud of their food,
Mr. Collins."

I mumbled something that
contrasted their fine palates with their tin ears and began eating. The squab,
I had to admit, was excellent.

"You're rather young for a
chief project engineer," said Parry, sitting back and straightening his
napkin. The creamed peas and mushrooms, succulent, stifled my response. I
nodded, eating.

"I had always considered Dr.
Norton quite young for the job, mid-forties. You could not be past forty,
though you look younger."

"Twenty-eight," I said
around the squab.

"Twenty-eight! I'm
amazed!" He sounded amazed. Since he knew Dolores' name, I doubted he
actually was amazed. "Congratulations! That is an
achievement."

"Thanks." Whether
mistaking me for a young forty was supposed to flatter my maturity, I didn't
know. Whatever it was supposed to do, it misfired. Twenty-eight, forty,
seventy-fivewho the hellpardon me, Hollecares? I sipped some wine.
Parry's relaxed manner of getting to the point began to annoy me.

"You wanted to talk to me
about business."

"In a way, yes."

"What way?"

"Mr. Collins, enjoy your
food. Good food helps the disposition, sharpens the judgment"

"Hardens the arteries. What
did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Parry?"

"Loyalty."

If the food had been worse, I
would have walked out. The man seemed intent on giving me some sort of
sophomoric lecture on values. If I didn't watch it, he would trot out Kant and
ruin my squab. "OK, shoot."

"Would you say you are loyal
to your new employer?"

"Sure." I ate some
potatoes and sipped some wine. Good wine. Dry. Nice. "They paid for me.
They got me."

"If there were other
opportunities to profit by your employment, would you accept them?"

"If this is some kind of
bribe attempt"

Parry made a show of denial, shaking
his head vigorously from side to side and scowling. "No, no, Mr. Collins.
Bribery is not my style."

"What's your style?"

"Aid. Let me ask you a
hypothetical question. If you were in a position to gain certain technical
information, information that would put your project months ahead of schedule,
and, I might even say, add to its capabilities, would you accept it?"

"Depends."

"Exactly. It depends. Suppose
further that the source of this information would have to be kept strictly
secret, that you would therefore be given credit for originating the technical
innovations it contained."

"Still depends. It could be
bad information."

"It is good. I assure you.
Nortonbut perhaps I've said too much. In any case, would you, under those
hypothetical conditions, accept the information?"

"What do I have to do for
it?"

"Nothing." He beamed. "That
is the beauty of it."

"Nothing?"

"Simply supply, in exchange,
status information on your project." He held up his hand, warding off any
potential protest. A tastelessly, large diamond glittered on his little finger.
"Nothing technical, Mr. Collins. Just the state of construction."

"Why don't you just charter a
spacecraft and go look?"

"Mr. Collins, you know as
well as I do that hardware, floating in space, gives little evidence of the
state of construction. The erected shell of a building says only that tenants
will move in soon, not when."

"Why do you want it?"

"Good question. Businessmen
must keep apprised of the business opportunities available, the market.
Accurate information is as valuable to assessing a market as intelligence is to
a nation."

"Hypothetically, what kind of
information would I be given?"

"My employer, Fenton Laser
Products, is prepared to supply engineering data for the controlled-laser
fusion reactor. That was Dr. Norton's choice for a power supply, wasn't
it?"

"Beats me. Why should I care
if you supply the information, or if Westinghouse supplies it or General
Electric?"

"Ah, General Electric,"
said Parry, as if I had just revealed the name of his wife's lover. "They
have a research facility near Livermore where you did some of your PhD work,
don't they. I imagine Dr. Adamson was quite helpful."

"He was."

"Frankly, Mr. Collins, the
progress we have made recently makes your dissertation look like a high-school
term paper."

I quit eating. First he accuses me
of being forty, then he calls me incompetent. His method of influencing people
would not win friends.

"I'll think about it," I
said.

"Good. Good. I hope our
association will be profitable." He held out a silver bowl.
"Nut?"

Smith was still retrospectively
tapping Norton's phone when I got back, his face drawn. He saw me coming and
hooked his thumb at the phone.

"Nothing. I've only learned
one thing all morning."

"What's that?"

"Norton was a grade
"A" son-of-a-bitch to just about everyone. How was lunch?"

"Parry tried to bribe
me."

Smith chuckled. "How
much?"

"Money?" I tried to
sound insulted and incredulous simultaneously. "What do you take me for,
Smith? Mere money. Fame!"

"Ah. And did you
accept?"

I shrugged. "I'm too young
for fame. Twenty-eight, much too young."

"Twenty-eight." He shook
his head. "Too old."

"For what?"

"My granddaughter."

"I'm taken." I told him
what happened at the Vier Jahreszeiten. He listened, chewing on an unlit
cigar. From time to time a computer technician passed, glancing apprehensively
at the cigar. Smith nodded, absorbing it all.

"OK," he said when I
finished. "Let's get out of here."

"Where to?"

"Lunch. I'm starved." He
rose and started across the computer room, gesturing with his cigar for me to
follow. "We'll find someplace we can talk. And where I can
smoke." He waved the cigar around at the room. "These health fanatics
won't let me smoke. Besides, I want to tell you what you're going to do."

"You've got my marching
orders cut already?"

"Yep."

"What am I going to do?"


"Be famous, buddy boy. You're
going to take Parry up on his offer."

 

VI

 

Smith ate like a kid, wolfing down
two hamburgers, demolishing a chocolate malt and rending an order of fries.

He talked between bites.

"Bad habit, I know." He
ate. "Horrible to eat this way." He dunked a fry in catsup,
apparently content to suffer the horror of it. "It's my granddaughter,
Julia. Bad influence." The malt blurped in his hand. "I pick up all
her bad habits."

"She smokes cigars?"

He ignored me, outlining his plan,
eating, sipping. Parry was the only connection between Norton and Spieler
Interstellar. In spite of Spieler's ultimate ownership of Fenton Laser
Products, Parry might only want to sell laser products. It was his
business. Smith wanted to know for sure. He wanted me to string Parry along.

"What do I do? Call Parry up
and say, 'OK, make me famous'?"

Smith examined the innards of his
second hamburgerlettuce, tomato, meatall there. He added catsup and mustard,
squirting each liberally. "He'll contact you."

"He will?"

"Sure." Smith bit into
the hamburger and chewed, tucking the food into a pouch at the side of his
mouth when he talked. "He contacted you before. He'll contact you
again." Smith chewed up the pouched food, then dangled a fry over his
tongue like a square worm, snapping at it. "Give him time. Make it look
natural." He bit the fry.

"Speaking of how something
looks"

"Hm-m-m?" He looked at
me, then at the fry. "Oh, sorry." He ate the fry.

"Julia?"

He nodded. In the same situation,
caught with a dangling fry, I would have blushed. Smith just kept talking.
"When Parry contacts you, give him something real to cut his teeth on,
something you already know. That way we can check his information."

I thought about it. If Smith
cleared everything with Mr. Merryweather, what could I lose? Fenton Laser made
good equipment. If Parry was just a salesman, disguised as an industrial spy, I
might even gain by the contact.

"What about Mr. Merryweather?
Doesn't he have policies against trading with the enemy?"

"Don't worry about Horace."


I spent the rest of the weekend
preparing to leave Tuesday morning. I had several quarrels with Dolores about
leaving. She sulked, raged and pouted, mixing them sufficiently to keep me off
guard. In mid-quarrel Sunday afternoon, the phone hummed. Dolores stomped out
of the bedroom, where I was packing the second of three suitcases, to answer
it. She returned grumbling.

"Who was it?"

"That awful man."

"Pornographic phone
call?"

"No."

"Who was it?"

"That man you work for."


"Duff'?"

"No."

"Smith?"

"No."

"Dolores, can we stop the
guessing game?"

"Merryweather."

"Mr. Merryweather! What did
he want?"

"I don't know. I hung
up."

"You what?"

"Hung up."

Something like rage overcame me. I
stammered about stupidity and irresponsibility and slammed the suitcase shut.
Stuffed, it bounced open. She backed toward the bedroom door.

"Dolores, stay in
here!"

"Bobby, don't get
angry."

"I already am angry!
When people call for me, I want to talk to them! I do not want you"

"Bobby."

"Don't interrupt!"

"Bobby."

"What?"

"The phone's humming."

It was Mr. Merryweather, his tan
face contrasting with the white collar of a tennis shirt. "Sorry to bother
you on Sunday."

"That's quite all right,
sir."

"I just wanted to tell you to
give Smith your entire cooperation."

"I will, sir."

"I have complete faith in his
abilities. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Do you play tennis,
Mr. Collins?" The question took me off guard. He held up a racket.

"A little."

"We'll have to get together.
Doubles perhaps. Miss Gomez seems a formidable opponent."

"She is."

He reached toward the screen to
hang up, paused and looked at me. "Or ping-pong." He hung up.

Monday, I was thumped, probed,
sampled and scrutinized. Dr. Merril, the company physician, taped electrodes to
everything but my toes, peering at the readouts with grave and profound
impassivity. I expected to be wheeled into an operating room immediately.
Emergency case. Born without a liver.

"Doctor," I said,
anxious, trying to twist around on the diagnostic couch and see the readings.

"Lie down."

"But, Doctor"

"If you do not lie down,
young man," said Dr. Merril, slapping his palm with a rubber mallet,
"I shall be forced to use anesthesia."

"Anesthesia," I said,
looking at the hammer.

"Yes."

I lay down, staring at the
ceiling. A brown stain, residue of a leaking roof, spread from one corner.
"Doctor."

"What is it now?" snapped
Dr. Merril, exasperated. I had not said more than a half-dozen words to him.
"There are others waiting to be examined, in case you didn't know."

"People?"

"People. People exactly like
yourself, people with concerns and cares and business to conduct, busy people,
along with a smattering of very busy people. I am told that one of them
will be in charge of our space station project, so you can see what a busy man he
must be. I cannot stand around here all day explaining every little thing
to you. These people must be examined. You did know we have a space
station?"

I told him I had heard a rumor to
that effect but had never seen it with my own eyes.

"Space stations, yes,"
he grunted. "But decent facilities for the medical personnel? No,
definitely not. Look at that ceiling!"

I looked again.

I felt something cold swipe at the
inside of my elbow. Dr. Merril and I inspected the area together.

"Ah, there it is."

I swallowed hard.
"What?"

"A vein. Do I have to explain
everything?"

"Sorry." I lay back.

Something stabbed me. I looked at
Dr. Merril. He held a large syringe of my blood.

"Aren't those," I asked,
nodding at the syringe, "a little old-fashioned?"

He glared at me. "Are you a
doctor?"

"Not a medical doctor."

He paused. "But you are a
doctor?"

"Yes."

"What kind?"

I told him. He snorted, returning
his attention to the syringe.

"The body," he said,
"contrary to the rather crude analogies of the popular media, is not a
machine. It is an organism. The tried and true methods are most effective.
Syringes are tried and true. Medicine is an art, nothing more, nothing less.
These new machines"he said the word with contempt"can never replace
the artist."

The Monet of medicine left with my
blood sample. I wondered if he still treated ulcers with mercury. I lay there,
thinking about my new job.

In spite of my initial indecision,
I liked the challenge. I still had enough adolescent enthusiasm to enjoy the
idea of space stations and matter transmitters. True, they were only machines,
not Dr. Merril's organisms. Dr. Merril might find the artist in him inhibited
by machines, but the artist in me, held at bay by the more disciplined engineer
in me, wanted nothing more than to get his hands on those machines. If I was
ever going to contribute anything more than the valves and swivels I had been
designing at Standard Engineering, I would do it now. I remembered Mr.
Merryweather, examining the model of Jenson's Gate. At sixty, his expression
could have been described as adolescent enthusiasm.

Dr. Merril returned, glancing over
a computer printout. At least he let some machines help him. I had imagined him
running my blood tests with a large magnifying glass.

"Low blood sugar," he
said.

"Is it serious?"

"Have you eaten yet
today?"

"No."

"Hm-m-m," he said,
giving the sound an amorphous sort of hopeless flavor.

"What does it mean?"

"It means," he said,
scowling at me, "you haven't eaten today."

"That's all?"

"For now," he answered,
coughing twice.

"But later, something might
get me later."

"Young man, something gets everyone
later. See the nurse on your way out. She'll give you my report to return
to personnel."

He coughed again. I thanked him
and left. I imagined Smith, listening to that cough. Unhealthy
doctorthere's something to it.

The rest of the day, I filled out
forms, collected essentials for the trip and examined the library catalog,
punching up items that applied to Jenson Gate physics or engineering. It
required little augmentation. Somewhere in the process, my enthusiasm waned.
Doubts surfaced. Just mastering the essentials of Norton's job was an imposing
task. Going beyond the essentials to Norton's brand of engineering would take
two or three engineers.

I talked briefly with Wilkins, the
space station commander, by phone. His jaw actually was square, or close
enough to pass for it. Age had muted its sharp line. His responsibilities
included the station, its life-support system and personnel. Mine included the
Gate, construction personnel and development. I also talked to the company
geologist, the company astronomer and assorted company engineers and
technicians. The engineers were the- hardest to handle. With anyone else, I
could postpone the always urgent consideration their problems deserved. The
engineers insisted on being first in line. Testing me? Who knows? I
demonstrated sound judgment. I begged off until I knew more.

 



 

After each call, I mentally
retallied the amount of midnight oil. I would need. The quantity was vast.
Norton kept everything in his head, leaving nothing to fill mine. Until I got
my feet on the groundor off the around, as Dolores correctly pointed outI
would be working in a vacuum in more ways than one.

Tuesday morning, I said goodbye to
Dolores. She cried, hugging me.

"Bobby, don't go."

"Don't go! What am I supposed
to do? Call them up and quit? Wouldn't that look nice."

"I just don't want you to
leave."

I broke free and picked up my
suitcases, starting for the door. Dolores blocked my exit, arms stretched
across the doorway.

"Dolores, please."

"Promise you'll think of
me."

"I'll think of you."

"Promise you won't play
around with_any of those flivvers, up there."

"I promise. Now can I
go, or do you want it in blood?"

"Kiss me first."

I tried, Dolores and I and the
suitcases struggling.

I arrived at the Merryweather
Building early, staggering up the entrance steps with my suitcases. Two
suitcases are awkwardput down, open door, pick up, walk through, put down,
close doorthree are a juggling act. Duff, exiting the elevator, saw me coming.
His scowl disappeared, replaced by something that was either a smile or a
sneer.

"Going somewhere?"

I lowered the left-hand suitcase
to the carpet and rested the hugged suitcase on top. My left arm felt several
inches longer than my right. Slowly, I regained use of it. I glanced at the
ceiling. "Up there."

"He's not in."

"I meant to the Merryweather
Enterprize. Someone was supposed to drive me to the Gate."

He looked at my bags.
"Ballast?"

"Very funny. I would like
to change underwear once in a while."

The receptionist, listening,
looked up at me. Duff looked from suitcase to suitcase.

"Did you have three suitcases
full of underwear at your last job, Mr. Collins?"

Clearly enjoying himself, he
continued in this vein, speculating what sort of psychological fetish could
account for a man wanting to change underwear so often. Unless Duff wore his
clothes for three months straight, his preoccupation seemed misplaced. I began
to suspect Duff knew some critical fact, one he liked keeping from me.

"I was under the
impression," I interrupted, "correct me if I'm wrongthat the
Earthside rotation is about three months."

"We don't recommend longer
than three months," answered Duff, sharing his joke with the blond.

"It seems to meand again I
may be wrongthat one changes one's underwear at least once in three
months."

"I should hope so,"
clucked Duff, coat pushed back, hands in his pockets, nodding vigorous
agreement.

"Then what's so damned funny
about three suitcases?"

"You don't plan to go home
tonight like everyone else?"

"Home? I"

With Norton's solution of the
matter transmitter phase-shift, Duff explainedglowing with satisfaction at
catching the child-engineer in what he evidently considered an Earth-shaking
piece of technical ignorancethe solid electrical ground of the Jenson Gate was
no longer necessary. Merryweather Enterprises used the standard first leg of
any space journey, Earth to Moon by Jenson Gate, then a series of one hundred
relay stations, orbiting the Sun at two-hundred-thousand-mile intervals, took
over. I had been so intent on understanding the present problems of the Big
Gatemost of them power supply problemsthat I ignored anything considered
solved: Phase-shift was solved. In one ear and out the other. The possibility
of applying former solutions to different problems eluded me.

"Relay stations," I
said, chagrined.

"Norton's idea."

"How long does it take?"


"About two minutes."

I will simply record that I felt
foolish. I blushed. I looked at the blond. She, at least, had sympathy for me.
Duff, busy enjoying himself, had none.

"Don't worry about it, Mr.
Collins. They've only been in operation six months. Prior to that, we did have
a three-month rotation policy."

"Thanks."

I left the suitcases with the
receptionist. Duff drove me to the company Gate in Corona del Mar. I saw the
focusing ring first, the great-grandson of the ring I had seen in Mr.
Merryweather's office. Unlike commercial Gates, architecturally camouflaged,
the company Gate showed bare bones, its eighty-foot tantalum focusing ring
resting back on a framework of struts and supports, pointing skyward. It
reminded me of a grossly constructed radio telescope. I say "pointing
skyward" only because I knew it was. It could have as easily been focused
at the core of the Earth. Physically "aiming" a Jenson Gate, though
once thought essential, is superfluous. Electronically aiming it, the way
"holes" are aimed in a transistor, is more accurate. Anything less
would be like trying to hit an orbiting satellite with a slingshot. Chancy.

A blockhouse at the base of the
focusing ring housed the integration equipment. A red Ferrari was parked by the
door.

"Smith's here," said
buff. Any residual good humor he had from making the kid-engineer look foolish
disappeared. "I'll drop you outside."

"Fine." I watched the
Gatekeeper suit Smith up. He checked wrist couplings and attached the air-conditioning
hose. It trailed from a metal cart. The air-conditioning only worked with the
helmet in place. Smith, his head micro-cephalic within the helmet coupling
ring, watched intently, manipulating a dead cigar from one side of his mouth to
the other.

"Is all this hardware
necessary?" asked Smith.

The Gatekeeper, a chunky man with
the reassuring air of a doctor asked whether something would hurt, glanced up,
hunkering next to Smith's leg and checking his outsized boots. "Is
insurance necessary?"

"Not particularly."

A bad analogy. To an actuarial
table, Smith didn't exist.

"But nice to have."

"Yes."

"So's the suit."

I wondered about the odds on a
faulty transmission. It happens occasionally, even on commercial jumps. Halfway
between Los Angeles and New York, someone materializes in Des Moines. Defective
transoceanic transmissions must be worse. Expecting the Arc de Triomphe and
getting the Sargasso Sea could be annoying, especially with only a suitcase for
a raft.

Smith cradled the helmet in the crook
of his arm, lumbering around the suit room. "I feel like a zombi in this
thing."

He looked more like a cross
between the abominable snowman and the hunchback of Notre Dame. The white suit,
arms and legs puffed, life-support backpack rising past his shoulders to ear
level, gave him an imposing physique. Why Merryweather Enterprises kept
old-style spacesuits was beyond me. Presumably new ones, light and efficient,
would add nothing to the safety margin but expense. I could see Duff's hand in
that decision.

While I was being suited up, Smith
got a call. He lumbered into the adjoining room to take it, the metal
air-conditioning cart following him. When he returned, I was almost ready,
suited and sweating. The Gatekeeper connected me to the cart. Air began to
circulate around my limbs. Smith's expression, pensively munching his cigar,
attracted my attention.

"What's eating you?"

"Hm-m-m?" He stared at
the floor, thinking.

"What's bothering you?"

"Norton," answered
Smith, brow wrinkled.

"He bothers me, too."

"I can't figure it."

"He's turned up?"

"In a manner of
speaking."

According to Duff, who relayed the
information to Smith, pieces of Norton had been turning up for several hours,
an arm here, a leg there.

Once the police got the idea, they
put out an all points bulletin for stray limbs and organs. Someone had fed
Norton's body through a spray-focused Jenson Gate, someone who knew very little
about matter transmitters.

The idea had probably been to
dematerialize Norton. Commercial Gates, stabilized by fail-safe feedback
systems, seldom slip out of focus. Only manual override allows it. Even manual
override never completely defocuses the field. Instead of spraying Norton over
Los Angeles, a stream of subnuclear particles, it sprayed him in chunks and
pieces.

"Norton gets around," I
said. "Yep. But"

"But what?"

"We still haven't answered
the big one."

"What big one?"

"Why? Alive, old Norton may
have been the smartest engineer since Berzelius, but"

"Berzelius was a
chemist."

He ignored me, continuing.
"Dead he's just a hunk of meat like anybody else." Smith mused,
twirling the cigar in his puckered mouth. "Live genius." He looked at
me. "Dead idiot?"

"What are you getting
at?"

"All dead men are idiots,
aren't they?"

"I suppose so."

"There's something to it,
buddy boy."

"What?"

He grinned. "Who knows? With
a joker like Norton, who knows? But we're making progress."

"We are?"

The Gatekeeper led us to an
elevator, the conditioning cart trailing. On the way up to the transfer
surface, we received his memorized spiel.

"Both of you have used
commercial Gates?"

We nodded.

"The only difference here is
the suits. If there's a malfunction, don't panic. Press the red plate on your
chest. It activates a homing beacon. You will be rescued within thirty-six
hours. Do you understand?"

"The red plate." I
looked at it. Square, red, not much to it.

The longer I thought about it, the
more apprehensive I got. A three-thousand-mile jump to New York is one thing. A
twenty-million-mile jump to an orbiting space station is something else. New
York, at least, stands still, relatively speaking. The Gatekeeper mentioned
only transmission interruption. He never said anything about spray-focus. I
wondered about the maintenance requirements on privately-owned Gates. The
thought of Norton, most of his organs still loose in Los Angeles, impinged. No
red plates to be pushed after dematerialization. No red plates.

The elevator stopped, opening. A
foot in front of us, the air shimmered. Through the wavering air, I could see
the rooftops of Corona del Mar. The Gate framework was out of view. I felt as
though I was about to walk the plank. Commercial Gates usually have a garden on
the other side of the transmission surface. "Walk toward the
fountain," the girl says. The fountain you reach is a duplicate at your
destination. Most people find the illusion comforting. The Merryweather Gate,
designed for corporate use only, lacked frills. No fountains, just air.
Acrophobia set in.

"What if it shuts off?"
I asked, trying to see over the edge.

"It never has," answered
the Gatekeeper.

The Merryweather Enterprize, I
tried to assure myself, in spite of orbiting the Sun near Mars, was closer than
the ground. The station was only three steps away. I still felt dizzy.

"Helmets."

I hoisted my helmet into place.
The Gatekeeper locked it onto the suit. When I was ready, he stepped around in
front and signaled for me to go first.

"Smith?" I said into the
helmet mike. My voice echoed around me. "What is it, buddy boy?"

"Do you have your cigar in
there?"

Above the elevator door, the green
"Go" light blinked. The Gatekeeper thumped my helmet, nudging me
toward the end of the platform. I took a deep breath and walked toward Corona
del Mar.

 

 



 

Part 2

 

VII

 

"Yep," answered Smith,
stepping through behind me.

What did I expect? Sudden weightlessness?
Perhaps. I lumbered forward in Corona del Mar and finished lumbering near the
orbit of Mars. I remember reading about Neil Armstrong. One small step. What
did he know about it?

"Yep what?" I asked.

"Yep, I got my cee-gar in
here." The shimmering air behind me disappeared. In front of me, Captain
Wilkinsevery inch the captain; there was no mistaking himsilently mouthed a
conversation with the station Gatekeeper. The technician nodded and walked
toward me, reaching for my helmet. Captain Wilkins touched an intercom plate.
The suitphone popped.

"As soon as we get you out of
that suit, I'll give you the grand tour, Mr. Collins."

"We" meant the
Gatekeeper. Captain Wilkins, probably from seeing too many movies about
spacecraft commanders, watched, hands behind his back, legs firmly planted on
the deck, his expression, between his distinguished gray sideburns, resolute.
With the station in permanent orbit, Captain Wilkins had little to do but look
resolute.

Out of the suits, we followed
Captain Wilkins. He led us from room to room, doggedly explaining everything in
sight, intercoms, plumbing, station policy on food in the rooms. The station, a
standard wheel construction a half-mile across, seemed endless. Even the
slightly reduced "gravity," caused by the rotation of the wheel,
added little to the speed of the tour.

After the first few rooms,
identical to offices and workshops on Earth, I began to fade out. I was still
interested, but you can only absorb so much information at once. Try seeing all
the Louvre in one day. I followed the drone of Captain Wilkins' monotonous
voice rather than the content. How many times had he given this tour to
visiting VIP's? Too many. The spontaneity had long since died from his lecture.


Smith nudged me.

"Wake up, buddy boy. You're
gonna walk into a wall."

"Bulkhead." I remembered
that much. The walls were bulkheads.

"Looks like a wall to
me."

I grunted something exculpatory. I
felt sure we had circled the station twice. Captain Wilkins must have noticed
my glazed expression. I noticed his disapproval, both of my inattention and of
me, personally. I was half his age. Obviously a man half his age was incapable
of commanding a boy with an erector set, much less the Big Gate construction.

"Mr. Collins," said
Captain Wilkins, halting the tour, "if you find this too much of a burden,
we can postpone"

"Let's get the damn thing
over with, Willis."

"Wilkins."

"Sorry."

Watching us, Smith grinned. He had
detected the hostility between Captain Wilkins and me. The tour proceeded.

Only in the control room did I
feel something of what I expected, awe and excitement. I revived quickly. Three
walls of equipment, computer displays, oscilloscopes, assorted screens and
winking readouts, gave way to a fourth wall, transparent and stunning. I walked
toward it, mounting the low observation platform. I stopped when the equipment
disappeared from my peripheral vision. Stars, constant pinpricks of light on a
black field, stared at me. I felt none of the acrophobia I had in Corona del
Mar. Looking at a forty-foot drop can make you queasy. Looking at millions of
miles of "drop" is meaningless.

On a clear winter night you might
feel what I felt, a sense of perspective, a sense of direct confrontation with
man's insignificance.

"Sure is a hell of a lot of
it," said Smith, next to me.

"What?"

"Space."

I nodded. A hell of a lot of it
and more.

To our left, the Big Gate focusing
ring came into view, a nearly completed "O" of solid tantalum. It
floated, catching the sunlight from behind us, its apparent diameter no more
than a quarter of an inch. From time to time, light reflected from specks near
the incomplete section of the "O." I pointed at the ring.

"That's it."

Smith looked, squinting.
"What's that dust where the ends meet?"

"Dust?"

"Those shiny specks." He
pointed. "There's one."

Light flared and faded from a
speck. I turned to Captain Wilkins. "Captain, is there someplace we can
get a closer look at the ring?"

"Your office."

My office, located near the
station's own Gate, looked as bare as the one I left at Standard Engineering.
Captain Wilkins touched a plate next to my built-in desk. One wall of the
office came alive with screens. I watched, fascinated. Each screen showed a
different angle or distance from the ring. I pointed at a close-up screen. A
two-man constructor, its hydraulic arms extended, maneuvered for position,
preparing to weld a coupling to the incomplete stub of the Gate.

"See that?"

"Yep."

"That's your speck of
dust."

Smith's forehead wrinkled,
struggling with the jump in scale. I could appreciate his difficulty.
Intellectually I knew the size of the Big Gate, but seeing it was
disconcerting. For a fifteen-kilometer projection surface, the ring had to be a
hundred and eighty kilometers in diameter. The tantalum alone, cast section by
section in space, cost over a billion dollars.

Smith looked from screen to
screen, absorbing the sight. "What's old Horace going to do with that
hole?"

Captain Wilkins coughed on the
word Horace.

"Hole's a good
description," I said. "Mine shaft's a better one."

"Mr. Collins,"
interrupted Captain Wilkins, pronouncing my name with the long-suffering
weariness of a man being patient with a child. "Is Mr. Smith cleared
for"

I decided it was time to establish
my relationship with Captain Wilkins. If his disapproval gelled into a
permanent attitude, condescending and barely tolerant, I would have trouble. He
had two choices. We were equals or he got off the merry-go-round.

"Captain, Mr. Smith is
cleared for anything. Do you understand?" He sensed something in my
tone and looked startled. "You can check it with HorI mean, Mr.
Merryweather. If Smith says to junk this station, you ask when."

"Junk my"

"If he says spit to-windward,
you spit!"

"There isn't any windward on
a"

"There's a solar wind, isn't
there?"

"Yes, but"

"No buts. If Smith
says spit, spit! Got it?"

"Yes, but"

"I'll talk to you later,
Captain Wilkins."

Bewildered, Captain Wilkins left,
muttering something about Norton and reincarnation. Smith grinned at me.

"What's your problem?" I
snapped.

"No problem."

"Then get that silly grin off
your face."

