by H. B. Fyfe
Westervelt grinned back, at some cost.
“Is there another kind?” he asked. “After all, Si, she’s only been around a few weeks. It’s the novelty. I’ll get used to her.”
“Sure you will,” said Simonetta.
She returned to her letters, and Westervelt hunched over his desk to brood. He wondered what Parrish and Beryl were up to in the file room. He could think of no innocent reason to wander in on business of his own. Perhaps, he reflected, he did not really want to; he might overhear something he would regret.
He passed some time without directing a single thought to the problems of the Department. Then the door beyond Simonetta opened and Smith strolled out. He carried a pad as if he, too, had been doodling.
“Well, Willie,” he said cheerfully, “what are we going to do about this Harris fellow?”
“All I can think of, Mr. Smith, is to offer to trade them a few people we could do without,” said Westervelt.
Smith grinned. He seemed to be willing to make up a little list.
“Some who never would be missed, eh? And let’s head the page with people who take messages from thinking fish!”
He pottered about for a few moments before winding up seated on a corner of the unoccupied secretarial desk.
“I was actually thinking of skin divers,” he confided. “Then I realized that if it takes a twenty foot monster to wander the undersea wilds of Trident without being intimidated, maybe those waters wouldn’t be too safe for Terran swimmers.”
“Unless they could get one of the monsters for a guide,” suggested Westervelt.
The three of them pondered that possibility.
“I can see it now,” said Simonetta. “My name Swishy. Me good guide. You want find pearl? Not allowed here; we no steal from other fish!”
They laughed, and Smith demanded to know how one thought in pidgin talk. They discussed the probability of fraud in the reports that Smith had received, and concluded reluctantly that, whether or not some trick might be involved, there was bound to be some truth in the story.
“I suppose we’ll have to use this fishy network to locate him,” sighed Smith at last. “It would take too long to ship out parts of a small sub to be assembled on Trident. The whole thing makes me wonder if I’ll ever eat another seafood dinner!”
“Maybe somebody else will think of something,” said Westervelt, partly to conceal the fact that he himself had come up with nothing.
“Tell you what,” said Smith, nodding. “Suppose you go along and see how Bob Lydman is making out, while I sign these letters. You might check at the com room sometime, too, in case anything else on the case comes in.”
Westervelt agreed, made sure he had something in his pocket to write upon should the need arise, and left.
A few minutes later, he reached the end of the corridor, having cocked an ear at the door of the old file office as he passed and heard Beryl giggling at some remark by Parrish. He unclenched his teeth and knocked on Lydman’s door.
He waited a minute and tried again, but there was still no answer.
He hesitated, wondering what would happen should he walk in and find that Lydman was physically present but not in a mood to recognize any one else’s existence. Slowly, he walked back to the washroom on the opposite side of the hall.
Washing his hands with deliberation, Westervelt decided that it might be best to get Lydman on the phone. He could not, in fact, understand why inside phone calls were not more popular in the office. He supposed that the face-to-face habit had grown up among the staff, probably reflecting Smith’s preference for getting everyone personally involved in everything. There might even be a deeper cause—they were so often in contact with distant places by the tenuous beaming of interstellar signals that there must be a certain reassurance and sense of security in having within physical reach the person to whom one was speaking.
“I’ll have to watch for that if I stay here long enough,” Westervelt told himself. “You don’t have to be a prizefighter to get punchy, I guess.”
He examined himself critically in the mirror over the sink, thinking that he could do with a neater appearance. A coin in the slot of a dispenser on the wall bought him a disposable paper comb with which he smoothed down his dark hair.
I need a haircut almost as bad as Castor P. he thought. I wonder if that really stands for Pollux? What a thing for parents to do! On the other hand, from people that came up with one like him, you’d expect almost anything!
No one came in while he was in the washroom, much as he would have welcomed an excuse for conversation. He dawdled his way through the door into the corridor, not liking the thought of inflicting his presence upon Beryl and Parrish. That meant he would have to walk back as far as the spare conference room to find a phone.
“Of course, there’s the lab,” he muttered.
That was only a few steps away, and he could hardly do much damage between the door and the phone.
Reaching the end of the corridor once more, he decided to make one last try at Lydman’s door. Again, there was no reply to his knock, so he turned away to the laboratory door and entered.
He was faced by a vista of tables, workbenches with power tools, and diverse assemblies of testing apparatus, most of the latter dusty and presenting the appearance of gold-bergs knocked together for temporary use and then shoved aside until someone might need a part from one of them. By far the greater space, however, was occupied by shelves and crates and stacks of small cartons or loosely wrapped packages in which various gadgets seemed to be stored after plans of them had been transmitted to the field. Half a dozen large files for drawings and blueprints reached nearly to the ceiling. Racks of instruments in relatively recent use or consideration stood here and there among the tables and workbenches.
To Westervelt’s right, near the far wall behind which lay the communications room, he caught sight of a prowling figure. He recognized Lydman’s broad shoulders and hesitated.
