by James White
‘Of course I’ll help you, if I can,’ said the publicity man. ‘But your voice sounds funny, Joe--have you a sore throat or is this a bad line ...?’
Carson tried to contain his excitement and lower the pitch of his voice as he gave the title, page and date of the magazine and added, ‘I’m very interested in one of the pictures. It shows a group of pilots surrounded by inset pictures of, I think, the aircraft they fly. But the caption does not give the names of the individual pilots. Is there any way of finding out who they are?’
Simpson was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I’m not sure, Joe. I recognise the magazine and date, of course--it was an issue devoted to one of the big international aerospace shows which was held the preceding month. Companies and even government information agencies buy space on these occasions and try to place as much editorial material as possible--it’s a matter of national prestige, you see. The item you’re interested in sounds like a puff about the pilots taking part in that country’s flying dis-play.
‘That particular magazine is a very small one,’ Simpson went on, ‘so I would think that the only way you would have of finding out the pilots’ names would be to scan the larger magazines published at the same time. They would also have covered the show and might possibly have used the same picture with a more detailed caption.’
‘Could you ...’ began Carson.
‘I could try, Joe, but you could probably do the job quicker and easier yourself by calling in on Ben Mitchell at the library. He keeps bound volumes of all the principal aviation magazines back to the Wright brothers. You have the date, now, so it is just a matter of checking through the different magazine files for that period ...’
On the way to the technical library Carson called in at Engineering Test to check whether Pebbles had returned or not. He had not, but Daniels was there ostentatiously displaying no interest in the crated and supposedly substandard module which was being loaded on to an articulated truck belonging to a local transport company. To be junk, Carson thought, the module was being very carefully handled.
The presence of God, sometimes known.as the Chief of Design, was making everyone appear unusually industrious and not disposed towards idle conversation. Even Donovan, who was standing beside the cab with the driver and whose duty it was to see that non-company transport did not take short cuts between parked aircraft and risk knocking off a tail or wing-tip, was watching Daniels out of the corner of his eye and had very little time for his own chief.
Carson went to the nearest outside telephone and called Jean Marshall. She was having a day off at home in lieu of a spell of night duty worked the preceding week. When she answered he said, ‘Jean, how would you like to follow a truck...?’
A little later as he was entering the building which housed the technical library, Carson called at the patrol office to lay some groundwork for his probable presence in the library later that night. He discovered that there would be a meeting in Daniels’s office at seven-thirty that evening.
He knew that it was going to be an important one...
In the library he used the outside phone to call Jean again and was lucky enough to catch her before she left. There was nobody within earshot but he avoided being specific--this was not, after all, an automatic, unmanned exchange--as he asked her if she would mind letting herself into the flat and taking a call he was expecting sometime after seven o’clock. She could amuse herself with the tape-recorder until he arrived later. He hoped she would be back in time to do this because it was a very important call...
He could always eavesdrop on the meeting from his office as he had done the last time. But this meeting, he felt sure, was going to be a very important one and he did not want his eavesdropping to be interrupted by Donovan or one of the other patrolmen wanting to know if they could help him or make coffee. This way he could use the recorder attachment for telephone calls and later go over the tape of the meeting as often as he liked, and if the level of conversation dropped too low he could simply crank up the volume--if he was lucky, that was, and Jean returned from checking on the truck in time.
Carson felt lucky. Everything seemed to be going his way today.
He was lucky again in the library. Carson found the information he needed in just under two hours although he did not, of course, tell Ben Mitchell that. Instead he talked to the technical librarian about a series of articles he hoped to do some day on the subject of second generation space-flight, pointing up the fact that recent advances in the art were making it unnecessary for astronauts to be supermen and that the way was opening for purely commercial, or even pleasure, trips to the moon and planets.
Perhaps he overdid it a little, but Mitchell did not seem to think it strange that a security officer should want to write as a hobby, though he professed mild surprise that it was not spy stories. The librarian did not mind how late Carson stayed researching, but he reminded him that it was against regulations to take books and technical material off company limits. In the meantime Mitchell said that he would get photo-copies made of the pages and illustrations Carson was most interested in and let him have them in about twenty minutes.
He was thinking of those pages as he let himself into Daniels’s office a little after seven o’clock. They had shown the picture in his clipping enlarged, reduced and in one case chopped to show only the man he was interested in plus two of his companions, and they had also named names. The photographs would lose detail in the copying process, which was meant to reproduce text rather than half-tones, but the face was recognisable and it was the name that was important.
The name was not Pebbles.
He went to the external telephone on the inconspicuous corner table. At this time there were no operators on the board and Daniels, being an important man in the company, had a private night line to his office. A little selfconsciously he used his handkerchief to lift the receiver and the end of his ball-point to dial.