"Aye, aye, sir." He kept
grinning.

"Just what is so
damned funny, Smith?"

"You."

"What about me?"

"You may fill old Norton's
shoes yet. He was a real son-of-a-bitch."

 

The rest of the day, I
familiarized myself with the state of construction. Smith wandered off on
errands of his own. Rodriguez, the ring construction boss, proved competent and
efficient, though irritated at being called away from the job to report. Ring
construction would be complete in two weeks.

Burgess, the electronics engineer
in charge of the transmitter itself, was less efficient. I read through his
daily work reports, hoping to find some sign of progress. Since Norton's death,
Burgess had marked time. I found his number in the company directory and
punched it up. A man about forty years old appeared on the screen, staring
blankly at me, his wide face, bulbous nose and weak chin close to the camera.

"Mr. Burgess, please."
"Speaking."

"I'm Collins. I've just been
going over your reports. What seems to be the problem?"

"Which problem, Dr.
Collins?"

"The transmitter. Your
reports don't show any progress for the past three weeks."

"Sir, we're doing the best we
can." He paused, uncertain whether to add anything. "Under the
circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"May I see you in your
office, Dr. Collins?"

"Sure. Ten minutes, OK?"


"I'll be there."

Waiting for him, I digested his
reports. The integration equipment, completed before Norton's accident, floated
in space a mile from the focusing ring. The transmitter's modulator, its most
critical and expensive section, lay in pieces separated by twenty million
miles, kleistronisters and reconstitution modules spread from Burgess' assembly
rooms on the station to the Merryweather plant in Osaka, Japan. The
stabilization computer, incorporating Norton's phase-shift program, was on
order from Master Toole in San Francisco. The order, actually a purchase
option, had four days to run. At the end of the four days, Master Toole could
pocket the half-million-dollar option price without doing a lick of work.
Nicefor them. If we finalized the purchase by picking up the option, an
operative computer had to be on board the Merryweather Enterprize within
thirty days.

Burgess came into the office,
glancing around apprehensively. Tufts of graying hair, disarrayed, sprouted above
his ears and collar, accenting his bald head. On the screen, he had appeared
heavy. In person, only his face seemed large, supported by a thin body.

"Sit down, Mr. Burgess."


He sat down, assured himself we
were alone, then leaned across the desk, eyes glancing from side to side. His
air of conspiracy made me smile.

"Dr. Collins."

"Yes."

"Something has to be
done."

"About what?"

"Dr. Norton never
would have allowed it."

"What?"

"Shhh. He's got spies everywhere."


"Who?"

"Shhh."

I whispered. "Who?"

"Duff."

Duff? I laughed. The idea of Duff
with a network of spies, coldly masterminding some nefarious plot, had a
genuine comic flavor.

"This is no joke, Dr.
Collins."

I tried to appear sober.
"Exactly what is it that isn't a joke?"

"Duff. He's out to ruin this
project."

"I hardly think"

"You" he began
too loud, then lowered his voice, glancing over his shoulder. I made a mental
note to check Burgess' psychological profile in personnel. "You have no
idea the lengths that man will go to. Dr. Norton knew. Oh, he knew, Dr.
Collins. We fought Duff tooth and nail, hand and claw"

"Hoof and mouth?"

Startled, his eyes narrowed,
examining my face. Who was I with? Him? Duff? "Joke if you like, Dr.
Collins. Duff is out to get us, you and me. He does not want this Gate
finished. He wants a drone fleet instead." He lowered his voice even
further. "I can only speculate about his reasons."

"Speculate for me."

"I'd rather not."

"Please do."

"It is said"

"Could you speak up, Mr.
Burgess? I'm having trouble hearing you."

"It is said," repeated
Burgess, only slightly more audibly, "that Duff has invested heavily
in"he broke off, unable to bring the words to his lips"them."


"Spieler Interstellar."

His index finger flew to his lips.
"Shhh!"

"Them," I whispered.

"Yes. When we go under, it if
said that Duff will be in charge of picking our bones."

"It all sounds very
sinister."

"It is, Dr. Collins.
Sinister and more. It is treachery of the meaner kind. And treason of the most
despicable type!" He pronounced "despicable" with a
"z." "And . . . and"his voice faltered, returning to the
whisper"and more."

"More?"

"Much more."

"Do you have any evidence
of"

Burgess' arms spread, indicating
the space station with an all-encompassing gesture. "It's all
around us!"

"Everywhere?"

"Everywhere!"

"For example."

He noticed the reports on my desk.
He leaned forward and stabbed at them with his scrawny index finger.
"There! There is an example!"

"Your reports?"

"No. The computer option! We
cannot go one inch further without that computer, yet he refuses to pick
up the option!"

Suddenly, I took Burgess
seriously. Duff did want a drone fleet instead of the Gate. Almost the first
words I heard from him expressed disapproval of Norton's Gate. He considered
the Gate an economic folly. Still, a simple failure to pick up a computer
option was inconclusive, no matter how it hindered the project. It could have
been an oversight.

"When was the last time you
talked to Duff about it?"

Burgess looked incredulous.
"Talk to him? If the man were in this room, I would not talk to him."


"How do you know he stopped
the option?"

He looked exasperated. "The
day after Norton's death, a directive over his signature arrived. All
options still open on the Gate project would remain open until further notice.
We have to do something, Dr. Collins. Renegotiating with Master Toole
will take six months or more. The financial impact will be fatal!"
His eyes gleamed.

 

I looked up Duff's number and
punched it into the phone. His secretary, a hawk-faced woman, answered.
"Mr. Duff's office."

"May I speak to Mr.
Duff."

"Who's calling, please?"


"Dr. Collins." The
"doctor" impresses secretaries. She remained unimpressed, eyeing me
suspiciously.

"Impossible."

"Pardon me?"

"Dr. Collins is a much older
man. I don't know what sort of joke this is, but"

"Tell him," I said,
realizing she was about to hang up. The grapevine had evidently aged me
substantially before she got the word. "Tell him it's about Sharon
Norton."

She looked at me, doubtful.
"Very well, sir. Hold, please." The screen went blank.

Burgess looked at me. "Sharon
Norton?"

"First, we have to get his
attention."

Almost immediately, Duff,
apprehensive, came on the screen. When he saw me, his expression relaxed.
"Ah, it's you."

"Yes, it's me. And would you please
tell that old crow you call a secretary who I am?"

"Sorry. What can I do for
you?"

I explained about the option,
emphasizing the remaining four days. Duff listened, nodding at the camera. Yes,
yes, he had heard it all before.

"Mr. Collins," began
Duff, "one does not simply go out and purchase a
fifty-million-dollar computer without careful planning and thought. I"

"I've thought about it,"
I said. "I want it."

"Be reasonable, Mr. Collins.
These things take time and"

"Now."

Duff's expression hardened.
"Norton used to talk to me in that tone of voice."

"Is that a threat?"

"No."

It was a threat. He knew it. I
knew it. It angered me.

"I don't give a damn
how Norton used to talk to you. If he did, I can see why. Obstruction like
this"

"I would hardly call it
obstruction."

"What would you call
it?" I could feel my cheeks reddening.

"Prudence. Have you read the
computer contract?"

"No."

"It calls for transfer of the
entire fifty million on the date the option is exercised. Why give them our
money, which can be used in other areas, until absolutely necessary? Four days'
interest on that money alone approaches thirty thousand dollars. This is
strictly a business matter, Mr. Collins. You will have to leave it to" I
hung up.

"You see, Dr.
Collins," said Burgess. "From his own mouth."

I found Mr. Merryweather's
secretary in the directory and called. She put me through to Mr. Merryweather.

"Mr. Collins. I was meaning
to call you today. Are you getting settled in?"

"Unsettled is more like
it." I explained about the computer, the option, and Duff, omitting only
Burgess' suggestion of ulterior motives. Mr. Merryweather listened quietly,
nodded, his face impassive. When I finished, he spoke immediately.

"When do you want it?"

"As soon as possible. It
should have been here already."

"I'll have Phillip exercise
the option today. How's Scarlyn doing?"

"Who?"

"Mr. Smith."

"Fine, I suppose. I haven't
seen him since this morning. He's around here someplace."

Mr. Merryweather laughed.
"You're sure about that."

"Reasonably. Why?"

"Scarlyn gets around. If
there's nothing else"

"Thank you, sir." He
hung up. Burgess left the office beaming, sure of an ally in his hoof-and-mouth
struggle with Duff.

 

I looked for Smith on the way
home. The Gatekeeper told me he went through around noon, Los Angeles time. I
suited up and stepped through, too tired to worry about Smith or even be
anxious about the transmission. I was drained. Most of the day, I felt
inefficient. New jobs are always the same. More wheel spinning than traction. I
had a document viewer in my coat pocket and the depressing prospect of an
evening staring at it ahead of me.

I picked up my suitcases at the
Merryweather Building and juggled them home on the monorail, imagining the
effect my unexpected appearance would have on Dolores. I envisioned her alone
at the kitchen table, crying into a plate of cold beans, unable to eat, in
despair at my absence. I would walk inta-ta, it is I! She would bounce with
joy.

When I got there, she was neither
crying nor bouncing. The kitchen table was set for two, candle flames
flickering romantically over a small roastsurrounded on its platter by glazed
carrots and sprigs of parsley. I dropped the suitcases on the floor. They
clattered and toppled.

"What," I
inquired, using my most tactful shout, "the hell is this?"

"Bobby"

"One day I'm
gone"I held up one finger, shaking it"one lousy day and you're
having cozy little candlelight dinners!"

"Bobby"

" 'Oh, Bobby, don't
leave,'" I mimicked. "And two seconds after old Bobby's gone, you're
out hustling a tryst!"

"What does that mean?"

"You and the night and the
pot roast, that's what it means! Just the two of you with nasty old Bobby out
there in space!"

"Bobby, it's not what"

"It isn't, huh? Then what is
it?" She started to tell me. I interrupted. "I'll tell you what it
is! A little action on the side!"

"Please, Bobby, let me"


"We may not be married, but I
do have a few rights, you know!"

Her expression changed. Instead of
a plaintive desire to explain, it showed indignation. "Oh?"

"Yes! You eat my
food"I jabbed at my chest with my thumb"and live in my
house,

"So I'm yours, huh? Fee
simple absolute!"

"What does that mean?"

She flapped her hand at the food
on the table. The puff of air extinguished a candle. "You know where you can
put your food and your house! I'm taking my suitcase and getting
out!"

She hoisted one of the suitcases
and carried it into the bedroom with both hands, listing under its weight. I
heard the snaps click and my things crash to the floor.

Getting out? My Dolores? Hasty.
Yes. Perhaps I had been a little hasty. I followed her into the bedroom,
stepping over a pile of my shirts. Pungent scent rose from a broken bottle of
after-depilatory.

"Dolores."

"What?" she
growled, dumping a drawer full of underwear into the suitcase. She discarded
the empty drawer, throwing it against the dresser. It banged and clattered.
Dolores, though small, gets violent. One of these days I'll probably wake up
with an enchilada through my heart. I tried to sound humble.

"Maybe I was a little
hasty," I said. "You had some kind of explanation."

"Who wants to explain
anything to you, you hypocrite!"

"Hypocrite?"

She glared at me. "All the
time, I thought this was a joint venture, our house, our food, our
life! All the time, I thought you agreed! `Dolores, don't we have a good life
together?' But inside"she tapped her temple violently; her head recoiled
from the blowyou were thinking, Mine! Mine! Mine! You
hypocrite!"

"Dolores."

"Don't talk to me."

"Please, Dolores, who was the
extra plate for?"

"You," she muttered.

"Who?"

"You, you
hypocrite."

"Me? How did you know"

"That old man came around
this afternoon."

"Smith?"

"Yes!"

"What did he want?"

"Don't talk to me." She
slammed the suitcase shut and snapped one hasp.

I backed into the hall. I heard
her coming, bare feet thumping on the floor. Evidently, she planned to leave
without her shoes. I blocked her way at the front door, spread-eagled. She
stopped, looked at me, forehead severely wrinkled, and hefted the suitcase,
securing her grip. I had the distinct impression she intended to butt me in the
stomach. She raised her head and looked at me again. I continued my crucified
martyr posture. Finally, she got the point. She remembered blocking my way that
morning, using the same pose. Her determination broke. She tried to suppress a
smile and failed, giggling.

"Did I look like that?"

"Yes."

She giggled again. I walked to her
and put my arms around her. The suitcase banged my shins.

"Bobby."

"What?"

"I don't like fighting with
you."

"I don't either."

She put the suitcase down and
towed me into the bedroom. She pulled me down on the bed.

"Bobby."

"What?"

"You're not really a
hypocrite, are you?"

"No, dear."

The doorbell chimed.

"Go 'way," I said,
warming to my task.

It chimed again. Reluctantly, I
got up. I straightened my suit and went to the door, opening it.

"Hiya, buddy boy. What's for
dinner?"

 

We fed Smith, watching him devour
half the roast. He talked incessantly, stabbing carrots and dissecting beef,
complimenting Dolores on the food, me on Dolores and himself on his appetite.

"Pretty good," he said,
sitting back from his empty plate, "for an old man. I can still put it
away with the best of them."

"Do you always eat like
that?"

"Only when I'm working."


"When you're not working, you
eat like a sparrow."

"Actually, it just tastes
better when I'm working."

Dolores placed a scooner of
butterscotch ice cream in front of him.

"Gracias."

"De nada."

"Why did you come by this
afternoon?" I asked.

He puckered around the cold ice
cream. "No stone unturned and all that."

I started to protest. The idea of
Smith investigating me was incredible. Robert Collins, shifty-eyed
superspy. I have enough trouble just being a shifty-eyed engineer. Smith waved
his spoon at me, stifling my protest until he could swallow his ice cream.

"You're clean."

"I am?"

"Yes."

"Glad to hear it."

Smith concentrated on his ice
cream. Stuffed, I ate mine slowly, thinking about him. The more I thought, the
less I understood. Seventy-five, retired, reluctant to accept this job, then
suddenly eager. Mr. Merryweather thought him indispensable. Duff thought him a
menace. What did I think? I didn't know.

I asked him why he took the job.

"I told you. It's better than
feeding pigeons."

"You don't like
pigeons?"

"Nope. Lazy birds." He
finished his ice cream and pulled out a cigar. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Go ahead. You weren't going
to take the job when 'Duff and I talked to you."

"Changed my mind." He
found a match, struck it, lit the cigar and puffed.

"Why?"

"Bobby," said Dolores,
sitting down and turning on the coffee pot, "it's really none of, your
business."

"If he can go around
sticking his nose in my business, I can ask a few questions, can't
I?"

"He," answered
Dolores, "gets paid to stick his nose in your business."

"She's got you there, buddy
boy."

I grunted. "Have you been
sticking your nose in Duff's business?"

"He's clean, too."

"You're sure."

"Other than a little fooling
around with Sharon Norton, yes."

I told him about Burgess'
accusation.

"That paranoid!"

"He's only paranoid if no
one's actually after him."

"True. But Duff's still clean.
The only stock Duff owns, other than Merryweather stock, is two shares of Pan
Am he got from an auntworth, broadly speaking, a penny and a half. They say
Pan Am's going up, though. Souvenir value. Duffs persnicketythat may look
subversive to a mind like Burgess'but he's loyal to Horace."

"Duff once said something
about you almost 'getting' him. He showed me a scar you gave him on his
eyebrow. What was that all about?"

"Duff is a very cautious man.
He got the scar because I told him to move and he asked why. Prudent men ask
why. Sometimes fools ask why. If I'd been slower, we wouldn't be worrying about
old Duff at all." He pulled up his left shirtsleeve. A half-inch scar
creased the top of his forearm. "See this?"

"Yes."

"The bullet would have been in
Duff's head." Smith grinned. I imagined Smith's arm outstretched, knocking
Duff aside, the bullet cutting through Smith's arm.

"He didn't seem too
grateful."

"He thought I liked doing
it."

"Did you?"

"Enough of this nostalgia, my
boy. Let's adjourn to the living room."

We adjourned. Smith sat in my
easy-chair. I sat on the couch. Dolores brought coffee and sat next to me.
Momentarily, watching Smith smoke, his long legs crossed on the ottoman, I felt
I was visiting him.

"Can I ask you something,
Scarlyn?"

"Sure." He puffed. A
cloud of smoke accumulated above his head.

"We're glad to have you, but
why did you"

"Invite myself to
dinner?"

"Yes."

"One, I wanted to see if you
dug up anything today."

"You could have done that bye
phone."

"True. But I'm persona non
grata"he nodded his head in the general direction of Seal Beach,
pointing over his shoulder with the butt of his cigar"over there."

"At your daughter's."

He grunted, his voice momentarily
serious. "Yes. My daughter's."

"What happened?"

His smile returned, his expression
that of an old imp. "You send children to their room when they're bad,
don't you?"

"Yes, I guess you do."

"What if they won't go?"


"You make them go."

"What if you can't?"

"I don't know. What?"

"You get mad at them,
right?" I nodded.

"Persona non grata."


"I can't imagine anyone
treating you like a child."

"You don't know Harold and my
so-called daughter." He thought a moment, looking at me. "I like you,
buddy boy."

"Thanks."

"It's true. Even if you do
browbeat your girl friend."

"Browbeat!"

"I could hear you all the way
from the curb."

Dolores blushed. I glanced out the
window. Smith's red Ferrari stood at the curb.

"Do you want to know why I
took this job? I'll have to give you a little background first."

I nodded.

"When you and Duff came to
see me on the beach, I was retired. I've been retired for ten years. I could
have retired at forty. I had the money." He looked at me, unsure if I
thought he was bragging. I knew he was just stating facts. "I had the
money, but what do you do then?"

"Feed pigeons?"

"Right. Looks a little silly,
doesn't it? Shuffleboard and cribbage at forty. So I kept at it."

"At what?"

"This kind of thing I'm doing
now. Special jobs. One of my first jobs was for Horace's father. Back in 1970.
Someone was systematically looting the Conquistador Hotel in Acapulco. Homer
Merryweather hired me. I got a free trip to Acapulco, expense account, and one
orderfind the guy who was doing it. I found him. He just about found me
first." Smith laughed. "Mean devil, he was. Anyway, I got back to Los
Angeles and I started thinking. Scar, I thought," you've got to do
something with yourself. Times are changing. Things are quieting down. This
Acapulco business went pretty well. Why don't you go into that line of work
permanently? True, it couldn't match the social significance of Berkeley,
but"

"You went to Berkeley."

"Bachelor of Arts, '68,
history. Master's, '70, criminology. I got the job with Horace's father because
of the Master's." He leaned back in the chair, looking at the ceiling
above our heads, remembering. "Berkeley in the Sixties was one hell of a
place to be. We brought down governments and turned the world around. Good
times. I met Molly there."

"Molly?"

"My wife. Good old
girl." He shook his head from side to side. "Fifteen years since I
lost her. It seems like only" He looked at Dolores and me. His face had
lost the hard old man quality. "Never mind. On with my tale. The times
changed. I didn't. The war was over"

"Korea?"

"Vietnam. And I realized I
liked all the action. I hated the war, mind you. At the time, I wanted it over
and things back to 'normal'. I was not doing it because I was having one hell
of a good time, I told myself. Who, after all, likes being on the wrong
end of tear gas and billy-clubs? It was all idealism, not kicks. A lot
of it was idealism. But some of it was kicks. I liked the turmoil. Then
things changed. There wasn't much need for billy-club-scarred veterans of the
peace movement. After Acapulco, I realized I liked the excitement. Wouldn't
you?"'

"I wasn't there."

"True. I was, buddy boy, and
it was the best time in the world."

"Everyone's youth is."

"True again. I had done the
job for Horace's father. Horace was just a kid at the time. I kept at it, that
sort of job. It's been"he hesitated, searching for the right
word"interesting."

"What does this have to do
with"

"Background. I told you we'd
need a little background. I could have quit at forty. I collected what I
thought was my last fee the day before my fortieth birthday. One million
dollars. In 1985, that still meant something."

"It still does."

"I decided, to hell with it.
I liked the work. It was the only thing I knew how to do anyway. If somebody
nailed me, I'd leave a rich widow. Molly understood. She always understood.
Even when I lost her, I kept working. I sold the house. Janetthat's my alleged
daughterwanted me to live with them. Someplace along the line Molly and I went
wrong with Janet. She's got none of her mother in her and less of me. She
married the banker"

"Harold."

"Yes. She married him and got
worse. Money, status, securitydo you realize that no one uses the front room
in that house? No one. She wants to keep it neat in case any of the Rotary
wives drop by." He shivered visibly. "Makes me sick just thinking
about it."

"Why did you move in?"

"Julia. She was following
right in her mama's footsteps. I thought maybe I could change her, give her
some guts."

"Did you?"

He shrugged, snuffing out his
cigar butt in the ashtray next to him. "Maybe. Can't tell yet. She's
eighteen. Freshman up at Berkeley. She was visiting that day Duff called but
left before you two showed up. I won't know if I did any good until she's about
your age, or until she gets married. Who people marry tells you a lot about
them." He smiled. "Or who they live with."

He sipped at his coffee. "As
soon as I moved in, they were after me. `Scar, why don't you retire?' `Daddy,
you're getting older. This kind of life isn't good for you.' What did they
know about what was good for me?" His voice became intense. Instead of
reciting dead memories, he was touching active feelings. He stared past us out
the window. "After five years, I finally gave in. I retired. Worst mistake
I ever made. Just after I retired, Simpson Autotec offered me a job. I turned
it down. The guy who took it went up with twenty thousand gallons of crude oil.
Janet used to remind me of it every time I brought up the subject of work. Look
what a wonderful thing she'd done for me! Saved my life! I looked. Just because
that other guy went up doesn't mean I would have, does it?"

"I suppose not."

"When I talked to you and
Duff, I was retired. I had accepted my lot. Too old, anyway. Not good for much.
Keep a little girl company, maybe, but the little girl had grown up. Big girl.
Gone to college. What the hell. Feed the pigeons and forget it. Horace must be
out of his mind to think of Scar Smith, I thought." He sipped the coffee.
"Cold."

"Would you like some
more?" asked Dolores.

"No, thanks." He
continued his story, looking past us. "When you and Duff left, I went in
for lunch. I had no more intention of accepting Horace's offer than going to
the Moon. Harold was home from the bank for lunch. Janet asked what you two
wanted. Since she was spying on me, I thought I'd needle her a little. I said
you offered me a job. `You said no, of course,' she said. Something about her
tone of voice and that 'of course' stuck in my craw. She continued eating,
almost oblivious to my presence, talking to Harold about the bank and listening
to him expound on the Prime Interest Rate. Eventually, she realized I hadn't
answered. She looked at me. 'You did tell them no?'

"In her face, that moment, I
saw her picture of me. An incompetent old man, a burden on everyone, the sooner
dead the better. In the meantime, keep him out of trouble. The world, after
all, isn't made for the sick or the old. I kept my temper. `I told them I'd
think about it,' I said.

"She dismissed the idea with
a wave of her hand. `Don't be silly, Daddy,' she said. `You gave all that up a
long time ago.'

"`Did I?' I asked. Harold
chimed in at that point. `Scarlyn, this is ridiculous,' he said. 'You're not
actually thinking of taking that job?'

" `I told them I'd think
about it,' I repeated, and then the son-of-a-bitch laughed. God damn it hurt!
He laughed!

"I stood up. I felt like
laying him out on the floor. Instead, I walked out. I slammed the door behind
me. I think glass broke. I got in the car and drove to the Merryweather
Building."

Smith looked at me. "I
haven't been back."

 

VIII

 

"Old men talk too much,"
said Smith, searching for another cigar, patting his coat pockets and avoiding
our eyes. I decided to change the subject, asking what he planned to do now.

"I rented a place in Newport
Beach," he answered. "I guess I'll just live in it."

"I mean about Norton."

His face brightened, glad to turn
attention away from his personal life. "Didn't I tell you? They found most
of him." He discovered another cigar in his coat pocket and withdrew it,
continuing to talk. Norton's liver had been found in Pomona, his kidneys in the
Long Beach-Compton area.

"One each," I said.

"Right. But one thing never
showed up."

"What?"

Smith sat back in the chair, the
cigar between his teeth. "The brain."

"The what?"

"Brain." Smith tapped
his temple. "In here."

Norton's brain. It was worth
something alive, but dead, as Smith had said, it was meat. Why would anyone
want it? Frowning, I asked Smith.

"Who knows? Maybe Norton
wasn't the only joker in town."

"That's sort of a grim joke.
Maybe it just hasn't turned up."

"Maybe."

"But you don't think
so."

"Everything else has turned
up."

"How about the possibility of
a transplant?" suggested Dolores.

"It's never been done,"
answered Smith.

"There's always a first
time."

"I checked around,"
responded Smith, lighting his cigar. Dolores opened a window. "No one's
even close to being able to do it. Besides, if you transplant a dead brain into
a live body, what do you have?"

"Two dead men."

"Right. It's something
else."

"What?" I asked.

"That, Robert, is what we
have to find out." He puffed on the cigar, thinking. "There are two
ways to get information," he mused, "direct and indirect. You can
snoop around, putting two and two together, or" He puffed, wanting me to
ask, "Or what?" As a boyif Smith ever was a boyhe probably rode his
bike with no hands, showing off. He enjoyed showing off. I resisted as long as
I could.

"Or what?"

"Or get it from the horse's
mouth."

"Which do you prefer?"

"Little of both. Let's assume
Spieler's involved. We can't just walk up to him and say, 'What did you do with
Norton's brain?' then throw him against a wall and frisk him for it, can
we?"

"I suppose not."

"But if we had some idea what
he wanted with it, we could ask about that. Take the transplant idea. If
he wanted it for a transplant, we could ask about that. We could, perhaps,
suggest that you needed one."

"Me?"

"Hypothetical situation only.
But we know the transplant's probably out. So what now?"

"A rite of some kind?"
asked Dolores.

I looked at her. What sort of rite
did she think would require Norton's brain? Smith took the suggestion
seriously.

"No. The only thing Spieler
believes in is profit."

"Then what?" I
asked.

"Did you happen to see Horace's
list of current Spieler projects?"

I faintly remembered looking at a
list in Mr. Merryweather's office. I nodded.

"Do you remember an item near
the end labeled Giant Molecule Reconstitution, Organic?"

"Vaguely. Biology's not my
field."

"The work's being done by Dr.
A. Perkov at the Golden Years Geriatric Center in Glendale. Spieler owns
it."

"So?"

"So how would you like to be
my grandson tomorrow morning?"

I saw it coining. Smith wanted me
to play grandson and go traipsing around some old people's home. I had too much
work to do. The thought of a day off, even a morning off, panicked me. I had
not even started to decipher where Norton left the Big Gate. Smith noticed my
contorted expression.

"Something wrong?"

"No."

"You don't like Glendale?"


"I like Glendale just fine,
but"

"You don't like me?"

"I like you just fine, too,
but"

"Then what is it?"

"I would like to get a little
work done. They pay me to be an engineer, not some kind of skulking
cloak-and-dagger man."

"You're getting in a rut. You
need a break."

"Rut! I've only worked
one day! I can't do it, Smith."

He looked at Dolores. "He's a
very responsible young man, isn't he?"

"Very."

"Don't you get in on
this," I told Dolores.

"Like the man said,
Robert," said Smith, "when Smith says spit, you spit."

 

On the way to Glendale the next
morning, gripping my seatbelts every time Smith took a corner, I asked what I
was supposed to do, other than the things he had briefed me on the night
before. The briefing had covered very little.

"Just act natural, buddy
boy." "That's a big help."

"I had Pamela make an
appointment for me at nine."

"Who's Pamela?"

"Horace's receptionist."


I remembered the blond at the
Merryweather Building. "Oh."

"Not bad."

"What?"

"Pam."

"You're too old for
that."

"Have you ever heard of
Charlie Chaplin?"

We arrived at the Golden Years
Geriatric Center, a collection of bland two-story buildings in front of a
cemetery, before nine. Smith, dressed in a suit ten years out of date and a
necktie, got out, stooped. I gestured at the cemetery.

"Convenient."

"Yep." His voice
cracked, dry and old. His face, normally taut, had gone slack. He peered slowly
around at the cemetery, getting into his part. "But I'm still here, buddy
boy." He laughed a cackling sort of laugh. "Wherever here is."

For an instant, I believed him.
"Glendale."

His voice momentarily became
normal. "You sounded good. Keep doing that. Just react to me. Don't think
about it."

 

I helped Smith along the walkway
to the main building. We passed several old people in wheel chairs, who watched
us, comparing their infirmity to Smith's. They seemed consoled by the
comparison.

Inside, the receptionist, a
matronly woman in a white dress, told us to take a seat. Smith glowered at her.


"I don't want to sit
down!" he cackled, swatting at my supporting hands.

"Gran'pa, please, sit
down."

"I don't want
to!"

I shrugged. "So stand."