The ex-spacer had paused to examine a gadget lying on one of the tables. From Westervelt’s position, it appeared to be a wristwatch or something similar. Lydman picked it up and turned toward a part of the wall where a thick steel plate had been fastened to an insulated partition of brick. He raised the “watch” to eye level, as if aiming.
A thin pencil of white flame leaped from the instrument to spatter sparks against the already scarred and stained steel. Sucked up by the air-conditioning, the small puff of smoke disappeared so quickly that Westervelt realized that the scorched odor was entirely in his imagination.
Lydman replaced the instrument casually before strolling over to another table. He inspected an open pack of cigarettes with a grim smile, but let them lie there in plain sight. Westervelt reminded himself never to grab one of those, just on general principles. Lydman went on to a small cylinder somewhat larger than an old-fashioned battery flashlight. Something clicked under his finger, and from one end of the cylinder emerged the folding blades of a portable fan. The ex-spacer pressed a second switch position to start them spinning. He turned the fan to blow across his face, as if to check its cooling power, then held the thing at arm’s length as he thumbed the switch to a third position.
A low, humming sound reached Westervelt. It rose rapidly in pitch until it passed beyond his hearing range. He shook his head slightly. For some reason, he found it difficult to concentrate. Perhaps Lydman’s presence, unexpected as it was, had upset him, he thought. He decided that he must be getting a dizzy spell of some sort. Then he became concerned lest he turn nauseous.
The final stage, hardly a minute after Lydman had last moved the switch, found Westervelt tensing as a wave of sheer panic swept over him.
He stepped back toward the door, noticing dizzily that Lydman wore a strange expression too. Part of the youth’s mind wondered if some of the ultra-sonic effect were reflected from the walls t
o the ex-spacer; another part insisted upon leaving the scene as hastily as possible.
He got himself into the corridor again, actually panting as he eased the door closed behind him. He started to walk, finding his knees a trifle loose. Passing the washroom, he hesitated; but he decided that he could make it to the conference room. Once there, however, he slipped inside and sat down to recover.
“What does it take to have a mind like that?” he whispered to himself. “It’s like a hobby to him. I think some day I ought to look for a job with reasonably normal people!”
A few minutes of peace and quiet refreshed him. He returned to the main office, just as Smith was surrendering a stack of signed letters to Simonetta Diorio. They looked around as he entered.
“Well, Willie, did he have anything going?” asked Smith.
“I…uh…he was kind of busy,” said Westervelt.
“What did he seem to have in mind?” Smith started to reach for Simonetta’s phone switch.
“He…that is…I didn’t ask him. He was…busy, in the lab.”
“Oh,” said Smith.
He peered at Westervelt’s expression, and added, “Then…perhaps we’d better not disturb him. It might spoil any ideas he’s putting together.”
Westervelt managed a grunt of assent as he turned to walk back to his desk.
Whatever he’s putting together, he thought, I’d rather stay out of the way.
He hunched over his desk, staring unseeingly at the notes he had scribbled earlier. He was vaguely conscious of the cessation of talk in the background, but he did not notice Simonetta’s approach until the girl stood beside him.
“What happened, Willie?” she asked. “You look as if he threw you out.”
“No. Not deliberately, anyhow,” said Westervelt. “At least, I don’t think he knew I was even there—although how can you tell if he doesn’t want to let on?”
He told her what had happened in the laboratory. She nodded thoughtfully.
“I suppose it has its uses,” said Westervelt. “I hate to think of the way he plays around with things in there. Wasn’t there a time when someone killed himself in that lab?”
“That was years ago,” said Simonetta.
She hugged herself as if feeling a sudden chill, her large, soft eyes serious. Westervelt realized that she was actually a very beautiful girl, much more so than Beryl, and he wondered why he felt so differently about them. Simonetta seemed too nice to fit the ideas he got concerning Beryl. Something told him that his thinking was mixed up.
I guess you just grow out of that, he reflected silently. Maybe they’re the same under the skin.
FIVE
When Beryl walked in, Westervelt was at one of the tall windows with Simonetta, dialing filter combinations to make the most of the setting sun. They had the edge of it showing as a deep crimson ball beside another building in the vicinity.
“What are you two doping out?” asked the blonde. “Some disappearing trick?”
Simonetta laughed as Westervelt shoved the dial setting to afternoon normal.
“It’s an idea,” he said, scowling at Beryl.
“For underwater?” she demanded mockingly.
“Ever hear of a squid?” retorted Westervelt. “They hide themselves underwater. Maybe a cloud of dye would be as good as a filter.”
“Willie, that is an idea!” said Simonetta. “You ought to tell Mr. Smith.”
Westervelt looked at her sourly. Now Beryl knew that they really had been wasting time, and had a point to score against him in their next exchange.
Oh, well. I can’t hold a thing like that against Si, he thought. I can think of people who’d be on the way to Smitty already, calling it their own idea.
Beryl had done a ladylike collapse into her chair and crossed her legs. She dug into her purse for cigarettes and requested a light.
“Why don’t you buy a brand with a lighter in the box?” asked Westervelt.