I walked over to a chair and sat
down, picking up a magazine viewer. Even though. I knew Smith was acting, I
still felt embarrassed at the scene. Smith did nothing to alleviate the
feeling. He pointed a trembling index finger at me, cackling. "I got-cha,
Freddy! I gotcha!"

He continued cackling and
pointing. It struck me as overdone.

The receptionist came around the
desk and took Smith's outstretched arm. He looked at her, his expression
quizzical, then amazed.

"Louise?"

"No, Mr. Smith. I'm not
Louise. Why don't we sit over here and wait for Dr. Perkov?"

"Who?"

"Dr. Perkov."

She led him to the chair next to
mine and seated him.

"Who's Perky?" asked
Smith; then cackled, delighted.

"Dr. Perkov will be free in a
few minutes," she told me.

I thanked her and turned on the
magazine. I became engrossed in an article on Martian blight. When I looked up,
Smith was gone.

"Gran'pa?"

The receptionist, glancing up from
some papers, looked around the waiting area. Her eyes stopped on the hallway.
She dropped the papers and dashed down the hall. I followed.

Smith, his voice echoing hollowly
in the corridor, had some other oh man up against the wall, throttling him. The
man's eyes were terror-stricken. Smith kept shouting, "Give it here,
Jeb!" "Jeb," or whoever he was, made raspy noises.

The receptionist and I freed
"Jeb," who scurried off down the corridor at full shuffle.

"Mr. Smith," cautioned
the receptionist, "we mustn't attack people, must we?"

"Who?" He saw me.
"Jimmy! What are you doing here?"

"Robert," I corrected.

We led him back to the reception
area. Seated, leaned over to him, whispering.

"You're putting it on a bit
thick."

He cackled and pointed at me.

Fortunately, Dr. Perkov appeared
before Smith could think of any more antics. Perkov, a long-faced man with a
Van Dyke, shook hands with us. Smith kept calling him Father Perky, evolving it
into Father Pesky and Father Porky. Perkov ignored him, discussing commitment
with me. I followed the instructions Smith had given to me the night before.

"It is better," I said,
after Dr. Perkov explained the excellent facilities at the center, "to
keep them at home, if possible."

"Yes, yes. We encourage it.
Family environment is always helpful, but in his case"

"He's not usually violent,
Doctor," I said, deciding to repay Smith for jeering at me. "The
incident with the little girl was, well, an oversight on our part."

"Little girl?"

Smith, momentarily out of Dr.
Perkov's view, raised one eyebrow.

"It's not worth mentioning.
We do have a place for him. Our problem is his memory. He recognizes none of
us. I mentioned the problem to a friend of mine and he said Golden Years might
be able to help."

"We do have certain
treatments to retard the effects of"he glanced at Smith, then lowered his
voice "s-e-n-i-l-i-t-y."

"I heard you two!"
roared Smith. "I didn't do it! Go ahead! Beat me again! I never touched
that sweet little girl!"

"Beat him," said Dr.
Perkov, giving me a sidelong glance.

"Frankly, Dr. Perkov, my
grandfather is quite a serious case. Perhaps if we had brought him boner"


"What are you getting at, Mr.
Collins?"

"He needs something stronger
than simply retarding what is, after all, a fait accompli."

"I see." Dr. Perkov eyed
Smith, scratching his beard, considering. "Perhaps"

"Perhaps what?"

"There is a treatment.
I developed it."

"What sort of
treatment?"

He shook his head, vigorously
negating his "perhaps." "No, I can't do it."

"Doctor, we're desperate. You
can see what shape he's in."

"The name's Smith,"
shouted Smith. "Doctor Smith to you birds."

"A doctor?" said Doctor
Perkov. "He was a doctor before . . . this?"

"Yes."

Perkov pondered, debating with
himself. Finally, he looked at me. "Mr. Collins, I have a problem. On the
one hand, my work is highly experimental. The main office forbids me using it
in therapy for commercial reasons. They want to insure its complete safety and also
our exclusive use of it. On the other hand, a man like Dr. Smith, a colleague
who has helped so many, should enjoy the twilight years. Perhaps, if you told
no one" He let the sentence dangle, waiting for my response.

"I won't tell a soul."

"Follow me."

 

Dr. Perkov led us down the
corridor to a room marked "Private." The old man Smith had attacked
passed us in the hall, veering away from Smith. Smith shook his fist in the
air, shouting, "I'll get you, Jeb!"

"Such a shame," muttered
Dr. Perkov, unlocking the door.

We followed him into his
laboratory. Long tables displayed chemist's glassware, test tubes, glass coils,
beakers. We stopped at a temperature-controlled locker. Dr. Perkov punched in
the combination. The locker door slid open. He removed a vial, holding it
aloft. He looked at it, transfixed, marveling at his own discovery.

"That's it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"What is it'?"

"A catalyst, more or
less."

"For what?"

"Ultimately, for increasing
engram definition in the brain, Mr. Collins."

"What does it do?"

I shouldn't have asked. Dr. Perkov
started on a lecture that would have boggled Watson and Crick. His catalyst, he
informed me, affected each building block in the subject's cortical DNA
molecules, deoxyribose sugar, the phosphate unit and especially the
nucleotides.

"Them, too."

"Indeed."

The purines, adenine and guanine,
as well as the pyrimidines, cytosine and thymineall were affected. I nodded,
trying to keep my eyes from glazing over. I had pushed Dr. Perkov's button. He
didn't come equipped with an off-switch.

The quantity of adenine, I
learned, was increased above the other nucleotides, hence more adenosine
triphosphate and hence higher energy conversion in the phosphate group.

"You do see that, don't
you?"

"Hm-m-m."

"Most people don't."

"Hm-m-m."

He rummaged in a drawer and pulled
out a wooden box, opening it and removing a microscope slide. He slipped the
slide into a microscope, stooped and adjusted it.

"Look at this."

I looked. The slide, stained
purple, showed several irregular black blobs with spidery tendrils spreading
from them at random.

"What is it?"

It was a Golgi stain of a section
of occipital cortex showing dendrites of large cortical cells, he explained, annoyed
at the question.

I asked why I was looking at it.
Another mistake. Dr. Perkov broke out in analogies. Nerve cells like these were
the printed circuits of the brain, the well-trodden paths through the jungle of
the mind, if not the very foundation of civilization itself.

Vitamem, Dr. Perkov's discovery,
revitalized the DNA in those circuits, enhancing the engrams like a
photographer enhances faint photographic negatives. More particularlyI winced
at the phrase; I had thought he was being particularthe spines of the basal
dendrites in the;, synaptic contacts between nerve cells in the cortex were
stimulated.

"Stimulated," I
repeated.

"Yes, let me show you."

He dug in the drawer again, coming
up with two pictures that reminded me of abstract photography. He seemed to
have them upside down.

"These electron
micrographs," he said, "will clear things up."

"I doubt it."

"The one on your
left"he jiggled the photograph in his right hand"shows cortical
dendrite spines of the senile brain. You see the shriveled effect."

"Not exactly."

"This one on your
right"he jiggled it "is after Vitamem. You see the alert,
vigorous posture of the spines."

"Puts backbone in them."


"Exactly."

"A doctor once said my
grandfather has dead tissue in his brain. The stroke, I believe. Will Vitamem
help that?" I began to feel like a commercial.

"You do realize, Mr.
Collins," he said, replacing the photographs in the drawer, "that
death, whether on the small scale of a cell or the large scale of an entire
organism, is a relatively permanent condition. Is there some particular
reason" The clause hung in air, a question.

"The money," I
improvised. "He's forgotten where it is."

"I see. Very sad. What were
you planning to do with . . . the money?"

"Pay for his treatments."


"Ah, yes. But you must
understand, extracting engrams from brain tissue is a delicate process. The
tissue must be fresh."

"How fresh?"

"Not more than two weeks old.
Your grandfather's stroke must have been some time ago."

"It was."

"Too bad. I just had an
interesting case recently, however."

I could see I was in for another
fascinating barrage of biology and tried to look interested.
"Really?"

"Yes. The man worked for our
drone ship division. He died accidentally. They say he kept everything in his
head. You can imagine how upset they were to lose him. They brought the brain
to mefresh, mind you, or nearly soand asked my help. It was a challenge, Mr.
Collins, a challenge." He pointed across the laboratory to one corner.
"That's it, over there."

I looked across the tables. Only a
computer display occupied the corner. "The brain?"

"No, no. The information in
itthe engramssafely stored in our company computer."

"You succeeded."

"Partially, yes. They
didn't seem too happy about it, however. The tissue had been damaged in
removal, you see. Not my fault at all. The man who removed it seemed to know
more about karate than surgery. It was a rather small organ, runty actually.
But the cortical cells themselves" He whistled.

"Big?"

"Gigantic!"

"But they weren't happy with
your results?" I coaxed.

"No. A rather grizzly little
man kept saying, 'What about the tachyon?' Except it wasn't just tachyon. The
man cursed. It was the damn tachyon, as I remember. 'We know
about phase-shift! What about the damn tachyon?' He must have repeated
it ten times. It was absolute nonsense as far as I was concerned. I told Mr.
Spieler I did not want that man around here in the future."

Dr. Perkov's upper lip quivered,
remembering the grizzly little man. He sighed deeply and looked at me. "But,
this has very little to do with your grandfather. When would you like to submit
him to treatment?"

Smith, who had listened to the
discussion, suddenly became active, knocking over beakers and coiled glass
tubes, shouting about how the revenuers were coming and we had to get rid of
the still.

"Next week," I answered.
"I'd better take him home now. It's time for his nap." I led Smith
toward the door.

"Good. Make an appointment at
the desk. I'm sure we can help Dr Smith."

"He needs it."

 

IX

 

"What do you think?" I
asked Smith in the car.

"I think they drained old
Norton like a swamp. Did you understand any of that?"

"Not much." I told Smith
about tachyons, faster-than-light particles, identified at the end of the
Twentieth Century. I was into a simple comparison between mesons, neutrinos and
tachyons when Smith interrupted. People always interrupt during the interesting
parts.

"OK, I believe you. You're
starting to sound as incomprehensible as Father Perky back there."

Smith drove me to the Corona del
Mar Gate. I thought about Norton and tachyons and the grizzly little man who
deposited Norton's brain with Dr. Perkov.

"It doesn't make sense,
Smith."

"What doesn't?"

"Norton didn't have anything
to do with tachyons, at least that I know of. Mesons, yes. That's part of Gate
physics, and neutrinos, not tachyons."

"Keep gnawing on it. You'll
come up with something."

He dropped me outside the Gate
blockhouse. Wheels spinning and rubber squealing, he disappeared down the
access road, shrinking to a red dot. Still puzzled, I suited up and walked
aboard the Merryweather Enterprize. Captain Wilkins passed me in a
corridor, glancing at his watch and frowning, but saying nothing.

In my office, I called Burgess and
asked for a copy of Norton's integration computer program.

"All of it?" He
asked, incredulous.

"Yes. And a
mathematician."

"You'll need one."

The mathematician, a
cadaverous-looking man named Webber, came into the office smelling of garlic.
He looked about nineteen. No worries, staring at numbers all dayit kept him
innocent. He seemed anxious about being in my office.

"Is there some problem, Dr.
Webber?" I asked.

"Hm-m-m? No, no."

"You don't look well."

He stood there a moment, looking
at everything but me. He reminded me of a child about to be scolded. Finally,
he stopped fidgeting and looked at me, mustering shaky indignation.

"I haven't done
anything," he protested.

"Who said you had?"

His indignation disappeared,
replaced by blank incomprehension. "I thoughtbeing called hereI,
naturally"

"You thought what?"

"I heard about Captain
Wilkins, and" He broke off, his face asking for sympathy and
understanding. It took me several seconds to realize what Webber's
"and" meant. He had heard about my fray with Captain Wilkins, that I
was somehow the reincarnation of Norton. He assumed I wanted to chew him out.
My reputation as an ogre was spreading. As a patrol leader in the Boy Scouts,
they laughed at my orders. Here, nobody laughed. It was a strange feeling.

"You understand, Dr. Webber.
I need some help deciphering Norton's program."

 

We worked through most of the
afternoon. I spent half my time saying, "Oh, yes. You're right. I see it
now." By four o'clock, Webber's talents awed me. He could compress a whole
section of the program into a single simple equation or expand a minor phrase
into a ream of paper. He seemed to do it at will, grasping the answer and only
retracing his steps to explain how he got there to his dumb-dumb boss. When he
finished, I had what I wanted. Webber, still timid, retracted the lead into his
mechanical pencil and stood up, rubbing his eyes. I noticed his suit. Threadbare.


"Will that be all, sir?"


"Yes. Thank you, Jim. You can
go home if you like."

"Home?" He pronounced
the word as though it were new to him.

"You do have one?"

"Yes, sir. But Dr. NortonI
mean, there's still an hour and a half to work and he never let us"

I shrugged. "What can you get
done in an hour and a half?"

He started to tell me. With a mind
like Webber's, an hour and a half was a long time.

"Take the time off. You
deserve it."

"I do?"

He left, bewildered. I checked
with personnel. Webber made fifteen thousand a year.

"You're kidding," I said
to the girl on the screen.

"No, sir."

"Double it."

"But, Mr. Duff will"

"If you have any problems,
refer Mr. Duff to me."

My good deed done, I called Smith.
No one answered. Either Smith had forgotten to redirect his phone calls or he
was away from a phone. I called Mr. Merryweather.

"Ah, Robert. How are things
up there?"

"Fine. Have you heard from
Smith?"

"He called at noon. He said
the two of you had been trying to get him committed."

"The way he drives, he should
be committed. Do you know where he is now?"

"I'm not his secretary, you
know." He chuckled at the idea. "Is it important?"

"Yes. I think I've figured
out what happened to Norton and why."

Mr. Merryweather knew about Dr.
Perkov and Norton. He listened patiently while I recounted my version of the
events, the body removal, the brain removal, the memory removal. When I
mentioned tachyons, he stopped me. "Just a minute, please."

I waited. The screen flickered and
settled.

"Go on."

"What was that?"

"Scrambler."

I told him about Norton's program,
splicing in as much physics as I could. His attention never wavered. He never
asked for an explanation. Norton's program called for anything fed through the
matter transmitter to be accelerated to near-light-speed. According to
Einstein, that meant near-infinite-mass. To do it, Norton needed the
controlled-laser fusion reactor I was supposed to build. So far, so good.

At near-light-speed, the trip to
the nearest star still takes a little over four and a quarter years. Spieler's
drone ships took over eight years to deliver their first load. Now, ships
appeared monthly and probably would continue appearing for the next fifteen
years. The Merryweather Big Gate, designed to reach across the light-years and
rip out a hunk of planet fifteen kilometers in diameter, would cut the trip in
half. It would cut the expense by a factor of ten. Once the ore arrived, it
could be mined in orbit, undercutting Spieler's price and destroying his
capital investment in drone ships.

Norton had taken the proposition
one step further. Once something in the transmitter accelerated, he drained it
of energy, converting the entire mass into tachyon particles. Tachyons,
existing only at superlight-speeds, lose mass, as their speed increases. At the
end of the journey (or the beginning, depending on your viewpoint; both the
beginning and the end are actually the same event, observed from a different space-time
position) the process is reversed. Energy is added to the tachyon particles,
slowing them to light-speed and near-infinite-mass, then integration into
sub-light-matter slows them to below-light-speed. Eventually, at something like
rest, they pop out of the Gate's field:

"I hope you realize the
implications, sir."

He smiled, tolerant. "Norton
and I discussed them several times. It is my prime reason for continuing. I
think the capital outlay is justified by the possibility of almost
instantaneous travel to the stars, don't you?"

Hearing the idea vocalized for the
first time, and believing it, stunned me. Each pinpoint of light I had seen
from the control room of the Merryweather Enterprize would be as near as
Corona Del Mar.

"There's only one problem,
Mr. Collins."

"What's that?"

"According to what Smith
said, Spieler got wind of it before Norton's death. I intentionally had Norton
omit any reference to it in his reports. You don't have any lead on that, do
you?"

I remembered Parry saying he and
Norton had eaten lunch at the Vier Jahreszeiten often.

"One."

"Good. Look into it. I have a
meeting with our Soviet affiliate in Kharkov this evening." He paused.
"Or will it be morning there? Keep at it, Mr. Collins. If Smith calls
here, I'll have the call referred to you."

He hung up.

Look into it. Keep at it. How was
I supposed to look into or keep at anything? I only knew three things about
Parry. He worked, indirectly, for Spieler. He was either an industrial spy or a
diligent salesman. He liked German food. Why would Norton, aware of the need
for secrecy, talk to him about the super-light-phase of the Big Gate project?
He wouldn't. I scratched my head. Would he?

The phone hummed.

"Collins," I said.

It was Pamela at the Merryweather
Building. "There's a Mr. Tuttle here. He insists on talking to someone in
authority."

"Tuttle?"

"He says it's about ScarlynI
mean, Mr. Smith."

Tuttle . . . H. Winton Tuttle ...
Harold. "Tell him I'm gone. Give him to Mr. Duff."

"Mr. Duff is
gone."

I considered passing Harold on to
Mr. Merryweather, then changed my mind. Mr. Merryweather had enough problems.

"Put him on."

Harold came on the screen, his
face florid and hair windblown. "Listen, Collins, I warned you!"

"You did?"

"I forbade you to employ my
father-in-law. I want you down here this instant to talk about it!"


"You do."

"I will wait"he
gestured at something off camera"by the elevator!" He hung up.

He would have a long wait. I began
collecting the things I wanted to take home: document viewer, containing the
critical portions of Norton's program; my notes from the afternoon with Webber;
a smallthe phone hummed.

"So!" accused
Harold, furious "You're not here!"

"Right."

"If you think you can avoid
me with this . . . this . . . ruse, you are sadly mistaken!"

"How can I avoid you?"

"You can't!"

"I'm a little tired of this,
Tuttle. Can you get to the point?"

"The point is my father-in-law.
He came by our house this afternoon to get some of his things!"

"I don't see"

"No! You wouldn't! He was bleeding,
Collins, bleeding!"

Suddenly, Harold had my attention.
"Seriously?"

"I'm quite serious."

"I mean, was he bleeding
seriously?"

"It was only a small cut over
his eye, but he limped! He tried to conceal it, but I saw it! He
definitely limped!"

"What happened?"

"He wouldn't say. He washow
shall I put itdifficult to handle. I was afraid, frankly, that he might get physical."


"He didn't?"

"No."

"Too bad. Where did he
go?"

"That's what I want to know.
You have to talk some sense into him. Do you know what he took with him?"

"No."

"A gun! I didn't even know
there was one in the house! I forbid his getting involved in this!"


"It doesn't sound as if you
have too much to say in the matter, Mr. Tuttle."

"Perhaps this will convince
you. I followed him outside. I tried to reason with him. The man is impossible.
I told him to look at himself. A seventy-five-year-old man, running around like
some fool in his twenties. Really, Mr. Collins! I admit he seems
to be in good shape, but no one seventy-five is in good shape"he
tapped his chest"inside. I don't care what the doctors say. I told
him that. I told him he should come back and let us take care of him. It just
made him angrier! He's crazy, Collins! Demented, senile, and crazy! I told him
just that! I told him he should act his age, be like the other old gentlemen in
the neighborhood, enjoy his sunset years!"

"What did he say?"

"He laughed and called me a
pipsqueak."

I laughed.

"This is not a joke,
Collins."

"Did he say anything else?
Where he was going?"

"No. He just checked that
horrible revolver, got in his car and left. He almost ran over me pulling out! That's
when I saw the rear window of the car. There was a bullethole in it! A
bullethole, Collins! I intend, at the first opportunity, to take legal action.
Commitment, if necessary!"

"You missed your
chance."

I hung up.

 

When the phone hummed again, I let
it hum. I collected my things and started for the station Gate. As I passed the
control room, Captain Wilkins called my name. I went in.

The night crew, two men, monitored
the equipment. Captain Wilkins looked worried.

"What is it, Captain?"

He pointed at a radar screen.
"Look at this."

I looked. The random pattern of
blips was meaningless.

"That," he said,
pointing at a blip near the center of the screen, "is the transmitter
focusing ring. The smaller blips are constructors and our equipment."

"What are those other two
blips?"

"Spacecraft."

"Government?"

"Private."

"Whose are they?"

"It's impossible to say.
They're unmarked. They've taken up orbits matching ours. We tried hailing, but
got no answer."

"Are they drone ships?"

"No. Too small and drones
automatically set off beacons after their second shift. These ships don't have
beacons."

"What do you think they
want?"

"Who knows?"

"Thank you, Captain. Inform
me immediately of any change."

I suited up and returned to the surface.
On the way home, standing in the packed mono rail car, I reviewed Norton's
program, holding the strap with one hand and the document viewer with the
other. Jenson, starting with nothing, had created the matter transmitter.
Norton, starting with Jenson's Gate, had opened the stars to man.

The implications staggered my
imagination. Norton could have opened either a treasure chest or a Pandora's
box. I remembered staying awake nights in college, debating the moral issues of
technology with my roommate, a social science major. He would pose some
hypothetical discoverydynamite, atomic fusion, genetic manipulation, Jenson
Displacement, anythingpointing out its potential for evil. Each could be used
to kill and enslave. He expected me to take the opposite side. Each could also
save lives and liberate. I never did. Whatever man discovers or invents can be
perverted. Split table salt, and you get sodium and chlorine, poisons. The
question is how technology is used; not what it is. How to use a discovery is a
political question for those in power, not us worker ants.

Yet, Norton's addition to
technology was potentially devastating to human society. Did the scale of its
possible impact become a moral question in itself? If the English longbows at
the Battle of Agincourt enabled them to pierce French armor, so what? True, it
was a technological advantage. But a small corner of medieval Europe, where a
battle was won or lost because of technology, remained a small corner of
medieval Europe. Norton's technology could enslave a galaxy. Was it still a
question of how the Gate was used? Or was the Gate itself now at the center of
the moral storm?

Getting off the monorail, walking
down the escalator to the street, it hit me. I had to know the answer to my
question. If the Big Gate's very existence was the issue, I was the only person
with the power to enforce the moral decision. I could, if I had to, destroy
Norton's work. I shivered, turning the corner onto our block. Smith's red
Ferrari stood in front of my house. "So what happened to you?"

Smith sat back in my easy-chair,
crossing one long leg over the other. A small cut, closed with Plastaid, showed
over his left eyebrow. He touched it. "You mean this?"

"And the limp, and
the gun, and the bullethole in your car window."

"The limp's gone." He
patted his ribs. "The gun isn't, and the bullet-hole" He shrugged.
"They couldn't run fast enough to catch me on foot."

He liked being evasive,
heightening the suspense. Smith as hero. He enjoyed telling it as much as doing
it. I wondered whether Smith, nowhere near his second childhood, had ever left
his first.

"Who couldn't catch
you?"

"The leader looked
short."

"And grizzly?"

"You could say that. I
dropped you off and I got to thinking. A dangerous practice, I know, but I got
to doing it anyway. Whatever Spieler wanted"

"That I can tell
you."

"He didn't get. He had two
choices. Forget it or try something else. A man who would steal Norton, crack
his skull like a walnut and literally pick his brain, wouldn't forget about it.
What, I asked myself, next?"

Smith had driven out to the
Spieler Space Operations Center in Tustin, eleven acres of prime real estate.
Drone ships, built in space, were prepared and tracked from the Center.
Incoming ships transferred their cargoes to lunar shuttles. From the Moon, ore
was fed to the purchaser through a Jenson Gate. Repair crews, dispatched from
the center, refurbished the drone fleet. If, as Dr. Perkov indicated, Spieler
knew Norton's phase-shift solution, the Space Operations Gate could now
transfer men or ore through a series of relay satellites, thus eliminating
transshipment via the Moon.

Smith applied for a job,
Gatekeeper. He knew enough from talking to the Merryweather Gatekeepers to
convince a personnel man of his abilities. During a tour of the facilities, he
noticed a squad of armed mil assembled outside the Gate blockhouse. Security,
explained the tour guide, a Gatekeeper himself. Approaching the group, Smith
made his mistake. He asked how the tachyon aspect was progressing.

"I must be getting
stupid," said Smith. "Senile. I'd heard the word from you and Father
Porky. I wouldn't know one if it bit me. But it seemed to be the crux of the
matter."

"It is."

Smith thought if he dropped the
wordtachyoncasually enough, he might get a lead. He dropped it.

"The guy looked at me like I
had just handed him Norton's liver."

Pardon me? said the Gatekeeper.

Tachyon? repeated Smith.

The Gatekeeper started yelling his
head off. Grizzlyaccording to Smith, the meanest midget he had ever seen,
though I doubt the man was that shortran over to them.

What's up? asked Grizzly.

The Gatekeeper pointed at Smith
like he was Jack the Ripper and yelled, He knows!

Knows what? asked Grizzly, looking
up at Smith.

About the tack-tack-tachyon!
sputtered the Gatekeeper.

"The man stuttered something
awful. Too much pressure on him. Too many secrets," mused Smith.
"Secrets. Don't talk. Can't talksomething to it."

"What did you say?"

"I looked at Grizzly and
tried to play dumb. 'Me?' I said, `Tachywhat?' It was too late to play dumb.
Grizzly started to pull out his sidearm." Smith sighed, shaking his head.
"I don't know, buddy boy. I must be slowing up. Ten years ago I would have
seen it coming and decked them both."

Smith knocked Grizzly's gun to the
ground. Grizzly came around with a right, clipping Smith's forehead.

Smith elbowed him in the solar
plexus.

"He went down like a bag of
cement."

The Gatekeeper had the gun. The
side of Smith's shoe caught the Gatekeeper's wrist, possibly breaking it. The
Gatekeeper yelled. The gun flew. Smith ran. Keystone Cops. Except the bad guys
were the cops.

Smith was lost. He cut through an
office building at full tilt. Women screamed. He bumped into one with her arms
full. Papers flew, settling like a flock of seagulls. He tripped on a
wastebasket and jammed his leg against a sharp desk corner.

"Hurt like hell."

As Smith picked himself up,
Grizzly and his men exploded into the room. When the secretaries saw the guns,
they started running around screaming as if the fox was in the hen house.
Grizzly, prudent, decided against shooting through them.

Out the opposite door went the
fox. Smith loped down the corridor, his leg hurting. He was still lost. He
stopped at the Information Desk.

Which way out?

The girl pointed. He ran. His,
foot hit the proximity detector field for the double, doors just as Grizzly and
company rounded the corner behind him. The doors opened long enough for Smith
and a bullet to get out. He never heard the explosion. Just the zip of the
bullet going past. He made it to the car, hit the starter and prayed.

The turbine caught. He jammed the
accelerator to the floor. The Ferrari shot across the parking area toward a
dirt field. He wanted get to the dirt before they started shooting again.
Someone got off a round. Smith heard a thunk. He thought at first it was
a rock. The seat next to him bobbed forward and a two-inch hole bloomed in the
headrest. When he glanced in the rear-view mirror, he saw the other hole. Dime
size. He bounced into the field.

A dust cloud rose behind him,
obscuring his view. He veered toward the street, hoping the dust camouflaged
him. He hit the street doing fifty and let out the Ferrari. No one followed.

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Duff thinks you're a
menace."

 

X

 

"What now?" I asked.

Smith withdrew a file card from
his coat pocket and looked around for a document viewer. I handed him mine. He
inserted the card and handed it back.

"That's Spieler. We talk to
him."

The facesharp-edged, tough,
intelligentlooked younger than thirty-nine. I indexed the viewer. The second
picture showed Spieler in a sweatsuit, running.

"Another runner," I
said.

"The man has his good
points."

At six every morning, rain or
shine, Spieler ran five miles, his chauffeur trailing in the limousine. A
detective's report, stamped "Merryweather Security," appeared after
the pictures. Spieler arrived at his office every morning at eight sharp. He
worked until past seven each evening. Other than running, he had no hobbies.
Sometimes he stayed at the building for days, leaving only for his morning run.


Once a week, Saturday evening, he
relaxed. From seven to ten PM, he went to a club he owned, The Hollywood Star,
in Hollywood. He never drank or smoked. He listened to the music and left at
ten, usually alone, occasionally with a girl. It was never the same girl.

Smith walked across the room and
sat down next to me, noticing where I was in the report.

SPIELER, FREDERICK, MARCUS

BORN: 23.Jan 1983, Bangor, Maine.

PARENTS: Martha and, Wilber (Moved
Calif. 3-2-85).

SIBLINGS: Four brothers, two
sisters (See Appendix "A").

Smith pointed to the sibling
entry. "Spieler was in the middle. Do you have any brothers or
sisters?"

"I'm an only child."

"Older brothers are louder
and stronger. Younger brothers are cuter and more lovable. There's something to
it."

"What?"

"Little Freddy had to compete
for Martha and Wilber."

I continued reading.

EDUCATION: Long Beach Polytechnic
High School; Track, football; GPA, 3.80; Grad. June, 1999.

UCLA: Track, football; Maj., Bus.
Ad; Minor, psychology, philosophy; GPA, 3.95; Grad. Summer, 2002.

 



 

Stanford, School of Business
Administration: MBA, Grad. June, 2003 (Note: two-year program, completed one
year).

"Why do you suppose,"
interrupted Smith, "he minored in psychology and philosophy?"

"He liked them?" I
suggested.

"He wanted something from
them. Psychology might tell him how his mind worked. He wanted to know that.
Who am I? It didn't tell him. Psychology can't. If you know how a computer
words, you don't necessarily know what's in it. He switched to philosophy,
superseding form for content. But philosophy" Smith turned up his hands.
"Who ever got anything from philosophy?"

"I always liked it."

"Sure. So did I. I rather
like Hume myself. Very witty. He can prove you aren't reading the book you are
reading to get his proof. Fun, but hardly something to hang your hat on for
life, especially if you're a man like Spieler. Philosophy's like art. Personal.
Everyone has to develop his own."

I laughed. "That's a
philosophical position itself, Smith, and a debatable one."

"True, but it fits in
Spieler's case. Did you see the paper he did for a philosophy seminar?"

I indexed the viewer to the fourth
appendix. "Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Mao Tse-tung: Psychophilosophical
Applications to Intercorporate Politics." I whistled.

"Freddy got an A-plus on that
one," said Smith.

"Have you read it?"

"Yep. Bright boy."

I returned to the factual resume
and read the last item on the list.

Founded Spieler Interstellar, Aug.
2003.

Initial Capitalization, $20,000.
Current value, $150,000,000,000. "A heavyweight," I said.

"I'd say he knows what he
wants now," said Smith. "Even if he's still having trouble with who
he is." Smith frowned, dissatisfied with his conclusion. "Or better
yet, what he thinks he wants." He looked at me. "Like to meet
him?"

"Spieler?"

"The horse's mouth himself.
Saturday night. And bring Dolores. I'll pick you up about six-thirty." He
looked around the room. "Where is Gladstone, anyway?"

"At school probably."

At school. It suddenly dawned on
me. Neither Dolores nor I had let Smith in.

"How did you get in here,
Smith?"

He blushed, looking guilty, and
smiled. A friendly smile, for a burglar.

The rest of the week, I
concentrated on my own work, building the Big Gate. Most of the construction
started by Norton- ran under its own momentum. By Thursday afternoon, I was
actually playing with a drafting screen. Not working, just toying, trying to
set up what I would need for a controlled-laser reactor.

The two and a half years since I
finished my dissertation could have been a decade. It worked to my advantage.
Most of the engineering problems I envisioned, and a few I missed, someone had
already solved. One or two solutions even reflected suggestions in my
dissertation. Those things are actually read sometimes.

The lasers themselves gave me the
most trouble. Most laser applications use a constant beam of pulsed light. For
that reason, a laser-induced fusion reaction was once thought impossible. For a
lone beam to heat a pellet of solid heavy hydrogen and implode it at
thermonuclear temperatures, it has to produce more than a billion joules.
Otherwise the laser consumes more energy than the reaction produces. Billion
joule lasers are theoretically possible.

In the last century, when lasers
produced only about a thousand joules maximum, Emmett and Nuckolls at the
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory developed the idea of multiple lasers, focused on
a hollow ball of frozen hydrogen. In a billionth of a second, a ten thousand
joule multiple laser can heat the ball to a hundred million degrees Celsius.
The hydrogen boils, escaping at a thousand miles a second. Escaping, it
implodes the ball. Action-reaction. Remember Newton?

The ball's density is now a
hundred times that of lead. The nuclei fuse, releasing nuclear energy like a
collapsing star. Liquid lithium around the implosion chamber transfers the
energy to the heat exchanger and from there to the generators.

A hundred implosions a second in a
hundred chambers can produce ten billion watts, enough for the Big Gate and my
toaster, too.

After I got the specs on both the
General Electric and Westinghouse multilasers, I remembered Parry called Fenton
Laser Products.

Parry was out. I left word for him
to call me. Before I went home, I checked with Captain Wilkins. The two
spacecraft still hung in an orbit matching ours. Neither showed any sign of
life. Our work crews came and went, finishing the Big Gate focusing ring,
unmolested. The longer the ships did nothing the more Captain Wilkins worried.
He kept complaining to me about being defenseless. He would complain and eye
me, somehow holding me responsible for this threat to his station.

"Do you realize, Dr.
Collins," he said, eyeing me, "that we don't even have a handgun
aboard, much less anything useful?"

What did he expect me to do? Order
up a nuclear cannon? Space stations are the most vulnerable of man's creations.
Even if we had a cannon, the recoil would probably knock us out of orbit.

"Sorry."

He grunted.

 

Parry returned my call that
evening.

"Ah, Dr. Collins," said
Parry after Dolores called me to the screen. I could see the corner of a
stag-hunting picture behind his head. "I'm sorry I missed you on the
station. Rather convenient, being able to return home each evening."

"Yes."

"I remember when I first met
Dr. Norton. He made it back infrequently. How can I help you?"

I told him I needed information on
Fenton's multilasers. He listened, absorbing my technical questions without
taking notes, nodding occasionally.

"I see. We do have several
units that would fit your requirements." He listed them, reeling off
specifications faster than I could jot down the figures. A good salesman knows
his product. So does a good industrial spy. "But may I make a suggestion?"


"Sure."

"Try our FLP-Four."

"Four? You just said the Four
was superseded."

"In most applications, yes.
Franklyand I would not wish this information spread around" He paused,
waiting for my assurance of confidentiality.

"Mum's the word."

"Our later models, Five
through Nine, will soon be obsolete. One of our technicians, using the basic
design features of the FLP-Four, has developed a million-joule unit. It
requires little more power than the Four, which produced only ten thousand
joules."

"Sounds good."

"It is good. As a
matter of fact, the man who developed it did so by accident."

"Serendipity?"

"No. More an accident. It
killed him. He died shortly after his work was complete. His heirs are becoming
difficult. They threaten legal action. They claim the man developed these
modifications after leaving our employ, that the modified device is theirs. The
claim is utterly groundless, but" He pursed his lips, his expression
asking sympathy.

"Annoying," I suggested.


"Exactly. We would rather throw
the device on the open market, unpatented, than submit to this extortion. Your
request comes at an advantageous moment. If you purchase FLP-Fours, which cost
considerably less than Nines, I can supply you with modification information
that will produce more power, cheaper. Merryweather Enterprises will save
moneyalways a happy prospectand you will be credited with the innovations
responsible for the savings."

"Why me?"

"The man's heirs. I assure
you, all work was done in our laboratories on our time. These
heirs are scoundrels. The man himself was once caught stealing from the
company. Who knows how often he escaped detection? Should a thief's heirs
benefit by his skullduggery, Dr. Collins?"

"I suppose not."

"Of course not." Parry
sounded genuinely indignant. "Your use of the modifications will appear
independent of ours. Great minds, after all, do run in similar channels. An
idea whose time has come, comes, despite thieves or their heirs. This will show
them that anyone can make this laser without us and that the potential profits
are not, as they currently believe, astronomical."

"I feel as if I'd be stealing
the fruits of another man's work."

"Nonsense. The man was a
scoundrel. His heirs are scoundrels. Probably his whole bloodline is tainted.
He is dead. One cannot steal from the dead."

Somewhere, there was a hole in
Parry's argument. "How soon can you get the information to me?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Fine." I said good-bye
and hung up.

"Dolores," I called into
her closet. I heard some papers shuffle.

"Yes, dear."

"Can you steal from a dead
man?"

"No, dear." Maybe Parry
was right.

"Just from his heirs."

"Oh."

I called Smith. His new number,
unlisted to avoid Harold, showed a Newport Beach prefix.

He came on the screen with the
phone in tight focus. A pillow showed on either side of his head. Apparently
the phone rested on his stomach.

"Sorry I woke you."

"You didn't. What's up?"


"I just talked to
Parry." I repeated the conversation, including Parry's improbable reason
for giving me credit for the FLP-Four innovations. As I finished, the picture
on Smith's end bounced, as if someone had jostled the bed.

"Are you alone?"

"More or less."

"Who's there?"

"A friend. Here's what I want
you to do," said Smith, continuing before I could say anything about his
friend. "Check Parry's information. If it's good, use it. He'll want
something in exchange, probably something he already knows, like that
phase-shift business. Give it to him. He knows anyway. Be reluctant, but give
it to him. Then he'll have you."

"He will?"

"The next time, he'll ask for
something big."

"The tachyon
conversion."

"Yes."

"I'll give that to him,
too."

"No. You'll balk."

"Good. I wondered whose side
you were on."

"You'll balk, then you'll
give it to him. Let him threaten first. He'll say if you don't come across,
he'll tell Merryweather you're not a boy genius."

"Mr. Merryweather probably
knows that."

"He'll have proof.
Phase-shift was a secret. He can prove he knows the solution. Cooperate or
else, he'll say."

"I'll cooperate."

"Yes. Give him rigged
figures. While he's checking them out, we might have enough time to stop them
altogether."

Give him rigged figures. Smith
threw off the phrase as if all I had to do was change a number here or a number
there. Rigging figures on an engineering project is harder than developing the
real figures. They have to look good to a trained eye but be wrong.

"Smith, do you have any idea
how hard it is to rig figures?"

"No."

"It's hard. You don't just
tear out the multiplication tables, change a few numbers and hand them to
Parry. They have to be convincing."

"You're young and eager.
You'll think of something."

"Not that eager."

"Just do it and quit your
bitching."

"You seem pretty sure about
all this."

"I've dealt with people like
Parry all my life. Keeping one step ahead of them is my job." He paused.
The camera shook again. Someone said something off-camera. Smith nodded, then
returned his attention to me. "Or it was my job, before I retired. See you
Saturday, Roberto. I've got to go feed the pigeons."

He hung up.

"The next morning, Parry's
specifications waited on my desk. I called Hilda at the Merryweather computer
center. Grumbling, she set up a computer model of Parry's FLP-Four and laid in
the modifications. According to the computer, Fenton's laser would produce
considerably more power than Parry indicated. A reactor, using Fenton's lasers,
would easily produce three times the power of our original design, or more. I
was impressed. The power curve ran off the scale. When I noticed it, Hilda
frowned, thinking I would want a rerun of the entire program. Her frownlike a
Pekingese about to be kickedstopped me. I was satisfied. The reactor would
power the Gate.

If Fenton's equipment lived up to
the figures by half, I would have no complaints. I thanked Hilda. She looked
relieved.

I ordered Fenton's lasers and put
Bernie Mitchel in charge of modification. As soon as word got to him, he called
me.

"Bob," said Bernie,
frowning, shaking a piece of paper at me on the screen, "what the hell is
this?"

"I put you in charge of laser
modification."

He laughed. "So I see. Got a
minute?"

"Sure. What for?"

"I want to tell you
everything I know about lasers. First, it's light. Second, my dentist has one.
Third, he knows more about it than I do. Fourth"

"You're a bright boy," I
said, remembering his comment when I hesitated over taking the Merryweather job.
"You'll learn."

"Bob."

"Engineering's
engineering," I reminded him.

"All right, maybe I deserved
that, but seriously"

"Seriously, I want this job
done right. That's why I want you to do it."

He looked over the reassignment
sheet in his hand. "It says here modifications."

"You'll get all the
details."

"Where'd you get the
modifications?"

I hesitated. The idea of lying to
Bernie, my engineering mentor, bothered me. First, I had never lied to him.
Second, he knew my capabilities better than anyone. If I claimed to have
developed the modifications myself, he would take one look and know I was
lying. "The muses spoke."

"Muses?"

"Just do it, Bernie. It's
important."

Friday evening, Rodriguez reported
completion of the focusing ring ahead of schedule. I told the girl in
accounting to give the construction crew bonuses.

Saturday, I read over the week's
work reports. Burgess was expecting the Master Toole integration computer any
day. The integration, modulation and acceleration equipment would be ready to
plug in by the middle of April. All it needed, his report pointedly reminded
me, was a socket. I dictated an over-all status report to Mr. Merryweather and
went home.

Smith arrived at six-thirty,
dressed to kill. He had on a polka-dot tri-tie, one of those three-bladed
bowtiestwo blades horizontal, and one hanging verticalthat pass for
fashionable. It did make me feel self-conscious about my cravat. He grinned,
exhibiting himself in general and his tie in particular.

"Like it?"

"Beamy," said Dolores,
poking at her hair in front of the hall mirror.

"She never says I'm
beamy," I complained.

Smith looked me over. From his
expression, I expected him to say, "You aren't."

"You'll do."

"You look just fine,
Bobby," said Dolores.

"Thanks again."

"You'll do." Smith
glanced at his watch. "Let's go. We have to pick up my date."

"Date?" said Dolores
arid I simultaneously.

Smith's description of his date,
delivered while weaving through traffic to her apartment, grew in extravagance
the longer he talked. We were, under no circumstances, to make fun of her
hunched back. Dolores protested, asking what kind of people Smith thought we
were.

"You're OK," answered
Smith. He nodded toward me in the back seat. "It's him I'm worried about.
Any man who chews up space station commanders and spits them out would make fun
of a wooden leg."

"Wooden leg!"

Prosthesis, actually, Smith
explained. His date received a horrible injury during the National Karate
Championships. Unfortunately, one of her best tattoos went, with the leg.

By the time we pulled up in front
of a tall apartment building in Surfside, our picture of Smith's' date was
awesome. A hunchbacked little old lady with a wooden leg and tattoos,
practicing karate.

"Back in a minute," said
Smith, popping the car door. "I have to get peg-leg."

Dolores got out and moved to the
cramped back seat, plopping down next to me.

"Dolores."

"Hm-m-m?"

"I think Smith is pulling our
wooden legs."

"Nothing gets past you, does
it, Bobby?"

Peg-leg, otherwise known as Pamela
Rysor, the receptionist at the Merryweather Building, looked stunning. Her
black skirt, ankle-length, was slit to mid-thigh. She showed more sternum than
an anatomy class skeleton. A single strand of pearls circled her throat. I was
transfixed watching her get in the car.

"Hi, Mr. Collins."

The way she said it, more breath
than voice, made Dolores pinch me.

I introduced Dolores. Smith got
in.

We picked up the San Diego Freeway
northbound. Smith punched the exit we wanted into the Guide computer and got in
the Guide lane. It surprised me. The way Smith normally drove, I expected him
to stay in manual all the way. The bullethole in the rear window whistled above
fifty.

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?" answered
Smith, chatting quietly with Pamela in the' front seat.

"What are we going to do
tonight?"

"Have fun, buddy boy."

"Dancing, singingthat sort
of thing?"

"Sure."

"What about Spieler?"

"Is he a baritone or
tenor?"

"Seriously."

"I'm serious. He can join us
if he wants to."

"What if he doesn't?"

"What would you do in his
position? He undoubtedly knows your face and, by now, mine. We show up at his
club, singing, dancing, whatever. Would you be curious?"

"Sure, but"

"But what?"

"There's a difference,"
I told him, "between looking in the horse's mouth and being in it."

The Guide signaled Hollywood
Boulevard. Smith returned his attention to the road and switched to manual.
Behind us, a white van pulled out of the Guide lane. I had noticed it near
Pamela's. We stopped at a signal and turned onto Hollywood Boulevard. The van
followed.

"Smith."

"Yep."

"Someone's following
us."

"The white van, you
mean."

"Yes. Who is it?"

"Search me."

We neared the address of Spieler's
Club. Smith started to park. The van started to park. Smith pulled out and
circled the block.

The van followed. Smith parked
again. The van, unable to find a parking space behind us, passed. A man in the
passenger seat glared at us. Neither Smith nor I recognized him. They parked a
half-block in front of us, remaining inside.

"They're waiting to see if we
stay put," said Smith.

"Are we?"

"Sure. I came to dance, not
play hide-and-go-seek."

 

XI

 

A violaphone honked, backed by
bass, piano and saxophoneall throbbing, squealing and electrified. We pushed
our way through the bobbing bodies toward a table. The walls, floor and ceiling
looked like giant projections of tinted amoebas, dividing and multiplying. So
did most of the people. A girl, her face reduced to a blinking trancebut
frenzied, definitely frenziedgrabbed my hand.

"Dance?"

"Hm-m-m?" I inspected
the corners of her mouth for foam.

"Dance," she droned,
undulating.

"I have to"

"Dance," she commanded,
oscillating.

"But"

"No dance?"

"No."

Her tongue lolled from the corner
of her mouth. I took it to be a sign of disapproval. I followed Smith to our
table. Almost immediately, he and Pamela disappeared into the crowd. I could
see Smith's arms flailing over the dancers and catch glimpses of Pamela,
writhing. She writhed well.

"What's he doing?" I
asked Dolores.

"Pardon me?"

I shouted above the squealing
violaphone. "What's Smith doing?"

"He said he was going to
look things over!"

"The only thing he's
looking over," I yelled, "is Pamela!"

"I saw you getting an
eyeful, too!"

"Dolores! Please! Don't
start that!"

The band reached something near
ten to the tenth decibels.

"Dance?" Dolores
might have said. It was impossible to tell.

"WHAT?"

"DANCE?" Dolores
shimmied, signaling her meaning. Abruptly, the band stopped.

"NO!"

Smith and Pamela approached.
"What are you yelling for, buddy boy?"

"Smith," I said, my
voice still louder than normal in spite of the pause in the music, "we can't
stay here."

"Why?"

"We'll all go deaf."

"You don't know what's good,
buddy boy. That's the Stone Jock up there on the bandstand."

"I don't care if it's Rudy
Vallee or someone else out of your heyday. They pierce."

"Rudy Vallee was a little
before my time," said Smith, nodding across the dance floor. "There's
Spieler."

I looked across the room. At a
table next to the dance floor, Spieler sat with two men and a girl. She looked
familiar. After several seconds, I recognized her as my erstwhile dance
partner.

"Does he know we're
here?" I asked.

"Who knows?" Smith
answered. The band struck up. "Let's dance, Dolores."

Smith led Dolores onto the floor.
His arms flapped above her bobbing head. Though Smith's style could have been
improved, his enthusiasm seemed boundless. Pamela looked at me, inquiring, over
the din, whether I wanted to take a turn around the floor.

"We might as well get
group rates at the chiropractor," I shouted.

"Pardon me?"

"Never mind!"

Once I got into the music, only my
spine felt about to snap. Everything else held up. The amoebas flashed on the
walls and the people. Pamelapurple, green, orangewobbled in front of me, her
anatomy threatening to free itself with each twitch. Faces flashed pastSmith,
grinning; Dolores, intense, puckering; Pamela, erotic; Spieler, inquiring.

I tried to talk to Pamela.

"Miss Rysor!"

"Pam!"

"Where did you meet
Smith?"

"At work!"

"Did he take you anyplace
interesting Wednesday?" The gossip in me wanted to know.

She looked at me, squirming
rhythmically. "Wednesday?"

"Didn't you go out with
him"someone jostled me"Wednesday night?"

"Not me!" She
bent forward, shaking her blond hair like someone emptying a dustmop. The music
stopped. I stopped. Eventually, Pamela stopped. We headed back to our table.
The leader of the Stone Jockperhaps the Stone Jock himselfannounced a
fifteen-minute break.

Smith began to regale Pamela and
Dolores with a tale from his youth. I could see Spieler out of the corner of my
eye, talking to one of his men, I imagined a contract being put out on us, hit
men behind every door. I remembered the white van outside.

"Smith."

"Don't interrupt," said
Dolores. Dolores thinks she has to improve the creditable job my mother did on
my manners.

"Smith."

He continued his story, ignoring
me. Pamela and Dolores, round-eyed and breathless, listened.

"Smith."

"Bobby, please!"

"Smith, Spieler's coming this
way."

Smith, annoyed at my interruption,
scowled at me. "So?"

"I just thought you'd like to
know."

"He had to, sooner or later,
didn't he?" Smith returned to his tale. Spieler approached and halted near
Smith's elbow. He looked different than the pictures in the Merryweather file.
Not older, just harder, more intense.

"And then," said Smith,
glancing up at Spieler as if he were a waiter, suddenly discovered at the
table, "the man said" Smith's voice trailed off. "Hi,
Fred."

Spieler, his lean face impassive,
scrutinized Smith. Sizing him up? Probably.

"I understand," said
Spieler, "you've been applying for work at one of my companies."

I heard a faint New England
intonation in Spieler's voice, inherited from his parents.

"Man's gotta eat," said
Smith.

"I could have you thrown out,
Mr. Smith."

"You could," said Smith,
smiling. "But you won't."

"I won't?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I'm the piece in the game
that doesn't fit."

Spieler looked startled. Somehow,
Smith had touched a nerve. "What game is that, Mr. Smith?"

Smith waved his hand at Spieler,
pushing aside the question. "Come on, Fred. Don't play dumb. You're a
direct man. Be direct." Before Spieler could answer, Smith turned to
Pamela. "Do you like football players?"

"Sure."

I could see she did. Too bad for
us old ping-pong men.

Smith nodded at Spieler.
"Fred here was a quarterback at UCLA. In eighty games, he only took to the
air thirteen percent of the time. Ground games. Slug it out. That's Fred.
Sixty-three percent of his ground plays went through the middle. There's
something to that."

 

Spieler listened, smiling faintly.
"That was a long time ago, Mr. Smith. People change."

"Not much. You saw us here.
You came over. You could have sent someone else." Smith glanced at Pamela.
"Fred's a direct man." He looked up at Spieler. "As long as
you're here, have a seat."

Smith continued his asides to
Pamela. "You see what I mean? Direct. Right to the point." He looked
at Spieler. "I want to talk."

"So talk."

"Why do you need armed men at
your Space Operations Center?"

I flinched. Smith was no end-run
man himself. By Spieler's expression, calm yet courteously attentive, Smith
could have been asking where he got his cravat.

"We've had a rash of old men
running through the facilities. We don't want them to get hurt."

"How bad is Merryweather
going to hurt you when the Big Gate's finished?"

"Not much. We have
established markets."

"Come off it, Fred,"
said Smith, lighting a cigar. He puffed, working up a substantial ember and
blowing out smoke. "He's going to break your back and you know it."

"There are doubts," said
Spieler, glancing at me, "that the Gate will be finished. If anyone
were capable of finishing it, and if it were finished, and if it
worked, we estimate some encroachment on our markets."

"Encroachment!" hooted
Smith. "You won't have any markets, to encroach on." He puffed
the cigar. "Next question. Why do you have two spacecraft standing off the
Big Gate?"

"Mr. Smith, as you no doubt
know, I try to keep my Saturday evenings free of business concerns."

The more I watched Spieler, the
more impenetrable he seemed. He listened to Smith, showing little reaction.
Once or twice, his cheek, tinted green by the club lighting, twitched. It could
have been the smoke from Smith's cigar, irritating his eye. In another
contextmeeting Spieler at a party or at workI would have described him as
quiet. Knowing his background and remembering Norton, his silence seemed
threatening, unpredictable.

Smith bearded the lion.

"Try this on for size, Fred.
The major capital investment of Spieler Interstellar is in, drone ships. Your
first shipload made you a billionaire. Since then, you've sunk everything into
the fleet. The odds were with you. In spite of the cost, the, financial risk
was low. If only ten percent of your fleet returned, you would profit. Then
Merryweather started the Big Gate. Word got out. Spieler Interstellar stock
slipped. It's down eighty-seven points now and still going."

"Eighty-six."

"The rats are leaving the
sinking ship. You had to stay competitive or hit the showers. You would never
hit the showers. You have to play, don't you? But how? Any day Merryweather
will pull a hunk of rock out of that orbiting mother lode and tie it to your
feet.

"Merryweather put up relay
satellites to his space station. Your technical people told you it could mean
only one thing. The interface phase-shift problem for ungrounded matter
transmitters had been solved. If the solution applied to your drone ships, it
meant you could send people.

"Drone ships go out empty.
Everyone knows an empty leg on any type ship is wasted space. Why not send out
people? Passengers pay more per pound than rocks. You got the phase-shift
solution somehow"

"Smith," I interrupted.

"Quiet, buddy boy."

"Smith, you're talking
too"

Spieler looked at me, his
expression cutting off my protest. "Let him talk."

Let him talk, hell! Smith was
about to blow the whole thing. Why? A rational explanation eluded me. I
remembered Smith's after-dinner conversation on Monday evening, describing his
relationship to his daughter and son-in-law. It boiled down to one thing. Smith
wanted to be considered a competent adult, someone capable of dealing with the
world no matter what the world tossed at him. His family refused to give him
that respect. He thought he had figured out Spieler's motives. He wanted
Spieler to know it, to appreciate it. Smith pictured Spieler as his personal
enemy. If his enemies respected him, he knew it was given only because it was
due. His enemies had respected him once. They would again.

 

I stood up. "Let's get out of
here, Smith."

Smith jabbed an index finger at
me. "Sit down, buddy boy!"

"Smith, you can't do this.
You'll blow"

"I can do any damn
thing I please! Ask Horace." The intensity of his feeling showed in his face.
"Now, sit down!"

I sat down. Smith looked up at
Spieler.

"You got the phase-shift
solution, but you learned something in the process. Merryweather had a flying
wedge play tucked away. When did you realize it was all over? Three months ago
when Norton wouldn't play on your team? Hell of a guy, that Norton. He didn't
give a damn about money, did he? How much did you offer him? Half of
everything, wasn't it?"

Spieler's eye twitched. He
remained silent.

"Half! And he laughed at you.
He was a-mean son-of-a-bitch, that Norton. He didn't care about money. He
didn't care about his wifeand she was no help to you. She can't do long
division without a computer. She could repeat what Norton said but she didn't
understand enough of it to make any sense. Norton only wanted one thing in his
life and he already had it. He wanted his Gate finished, his precious theory
verified. You knew Norton. The Gate would work. A man like that couldn't fail.
Did you have him killed or did someone just oblige you, knowing it would please
you?"

"Smith," I said. His
tirade was turning sour. Accusing Spieler of sharp business practice was one
thing. Accusing him of murder could get us killed.

"Just a minute, buddy boy.
I've got one more question."

Behind Spieler, the band mounted
the stage, preparing to blare.

"You'd better make it
quick," I said, watching the saxophonist limber up.

"My question, Freddy, is what
now? No one's irreplaceable and Norton's been replaced."

Spieler stood motionless, glaring
at Smith. Slowly, a smile broke on his face, a smile I can only describe as a
snarl, muted but twisted. I felt I was staring directly into Spieler's mind.
When he spoke, quietly, his voice had a force of will and determination I have
never heard from anyone else.

"I'll win, Smith."

The band blared, drowning any
response from Smith. Spieler turned and pushed his way violently into the dance
floor crowd.

Smith motioned for us to leave. We
followed him. I knew Smith had blown it, revealed everything we knew about
Spieler. I made up my mind to talk to Mr. Merryweather. Smith was old.
His judgment had become distorted. He wanted to prove he was still hero, the
eternal damn hero.

Outside, I tried to talk to Smith.
He smiled pleasantly at me. Nothing had happened, said the smile. Old Smith,
the hero, was on the job.

"Now we're cooking," he
said.

"Now we're cooked, you mean.
How in hell's name do you expect to deal with that man when he knows everything
we know?"

"You worry about Norton's
Gate and I'll worry about Spieler."

I caught Smith's sleeve and
stopped him. Dolores and Pamela paused, looking at me.

"You'll worry about
Spieler," I mocked. "This is not some kind of game, you know! You and
Spieler fighting it out for King of the Mountain! If you're right that he's
involved in Norton's death, he may become involved in ours! Did you see that
man's face when he left the table? He wanted to break your neck with his own
hands!"

"Yep. Did you see those
eyes?"

"Yes, I saw them! That's
what, I'm talking about!"

"And that mouthtwisted like
that."

"Smith, you love this,
don't you?"

"He's nuts, you know."

"Who?"

"Spieler."

"You're the one who's
nuts!"

Dolores broke in. "I did feel
kind of sorry for Mr. Spieler the way Scarlyn was browbeating him."

"Sorry for him!" I
yelled. "Wait until a bomb flies through our front window and see how
sorry you feel!"

"Bobby, don't get
hysterical."

"I'm not getting hysterical!
Smith here just gave away the whole game!"

"I'm sure Mr. Smith knows
what he's doing."

"You people are all
blind!"

Smith put his hand on my shoulder.
"Robert, why don't you worry about something important."

"Like what?"

"The Gate, or"

"Or what?"

He pointed down the street.
"The two guys in that white van."

 

XII

 

The van followed us home. On the
freeway, Smith pulled out from the Guide lane and stepped on the Ferrari. The
van dwindled behind us. He slowed, letting it catch up.

"What was that for?"

"Now they know I'm letting
them follow me."

"This is just a big game to
you, isn't it, Smith?"

"Bobby, don't be
obnoxious," said Dolores.