Nevertheless, he walked over to the switchboard cubicle for the office desk lighter that had been appropriated by Pauline. Returning with it after a moment, he lit Beryl’s cigarette and inquired, “Well, what did you and Parrish dig up?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed, leaning back, “but, boy, did we dig!”
“Yeah, I thought I heard the shovel clink once,” said Westervelt, thinking of the laughter he had heard through the door of the dead file office.
Beryl, concerned with her own complaints, ignored him.
“We must have looked up thirty or forty cases,” she went on. “I never even heard of most of those places on the newscasts!”
“Did he find anything that gave him an idea?” asked Simonetta.
“Not a thing! There seemed to be some real crazy spots in the records, but nobody ever got in jail at the bottom of an ocean.”
“You’d think it would have happened sometime,” said Simonetta thoughtfully.
“I suppose,” suggested Westervelt, “that on any planet where Terrans were taken underwater, they didn’t live long enough to be one of our cases. On a place like Trident, they usually wouldn’t have any trouble. They’d stay on land, and any local life would stay in the sea. It took a nut like Harris to go poking around where he wasn’t wanted.”
“That’s what Mr. Parrish hinted,” said Beryl. “All I know is that it sounds like a story out of a laughing academy. They shouldn’t allow them to get into places like that.”
“Then we’d all be looking for work,” said Westervelt. “Don’t complain, Beryl—maybe it will happen to you someday.”
The blonde shivered and turned to face her desk.
“Not me,” she declared. “I’m staying on Terra, even if they do offer me a field trip as a sort of vacation.”
Ah, he’s already started that line on her, thought Westervelt. I wonder if there’s anything in the files on how to spring a secretary from a penthouse?
Lydman and Parrish walked in, the latter pausing to exchange remarks with Pauline, the switchboard operator. A moment later, Smith opened his door as if expecting someone. He must have phoned them for a change, Westervelt realized.
“Oh, there you are, Willie,” said the chief. “I suppose you might as well sit in on this too. We might need something, and meanwhile, you can be picking up a tip or two.”
Westervelt rose and followed the others into Smith’s office, where he took a chair by the window. The others clustered around the chief’s desk, a vast plateau of silvery plastic strewn with a hodge-podge of papers and tapes.
The office itself was like a small museum. The walls were lined with photographs, mostly of poor quality but showing “interesting” devices that had been used in various department cases. The ones in which the color was better usually showed Smith in company with two or three men wearing space uniforms and self-conscious looks. Sometimes, a more assured individual was shown in the act of presenting some sort of memento or letter of appreciation to Smith. Lydman and Parrish also appeared in several of the pictures.
The record of our best cases, thought Westervelt. The bad ones are buried in the files.
Standing along the walls, or on little tables and bases of their own, were a good many models of spaceships, planetary systems, and non-humanoid beings. A few of the latter statues were enough to have made Beryl declare she was perfectly happy to stay out of Smith’s office and be someone else’s secretary. One model, which Westervelt secretly longed to examine at leisure, showed an entire city with its surrounding landscape on a distant planet.
Westervelt tore his attention from the mementoes and turned toward the group as Smith settled himself behind the desk.
“This is no longer even approximately funny,” said the department head. “I’ve had a few calls put through. Do you know how little we’re going to have to work with?”
“I gather that
it is not very much,” said Parrish calmly.
“There are less than fifty Terrans on that whole planet!” declared Smith, running the fingers of one hand through his already untidy hair. “The nearest colony or friendly spaceport from which we could have equipment sent in is twenty odd lightyears away.”
“Well, that could be done,” said Lydman mildly.
“Oh, of course, it could be done,” admitted Smith. “But how long do we have to fool around? We don’t know under what conditions Harris is being held.”
Parrish leaned forward to rest his elbows on Smith’s desk.
“We can deduce some of them pretty well,” he suggested. “In the first place, if he got out several messages—which we’ll have to assume he did—they must have found some means of providing him with air.”
“He could have lived a while on the air in this submarine he built,” said Lydman.
“Yes, but in that case, he would have used its radio for communication. We have to assume that they pried him out somehow, no?”
The others nodded.
“He wouldn’t last too long in a spacesuit, even if they pumped in air under pressure,” said Lydman judiciously.
“So they must have built some kind of structure to house him, if only a big tank,” said Parrish. Westervelt stirred, then closed his mouth rather than interrupt. Smith, however, had seen the motion and looked up.
“Speak up, Willie,” he invited. “It won’t sound any sillier than anything else that’s been said in this room.”
“I…I was wondering about these Tridentians,” said Westervelt. “Does anybody know how they live? Do they have cities built on the sea bottom?”
“If they have water jet vehicles, they certainly have the technical—”
Smith stopped as he saw Parrish lean back and roll his eyes toward the ceiling.
“What now, Pete?” he demanded apprehensively.
“I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me sooner,” groaned Parrish. “A hundred to one they have a nomadic set-up. It would be typical, with an environment like that. This is worse than we thought.”