"Sure, it's a game."

"Do you care who wins?"

"I'm paid to care. Look at it
this way. If someone said, here's a high stakes poker game. I want you to play.
I'll take the winnings but I'll suffer the losses. I just want you to play.
Would you play?"

"It depends."

"For someone like
Horace."

I thought about Mr. Merryweather.
"Probably. But this isn't a poker game. And how do you know those two are
following you? They could be following me."

"Oh, Bobby," said
Dolores. "You're so egotistical. Why would anyone follow you?"

"I did replace Norton,
you know."

"Robert's right," said
Smith. "I'd rather be wrong."

At times, the world is against
you. I could see it was my time. People like Smith, blabbing their heads off to
people like Spieler. People like Dolores, accusing me of egomania. Me! I
sulked the rest of the way home. All I wanted was a phone. Mr. Merryweather had
to know about Smith.

Smith pulled up in front of our
house. The van parked down the street.

"I'll drop you two
here," said Smith. "As soon as you get inside, check the street from
the window. If our friends are still there, call a cop. If not, I'll handle
it."

"OK, hero."

Smith looked at me. "What was
that crack for?"

"Forget it. Let's go,
Dolores."

Pamela got out and pushed the seat
forward. Dolores and I followed.

"Good night, Pam."

"Good night, Bob."

 

Dolores and I walked up the path
to our front door. Dolores was muttering something. I asked what her problem
was.

" 'Good night, Pam,'"
she said while I looked for my key. " 'Good night, Bob.'"

"Dolores. Please."

"Good night, ootsy-cootsy
little Bobby."

"You don't like her?"

"I like her just fine.
It's you I'm worried about."

Inside, I checked at the window. The
van was gone. I went to the phone and called the Merryweather Building. They
put me through to Mr. Merryweather, who was out of the building.

He came on the screen wearing a
Mao jacket. I must have look startled.

"When in Rome," said Mr.
Merryweather. "What can I do you?"

"It's Smith."

I told him about Smith and
Spieler. He listened, possibly smiling. It was difficult to tell. Inscrutable.

When I finished, he thought a
moment.

"Robert."

"Yes, sir."

"Ten years ago, I got a call
very much like this one. From Phillip. Smith was a menace. Smith was insane.
Smith was this and that."

"I don't see what Duff
has"

"I admit Phillip had other
reasons. Smith was apparently zeroing in on him. But the tenor of the
conversation was the same. I also admit Smith's actions sound peculiar."

"Peculiar is hardly
the"

"But Scarlyn has one other
quality, in spite of his methods."

"What's that?"

"He's usually right. Give him
your complete cooperation."

"But, sir"

"As Captain Wilkins was
recently told," continued Mr. Merryweather in an even voice, "if
Scarlyn says spit to windward, spit."

I blushed. "I
understand."

"Good. I have to go now.
Chairman Chee is waiting."

The screen went blank.

Cooperate. OK, the private had his
orders. He might think the general was, nuts, but he had his Orders. He went to
bed; grumbling. Privates always grumble.

 

For three weeks, I saw nothing of
Smith, or much else. I became so immersed in the Gate's problems, I hardly saw
Dolores, even when she was sitting on my lap.

"Bobby?"

"Hm-m-m?"

"What are you thinking
about?"

"Work."

A constant refrain. Work. I never felt
dazed. I just looked it, walking around with engineering on the brain.

"Bobby?"

"Hm-m-m?"

"Can't you stop thinking
about that stuff?"

"No."

"Your gray matter's going to
transmit."

"Hm-m-m?"

One day during the week after our
visit to Spieler's night club, my office phone hummed. Pamela informed me H.
Winton Tuttle was on the line.

"Tell him to go to
hell."

"I'm afraid he won't
go."

"All right. Put him on."


Harold, unable to find Smith, had
found Collins, again.

"I told you,
Collins!" shouted Harold as soon as he saw me.

"More than once, no
doubt."

"He's escaped!"

"King Kong?"

"No! Scarlyn! I told
those men he was dangerous. But nothey didn't believe me."

"You told who?"

"This has gone far
enough! Do you understand me?"

"What men?"

"From the Golden Years
Geriatric Center."

Golden Years? Dr. Perkov? Spieler?


"What kind of car did they
have?"

"I really don't know! I
warned you, Collins"

"A white van?"

"Yes. I think it was white.
Why?"

"Mr. Tuttle, please calm
down. What connection do you have with Golden Years?"

The day after Smith and I visited
Dr. Perkov, two men appeared at Tuttle's house in Seal Beach. Smith, they said,
had begun procedures to voluntarily commit himself to the Center. At the last
moment. Smith became violent, attacking another patient. According to them
Smith fled. They followed, but he escaped. No mention was made of me.

Tuttle remembered the cut over
Smith's eye and his limp, attributing them to the attack on the other patient.

"Didn't you wonder about the
bullethole in the rear window?" asked. "If they were trying to stop
him for his own good, they wouldn't shoot him."

"They said they knew nothing
about the hole. For all I know, Scarlyn could have been out robbing gas
stations."

They showed Tuttle commitment
papers, assuring him their treatments would soon alleviate Smith's violent
propensities. After all, they argued, Smith himself had sought commitment and
treatment in a lucid moment. Smith was a danger to himself and others. All,
Tuttle had to do was get his wife's signature on the commitment order. A
daughter could commit a father.

"And you did it."

"Of course. Scarlyn is
sick."

"But he escaped."

"Yes. He injured one of their
people, I understand."

"Seriously, I hope."

"It just proves, beyond a
shadow of a doubt, that Scarlyn is dangerous!"

"If they call back, tell them
your wife has changed her mind."

"I'll do no such thing! I
warned you! I warned him! Scarlyn is slipping fast. I want him safe before he
injures himself seriously! I can see from your expression, Collins, that you
intend to do nothing! You have been warned!"

He hung up. I tried to call Smith.
No one answered. I tried again that night and the next day. For the next two
and a half weeks, he was missing in action. I concentrated on my work. Smith,
after all, could do any damn thing he pleased, or so he said.

The integration computer arrived
from Master Toole in San Francisco. Even with minichip construction, it filled
four of Burgess' assembly rooms. Half the computer was backup circuits. Since
computers worked at sub-light speedselectrons being what they areand tachyons
work at super-lightspeeds, most of Norton's program had to do with anticipation
flip-flops. A batter at home plate, who hits the ball into center field, finds
it difficult to run out and catch the ball. The fielder, even looking into the
sun, can anticipate where the ball will be and catch it. The computer played
batter and fielder. It still had to think fast, even if it could anticipate.
Its flip-flops had been glitch-tested to five nanoseconds without a crash.

Burgess had the computer ready by
mid-April along with the modulation equipment. The pressure on me doubled.
Everything was ready but the reactor. I began spending nights and weekends on
the station. I put on a double shift. My disposition deteriorated. I snapped at
everyone, even Dolores.

"Bobby," she said one
night, waking to find me sitting up in bed with a notebook and pencil.

"What?"

"What are you doing at this
hour?"

"Reworking these specs for
Bernie. I couldn't sleep."

She looked at the pencil and
paper. "Don't you need your books or something?"

I tapped my temple with the eraser
end of my pencil. "It's in here."

Saying it, I remembered Norton.,
For the first time, I felt something for Norton. Understanding. I understood
Norton's passion to prove his theory. I understood how it consumed his every
thought. He sacrificed friendships, marriage, an offer of unimaginable
wealtheventually his lifeproving it and himself.

"Dolores."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Have you noticed any changes
in me during the last month?"

"You're very concerned about
your work."

"Anything else?"

"No, dear. What were you
thinking about?"

"Norton."

"You're not anything like
Norton."

"I'm not?"

"No."

"You're sure."

"Sure, I'm sure. He was sort
of a fanatic, wasn't he?"

The next day, I chewed out Bernie
Mitchel. Where the hell were my lasers? And the liquid lithium, he could at
least have that sent up.

"Bob."

"What?" I snapped.

"What's bothering you?"

"Nothing. Let's just get this
damn show on the road!"

"You need a vacation."

"I need some cooperation.
Where's the lithium?"

"Duff's holding up the order
until we absolutely need it."

"Duff!"

I broke the connection and called
Duff. He never got a word in edgewise. I got the lithium. When I told Dolores
about it, she said Duff should have told me to go to hell.

"I suppose that's what you
would have done," I said, annoyed.

"Yes," she answered,
calm in the face of my somewhat loud statement. "When you reward obnoxious
conduct, people are just more obnoxious the next time."

"You have a degree in
psychology, too?"

"No. But it's true."

"Let's not bring up my
manners."

"This isn't manners. It's
just common decency."

I grunted.

All right. So I was a
son-of-a-bitch for a while. I got my reactor.

Smith called the day we ran
through the last systems checks.

"How's it going, buddy
boy?" He looked relaxed and tanned.

"Busy. Where have you
been?"

"Fishing."

I remembered Smith's last fishing
expedition, using himself for bait at Spieler Space Operations. It almost got
him hooked. "Catch anything?"

"A few trout. You look
haggard, Robert. Have you lost weight?"

"Some. Tell me about your
trout."

Smith began describing
troutrainbow, steelhead, three, five, seven pounds. I scrutinized his tan
face. It was hard to say if he was joking.

"Smith."

"What?"

"You really did go
fishing."

"Would I lie to you?"

"I thought" I shook my
head. "You weren't speaking metaphorically?"

"Nope."

The idea overwhelmed me. Smith
spent a week rattling Spieler's cageinvading facilities, confronting Spieler
himself, spilling everything we knewthen dropped everything. To go fishing! I
tried to control myself.

"What about Spieler?"

"What about him?"

"You just let him hang
fire."

"What else was I supposed to
do?"

"Something! Anything! Damn
it, Smith"

"Robert"

"That man's out there . .
." I pointed off camera. Actually, I was pointing into space. Spieler
could hardly have been out there. "He's trying to get us! And you, you're
off fishing!"

"Robert"

"Gone fishing! I'll put it on
our tombstone! Gone fishing! And right next to it, Out to Lunch!"

I hung up.

Smith called back immediately.
"Robert."

"What is it?"

"I thought I'd come up and
visit your junkbox. Have those ships near the focusing ring moved?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. See
you." He hung up.

Burgess, Captain Wilkins, even
Webber, the mathematician, along with assorted technicians, engineers and the
company astronomer, Dr. Steichen, crowded the control room. Smith, his dark
brown face contrasting with the pallid complexions of the station crew, stood
at the rear of the crowd, searching for a match. Unable to find one, he gave
up, chewing the cigar instead.

I pushed to the front of the
crowd. Dr. Steichen came over to me with a document viewer, squinting first at
it, then at me. Steichen squints constantly. A star in a telescope is probably
too bright for him. He was in charge of coordinates.

"Dr. Collins, I've laid in
the coordinates for Wolf 359c: The star itself is eight light-years distance.
Several of Spieler Interstellar's first ships have appeared from there
recently. They prove it a potentially profitable location. If I understand
correctly, the Gate should take considerably less than sixteen years."

"Considerably. Thank you,
Doctor."

The more I thought about it, the
more I thought Smith was probably right. Spieler resorted to stripping Norton's
memory in desperation. With Norton heading the project, Merryweather
Enterprises could be sure of success. With me in charge, Spieler could afford
to wait. If I bungled the job, Spieler could watch Merryweather Enterprises
sink, the albatross of a focusing ring around its neck. The idea did nothing to
lessen my sense of responsibility.

"What are we waiting for, Dr.
Collins," asked Burgess at my elbow.

"Rodriguez," I answered.
"He's repositioning the cameras. We want to have a clear view of what we
get."

"If we get anything,"
said Burgess.

"You're a big help."

"I just meant"

"Never mind. Where's
Smith?"

"Back there, I think."

"Would you get him for
me?"

Burgess left. Several monitor
screens around the room lit, showing the Gate field. Through the shimmering
field, the stars, normally motionless points of light in space, twinkled.

"Station Gatekeeper reports
Rodriguez back," said Captain Wilkins.

"Fine."

Smith pushed through the crowd to
me.

"Hi, buddy boy." He
inspected my face, chewing his cigar. "Nervous?"

"Don't ask. If I knew, I
might get that way. Sorry I blew up."

"Forget it."

"See that?" I asked,
pointing through the transparent wall at the focusing ring.

Smith nodded.

"Now you're going to see some
real fishing."

I stepped to the Big Gate control
panel. The controls, three touch-plates below direct readouts that summarized
the activity initiated by each switch, were protected by safety covers. The
first cover was up, its touchplate lit, "Power." The load readout
above it showed no appreciable burden. I flipped up the second safety cover,
"Focus," and touched the plate. Amber glowed beneath my finger. The
power drain increased slightly. The Gate reached out. Momentarily, I imagined
the reactor blowing, a blast of billowing light sweeping away station and Gate.
It would ruin my reputation.

"Where's Mr.
Merryweather?" I asked Captain Wilkins.

"He's watching from his
office."

To Mr. Merryweather, in spite of
his understanding attitude, the Gate was a business venture, a risk. To me? I
didn't know. I flipped up the last safety cover, "Activate."

"Got a rabbit's foot,
Smith?"

"I'm not superstitious."


I touched the plate. The dull red
plastic lit under my finger.

 



 

 

Part 3

 

XIII

 

We waited. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty
minutes. Smith, standing next to me, found a match and lit his cigar. The
pungent smell drifted over the heads in the crowd. No one complained. No one
noticed. They watched monitor screens, tense, anxious, their attention rapt.
Smith glanced around, impatient.

"Is this thing gonna
work?" he asked.

I pointed to the power readout.
The load had increased. "We've got one on the line right now."

"A big one?"

"It's set on maximum. Fifteen
kilometers across and two deep."

I glanced at the "Duration"
indicator. Three seconds, two, one. The rockripped from the surface of a
planet eight light-years from Earthburst from the center of the ring, rushing
at the nearest cameras, filling screens.

Pandemonium exploded in the
control-room, cheers, shouts, whistles. I looked from screen to screen,
fascinated. Successively, each of the nearest cameras winked out. The rock had
passed them. Only the distant cameras tracked it.

I checked the summary readouts in
front of me. The chemical analysis, made as the rock materialized, was better
than anticipated. Forty percent niobium ore, rich in tantalum. Fifty-eight
percent miscellaneous. Two percent vegetation.

"Congratulations, buddy
boy," said Smith.

"Congratulate Norton. Iwe
just put his toy together."

"I wasn't talking about the
Gate. I meant Spieler."

"What's he got to do
with"

"You just put him out of
business. From now on, his drone ships will arrive and find nothing but
stripped worlds."

Somehow, the way Smith said
itstripped worldsbothered me. He pointed at the chemical analysis readouts.

"What's this two percent
vegetation?"

"Jungle, probably;" I
answered. "Africa's still the best source of niobium on Earth."

"Apes, lionsthat kind of
jungle?"

"There was no animal life
indicated."

"This time."

"What's that supposed to
mean?"

"Nothing. Just a
thought."

The thought, clear enough without
being articulated, bothered me. I imagined an intelligent race somewhere in the
galaxy developing a Big Gate, reaching across the stars and ripping out fifteen
kilometers of Los Angeles. No great loss, you say? Only if you're not ripped
out with it.

Smith moved through the crowd to
the transparent wall. I followed, stopping next to him and looking out. The
Gate, a quarter-inch circle to our unaided eyes, hung below us, its solar orbit
synchronized with ours. The rock, a speck, drifted rapidly away from the center
of the ring. I ordered Rodriguez out with constructors to slow its drift and
match its orbit to the station, then had Burgess shut off the Gate.

People congratulated me, shaking
hands and returning to their duties. I stayed in the emptying control-room,
watching the Gate and the new asteroid. During the weeks of preparation, I had
pushed aside the implications of the Gate. Too many technical problems
impinged. Technical problems, though complex, were more susceptible to solution
than moral problems.

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?"

"I have a question. It may
sound dumb, but it bothers me."

"Shoot."

"See that Gate out
there?"

"Yes."

"Was it right to build
it?" Smith looked at me, smiling around his cigar. He seemed about to say
something sarcastic, then recognized I was serious. "What's `right'
mean?"

"Morally right."

"I don't suppose the Pope
will mind."

"That isn't what I
meant."

"Murky waters,
morality."

"In itself, is it right or
wrong?"

"Das Ding an sich."

"What's that mean?"

"The thing in itself. It's an
old argument. Is a gun, in itself, wrong?"

"A gun's just used in a small
area," I answered, begging his question. "A shoots B. Murder
with it is wrong. Self-defense isn't."

"You're sure."

"Yes. Why?"

"Some people aren't. They
even think killing in self-defense is morally wrong. What about a billion guns?
Is that a billion small areas or a global war?"

"The Gate is one thing,
Smith, one thing with a potential so devastating it's beyond either of our
comprehensions."

"Speak for yourself."

"Think about the revolution
the Wright brothers caused."

"Yep. Fighter planes and
passenger planes. Take your pick. But you've got the moral shoe on the wrong
foot."

"I do?"

"Morality applies to human
actions, not things." He relit his cigar. "An sich or
otherwise."

"OK. Were we right to
build it?"

Smith shrugged. "Who knows?
It's done. If you hadn't finished it, someone else would have. Spieler,
maybe. It was ready to happen. I'd rather have Horace playing with it than
Spieler."

"Dr. Collins,"
interrupted Captain Wilkins. "Mr. Merryweather wants to talk to you."


"Thank you, Captain. I'll
take it in my office. Tell me when Rodriguez gets the rock in orbit."

Mr. Merryweather congratulated me,
indicated I would find a substantial bonus in my pay envelope and asked to talk
to Smith. Out of range of the phone, I could only see and hear Smith. He
nodded, listening intently, said OK several times and hung up.

"Let's go, buddy boy."

"Go? Where?"

"To the surface. Horace had a
man watching Spieler Space Operations in Tustin. When your pebble bounced out,
all hell broke loose."

Smith started out the door. The
phone hummed.

"Just a second," I said.
I touched the phone. Pamela Rysor came on the screen.

"Mr. Parry is on the
line." Parry? I looked at Smith.

"Right on schedule,"
said-Smith. "Talk to the man."

"Put him on, Miss
Rysor." Parry's plump face came on the screen, smiling pleasantly.

"What can I do for you?"
I asked.

"Nothing at all, Mr. Collins.
I'm just calling to complete our little bargain."

"What bargain?"

"Come, come, Mr. Collins. A
man of your abilities must have an excellent memory. We were to have exchanged
certain information. I have fulfilled my end of the exchange."

Either Parry knew nothing about
the security recordings kept on all calls to the Merryweather Enterprize, or
he didn't care.

"What do you want to
know?"

"As I told you, nothing as
specific as the information I furnished you. Tell me, did our lasers prove
satisfactory?"

Parry knew the lasers worked well.
Spieler's two ships, still stationed off the Gate, would have reported our
success. Smith, evidently thinking the same thing, nodded yes, indicating
I should answer Parry.

"They performed
satisfactorily."

"Good. I'm glad to hear
it." He sounded glad. "Was there enough of a safety margin?"

"Safety margin?"

"The load placed on the
reactor by the Gatewas it severe?"

Knowing the load, Parry could
calculate the Gate's power consumption. The fact seemed harmless. It would only
tell Spieler the grasping power of the Gate during our test, something he
probably knew already. It would reveal nothing about the workings of the Gate
itself. Just because you know that Boulder Dam produces so many kilowatt-hours
of electricity, doesn't mean you know how. A salesman, furnishing lasers for a
reactor, would probably ask the question. I looked at Smith. He shrugged,
leaving the decision to me.

"No, the load was not
severe," I said.

"Excellent. I'm glad our
product performed well. What, exactly, was the load?"

I looked worried. Parry tried to
seem reassuring.

"Dr. Collins, our technical
people would like to check their calculations."

I still looked doubtful.

"Come, come, Dr. Collins. We
had a bargain."

I told him. He looked satisfied.

"Not bad at all. Plenty of
room to spare. Thank you for your time, Dr. Collins." He hung up.

Smith raised his eyebrows,
bewildered.

"What was that all
about?" I asked.

Smith pondered, staring at the
floor and pulling on the cigar in his mouth. "I don't know."

"You don't know! You're
the one who's supposed to know! The answer man! I thought Parry was
supposed to blackmail me or something! That's what you said when you
were one step ahead of them."

"Maybe I was wrong."

"This is a hell of a time to
be wrong!"

Smith began pacing my office,
chewing on his dead cigar and working it from side to side in his mouth.
"Was there anything funny about the lasers you got from Fenton?"

"Funny?"

"Anything wrong with
them?"

"If you're thinking of
sabotage, forget it. They were perfect. I had our best engineer in charge"


"You?"

"No, Bernie Mitchel. He went
over them with a fine-toothed comb. They were perfect. In fact, they were
better than perfect. Installed in the reactor, they could produce more power
than we needed."

Smith halted, withdrawing the
cigar from his mouth. "Better than perfect?"

"That's right. So what?"


"More power than you
needed?"

"Yes."

"That's what Spieler was
confirming, that there was surplus power. There's something to it."

"What?"

"Damned if I know. Let's
go."

"Where?"

"Tustin."

Smith parked the Ferrari a block
from Spieler Space Operations, out of view behind a slope. We walked the block,
Smith strolling, glancing around as if out for his morning constitutional.

"Beautiful day," said
Smith.

I snorted. From Corona del Mar to
Tustin, Smith had said nothing, intent on his driving. I tried to coax his plan
from him. He remained quiet. I began to suspect he didn't have a plan.

We reached the crest of the slope.
Spieler Space Operations, a cluster of low buildings surrounded by a chain-link
fence, spread out below us. I recognized the administration building from
Smith's description. The rest of the buildings looked anonymous.

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m."

"What are we supposed to do
here?"

"Poke around."

"How?"

"Beats me. Play it by
ear."

"Play it by ear! If
they catch us, they'll hang us by our ears!"

"I guess we'd better be
careful then," said Smith, coming to a halt. "Ah, here it is. I
thought I noticed this the other day."

Smith' stepped off the sidewalk
and began following a worn dirt path next to the fence. I glanced into the
compound. If all hell had broken loose, someone had caught it. The place showed
no signs of life. The more I thought, the more anxious I became. Smith clearly
intended to get inside. It was broad daylight. Aside from what Spieler might
do, there were laws against this sort of thing. I glanced at the open area
between the fence and the buildings, imagining myself running across it.

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Can't we come back
tonight?"

"There won't be anyone here
tonight."

"I know."

Smith stopped and squatted.
"I thought I'd find this."

"What?"

"A hole. Kids and dogs hate
fences."

I looked at the base of the fence.
The wire mesh, buried for most of its length, was stretched over a narrow
divot. Only a kid or a dog could get through it.

"You don't expect me to crawl
under there?"

He pointed at the top of the
fence. "You could go over."

"I'm not dressed for this
kind of thing."

"Neither am I. Put your coat
on inside out." He dug in his coat pocket, coming up with a plastic disk.
"On the other side, turn your coat right side out and put this on the
picket."

I glanced at the disk, green,
inset with my picture. I read the inscription around the picture. Robert
Cluggins, Spieler Space Operations, Supervisor.

"Cluggins?"

"Like it?"

"Not much. Where'd you get
these?"

"Don't ask. It might tarnish
your image of Horace."

Smith reversed his coat and put it
on, sealing it to the collar. He cleaned out the hole with both hands, removing
twigs and dirt.

"Give me a hand here."

We pulled the bottom of the fence
up as high as possible, adding another six inches to the clearance. Smith got
down on his back and squirmed under, inching forward like a soldier penetrating
barbed-wire.

"Can't I just hand my coat
through, Smith?"

"No. You might get the front
of your shirt dirty when you crawl under."

"What about my pants?"

"They're dark enough so the
dirt won't show. Besides, who looks at pants?"

I turned my coat inside out and
followed, squirming under the fence. The lining ripped on a stray wire. Inside,
we brushed each other off and prepared to start for the buildings.

"Smith, this is absolute
lunacy."

"Straighten your
cravat." He pointed at one of the buildings. "That's their Gate.
Where do you suppose everyone is?"

"Waiting in ambush."

He ignored me. "The building
next to the Gate is the one we want."

"What is it?"

"Their computer center."


We walked across the open area
toward the buildings. I kept glancing around, apprehensive. Smith strolled,
enjoying the warm weather.

"Relax, buddy boy."

I felt like the cavalry going into
a box canyon. Indians, behind every rock, watched us, waiting, bows taut. Once
trapped, they would pounce. I imagined myself staked spread-eagle on an ant
hill, Spieler, a feather protruding from behind his head, laughing, sprinkling
sugar on me.

"Smith," I said when we
reached the nearest building. "Where is everyone?"

"Out to lunch?"

"If they let us in, they're
out to lunch all right."

Smith paused outside the computer
center. "Let me do the talking."

Inside, there was no one for Smith
to do the talking to. The corridor stretched out in front of us, empty. We checked
several offices. Empty. Our footsteps echoed in the hall. I remembered the
Merryweather computer center, busy even on Saturday nights.

"It must be Spieler's
birthday," said Smith. "Everyone's at the party."

"Spieler's birthday's in
January."

"That's a joke, son."

"Where are they,
Smith?"

"You got me."

We continued down the hall,
passing empty rooms. Several of the rooms looked recently occupied, coffee cups
on desks, computer displays still lit, processing data. I began to get an eerie
feeling. Somehow, everyone in the building had simply vanished.

"Have you ever seen any of
those old Japanese pictures?" asked Smith.

"A few. The classics.
Kurasawa. That sort of thing."

"Did you ever see The Crud
Eats Again?"

"No."

"It opened with a scene like this.
Empty buildings. Machines running. No people."

"Where were they?"

"The Crud ate them."

Ahead of us, a man in a business
suit popped from a door, halted, inspected us and disappeared into a room on
the opposite side of the hall.

"Crud didn't get him,"
said Smith, picking up his pace. He turned in at the room.

The man looked up from a computer
printout, his round face startled.

"Oh!"

Smith scowled. "Why are you
still here?" he demanded, his voice authoritative.

"Sorry, Mr., eh" He
glanced at Smith's identification disk. "Smythe, I'm just finishing up
here."

"Who are you, anyway?"

The man's eyebrows went up.
"Me?"

Smith scowled even more deeply and
plucked the identification disk from the man's suitcoat, reading it.

"Higgins. Astronomer."
Smith grunted, returning the disk. "You've got no business in here today,
Higgins."

"I know, sir. But I had
to"

"You had to what?"
snapped Smith.

"I had to"

"Come, come, Higgins.
Cluggins and I don't have all day."

"Let him talk," I said.

Smith sneered at me.

"Thank you, Mr.
Cluggins," said Higgins. "I was running a program on these
coordinates, sir. They're all wrong."

"What coordinates?"
asked Smith.

Higgins looked at Smith, dubious.
He glanced at Smith's identification again, then mine. "Green
clearance," said Smith, impatient.

Higgins, anxious, made up his
mind. "I have to tell someone. Mr. Spieler simply would not listen. Look
at this!"

Higgins ripped four feet of
printout paper from the computer's typewriter, handing it to Smith. Smith
glanced down the sheet, uttering noncommittal "Hm's" and
"Ah's" and trying to look intelligent. He handed the sheet to me.

"Now, Higgins," said
Smith, official, brisk, "What's all this about?" Higgins, continuing
to look at Smith, pointed at the sheet in my hands, his expression distraught.
"There! It's all there!"

I looked at the sheet. Somehow, it
seemed familiar. The longer I studied it, the more significance it gained. Dr.
Steichen, just prior to testing the Big Gate, had shown me similar coordinates.
Steichen's figures programmed the matter transmitter's focal point.

"These are drone ship
coordinates," I said, guessing.

Higgins's expression changed,
lighting up. Someone, at least, understood.

"Yes, Mr. Cluggins, exactly.
But they're no good. No good at all. Look at this." He poked at an
equation. "And this." He jabbed at an expression. "It's some
horrible mistake!"

"Why a mistake?"

"Do you know where
that is?"

I looked at the equations.
"No."

"The Crab Nebula, Mr.
Cluggins!

"The Crab!"

"The Crab."

"Itself!"

"So?"

"Sooo?" he mimicked,
indignant. "Sooo? What do you think the Crab Nebula is, some sort
of seafood?"

"Crab Nebula," mused
Smith. "Sounds good."

"It's horrible!" shouted
Higgins, snatching the printout from my fingers. He folded it into a neat
square.

"Why?" I asked.

"If Mr. Spieler sends a drone
ship there"he jerked his thumb at the ceiling"it will
never return!"

"Most of them don't."

"Yes, but why compound the
problem by simply throwing away"he flipped the printout
onto a desk"ships. Money is still, I'm told, money."

"Why won't it come
back?"

"First of all, a round trip
takes eight thousand years!"

"A pretty impressive first of
all,'" said Smith. "What's second?"

"The Crab, Smythe! The
Crab!" Momentarily, the Crab blended in my mind with the Crud.
Question: what happened to Spieler's drone ship? Answer: the Crab ate it.

"The Crab will eat it?"

"Yeees!" said Higgins,
his tone patronizing. "Now you've got it!"

"I do?"

"What Crab?" said Smith.
"I think I missed something."

"The Crab," I explained,
bewildered, "in the Crab Nebula." Higgins nodded, agreeing with me.
Before I wrote Higgins off as a complete maniac, I decided to try for
clarification.

"Dr. Higgins, I was unaware
there was a real Crab in the Crab Nebula. I"

"Shows how much you know.
All you bureaucrats are alike. Give orders right and left, but when it comes
down to knowing somethingdown to the real" Higgins' hand flapped
in front of his mouth, trying to coax out the proper word.

"Nitty-gritty,"
suggested Smith.

"What does that mean?"
inquired Higgins.

"Essence. It's old
slang." "Essence! That's it! When it comes to the real essence, you
bureaucrats are absolute gritty-nitwits!"

"I don't think," said
Smith, "the word was used like that, but I rather like it."

"Ignorant as stones,"
concluded Dr. Higgins.

"I was under the
impression," I persevered, since Smith seemed intent on his diction
reverie, "that the Crab Nebula was so named because of its
appearance."

"Quite right."

"Then where does the Crab
come in?"

"It doesn't come in anywhere.
It's been there all along."

"You're a difficult man to
talk to, Dr. Higgins."

He grunted, contemptuous. "The
Crab, Cluggins, is a pulsar. I like to think of it as having a crab
inside, snapping up any bits of matter that get too close."

"You do."

"Yes."

"And in reality," I
said, my patience exhausted, "what is it?"

"A pulsar. I just told you.
M-1, very young. The Japanese and Chinese observed its nova in the mid-Eleventh
Century, you know. One daymark my wordsit will become a black hole. One day, everything
will become a black hole."

"But now it's just the CrI
mean the pulsar."

"Correct."

End of the line. I knew, vaguely,
about pulsars, giant blue stars collapsed during a supernova to a few
kilometers in diametera spinning neutron star. One fact eluded me. Why, all
things considered, did Spieler want to send a drone ship to a pulsar? He could
have more fun just burning a billion dollars in his backyard. A drone could
never land on a neutron star. I asked Dr. Higgins.

"I'm sure I don't know. I
told you, it is some kind of mistake. Holiday or no holiday, I must convince
Mr. Spieler."

"What do you make of it?"
asked Smith.

I shrugged.

"Does it concern us?"

"Concern you!"
interrupted Higgins. "It is vital to the company! Vital!"

"Who knows?" I answered.
"Maybe."

Higgins snorted something like an
imitation of my "maybe" and reached for his printout. I grabbed it
off the table.

"We'll take care of this for
you."

"But" Higgins looked
from Smith to me, his eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"

"Cluggins."

"Smythe."

Before either Smith or I could
react, Higgins bolted, scurrying to the door and out. Smith hesitated,
wondering whether to pursue. Higgins' footsteps receded. A door slammed.

"Forget him," I said.
"Where's a phone."

Smith pointed. I touched on the
phone and tapped out the direct number to the Merryweather Enterprize.

"Wilkins," said Captain
Wilkins. "Control-roooh, it's you. People have been trying to get hold
of"

"Give me Dr. Steichen,
fast."

The screen went blank. Captain
Wilkins knew enough not to argue with me. I waited.

"Come on, Steichen, come
on."

Steichen's face came on the
screen. I started talking immediately. I told him to listen. When I finished,
he could get a playback from the security recording of the call: He looked
startled to discover his calls were monitored but had the sense to accept it
and listen. The phone did not have a document feed so I had to read the
printout. Four pages of English can be read in a few minutes. Four pages of
math, especially sight-reading someone else's math, takes forever.

"You about done, buddy
boy?" asked Smith, glancing into the corridor.

"No."

"You better get done.
Someone's coming." He kept looking down the corridor. "Scratch that.
A lot of someones are coming."

"Well, close the door."

"Good idea."

I continued reading. Smith closed
the door and blockaded it with a desk chair. I started into the fourth foot of
paper. Steichen stopped me once or twice to verify an expression, trying to
copy while I read.

"Just get it off the tape,
Steichen. I don't have time to wait for your shorthand."

I read, trying to be precise and
quick. People pounded on the office door. The pounding became a rhythmic
thudding, shoulders applied to the outside of the door. Smith, pushing against
them from the inside, bounced with each thump.

"I can't hold this much
longer, buddy boy!" shouted Smith. "Hurry up!"

"I'm hurrying."

I read.

"How much longer?"
shouted Smith over the thumping.

"One minute."

Smith stepped back from the door.
Spieler's men hit it. It flew open, brushing aside the desk chair. A squad of
green-uniformed guards spilled into the room. Smith threw up his hands.

"We give up."

Only the leader, a short,
moderately grizzly but extremely furious man, had his gun drawn, aiming it at
Smith. The others, intent on breaking in the door, had holstered their weapons.


"You, again!"
said Grizzly. "Hiya," said Smith.

"Frisk them," ordered
Grizzly, then noticed me muttering to the phone. The muzzle of his gun swung to
me. "You!"

I looked up. "Me?"

"Get away from that
phone!"

Before I could respond, Smith
moved. A foot clipped Grizzly's gun armthe gun flewan elbow jammed a solar
plexus, rabbit punches here, karate chops thereall placed with speed and
precision. Men slumped, collapsed, groaned and gasped.

I read off the last equations to
Dr. Steichen.

One of the guards, dazed,
staggered backward past the camera. Dr. Steichen watched him.

"What's going on there, Dr.
Collins?"

"Dance contest. Analyze that
stuff and tell me everything you can about it."

"All right. Dr.
Collins?"

"What?"

"Why would anyone want to go
to the Crab Nebula?"

"That, Dr. Steichen,
is what we want to know."

A shot exploded, deafening in the
crowded room. The phone-screen in front of me shattered. Everyone stood
motionless, watching Grizzly with his gun. Smith's hands went up.

"We give up."

"That's what you said last
time," said Grizzly.

"I lied last time."

 

XIV

 

Embarrassed? Too mild a word.
Chagrined? Yes. Humiliated? Yes. Genetic ID. Photograph, head-on, click, profile,
click. Voiceprint. Fingerprints. Duff bailed us out by four o'clock.
They gave us the plastic bags with our personal effects. We left.

On the steps of the Tustin Police
Department, Duff positioned himself to my left to avoid walking next to Smith.

"What did he," asked
Duff, meaning Smith, "think we would gain from this escapade?"

"Ask him," I suggested.

Duff snorted, preferring to
imagine Smith elsewhere.

"He," said Smith,
"thought if it was fair for Spieler to strip Norton's memory, it was fair
for us to strip theirs."

In jail, Smith had told me his
original plan. He wanted to patch Spieler's computer into the Merryweather
computer and drain it. Whatever Spieler was planning would leave traces
somewhere in the computer. I told Duff.

"Did he know how long
it would have taken to sift the entire contents of Spieler Interstellar's
computer center?"

"I doubt it," I
answered.

"He knew," said
Smith, "that any clue would be somewhere within the last three months'
input and that three months' input would not take all that long to analyze.
Sometime during the last three months, Freddy Spieler figured out that he lost
the ball game. That's when he made up his mind."

"To do what?" I asked.

"If I knew that, buddy boy,
we wouldn't have wound up in the hoosgow. But we've got old Higgins' mistake
now. We couldn't have hoped for more."

"We couldn't?"

"Nope."

"What, exactly," said
Duff, addressing his question to me, "is old Higgins'
mistake?"

"The Crab, Duff," said
Smith. "The Crab!"

"Very helpful," said
Duff, disgusted.

We reached Duff's Mercedes. Smith
rode in the back seat, staring out the window, thinking. I rode in the front.

"One thing still bothers
me," said Smith, lighting a cigar.

"Do you have to smoke
that thing in here?" protested Duff.

"Yes."

"What still bothers
you?" I asked.

"Jail."

"It bothers me, too."

"Why did Grizzly and company
turn us over to the police?"

"Try this," said Duff,
momentarily glaring into the rear-view mirror. "You trespassed on
their property, broke into one of their buildings, impersonated an
employee, terrorized an astronomer ..."

"Terrorizing
astronomers," said Smith. "Serious charge."

". . . and broke up half
a dozen guards. One of those men is still in the hospital!"

"Only one," said Smith.
"I'm slowing up."

"If you're slowing up,"
said Duff, hopeful, "you should retire."

"Tried it," answered
Smith. "It's no fun." He looked at me. "Why, buddy boy, did they
put us in the stammer?"

"What would you have
done in their place?"

"Shot us."

I looked at him. "Are you
serious?"

"I wouldn't have shot us, but
if I were them, knowing them, I would have shot us. Or at least shipped us off
to Timbuktu."

Smith had something. I had
expected them to shoot us, or worse. Grizzly had left his men to guard us and
made a phone call, presumably to Spieler. When he returned, his expression
looked sour. Someone had taken the joy from his life. "We've gotta turn
you birds over to the police," he said, and did, personally signing the
complaint at the Tustin Police Station.

"You may have something
there, Smith," I said.

"Yep. But what?"
responded Smith, becoming aware of the road outside. "Turn here."

"What does he want
now?" asked Duff.

"He wants to turn here."


"No."

"Why not?"

"I refuse to take him
back to Spieler Space Operations. I have had enough trouble for one day. I had
to break an engagement to come here."

"With Sharon?" asked
Smith. Duff remained silent. It did seem to me Smith had gone too far. Duff's
relationship with Sharon Norton had entertainment value, but Duff was the wrong
man to share the humor.

"Pull over, Duff," said
Smith.

"Why?"

"I want to talk to you."


Duff pulled over, letting the
engine idle. "What is it?"

"I don't want you to see
Sharon Norton until this is over."

"You what?" shouted
Duff, turning and glaring into the back seat. "What right do you have to
order me"

"Shall we take it up with
Horace?"

"Yes! Damn it, Smith!
Every time I see you, you make havoc out of everything! Mr. Merryweather can
override me on hiring you, and on giving you the kind of authority he
has, but when it comes to my private life, it is none of your damn
business, or his! Do you understand that?"

"Call Horace," said
Smith.

Duff picked up the phone, cradled
between the two front seats, quickly punching out a number.

"Let me speak to Mr.
Merryweather," said Duff. He paused. "Well, find him!" He
glanced at Smith, glowering, waiting. "Hello, Mr. Merryweather, this is
Phillip . . . yes, sir, everything went just fine. I got them out . . . no, no
problems, except him . . . yes, sir, Smith"

"Gimme that phone,"
snapped Smith, grabbing it from Duff's hand. "Hello, Horace . . . just
fine, except old Duff here's giving me trouble. I told him not to see Sharon
Norton . . . yes, I'm aware of your policy against interfering in your
employees' personal lives."

"You see!" exclaimed
Duff, triumphant.

"But this is business.
Spieler learned about the tachyon conversion's existence from her."

"It's a lie!" said Duff.


"Let's just say, I know,
Horace, and forget the details. Spieler's relatively young and athletic, and
just about her age, though that doesn't seem to matter too much. Norton was
gone most of the time."

"That's the most ridiculous
thing I've ever heard," said Duff.

"Spieler's a direct
man," continued Smith. "If he wants to know something, he goes
straight to the source, or as close as he can get ... all right, here he
is."

Smith handed the phone back to
Duff.

"Yes, sir ... but . . . sir .
. . if . . . all right." Duff jammed the handset into the cradle. He sat,
both hands on the steering wheel, glaring out the front windshield. Smith, his
expression genuinely sympathetic, looked at the back of Duff's head.

"Sorry," said Smith.

After several moments, Duff spoke.
"Where to now?"

"Spieler Space Operations."


I looked at Smith, wondering what
he planned. My face must have shown my concern.

"I do have to pick up my car,
don't I?"

I had forgotten the car.: We
dropped Smith at his Ferrari. Duff drove me home, silent, upset.

Dolores was out. I got a beer from
the refrigerator and lay down on the couch. The range of excitement during the
day had drained me. I wanted to rest and revive. First, the tension of testing
the Big Gate. Second, playing spy at Spieler's. Third, being booked. Each took
its toll. Spies reminded me of Parry. I sipped the beer. Parry had proved more
helpful than many of the people working for Merryweather Enterprises. With his
help, the matter transmitter could reach any corner of the galaxy, if the
galaxy had corners. Do fried eggs have corners? I felt drowsy. We needed more
spies like Parry. Helpful spies. Benign spies. Benign ghosts. I remembered
Norton. And all the king's horses, and all the king's men . . . I dozed.

Somewhere far off, something
hummed, persistent and annoying. I wanted to sleep. It hummed. "Go
'way."

I rolled on my side. It hummed.
"Go away!"

It hummed. I opened my eyes,
squinting at the phone. It hummed. I pulled myself to my feet and walked to it.
I glanced in the mirror Dolores keeps by the phone, scratched my head, stuck
out my tongue and yawned. My cowlick stuck up from my rumpled hair. I looked
hungover, drawn and pallid. The intensity of my recent work was telling on my
face. I glanced at my watch. Six twenty-five. I had slept an hour and a half.
The phone hummed.

"OK, OK."

I touched it on.

A beaming, vaguely familiar face,
male, grinned at me. "Hi."

"Hi."

The face looked disappointed.
"You don't recognize me?"

"No."

"Most people do."

"Good for you."

"I'm Roger Adair!" He
said it as though it were a recent discovery or a predicament. I'm flying on
air! That sort of thing.

"Hi, Rog."

"You still don't know
me?"

"Are you sure you have the
right number?"

"Dr. Robert Collins?"

"Yes."

"Then I've got the right
number." He mouthed "OK" to someone off camera, then looked at
me. "Big day, huh?"

My patience, thin when aroused
from a sound sleep, broke, "Listen, Roger Adair, what in the hell is
all"

"No one told you?" He
looked genuinely startled, quizzical, mouth puckered into a tight "O"
and eyebrows raised.

"No."

"Sorry. I thought they set it
all up."

"They didn't, whoever they
are."

"Ten seconds," he said.

"To what?"

"And now," said
Roger, looking directly at me and smiling broadly, his voice robust, "on
our Late Breaker Newsmaker On-the-Spotline, we have Dr. Robert Collins, the
surprisingly youthful project engineer on the Merryweather Enterprize space
station!"

It dawned on me. That Roger
Adair. The six o'clock news.

"Tell us, Dr. Collins,"
continued Roger, beaming, "how does it feel to be in charge of the hottest
scientific project since Jenson invented the Gate?"

"Feel?" I said, trying
to determine how I felt about being awakened and thrust into millions of living
rooms.

"Yes. What did you think when
you saw the birth of the Collins asteroid?"

"The what?"

"Don't be modest, Doctor.
Tell us your true thoughts. A little pride at a moment like this would not be
hubris."

I couldn't remember what hubris
meant. My true thoughts. I remembered staring at the monitor screens, the
rock rushing at them, my attention riveted. I remembered my amazement that the
Gate worked. Then I drew a blank.

"I don't remember
actually."

"Don't remember," said
Roger, incredulous. "It just happened this morning."

"It works. I thought
something like that. The damn thing works."

"Now let me get that exactly.
Historians will want to know. The damned"

"Damn."

"Yes. Sorry. Damn. The
damn" He waited, expectant.

"Thing," I repeated.

"The damn thing" He
waited.

"Works."

"Excellent. Could you tell us
a little about the future implications of today's success, for mankind in
general and you in particular?"

"Well, first, there's the
stars"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Collins,
we're out of time for our Late Breaker Newsmaker On-the-Spotline spot for
tonight. Thank you for another in-depth, on-the-spot, aaand hot,
interview!" The screen went blank.

"You're welcome."

I wandered into the kitchen,
looking for something to eat. Dolores stocks the larder irregularly. She was
into her "Big Push" toward final exams. During the Big Push, everyone
suffers. I lost ten pounds during the last Big Push.

I opened two bags of dog food and
dribbled them into a bowl. It looked better than what I would probably get. I
took it outside to Dog. He galloped up, tongue flapping, and began slobbering
over the food, gulping it down. The early evening air, chilly, cleared my mind.
I sat down on the backsteps and watched Dog eat.

"What do you think?" I
asked him.

He looked up from the bowl,
bloodshot eyes watching me. About what? they asked.

"About the future
implications of today's success, for mankind in general and me in
particular."

The question must have bored him.
He returned to his dinner.

"Consider this," I said,
catching him with his mouth full so he wouldn't interrupt. "With only
minor modifications of the Big Gate, men can walk directly from Earth to the
other side of the galaxy." He seemed unimpressed. "Dogs, too."

I looked up at the sky. The first
stars were appearing in the eastern sky. Once, men thought the stars were
affixed to a sphere around the Earth, just out of reach. Copernicus,
unintentionally, changed all that. The stars receded, vast distances making
them inaccessible mysteries, every fact about them awesome, calculated to dwarf
men, size, distance, composition, utterly incomprehensible. Now the stars were
closer than the spheres had ever been. I told Dog.

He looked up, eyes asking so? "The
possibilities are staggering!"

Unstaggered, he licked the bowl.

"All the possibilitiesfor
good or bad. We could send out shiploads of conquistadores! We
could" I stopped. Something about the thought disturbed me.
Conquistadores? Stars? "Shiploads."

I stood up and went back into the
house. I called the Merryweather Enterprize. Berkin, Captain Wilkins'
night-shift counterpart, came on the screen, his face tan and relaxed. Working
nights, he spent his days on the beach. He lived in a Merryweather community
near Acapulco.

"Control-room, Berkin. Oh,
hello, Dr. Collins."

"Is the captain there?"

"No, sir. After the success
today, the big "M" gave everyone the day off. Minimum crew. Just us
skeletons up here. Can I help?"

"What's the status of those
two ships lying off the Gate?"

"Laying off," he
corrected. "I'll check." He disappeared from view. While he was off
camera, Dolores came home, slamming the front door.

"I'm ho-ome!" She padded
down the hall to the living room, glancing in. "I said, I'm
home."

"Hi."

"You're always on the phone
nowadays. I saw you on the news at school."

"How'd I look?"

"Like you do now."

"How's that?"

"Horrible. Your cowlick was
sticking up. It was very funny."

"Thanks."

"Dr. Collins," said
Berkin, returning to the phone. "They're still there. Condition
unchanged."

Dolores left, heading for the
kitchen.

"Does anyone have any idea
what they're doing?"

"Captain Wilkins thinks
they're observing our tests. They've definitely been identified as registered
to Spieler Interstellar."

"Why don't people tell me
these things?"

"We tried. We just identified
them this afternoon. You were, eh, occupied."

I blushed. "OK. Any other
news?"

"One of them's new, fitted
with special equipment."

"What kind of
equipment?"

"We don't know yet."

"All right. If anything else
comes up, I want to know immediately. Even if I'm 'occupied.' Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

I started to hang up, then
remembered Dr. Steichen. I asked if Steichen got anything from the coordinates
I gave him.

"Hard to say."

"Why?"

"He went home with everyone
else."

"Home! Give me his home
number."

Berkin gave me the number. I hung
up and tried it. No one answered. I tried Smith's number. No one home. I walked
down the hall toward the kitchen, musing on the new information. Spieler had
two ships, one specially outfitted, near our Gate. The Gate could reach out to
anywhere in the galaxy. There was something to it.

"Dolores."

"Hm-m-m," she answered,
stooped and staring into the refrigerator.

"What do you make of
this?"

I told her about the successful
test and its implications. I told her about Spieler's ships. She seemed
slightly less impressed than Dog.

"Ask me something hard."


"That's easy?"

"Sure. Spieler's going to fly
his little rocket ships through your Gate."

"They aren't rocket
ships."

"Whatever they are."

I thought about it. It was a
"four" that matched my "two and two." But was it the right
"four"?

"Why?" I asked.

"Now that's hard."


"Do you have any
suggestions?"

"None. Maybe his fortune
cookie said he should take a long trip."

I thought about itnot the fortune
cookie, the idea of Spieler going through the Gate. Somehow it rang false. If
Spieler planned to move his spacecraft through our Gate, one of three
alternatives had to materialize (no pan intended). He could get our permission.
Mr. Merryweather, a businessman, might give permission for the right price. To
Spieler, it would be like kneeling before his enemy, surrendering his sword.

He could do it by stealth, waiting
until the Gate was operating, then darting through. I laughed. Darting, Spieler
could only go where we focused the Gate. Fine, if that's where he wanted to go.
Otherwise, the potential was limited.

Or, he could use the direct
approach. He could take the space station and use the Gate as he pleased. But
why? What would he gain?

"I wish Smith were
here," I said. "Where is he?"

"I don't know."

Why would Spieler want to use the
Gate? Even if he had free access to it and sent through drone ships, their
cargo capacity was so much smaller than the Gate itself that he would gain
nothing economically. Competition was out of the question. Perhaps he wanted to
collect the ships currently searching the galaxy. But a few billion dollars in
scrap metal would come nowhere near repaying the hundreds of billions invested.
Nothing Spieler could do with the Gate, no matter how he gained access to it,
would prevent his ultimate financial collapse.

"It doesn't make any sense,
Dolores."

"What doesn't?"

"Spieler. Those ships. What
can he gain by using the Gate?"

"Maybe he's not going to use
it."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe he's going to destroy
it."

Destroy it! My Gate?
"He wouldn't!"

"He might. Do you remember
how he looked at Smith that night?"

I remembered Spieler's expression,
twisted with hate. "What would he gain?"

Dolores thought a moment. Studying
law has made her particularly adept at juggling hypothetical situations. She
can take any side of a situation and see it from any viewpoint. I have heard
her arguing with classmates on the phone, adding and subtracting facts from a
hypothetical situation, changing viewpoints, working up a theory. I do the same
thing with engineering problems but without people in the equation.

"Time," she said.

"But too many people know
those two ships are his. If he tried anything, they would nab him right
away."

"What if it looked like an
accident?"

"Accident?"

"Sure. One of those little
rocket ships, out there observing your test, accidently gets too close. Boom.
Accident. By the way, how did Norton die?"

"Accident."

"That accident gave Spieler
some time. What type of accident was it?"

"I don't know. It was here on
Earth, not the station. Something to do with a car. His car or someone else's.
I don't know."

"It couldn't have happened at
a better time for Spieler, could it?"

"I've got to find
Smith."

I went into the front room and
tried Smith's number. No answer. I tried the Merryweather Building. No sign of
him. I was about to call H. Winton Tuttle, Smith's son-in-law, when an
inspiration hit me.

I put the Greater Los Angeles
Directory card in the slot. Nothing. I tried the Orange County card. I found
the house on Balboa Island. I punched out the number.

The phone rang several times. I
was about to hang up, when she answered, her pink housecoat slightly open at
the throat. She looked at me blankly, a strand of blond hair disarrayed on her
forehead.

"Yes?"

"Is Scarlyn Smith there by
any chance?"

She looked startled, then composed
herself. "Why would he be here?"

"This is important, Mrs.
Norton. My name is Collins. I have to talk to him."

"Just a minute."

She left the screen. I could hear
unintelligible shouting somewhere out of camera view. Eventually, Smith came to
the screen.

"You just got me into a lot
of trouble, buddy boy. What's up?"

"I see why you didn't want
Duff to visit Sharon Norton."

"You're wrong."

"Am I?"

"Duff can't keep his lip
buttoned."

"Sure, Scarlyn."

"You don't believe me."

"Sure, I believe you."

"Frankly, I don't give a
damn. Now what's so important?"

That hurt. I realized how much I
liked Smith.

"Sorry."

"Forget it."

"I think I've got a line on
what Spieler's planning."

"Shoot."

I shot. I told him about Dolores'
suggestions and my speculations. He nodded, a smile growing on his lips,
occasionally interjecting "Yes," or "It fits." When I
finished, he thought a moment.

"You're getting better at
this game, buddy boy. Here's another fact to add to the heap. After I left you
and the worry-wart this afternoon, I talked to Dr. Steichen. He finished analyzing
the coordinates you gave him. Guess what he found."

"The Crab Nebula."

"Right. But he knew that as
soon as you read off the figures. Bright guy. The coordinates weren't for a
drone ship at all. They were for your Gate computer."

"But how"

"Spieler got the specs from
Master Toole in San Francisco. No one told them the information was
classified."

"What's in the Crab
Nebula?"

"Steichen agrees with
Higgins. One pulsar, about a thousand years old. He even told me all about
those wonderful Chinese astronomers who saw the supernova."

"Why would Spieler want to go
to"

"Who knows? The man's
nuts."

"Even a nut thinks he
has a reason."

"True," he admitted.
"Incidentally, how did Norton die?"

"Hit and run."

The screen flickered. In the upper
right-hand corner, a girl's face appeared.

"I have an urgent call,"
she said, "for a Dr. Robert Collins from the space station Merryweather
Enterprize."

"I'm Collins," I said.
"Can you put it on so both of us can see?"

"Yes, sir. But a conference
call costs"

"I'll pay for it."

Berkin's face; drained of its
healthy color, replaced the operator's. He looked frightened.

"Sir, there are men on
the station! Armed men! I can't get Captain Wilkins! What am I supposed
to do?"

"How many men?" asked
Smith.

"Fifty, sixty, maybe
more!"

"How many men do you
have?" asked Smith.

"Smith," I interrupted.
"I know what you're thinking and you can't have a gun battle on a space
station. First, our side doesn't have any guns: Second, if a bullet hits in the
wrong place, everybody in that section of the station goes. And almost every
place is the wrong place." I looked at Berkin. "How many
men do you have?"

"Ten."

"Ten! There's usually a
hundred up there at night!"

"Mr. Merryweather let
everyone go," said Berkin, his voice sounding as though he were suffering
physical pain: "Skeleton crew. What am I going to do?"

"Do you have any ideas?"
I asked Smith.

"Nope."

I looked at Berkin. "Throw in
the towel."

"But, sir"

"We'll get as many men as we
can to the company Gate, just"

"Sir, they're in the
control" Someone pushed Berkin off camera. A hand reached across the
screen and broke the connection.

"Meet you at the company
Gate," said Smith and hung up.

 

XV

 

I was among the last to arrive at
Corona del Mar. I had impatiently stared out the Mono window on the way down,
cursing what seemed like the creeping. pace of the car. Actually, it takes
about the same amount of time to get from my place to the Newport Beach area by
Mono that it does by car, but in a car you feel like you, personally, are doing
something about getting there. When I did arrive, I was glad I took the Mono.
The parking area around the blockhouse looked like a traffic jam.

Smith's red Ferrari, Duff's gray
Mercedes, assorted black and white police cars, plus twenty or thirty other
cars, stood at odd angles around the lot, hurriedly parked and abandoned. I
walked down the access road, finishing the apple in my quickly scrounged
dinner. A low Ford shot past, stirring a cloud of dust. It stopped in the
middle of the road. One of the day-shift Gatekeepers jumped out and sprinted to
the blockhouse. I followed.

Inside, I wormed through a mass of
solidly packed humanity, working my way toward the suitroom. A policeman barred
my way.

"Sorry, buddy. Nobody past
this point but the bigwigs."

"My name's Collins."

"Mine's Avery," he
responded, polite, friendly, still blocking my way.

"I'm a bigwig."

"So am I," he said,
"to my wife."

"Listen, Officer"

"Sorry. Can't do it. You
reporters are always trying to get past us. Tell them to send someone older
next time. Everyone in that room is over forty. One's past seventy. Tell"


"I'm not a reporter. Ask
someone in there, please."

Reluctantly, he retreated into a
room off the hall. Almost immediately, Duff, red-faced, appeared in the
doorway, yelling at me.

"Where the hell have you been?"


"I just got here."

I followed Duff into the room. The
policeman left, muttering about bigwigs getting younger every day. Captain
Wilkins, Smith, the head Gatekeeper and two other men, plainclothes detectives,
stood around a desk with an unrolled plan of the Merryweather Enterprize before
them, held down by coffee cups.

"Where's Mr.
Merryweather," I asked.

"Mutombo Mukulu,"
answered Duff. "He'll be here as soon as he can."

I was introduced to the two
detectives. They seemed relieved to have something to do other than stare at
the space station chart.

"What's everyone still doing
here?" I asked.

The silence, as they say, was
deafening. Duff bit his lip, holding back an outburst. Eventually, unable to
hold it back longer, his arm shot out, pointing at Smith.

"It's him!"

"What's him?"

"It's his fault!"


"Now, wait a minute,
Duff," protested Smith. "Let's not start that crap again."

Smith and Duff glared at each
other, suppressing boiling tempers. I drew Captain Wilkins to one side,
inquiring about the station's current status.

Spieler, Captain Wilkins told me,
had taken possession of the station personally, leading fifty men on board.
Everyone from Mr. Merryweather to the President of the United States had been
notified. The FBI was sending two men to the blockhouse. Government radar had
picked up a new string of relay satellites between Earth and the Merryweather
Enterprize. Apparently Spieler's specially fitted ship was the last relay
station. He had assembled his men and focused the special ship's Gate on the Merryweather
Enterprize, stepping through with them.

"Why aren't we sending anyone
up from here?"

"Blocked."

"Blocked! How?"

"We don't know, Doctor.
Something on the second ship is deflecting our focal point."

Our ground Gate was inoperative. I
wondered about the Gate on the station. Jenson Gates work both ways. The Merryweather
Enterprize had its own Gate more as a safety precaution than a necessity.
The two gates were used in opposite directions to avoid complications and
provide an emergency exit for the station when the ground Gate was focused
elsewhere. I asked about the station Gate, thinking we could use it.

"We thought of that, too. The
first leg, from the station to Zeta-one relay satellite is out. We don't know
where the station Gate is focused. Possibly on the second ship. That would give
them access to either one."

Duff and Smith were still
wrangling, getting louder with each accusation and denial. The intensity of
Duff's accusations made me think he knew about Smith and Sharon Norton.

"Listen, Duff," said
Smith, his face visibly tired of arguing, "I'm going to say this once
more. That's all. Once. So get it straight. I am not responsible for
Spieler's actions. I am not his mother. This little plan, whatever it
is, hatched in his brain before I even knew he existed. You're making it sound
like I thought it up."

"You were hired to prevent
it," shouted Duff. "So prevent it!"

Smith, stung, started around the
table toward Duff. I remembered what Smith had done to Spieler's guards. Duff
must have remembered something similar. He pointed at Smith, shouting to the
two policemen.

"Stop him! Stop that man from
hitting me!"

The two policemen moved toward
Smith. I imagined them stretched out cold on the floor. They waited to see what
Smith would do.

Smith, his face choleric, stomped
toward Duff. Duff, frightened, backed to the wall. Smith's bony index finger
came up, pointing at Duff's nose, an inch from it. He spoke quietly but firmly.


"Shut up."

"But"

"Shut up."

"I"

"If you do not shut up,"
said Smith, accenting each word by poking his index finger ever closer to
Duff's nose, "I'm going to flatten your face."

I laughed. Smith turned on me,
pointing. "You, too!"

"Me?"

"Everybody seems to think
this is somehow my fault." He jerked his head at Duff. "Him,
Horace, everyone!"

"I didn't say"

"Then don't." He turned
toward the door. "I'm going out for some air."

Smith left the room.

"What's eating him?" I
asked.

Duff snorted. "Incompetent
old man."

"Captain Wilkins," I
said, starting for the door. "Would you step out here with me."

In the hall, I asked Wilkins to
try to talk to Duff. We all had one job. It had nothing to do with fixing
blame. We had to try to recover the Merryweather Enterprize. If the
so-called leadership degenerated into chaos, what could we expect from anyone
else. If necessary, he was to pull rank on Duff, pointing out who was captain
of the station.

"I'll try."

"Good. I'll talk to
Smith."

I pushed through the crowd.
Several people asked me what was going on. I begged off. I found Smith outside,
trying to light a cigar and cursing. I walked up behind him.

"Sulking?"

He spun around and leveled the
cigar at me like a pointer. "Listen, buddy boy, I'm not letting any of you
bastards dump this thing on me!"

"Who said we were?"

"You heard Duff!"

"Do you really care what he
thinks?"

"And Horace. I can't get over
it. You should have heard him on the phone. I've never seen him angry
before."

Mr. Merryweather. That was it. Up
to now, Mr. Merryweather was the one person who believed in Smith, totally and
unequivocally, the one person whose opinion mattered to him. Mr. Merryweather's
disapproval had shaken Smith. He lit the cigar. In the matchlight, I saw the
deep wrinkles around his eyes. He looked momentarily old. An old man, out of
his depth? The match went out.

"He's got a right to be
mad," I said, trying to coax Smith from his pique. "It's his
money."

Smith grunted.

"What did he say?"

"The same thing Duff said. I
was hired to keep the damn cow in the barn and now it's gone. I, personally,
single-handed, was supposed to stop the resources of Spieler
Interstellar!"

"And you didn't."

He puffed his cigar, thinking.
"No."

"Could you have prevented
it?"

"Maybe." He pulled the
cigar out of his mouth and flicked off the ash. "Maybe not. Either way,
they're trying to stick me with the blame."

"Then I guess you'll have to
do something about it. Unless you just plan to stand out here all night and
lick your wounds."

Smith was silent several seconds.
Finally he looked at me, his expression asking whether I had an idea. "Do
what?"

"I don't know. I'm not
the hero."

Smith winced, but said nothing.
Finally he flicked away the cigar.

"Hero, huh," he said and
smiled weakly.

"Do you have any ideas?"


"One."

"What's that?"

"Come on."

Smith started away from the
blockhouse toward his car. I fell in step with him.

"Where are we going?"

"Do you have a gun?"

"No, and I don't want"

"I've got an extra in the
car." Smith drove. I sat in the passenger seat, wondering why. Why was
Smith leaving behind a brigade of police? Why was he leaving without telling
anyone? Why was I doing the same thing? My misgivings multiplied when
Smith reached in the glove compartment and came up with two .38 revolvers. He
dropped one in my lap.

"Stow this someplace."

I stowed it back in the glove
compartment. He retrieved it and returned it to my lap, glancing at me.

"You'll need it."

"I will?"

"Yes."

I looked at the .38. After some
fumbling, I figured out how to push out the cylinder. The percussion caps of
six cartridges stared at me. I closed the cylinder.

"There's a box of shells in
the back seat. Stick a handful in your coat pocket."

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?"

"Just who am I supposed to
shoot with this thing, assuming I could hit anyone?"

"Let them shoot first."

"Who?"

"Spieler and company."

Smith caught the Newport Freeway
toward Tustin. He was going to Spieler Space Operations.

"What," I asked,
"are we doing?"

"If we can't go in the front
door, we go in the back, right?"

"Go in the back! If we're
going in the back, why don't we take the cavalry with us?"

"Too much dust from the
horses." He smiled, happy with his metaphor.

"What," I inquired,
indicating the .38 in my lap, "if they scalp us?"

He eased into an exit lane.
"Always a possibility."

"Shouldn't we at least tell
someone?"

"They'd just screw things
up."

"But charging into Spieler's
back yard, guns blazing, won't."

He parked near the fence around
Spieler Space Operations and shut off the lights. Apparently, he planned to
enter under the fence again. He got out, stooping with the door open to look at
me.

"Coming?"

"This is insane."

"Probably."

I reached into the back seat and
scooped a handful of shells from the box. Smith lifted a satchel from the back
seat, slinging it over his arm.

Finding the hole under the fence
was more difficult at night. Down the slight slope from us, the compound was
dark. Security lights shone weakly along the sides of the buildings. Smith
found the hole and slid under.

"Pass me that bag."

I passed it under the fence.
"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?" he answered,
standing up with the bag in his hands. I talked to him through the fence.

"This time, tell me
your plan. I feel like I'm following the scapegoat into the
slaughterhouse."

He pointed into the compound.
"You remember the building where we were this afternoon?"

"The computer center."
Had it only been that afternoon? I was a burglar twice in one day. Smith was a
bad influence.

"The building next to it is
their Gate. It's probably focused on the first satellite in their string."


"So?"

"So it's the back door. If we
charged up there with the police, they'd close it. This way, maybe we can get
through before it slams."

"Get through! You mean I'm
supposed to step into a totally man-made environment, surrounded by a
vacuum"I pulled the .38 from my waistband with two fingers, dangling
it"and start punching holes in it with this thing! You're nuts,
Smith! You may be seventy-five and have most of your life behind you! You may
not care about a few bugged eyes and exploded lungs, not to mention
bulletholes! But I'm twenty-eight! I still have one or two good years left! I care
about eyes and lungs! Especially my own!"

"And bulletholes."

"And bulletholes! You
can just go on this little Kamikaze mission by yourself'!"

"OK."

Smith turned away from the fence,
staring down the slope. He walked quickly, the satchel swinging at his side.

"Smith!"

He kept walking. Somehow, I
couldn't leave. I wanted to leave. Smith's so-called plan was the zaniest thing
since Norton's body played Houdini. It would get him killed. If I went, it
would get me killed. There I would be, famous, jotted down in a history
book footnote, the man who assembled the first Stargate, dead on the day of his
triumph, his body bloated by the vacuum of the very space he conquered. I saw
myself perforated with as many holes as a practice golf ball.

What the hell? If you die at the
peak of your success, you can't go downhill. I slid under the fence and
followed Smith, noticing, as I caught up with him, that we were both going
downhill.

"Change your mind?" he
asked.

"No. It's still lunacy."


"Then why are you
coming?"

"Kicks."

"You'll get plenty of
those."

We neared the buildings. Smith's
index finger went to his lips. We approached the corner of the Gate building.
Smith glanced around the corner, then looked back at me, holding up two
fingers.

"Two men," he whispered.
"Ten yards. When I say 'go,' head for the small one."

Smith glanced around the corner
again.

"Go."

I went. Smith led, leaping on the
taller of the two guards. Somehow, I managed to collide with the smaller guard.
He had both hands on his holster, working at the flap. I used my one good blow,
a short left to his stomach. I expected him to collapse or at least bend
double. He just staggered back, gasping for air. I grabbed him with both hands,
trying to throw him to the ground. Either the man was an ex-acrobat or it is
harder to throw someone than in the movies. He stepped and staggered and kept
his balance, continuing to slap at his holster and gasp for air.

I tried my last tactic. I hugged
him, pinning his arms to his sides and lifting him off the ground. My knees
buckled. We sprawled. He kicked at me, hitting my leg. I heard an inrush of air
as he caught his breath, preparing to yell. Something moved over us. The air
burst from him in a harmless rasp. He lay still. Smith stood over him, the
satchel dangling from his hand. Whatever was in it had left my opponent cold.
Smith helped me up.

"I guess I didn't do that too
well," I panted, beginning to feel the pain where the man's heel hit my
thigh.

"You kept him busy."

"What's in that bag?"

"Plastique," whispered
Smith.

"Plastique!"

"Shhh."

"Plastique," I
whispered. "And you hit him with it! You could have blown his head
off and ours!"

 



 

"It isn't nitroglycerin, you
know."

"What are you going to do?
Blow this place up?"

"Not if I don't have
to."

We started into the building. An
empty hall met us. We followed it past several closed doors. Smith stopped and
listened at each.

"Smith."

"Hm-m-m?"

"You remember what happened
the last time we did this. We wound up in jail."

"Don't worry," said
Smith. "This time we're armed."

"That's what I'm afraid
of."

The fourth door was open, light
spilling on the hall floor. Smith held up his hand. I stopped. He eased up on
the door, pulling out his .38 and indicating that I should do the same. He gave
me a "here-goes" look and stepped into the room. I followed.

Only one man, his back to us,
occupied the room. He heard us enter.

"Did you get the coffee,
Tom?" he asked without looking around. There was something vaguely
familiar about him.

"Nope," answered Smith.

The man turned. It was Grizzly.

"You!" said
Grizzlywhether he meant me or Smith I don't knowand dived for an alarm
button. He careened off a panel of equipment just as Smith reached him. The
barrel of Smith's .38 clipped Grizzly's head. An earsplitting whooping shrieked
from the public address system.

I heard people in the hall. Smith
stepped over Grizzly to a set of elevator doors. They opened automatically
before him.

"Come on!" he yelled
over the deafening alarm.

I followed him into the elevator.
As the door closed, men scrambled, into the transmitter control-room, looking
first at Grizzly, then at the closing doors. One man aimed and fired. Something
thunked against the closing doors.

"We're trapped in here,
Smith."

"Keep your fingers crossed."


"For what?"

"Hope none of them knows how
to shut off the Gate."

"You're not going through!"
I said. "Without a suit!"

He pointed at the elevator floor.
"We can go back down there if you like."

The doors opened. Street lights
from the City of Tustin winked through the shimmering air of the Gate field.

"Smith," I protested,
peering over the edge. "What if they shut off the field just as we step
toward it? It must be thirty feet down there!"

"Have you ever heard of the
Great Leap Forward?" asked Smith.

"No."

"I'll tell you about it
sometime. Now go!"

I looked at the field in front of
me, reminiscent of hot air vapor. I had the eerie feeling I was about to step
directly into hell. Satan, looking surprisingly like Spieler, would greet me.
Either that or he would be grinning out at me from inside the Merryweather
Enterprize, waving good-bye, while I floated toward Pluto, suitless.

Holding my breath, I stepped
through.

 

XVI

 

When the deck of the Merryweather
Enterprize touched my feet, I exhaled. Smith, blasé as a businessman
stepping into Chicago, came through, fiddling with the strap on his satchel. He
got it open and reached inside, withdrawing a timer.

"How long did it take us to
get from Earth to here?" asked Smith, adjusting the timer.

"A little over a minute and a
half, but if you're going to throw that through, don't add the minute and a
half. Timers don't work when they're dematerialized."

Smith nodded and set the timer.
"Two seconds."

"Smith"

He pushed the timer and hurled the
satchel down the corridor. I had a sudden vision of Grizzly cutting the Gate
power, leaving us with Smith's plastique, activated and short-fused. The
satchel hit the shimmering air and vanished. A second later, the shimmering air
vanished.

"So much for the back
door," said Smith.

"That," I said, looking
'at the spot where the Gate had been, "was our back door,
too."

"Yep. Guess we'll have to
open the front door."

"How?"

"From the inside, of
course."

We had materialized in the
workshop area of the space station, across the wheel from the control-room. It
was the best location for Spieler. He could assemble his men with minimum
resistance. We started around the circumference, compartment by compartment. Smith
paused at one of the workroom doorways, examining it.

"Can we lock these?"

"Not from here."

"From where?"

"The control-room, or"
I hesitated, deciding how to tell Smith and avoid any impulsive response.

"Or what?"

"If a section is punctured,
it automatically seals off, but," I added quickly, "don't
start blasting away. Even if you found a thin spotand there are plenty of
themit would only seal one section, not all of them."

"What about the
control-room?"

"What about it?"

"Will it seal?"

"Yes, but you'd kill everyone
in there, even our people, if you punctured it."

"A drawback."

Smith thought, tugging on his
lower lip and blowing out his cheeks. I began to get worried.

"I thought you had a
plan."

"I do."

"What is it?"

"It doesn't cover this
situation."

"Doesn't cover it!
This is the heart of the problem!"

"Frankly, buddy boy, I didn't
think we'd get this far."

Encouraged by Smith's meticulous
preparation, I followed him. We moved from compartment to compartment, pausing
at each doorway to glance in. I began to worry about Spieler. When the ground
Gate failed, someone would notify him. He would be waiting for us at the other
side of the wheel. I suggested the idea to Smith.

"Maybe," he answered,
approaching another doorway. "Maybe not. If the plastique got most of
their ground Gate, it probably took out their communications equipment. The
only word Spieler could get would come from the relay ship. They would only
know that the Gate had failed, not why. Grizzly probably had orders to destroy
it if the police showed up. That's why I didn't want all those cops running
around. One sight of a black and white car and there wouldn't have been any
back door."

"You make this sound like
some sort of last-ditch effort."

"It is."

Smith was right. No one boards a
space station, captures its crew and jams its Gateall in the spirit of healthy
competition. Spieler had to be desperate. Yet, even in desperation, what could
he gain? Dolores had suggested Spieler would gain time by a well-planned accident.
An armed boarding party seemed a little obvious for an accident.

"What's Spieler going to get
out of this?" I asked.

"Who knows?" said Smith.
"We'll ask him when we see him."

Smith glanced into the next room,
then jerked back from the doorway, waving for me to flank the other side. I
heard footsteps approach. They stopped, then suddenly retreated. Smith stepped
into the doorway, legs apart, arms fully extended, holding the .38 with both
hands.

"Smith!" I shouted.

He fired once. The explosion reverberated
against the metal walls. "Missed him," said Smith.

"What in hell's name do
you think you're doing?"

He looked at me, quizzical,
bewildered. "He'll give the alarm."

"You can't just go around shooting
people!"

"Why not?"

"First of all, you might
puncture the hull."

"You said it would only seal
off the section with the hole. The hole would have been in there." He
nodded into the next room. "With him."

"Second, you just about murdered
him!"

"Murder?" He said it as
if the word were new to him.

"Yes!"

Smith opened the cylinder on his
.38, ejected the empty shell and replaced it with a fresh cartridge, glancing
up to talk to me.

"Buddy boy, those men are
committing more felonies than I can name. Kidnapping, burglary"

"Burglary?"

"Sure, this is probably a
building, legally speaking. Not to mention conspiracy and piracy and whatever
else they're planning. You and I are citizens preventing a felony in progress.
We are not murdering people."

"You're killing them,
though."

"Nope."

"You are! I just
saw"

"You just saw me miss. That
isn't killing anybody. I was aiming to wing him."

"Wing him! Kill him! It's all
the same thing! It's the same fascist disregard for life that they have!"


Smith's face flushed, his
expression so intense and hard it bordered on rage. He grabbed the front of my
coat, slamming me against the bulkhead. His eyes, when he spoke, looked
directly into mine.

"Listen, buddy boy, don't ever
call me a fascist again! I've been fighting fascists all my life. Madmen
and lunatics. They don't care how many bodies they walk over to get what
they want!" He snorted contemptuously, releasing me and turning away.
Relieved, I took a deep breath.

"Smith."

"What?" he snapped.

"You can't see it, can
you?"

"See what?"

"You're using the same means
they use."

He sneered at me, indicating the
.38 with a jerk of his hand. "OK, I'll throw this away and we'll bludgeon
Spieler to death with sweet reason."

I saw the point. Somewhere behind
the lines, there is a reason why a war starts. On the front lines, there is
just shooting, no reasons.

Smith led the way. We made it
through two more workrooms before I heard the hiss and bump of the doors
closing behind us, section by section: Spieler was sealing us off. I glanced
back. One compartment away, a door closed. Crossing Burgess' office, the door
ahead of us hissed and closed. Smith, leading, caught himself on the closed
door.

"Can we open these things
from here?"

"No."

"There's no manual
override?"

"You have to have a hand
winch."

Smith kicked the door once,
cursing.

The phone screen in Burgess'
office came on, a master intercom call. Spieler's face settled on the screen.

"Can he see us?" asked
Smith.

"Not unless you touch on the
phone. He's using the PA system."

"Whoever you are" began
Spieler, his expression impassive. Even his eyes seemed lifeless. It could have
been the phone. He looked more haggard than when I had seen him at his club.
"Give up. You have no hope either of escaping or interfering."

"Encouraging, isn't he,"
said Smith.

"We are systematically
searching each section of this station. If you do not respond to this call, you
will be shot on sight."

Smith shrugged. "I guess we'd
better give the man a call." He touched on the phone, grinning at Spieler.
"Hi, Fred."

Spieler blinked, startled,
recognizing Smith.

"How's tricks?" said
Smith.

Spieler looked past Smith.
"Dr. Collins. Excellent." He leaned off camera, said something, then
returned his attention to Smith.

"Are you armed, Smith?"

"Would you believe me if I
said no?"

"No. Place your weapons on
the desk in clear view of the phone. Then stand against the wall where I can
see you."

Smith pulled the .38 from his coat
pocket, laying it on the desk.

"What," I asked,
incredulous, "are you doing?"

"He's being sensible,"
interjected Spieler.

"Sensible! Smith"

"Like the man says,"
said Smith, "put your gun on the table."

I followed orders, whether
Spieler's or Smith's I didn't know. We backed to the wall, out of range of the
phone mike. Spieler told us to put up our hands. We complied.

"Smith," I said, trying
not to move my lips "you have a plan?" The last word sounded more
like "hlan."

"No."

"No!"

"Shh."

"No. After that lecture you
gave me on six-gun justice"

"Something more important has
come up."

"What?"

"Our necks."

The office door slid open. Three
men with automatics stepped through. Three more waited outside. They led us
through the station to a storeroom, the only rooms with manual locks, and
pushed us inside, locking the door behind us.

Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the
poor light. I heard something and glanced around at Smith.

He shrugged. "Not me."

I looked around the room. In an
alcove between a set of storage lockers, a gray shape moaned on a cot. I walked
to it. Under a blanket, his back to us, lay a man, doubled up and muffling his
moans on a pillow.

I squatted next to the cot,
shaking the man's shoulder.

"NOOOO!" he screamed.
"I don't want to die!"

I rolled him onto his back.
Staring at me, his face contorted with fear, one eye blackened and a large
bruise on his cheekbone, was Dr. Higgins, Spieler's astronomer.

"I guess he found
Spieler," said Smith, behind me.

"NOOOO!" screamed Dr.
Higgins at the mention of the name.

"We're not going to hurt
you," I said, trying to sound reassuring.

Dr. Higgins looked at me, still
frightened. After several seconds, his eyes showed recognition.

"You're," he said,
hesitating, "one of those men."

"Yes. What's going on?"

"The Crab!" shouted Dr.
Higgins. "Oh, God!" He buried his face in the pillow, his voice
muffled but intelligible.

"I don't want to die!"

"Not that damn Crab
again," said Smith, disgusted.

Dr. Higgins looked at him.
"Yes. The Crab. You've got to stop him!"

"The Crab?"

"No. Mr. Spieler."

I smiled. Even beaten and
terrified, Dr. Higgins said Mr. Spieler.

"It's no joke," snapped
Higgins, noticing my smile. It faded.

Dr. Higgins looked from Smith to
me and back to Smith, his face intensely serious. "He's insane, you
know."

"We noticed," said
Smith.

"I mean it, really insane,
off his rocker, nuts."

"What's he going to do?"


"He's going to bring the
Crab" Dr. Higgins broke off, overcome with emotion. He beat the pillow,
screaming that he didn't want to die. Eventually, he looked up. "Where was
I?"

"The Crab."

"Oh, yes. He's going to bring
it here."

Slowly, we pieced together Dr.
Higgins' story. That afternoon, after Smith and I were hauled off to the
police, Dr. Higgins tried to contact Spieler. He wanted another chance to
explain the mistake, hoping to deter Spieler from uselessly sending out a drone
ship. The Crab Nebula was the wrong target. When he finally reached Spieler, it
was six-thirty. Spieler and fifty men, men Dr. Higgins had never seen before,
were in the Space Operations Gate building. Waiting to talk to Spieler, Dr.
Higgins heard several conversations, people speculating about the expression on
"old Merryweather's face" when they did whatever it was they were
about to do. It puzzled him.

He found Spieler and began
explaining the error. Spieler nodded, listening, reassuring Dr. Higgins.
Everything was fine, said Spieler. Halfway through the explanation, Dr. Higgins
realized the coordinates would never fit into a drone ship computer. He
remembered the conversations about Merryweather.

He guessed at part of the truth
and confronted Spieler with it. The men were going to take the Merryweather
Enterprize. Once secure, Spieler was going to reach out to the Crab Nebula
with the Big Gate.

"I asked him why," said
Dr. Higgins. "He just smiled and said he had his reasons. But he doesn't!
He's insane! Loony! Let him die! I don't care! But I don't
want to die!" He became incoherent and blubbered into the pillow.

The door behind us opened. Spieler
stood in the doorway, flanked by two armed men.

"Dr. Collins," said
Spieler, nodding at me. "And the infamous Scarlyn Smith." He stepped
inside, leaving his henchmen in the corridor. They watched us through the
doorway, alert, automatics ready. "I've been doing some homework on you,
Smith. Yet, I'm still surprised to see you."

"That was the general
idea."

Spieler laughed, a cold and
unsympathetic laugh. Before he could continue, Dr. Higgins darted between Smith
and me. He stopped in front of Spieler, his face plaintive, hands clasped,
suppliant.

"Sir, you cannot go through
with this!" shouted Dr. Higgins. "We will all be killed! And
sir, we will die from that!"

Spieler sneered at him.

"Please, sir"

The back of Spieler's clenched
fist came across Dr. Higgins' face. I flinched, starting to go to Dr. Higgins'
aid but stopping when the muzzles of the two automatics in the hall turned on
me. Dr. Higgins reeled to one side, breaking his fall against the bulkhead.
Smith never moved.

Spieler returned his attention to
Smith. "I told you I would win, Smith."

"You've got a space station.
So what?"

"Not only the station,"
said Spieler. "The Big Gate."

"Big deal."

Smith's tone, that of a parent
unimpressed with its child's achievement, struck me as dangerous. I was
impressed. Spieler could kill us at any moment. If Smith persisted, the child
in Spieler might become angry, strike out at the parent in Smith.

When Spieler smiled, amused at
Smith's attitude, I relaxed a little, a very little.

"Do you know what winning is,
Smith?"

"Frankly," said Smith.
"I don't have time to discuss it right now." He indicated Dr.
Higgins, who was touching his bleeding lower lip with his fingers and looking
at them. "There are others who need my attention."

Spieler's face clouded over.
"You are going to listen to this, whether you want to or not."

"All right," said Smith,
exasperated, crossing both arms on his chest. "Let's have it. The sooner
you tell me your little thoughts on winning, the sooner I can pay attention to
something important."

Spieler's mouth had drawn tight.
He started to speak, but Smith interrupted, impatient.

"Come on, Freddy. Hurry
up."

Spieler's index finger came up,
pointing at Smith, jabbing the air to accent the words. "I have known
people like you all my life! I"

"I'll bet you have,"
said Smith, bored. "First, there was Wilber and Martha . . ." It took
me a moment to remember Spieler's parents. "Then who else? Teachers?
Coaches? Professors? But you made them listen, didn't you?"

"Yes," shouted
Spieler. "I made them listen! All of them!"

"Freddy Spieler," said
Smith, contempt in his voice. "The big winner. Chalked up more points than
anyone at a dollar a point, a dollar a pat on the head. Money is the way we
keep score, isn't it, Freddy? High scores are good. High scorers are good.
Freddy Spieler is a good boy."

"Shut up, Smith."

"Let's talk about winning
some more. I hate to discuss it in front of Robert here. He's so innocent . .
."

"Me?" I said.

". . . but it can't be
helped. After a while, you didn't need their opinion any more. After all, who
were they? Teachers, parentslow scorers. You thought of yourself as the
independent man, testing himself against himself. Never flinch from your tests.
Isn't that Nietzsche? The superior man knows how to accept those tests. But
Nietzsche also said the superior man knows how to conserve himself, to survive,
and you'll never survive, Freddy." Smith waved his arm around the room,
indicating Dr. Higgins and me. "It doesn't matter what happens to us . .
."

"Smith," I said, trying
to interrupt. That kind of loose talk seemed unnecessary to me.

"It doesn't matter what
happens to anyone. But to win, you have to be free enough to survive. All this
dragging poor old Nietzsche and old Machiavelli onto the scene just covers up
Freddy Spieler. The will to power," mocked Smith. "Little Freddy's
just upset because Horace Merryweather has pulled the rug out from under him
and won't let him play anymore, so he's taking his marbles and going home. If you
can't play, no one can."

Spieler glared at Smith, then
turned on his heels and left. In the corridor, he spoke to the guards, loud
enough for us to hear.

"Kill them."

Kill them. I started to swallow.
The lump in my throat refused to let me finish. Smith had definitely gone too far.
Psychoanalyzing a madman might have its advantages to society, but
psychoanalyzing an armed madman was the mad leading the mad.

Smith leaned over to me.
"Don't say I didn't try to reason with him."

"Reason! You call that
reason! Scolding him! 'You've been a bad boy, Freddy!' Why, Smith? What was the
point of" My sentence dribbled to a halt. The two guards, one of them so
large his automatic seemed dwarfed in his grip, entered.

"The point is," whispered
Smith, "that now there's only two of them."

"Shut up and get over
there," snapped the smaller gunman, indicating the bulkhead with a flick
of his pistol.

"NOOOO!" wailed Dr.
Higgins.

The big one started to lumber
toward Dr. Higgins. I never saw it happen. One minute he lumbered. The next
minute he slumbered, supine, out cold. Smith already had the second man's gun
arm. He stepped inside, twisting the gun arm away from himself, ducked under
the man's armpit, and threw him. The man spilled on his back, gun flying. He
started to get up, looking around for his missing gun. I stomped on his
stomach, somehow tripping and falling. When I looked up, the man was
unconscious. I got to my feet.

"I didn't think it would do
that," I said.

"What?" asked Smith.

"I didn't think it would
knock someone out, stepping on his stomach."

"It didn't," answered
Smith, pointing to Dr. Higgins.

Dr. Higgins, embarrassed, stood
behind the man, holding the missing automatic like a hammer.

"Oh."

 

XVII

 

"Next time," said Smith,
looking at the man on the floor, "Don't kick him in the stomach. There are
too many things he can do to counter it."

"Like what?"

He prodded the man on the floor
with his foot. "Like what he did."

"What did he do? I tripped.
That's all."

Smith smiled, tolerant. "It
did happen pretty fast." He turned to Dr. Higgins. "Tell me Freddy's
plan."

Dr. Higgins, slurring his words
around his swelling lip, launched into his suppositions, pieced together over
the last few hours. The longer I listened, the more impressed I got, both with
Dr. Higgins' deductions about Spieler's plan and with Smith's insights into
Spieler's character. Spieler had to be paranoid. No other explanation fit.
Spieler not only wanted to take his marbles and go home, he wanted to
take everyone's marbles. If he couldn't have them, no one could. Or, to
phrase it more accurately, if Spieler lost his marbles, everyone would.

"I don't believe it," I
protested, overwhelmed by Dr. Higgins' ideas.

"It's true, Cluggins. I
assure you."

Spieler had no intention of going
through the Big Gate. He planned to use it exactly as I had used it that
morning, with one exception. Instead of ripping up a fifteen-kilometer dirt
clod, he wanted to pull a pulsar into the Solar System.

The idea staggered me. I tried to
imagine it. A super-massive star spins, gravity and centrifugal force tenuously
balancing against each other. Spinning, it loses energy. It contracts to
compensate for the loss, growing brightera wet ice-skater, tucking in her
arms, spinning ever faster on the point of her skate, spewing water.

When enough energy radiates from
it, its center collapses under its own weight, a neutron star, its electrons
and protons mashed together.

"How large is it?" I
asked.

"This one is ten kilometers
across."

A star, once larger than the Sun,
now compressed to ten kilometers.

"What would happen,"
asked Smith, "if he succeeds?"

Dr. Higgins thought a moment,
looking past us at the vacant air, listing the possibilities in his mind. He
nodded vaguely, mumbling "yes," and "ahh," and "after
that . . . yes." His thoughts sorted, he looked at us.

"Take your pick. The Sun and
the pulsar might form a double star, or the Sun could just accelerate, leaving
Mars and Earth and some of the less significant planets to orbit the pulsar and
be bombardedamidst electromagnetic chaoswith massive doses of everything from
X-rays to protons, or the Sun and the pulsar could crash into each other and
the Sun itself could nova and the remaining glob could form a second neutron
star and then lose even more energy and collapse even further until it was so
small and so dense that the Swarzschild radius is passed and its gravity is so
great even light can't escape it and a black holeimagine it, a black
hole!forms. Of course we're long gone by this time. Everything in this general
vicinity is long gone. In spite of that, it's still magnificent! What an event!
One hell of an event!" Dr. Higgins looked at me, beaming, as if he
had just discovered the Moon. "If we were here, Cluggins, and did
get sucked into the black hole, there are people who think it would throw
us into another universe. Imagine it! Another universe! It's beyond
imagination!"

"If only Spieler's
parents," said Smith, "had paid more attention to him."

"In any case," concluded
Dr. Higgins, calming down. "Your guess is as good as mine."

I nodded, but refrained from
guessing. Could Spieler do it? The Big Gate, thanks to Parry's help with the
reactor, had potential far beyond Norton's original design. But moving the mass
of a star, even one only ten kilometers acrossI didn't know.

"Dr. Higgins," I said,
"what about the mass?"

"What about it?"

"A collapsed star is not just
another hunk of dirt."

"True. So what?"

"What's the essential
difference between the two?"

"The neutron star's packed
tighter."

I shook my head from side to side.
"Nothing else?"

"Not much. Matter's matter,
as they say. This is not, you know, antimatter. It still has to obey the law,
so to speak."

"Can it be moved?"

"Of course it can be moved.
Anything can be moved. Fulcrums and a place to stand won't do it, but given
enough power and the right equipment" Dr. Higgins reached into his coat
pocket and withdrew a notebook and pencil. "You seem to know something
about this Gate."

I nodded.

"Tell me the maximum power
output of the reactor Merryweather's using and I'll tell you if they can do
it."

"The maximum," I said,
my voice flat.

"Yes," said Dr. Higgins,
waiting, pencil poised on the notebook.

I had a sudden vision of Hilda,
the Merryweather computer technician, her Pekingese face in pain at the
prospect of rerunning a program.

Dr. Higgins looked up from the
notebook, eyebrows raised. "Yes?"

Smith looked at me.
"Well?"

"I don't know."

"You're a big help,"
said Smith, contemptuous.

"If I had a computer," I
pleaded, my voice shaky, "and a few hours"

"You don't."

Dr. Higgins closed his notebook.
"Well, there you are. If they have the power, they can do it. Matter is
matter."

"You're sure about
that," said Smith, already pacing the room, thinking.

"Reasonably."

Smith paced, weighing the
possibilities in his mind, looking up at Dr. Higgins and me every few passes
and shaking his head.

"We've got to assume,"
said Smith on one pass, "they can do it."

"Why?"

"If we assume anything else,
and we're wrong, the consequences are too great."

The neat map of the Solar System,
left in my mind from a high school science class, crumpled. "I see what
you mean."

During each traverse of the room,
Smith stepped over the two unconscious men. Then, approaching the smaller one,
he paused, foot in the air, looking at one of them. He lowered his foot to the
deck.

"I wonder if he knows."


I laughed. "That guy wouldn't
know a meson from his mother."

"No, I mean Spieler's plan. I
wonder if he knows what it means."

"I doubt it. He probably just
collects his pay and lets other people worry about policy."

"Policy," said Smith,
thinking. He looked at me. "Is there any other access to the PA
system?"

"Sure. Every phone has a
'General Station' button for emergencies."

Smith nodded. "Good. This
qualifies."

We locked the two gunmen in the
storeroom, taking their guns with us, and started back toward Burgess' office,
Smith leading.

"What's he doing?" asked
Dr. Higgins.

"Beats me."

Smith sat down at Burgess' desk
and touched the General Station plate. His own face, repeated on phones
throughout the station, appeared on the screen.

"Attention, everyone on the Merryweather
Enterprize. Frederick Spieler has deceived you. He is attempting to destroy
everyone on this space station. Contrary to what you have been told, this is
not simply an intercorporate struggle. I have with me Dr. Higgins, the
astronomer for Spieler Interstellar." Smith motioned for Dr. Higgins to
take the chair behind the desk. "He will explain what is happening."

I expected Dr. Higgins to get on
camera and begin his "Matter is Matter" speech, larding it so heavily
with technical language that Spieler's men would think it was an educational
program and refuse to listen. I underestimated him. Succinctly and simply, even
with occasional touches of grim wit, he began telling them what Spieler
intended.

Smith satisfied himself of Dr.
Higgins' showmanship, then started back toward the control room, trotting. The
station's "gravity," generated automatically by the rotation of the
great wheel, was slightly less than Earth's, helping our progress.

"Do you think," I asked,
loping next to Smith, "they'll believe Higgins?"

Smith gave something like a
running shrug. "They can't all be as suicidal as Freddy."

We passed an observation alcove.
Smith stopped and backtracked, walking up to the port and peering into space.

"Where are those two ships of
Freddy's from here?"

"Depends. Let me look. They
may be out of view."

Smith moved aside. I could see the
Big Gate's focusing ring, button-sized, below me. What must have been two or
three hundred kilometers from it, the "Collins" asteroid stood,
waiting for our mining crews. Between them, only detectable because of their
position in relation to the Sun, two space craft, easily mistaken for faint
stars, gleamed. I pointed.

"There they are, between the
Gate and the rock."

Smith looked, squinting and
shaking his head. "Too far. I can't see them. Eyes aren't as good as they
used to be."

"The two bright specks."


"No good. You watch
them," said Smith. "If either one moves in the next ten minutes, come
to the control room."

"Otherwise?"

"Otherwise" Smith
smiled, a broad ironic smile. "Frankly, buddy boy, I don't think there is
any otherwise."

He started down the corridor.
"Smith," I shouted. "Where are you going?"

"Control room."

I looked out the port. Neither
ship had moved. I stared at the two faint points of light. Once I thought they
moved, but I noticed everything had moved and realized it was my eyes. I
blinked and moved back from the port, aligning the Gate with the edge of the
port for perspective. I wondered why Smith left me behind. On our first visit
to the Merryweather Enterprize, Smith had been able to see constructors
near the focusing ring. Constructors were smaller than spacecraft. Heroics?
Possibly. If one or both of the ships moved, it meant Spieler's men believed
Dr. Higgins and fled. At that point, it would be possible to stop Spieler.

Smith would need help. If nothing
moved, Spieler could not be stopped. Smith was giving me a few extra minutes to
live.

I tried to think about the
situation, watching the two spacecraft. Spieler would have re-established
matter transmitter contact with the relay ship. His men could take either ship
or both. Presumably, the equipment deflecting the Merryweather ground Gate was
in the relay ship. The men would take the station's Gate to the second ship,
leaving the deflection equipment in operation to hinder pursuit.

Something moved. I stared out the
port. Imagination? I squinted at the spacecraft.

Somewhere farther down the
corridor, I heard a shot, loud and reverberating. Several more shots followed.
I checked the automatic, familiarizing myself with it. Would I shoot anyone? I
didn't want to. In self-defense? If they shot first?

I checked the port again. One ship
had disappeared, breaking out of solar orbit and changing its angle to the Sun,
its reflection gone. I started for the station control-room.

I expected noise. I heard none,
only my own footsteps on the deck. Ahead of me, the control-room door was open.
I stopped, checking the gun again.

"Smith?" I called.

No one answered. I shivered,
realizing what I had just done. If Smith were safely in the control room,
calling was unnecessary. Otherwise, it warned Spieler.

I moved up to the door, wondering
what I was doing there, a cocked automatic in my hand, about to step into a
room where I might have to use it. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. I
remember being surprised at how much I was sweating. My stomach felt knotted. I
kept thinking, You're an engineer, Collins. It buzzed in my head. Engineer.
Smith should take care of this. Smith, not you. My bowels wanted to move.

"Smith?" I called again,
almost involuntarily.

No one responded.

I pointed the gun ahead of me and
stepped through the doorway.

Spieler stood at the Big Gate
controls, his left shirtsleeve drenched with blood and his left arm dangling,
limp and useless, at his side. He looked at me, trying to steady himself on the
control panel. His face was blanched and slack. In spite of the physical shock
to his body, his eyes were alive. He began fumbling with the unfamiliar safety
on the first switch for the Big Gate. He got it up and touched the plate. The
"Power" light glowed green.

I hesitated, unable to decide
whether to say something or shoot. I looked around the control-room. On the
raised area in front of the main observation wall, the air shimmered. The
matter transmitter in the relay ship was focused on the control-room. Did
Spieler think he could escape, drag a pulsar into the Solar System and escape?
Or was it a door to the relay ship in case he failed?

On the floor, partly obscured by
Captain Wilkins' desk, a standup table like an old-style drafting board, lay
Smith, motionless, blood glistening on the deck along his left side.

I moved toward him, dazed. When I
moved, Spieler flicked up the second safety cover and touched the plate. The
"Focus" switch lit amber. I turned on him. He freed the automatic
from his belt, leveling it at me and leaning against the control panel.

In spite of the gun in my hand, I
expected Spieler to fire. A Mexican standoff is no standoff at all when one
side is insane. I could see he was struggling to keep erect. Watching him, I
realized why I was still alive. Spieler knew I would get off at least one shot.
He could not absorb more damage and still activate the transmitter.

"Move away from the
panel," I said.

Talking was a mistake. My voice,
unexpectedly reedy, reflected my frightened state of mind. Instead of moving,
Spieler seemed to gain confidence.

In the corner of my eye, something
moved. I thought at first Spieler might have an accomplice, stepping through from
the relay ship. I changed position to take in as much of the room as
possibleSpieler, the shimmering air from the relay ship's matter transmitter,
Smith's body. The body moved.

"Smith."

Spieler looked at Smith. Smith,
struggling to regain consciousness, rolled slowly onto his own blood.

"Smith!" I shouted.
"What should I do?"

Smith lifted his head a few inches
from the deck, his cheek smeared with blood, looking first at me, then at
Spieler. His head dropped back to the deck, the face away from me.

Spieler started to fumble with the
last safety cover, awkwardly trying to raise it and hold onto his gun.

"Smith! Please! What should I
do?"

Groggily, Smith turned his face
toward me, his voice weak and barely audible.

"Shoot the bastard."

Spieler looked at me, hesitating.

I tried. I held the automatic with
both hands, raising it to eye level. My arms shook. I could see Spieler's face
over the front sight and imagine it blown away. Spieler's face, watching me
with almost scientific detachment, and the front sight and what I was about to
do seemed the only reality. Everything else seemed abstract and unreal. A
pulsar, thousands of light-years from Earth, about to topple the Solar System
like bowling pins, about to extinguish the human racethe enormity of it
drained it of meaning. I only knew one thing. I was about to kill a man.

"Shoot, damn it,"
groaned Smith.

A smile, twisted and contemptuous,
appeared on Spieler's face. He turned away from me to the control panel. I
tried to fire. I couldn't. I felt the gun drop from my hands and heard it
clatter to the deck. I saw Smith reach out for it and lose consciousness. I saw
Spieler lift the last safety cover and touch the plate. The
"Activate" light came on, red beneath his fingers. Ignoring me, he
lurched toward the focal point for the relay ship transmitter. Even then, I
could have stopped him. If I had rushed him, he might have missed with his
first shot. Somehow, it seemed futile.

Spieler stepped through the
circle, disappearing.

Still dazed, I stooped over Smith.
He was unconscious. I rolled him on his back and tried to examine his wounds.
Amidst the blood and torn cloth, I could see a rib. I tried to stop the
bleeding.

While I worked on Smith, Dr.
Higgins came in, asking what happened. I tried to explain. I started to
indicate the place where Spieler stepped through to his ship. It was gone, shut
down just after Spieler used it. Dr. Higgins listened, visibly more upset each
minute.

"Can't we do anything?"
he asked.

"What?"

"Anything! Can't we shut it
off or something?"

"No. Once anything is in the
field, safety circuits prevent anyone turning it off until the field's
cleared."

"What kind of safety is
that?" raged Dr. Higgins. "It's going to kill us all!"

"Sorry."

"Sorry! Is that all you can
say? Who built this damn Frankenstein anyway?"

I told him. He looked at me,
startled, incredulous.

"You!"

I nodded.

"Then unbuild it! Take it
apart! Shut it off! Do something!"

I tried to think of something
feasible. Even if we destroyed the reactor, enough residual energy would remain
in the field to complete the transmission. All Gates are constructed that way.

"We could destroy the
focusing ring," I suggested.

"How?" asked Dr.
Higgins, game.

"Good question."

Even if we somehow moved the Merryweather
Enterprize near the focusing ring and pulled all the stops on the reactor,
the explosion would not damage the ring. The Merryweather Enterprize was
a half mile across. The ring was a hundred and eighty kilometers across. Any
explosion we could produce would only slap the giant's face. I told Dr.
Higgins. He cursed, thought a moment, running his tongue over his swollen lip,
then got an idea. It excited him. He clapped his hands together, saying
"yes, yes," thinking about it, assembling the pieces.

"What is it?"

He waved me aside, thinking.
"Just a minute."

"Please, Dr. Higgins. We
don't have much time."

He shook his head violently.
"Got it. Got it."

"What?"

"Can you maneuver this
station?"

"No."

"If we got someone on Earth
to tell you how, could you?"

"Maybe."

"OK, listen to this."

"I'm listening."

"We maneuver the station up
to the Gate. Got it?"

"Yes."

"Then we put it in this end
of the transmitter."

"Then what?"

"We ram it!" He clapped
his hands. "Like two trains in a tunnel!"

"Ram it!" In spite of
the seriousness of the situation, I laughed. The idea was utterly ridiculous.
Assuming the pulsar was not in transit but simply sitting in space, ramming it
would be about as effective as ramming the Sun. Second, I reminded Dr. Higgins,
since the long reach of the Big Gate is based on the idea, among others, that
the beginning and end of the journey are the same event seen from different
perspectives, the space station and the pulsar would never even touch. Starting
at different spatial positions and different points in time, they would be
different events. Dr. Higgins waved me into silence, his brow deeply furrowed,
contrite.

"OK, OK, I remember now. It
was just a suggestion."

"A strange one for an
astronomer."

He glared at me. "We make
mistakes, too, you know!"

"I know, but"

"Let's not pursue it further.
I remember it all now. I even explained it to Mr. Spieler once, though why he
wanted to know is beyond"

"Spieler! You
explained" I broke off and ran to the observation wall. I could see
nothing of the second spacecraft. I went back to the Big Gate control panel,
touching a series of plates. A bank of screens lit up.

"What's that?" asked Dr.
Higgins.

"Remote cameras to watch the
Big Gate." I scrutinized them closely, pointing at the screen.
"There."

Dr. Higgins looked. "What is
it?" "Spieler's spacecraft, heading for the focusing ring."

We watched the screen. Spieler's
ship approached the center of the focusing ring, perceptibly moving even at the
distance of our camera: I should have thought of it. Spieler planned to trade
places with the pulsar. Since it would be gone from the focal point of the Big
Gate, he could safely enter that space, leaving the Solar System before the
pulsar materialized. The "Power" readout was off the scale. The
"Duration" readout showed slightly under ten minutes to
materialization. Smith groaned behind us.

I left Dr. Higgins at the screens
and went back to Smith. Blood had soaked through my makeshift bandages.
Someplace, the station had first-aid equipment. I had never seen it. Under the
circumstances, first-aid would probably be last-aid. I tried to make him
comfortable. I had to lean close to his mouth to hear him.

"What happened?"

"I told him. He listened,
eyes barely open. When I finished, he made a noise, indicating he had
understood, then said something. I bent closer.

"Why didn't you shoot?"

"I couldn't."

"Stupid bastard."

He lost consciousness again.

I went to the phone and tried to
contact the Merryweather ground Gate. Spieler's ship was still jamming
communications. Somewhere in the process, the situation became a reality.
Spieler would keep jamming the equipment until his ship disappeared through the
focusing ring. Then? There wouldn't be any then. Why didn't you shoot? I
couldn't. Civilized, Collins. Very civilized.

I walked back to Dr. Higgins. He
pointed at the screen. Spieler approached the bull's-eye. What Spieler hoped to
do six thousand light-years from Earth, other than outlive humanity, I didn't
know. Perhaps he had one of his girlfriends aboard his ship. Adam and Eve. It
was the funniest thing I had ever heard. Tears came to my eyes. Dr. Higgins
looked at me.

"What's so funny?"

I couldn't stop laughing. I
pointed at the screen.

"That's not funny at all,"
said Dr. Higgins, frowning.

"Adam," I said and
dissolved, laughing.

"Adam?"

"I always thought," I
said, starting to hiccup, "Adam was a little crazy."

Dr. Higgins looked at the screen.
"He wasn't the only one."

Spieler's ship disappeared. Wiping
the tears from my cheeks, I looked at the "Duration" readout. X minus
thirty seconds. My hiccups subsided. Not even enough time to call the ground. I
walked to the observation wall. Below me, the focusing ring looked small and
harmless. How would it start? Would the pulsar materialize as the rock had
materialized, then suck us slowly to it? Would it appear, then nothinggone in
a split second?

I started to ask Dr. Higgins. He
stood intently watching the screens.

Why burden him with useless
questions. I glanced at Smith, unconscious on the floor. At least Smith had
known why he was going to die. On Earth, they would never know. I looked at my
watch. X minus three seconds. What can you think in three seconds? I stared out
into space, watching the focusing ring. Enjoy the ride, Collins.

I glanced at my watch again. X
plus three seconds. My watch needed cleaning. The thought almost started me
laughing again. X plus thirty seconds. I looked over my shoulder.

"Dr. Higgins."

"What?" he snapped,
irritated at having his attention taken from the screens.

"What does that readout by
your hand say?"

He looked at it. "Zero."


"Impossible."

"Look for yourself."

I walked over to the control
panel. "Duration" zero. Plain as day. In fact, six zeros. I looked at
the "Power" readout. Minimum load. I looked at the screens. The
focusing ring hung in space. I examined the background of stars. Nothing. Or
rather, something. Stars. Small stars. No big ones up close.

"I don't understand," I said.


"You don't understand
what?"

"We're supposed to be dead
now."

"Maybe we are,"
suggested Dr. Higgins.

I looked around. I had heard of
snowballs in hell, but not space stations. "No, I don't think so."

Dr. Higgins pinched himself.
"I feel like I'm here."

"Take my word for it," I
said. "You're here." I mused, dumbfounded. "You're here and I'm
here and Smith's here, but the pulsar isn't."

I heard clattering footsteps in
the corridor. Corona del Mar had reestablished matter transmitter contact with the
station. I reached over and touched the "Power" plate. The light
remained on. Spieler was still in the field. The instruments, designed to
register objects considerably larger than a spacecraft, barely noticed his
presence.

Captain Wilkins and a half dozen
men charged into the control-room. Captain Wilkins came to an abrupt halt,
staring at me.

"You!"

What could I say to that? I
grinned. "None other."

 

XVIII

 

Dolores and I visited Smith in the
hospital. Emerging from the elevator on Smith's floor, I felt like turning
around and leaving. As soon as the doors opened, I saw H. Winton Tuttle pacing
the corridor outside Smith's room, a deep frown on his face. I would have to
pass him to see Smith.

"What's the matter with
you?" asked Dolores.

"That's Harold."

Harold saw me. Retreat, as they
say, became impossible. He stopped pacing. He glanced at a gray-haired woman on
a bench next to the wall, pointing down the corridor at me. His pointing finger
quivered.

"That's him!"

"Who, dear?" asked the
woman. In a softened, middle-aged way, she faintly resembled Smith.

"Collins! He's
responsible for this!"

I introduced Dolores to Harold and
his wife. Meeting Smith's daughter was an odd experience. I thought of her as
belonging to the generation ahead of me. I thought of her father, Smith, as my
peer.

Reluctantly, Harold shook hands
with Dolores, grumbling. There would be litigation, he assured me, substantial
litigation over this matter.

"What matter?" I asked,
wanting Dolores to hear his complaints and evaluate them.

Harold put both palms to his
forehead, as if losing patience with an obstinate child. He looked at his wife,
shaking his head in disbelief.

"Did you hear him,
Janet? He asks what matter! First he convinces poor Scarlyn to ride off
like Don Quixoteand just as blindly! Then he gets Scarlyn shot to pieces and
from what the media say almost wipes out the human race! Then he alienates
Julia from us! And he wants to know what matter! I tell you"

"Julia?"

"Our daughter," said
Janet Tuttle.

"I know. What's she got to do
with"

"You, and Scarlyn,
and"he pointed in a generally northern direction"that so-called
school up there"

"Berkeley?"

"Yes! All of you are
combining to corrupt my daughter! She no longer listens to me! She
listens only to that crazy oldold" He waved his hand at Smith's door,
unable to find the right pejorative. "To him!"

"She could do worse."

Harold's eyes narrowed,
suspicious. "Where did you go to school?"

"Berkeley."

"Ah-ha! I thought so! You,
Scarlyn, Juliathey should tear that place down stone by stone and salt the
earth!"

"How's Mr. Smith?"
Dolores asked Janet Tuttle.

"Weak, but recovering. They
say he has a very sound constitution."

Harold snorted, beginning a
philippic against doctors. They knew nothing, nothing at all. Appearances were
deceiving. Inside, a man Smith's age was worn out, finished. The doctors only
took him off the critical list because there was nothing more they could do.

"Frankly," I said,
"I don't think you should let Scarlyn hear you say that."

"Why?"

"He's liable to get up off
what you seem to think is his deathbed and kick the hell out of you."

A nurse came out of Smith's room.
I introduced myself.

"Ah, yes. Mr. Collins. You
may go right in. Don't stay too long. He's still weak."

Harold looked startled; frowning
at the nurse. "They can go in?"

"Yes, sir."

"But we can't?"

"I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Smith
left strict orders and his doctor agrees."

Dolores and I left Harold arguing
with the nurse.

Smith, propped up in bed, looked
weak but alert, his complexion pale. A stack of magazine tapes stood on the
table next to his bed. He looked up from the viewer, glad to see us.

"And you brought Gladstone
with you," he said.

"I had to. Harold's threatening
to sue."

"What for?"

"I don't think he knows yet.
How are you feeling?"

"Better, they tell me. The
worst of it was over before I woke up." He patted his side lightly.
"Plastic rib in here."

We sat down on chairs next to his
bed, talking a few minutes about his health. Something other than his
convalescence seemed to be bothering him. I had a suspicion what it was. He
seemed reluctant to bring it up with Dolores present. I assured him she knew
everything that happened on the Merryweather Enterprize.

"I don't," said
Smith.

"What do you want to
know?" "First, why didn't you shoot Spieler?"

"I tried."

"You tried, but you
didn't."

"I couldn't." I thought
about it, remembering that moment in the control-room. "I kept thinking,
you're about to kill a man, Collins. Everything else seemed sort of abstract,
unreal. I couldn't justify killing for that abstract a reason."

"Humanity is a pretty
abstract idea."

"Maybe if he'd shot at
me" I shrugged. "Who knows?" I didn't like saying my next
thought. "Maybe I'm a coward."

"No. A coward would have
turned back a dozen times before he ever got to that control-room. It's just
the way you're built. Some people can and some people can't. I should have seen
it coming, but I was too concerned about Freddy's mind to worry about
yours."

"Seen what coming?"

"All that moral crap. I
should have known when you started worrying about the moral implications of the
Gate."

"Someone has to worry about
that kind of crap, as you call it."

"True." He nodded at
Dolores. "Lawyers, maybe. Preachers. MeI get paid, I work."

Watching him, it struck me. I had
seen Smith play the old man. I had seen him play the demented old man. What was
he playing now? Tough guy? Hero? Forget all that moral crap, Louie, and fire
the machinegun. I laughed.

"Totally mercenary, huh? You
never worry about little things like who's right and who's wrong."

"It'll give you gray
hair."

"You've already got gray
hair."

"I got it learning not to
worry."

A better way of putting it
occurred to me. "Suppose Spieler had offered you the job instead of Mr.
Merryweather. Would you have taken it, knowing what you know now?"

Smith's mercenary pose broke. He
laughed, then held his side. "Hurts. OK, you win. What are you going to do
now?"

Dolores beamed, answering before I
could say anything. "Get married."

Smith eyed me. "I suppose
he'll do."

Dolores hugged my upper arm.
"He'll do just fine."

"Then what?" asked
Smith.

"Mr. Merryweather wants me to
build three more Big Gates."

We talked a few more minutes.
Smith began to look tired. I suggested we leave and stood up.

"By the way," said
Smith, "there's one detail that's escaped me, a minor point but" He
hesitated, wanting to draw me out.

"What is it?"

"Why," he asked, reaching
over and pulling a cigar from the cabinet next to his bed, "wasn't the
Solar System destroyed?"

It had taken Burgess, Steichen and
I five hours and a computer to clean up that detail. The Gate, intended for
planetary mineral extraction and designed to reach through a planetary magnetic
field, could work perfectly in a planetary environment. Given enough power, it
could bore a fifteen-kilometer hole through a planet. The pulsar provided a
radically different electromagnetic environment.

The magnetic field of Earth, and
coincidentally the Sun, is one gauss at the surface, one line of magnetic force
per square centimeter of surface. The Crab Nebula's neutron star, ten
kilometers of shrunken sun, has a surface magnetic field of ten billion gauss.
When our Gate reached out, its focal point on the pulsar's surface, the intense
magnetic field acted exactly like a second focusing ring, tightening the focus.
Because of the added power, we removed a chunk of the pulsar with almost twice
the mass of our planetary sampletwice the mass and less than a centimeter
across. Impressive objects, pulsars. I hesitated telling Smith. I felt like
needling his pose of the uninvolved mercenary.

"You don't really care about
details like that, do you?" I asked. "You got your pay."

"True, but my granddaughter
asked when she called. I told her. I'd find out. One of the professors at
Berkeleyold gaffer, Emeritus, I thinkwanted to know."

"Not Jenson."

Smith snapped his fingers,
grinning. "That was the name. Slipped my mind. He thinks you didn't build
the Gate properly. I'd like to know why we're still here for his benefit."


When I finished, he nodded,
pensive, chewing on his unlit cigar. "What happened to Spieler?"

Spieler, intending to trade places
with the pulsarto arrive safely in the space it vacatedarrived instead at its
surface. The titanic forces at the surface, sufficient to squeeze the Big
Gate's focus from fifteen kilometers to less than button-hole size, had applied
themselves to his spacecraft.

I held up my thumb and index
finger, spacing them a fraction of an inch apart.

Smith looked at them blankly a
moment, thinking, then smiled, nodding. "Oh."

"What about you?" I
asked. "What are you going to do?"

"Horace wants me to look into
some problems he's having in Mutombu Mukulu."

I looked at Dolores. "I think
he's a little old for that, don't you, Dolores?"

"Definitely. He should feed
pigeons or something."

"What," I inquired, my
expression as grave as I could muster. "did you tell him?"

"I told him I'd think about
it."