He heard the phone in his flat ringing and go on ringing. Jean had not arrived. His luck was beginning to change. Carson laid down the receiver and walked around the large office. The ringing signal could be clearly heard everywhere, so he could not simply leave it as it was while he drove back to the flat and lifted his own receiver. That left him with no alternative but to eavesdrop from his office via the internal phone, except that he had not locked his office so that no matter how fast he drove down there he would be too late to stop one of the patrolmen lifting his receiver and replacing it when nobody spoke. And on the internal automatic PBX that would break the connection.
It was now seven-fifteen. An early arriver for the meeting might turn up at any minute.
Suddenly the burring from the receiver stopped. Carson ran to the table and picked it up. ‘Jean, I haven’t much time ...’ he began.
‘Joe, I followed the truck to the freight terminal,’ she said excitedly, ignoring him. ‘The driver left it there, among hundreds of others just like it, and I drove away and came back again every time someone looked as if they might ask me what I was doing there. About an hour ago another front end drove up and hooked on to the trailer. There were two men in the cab, both in service denims, the vehicle was painted olive drab with military serial numbers in white. They threw a green tarpaulin over the crate and trailer name panel and drove away. With that olive drab horse and tarp its own mother would not have recognised the load.
‘And Joe,’ she rushed on, ‘they came back here! They showed some papers at the airfield gate, drove through and on to that old C-5A that arrived this morning, which took off a few minutes later. Somebody thinks a lot of our scrapped components, Joe . . .’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Carson, practically sweating with impatience. She sounded so excited and pleased with herself. He should complement her but there was no time. He went on, ‘Jean, listen carefully. Set up to record through the phone. Try not to make any noise while you’re doing it, and afterwards don’t cough or sneeze or make any noise whatever unless you go into the other room. Any no
ise you make at that end might be picked up by the receiver here loudly enough to be noticed by someone in this room. And Jean, leave the flat door ajar so’s I won’t have to make a noise with the door-bell. Got all that?’
‘Yes, Joe.’
‘Good, I’m leaving now...’
He walked slowly past the patrol office, trying so hard not to run that he felt that he would fall on his face, and across to the car. As he moved away Daniels pulled in.
Chapter Seventeen
When he tip-toed into the flat half an hour later his telephone receiver was in its rest, the tape-recorder was switched off and loud cooking noises were coming from the kitchen. His disappointment was like a physical blow.
‘What happened...! ‘
‘I’m not sure,’ said Jean over her shoulder. ‘We’ll probably find out during the playback, all I know is that they hung up on us about three minutes ago. I haven’t had anything to eat since taking off after that truck. Are you hungry...?’
A little later they took their trays into the lounge beside the recorder and ate as they listened. They listened so intently that when a fork scraped a plate or a cup clinked softly against a saucer they practically snarled at each other to be quiet.
But for the first ten minutes or so there was nothing but a hissing, over-amplified silence. Then there was the sound of approaching footsteps, of a door opening and closing several times and the rhubarbing of three or four conversations going on at once, and finally one voice louder than the others...
‘Settle down, please. George, sit in a chair and not on the edge of my desk--this will be a long session, believe me. Now, let’s get on with it. Parsons?’
‘No trace of the vehicle or Tillotson. The search was thorough even though they thought they were helping me look for an important, instrument package. Dammit, why is it that a stupid machine can make the minus trip and not a man ...?’
‘A stupid man might make it ...’
‘Pebbles isn’t stupid, just innocent. But what does that make us ...?’
‘All right, all right, guilty. But he’s quite happy about it all. There was no need to tell him that he is to make a minus trip like Tillotson because he is unlikely to run into the same trouble ... ‘
‘But we don’t know what the trouble was, so how ...?’
‘Because we are controlling everything from the ground. He is an overgrown child and he’s living the dream that most children--and a lot of adults, too--have these days. He’ll be in space, a real live astronaut, but without the responsibilities of having to manoeuvre his vehicle or reposition it for re-entry or do anything at all ... What the blazes do you mean by jumping up like that...!’
‘It’s my car! I’ve just remembered that it’s giving trouble again, sir. Can I take a minute to ring the mechanic I know in Transport to have a look at it during the meeting? It could be important to have it checked before our trip tomorrow ...’
‘Your blasted car, at a time like this! You should ... ah ... Oh, well, use my phone and be quick about it.’
‘Thank you, sir. Sorry, fellows ... Hello, Transport? Donaldson here. It’s happened again, I’m afraid. Do you think you could come along and have a look at it? That’s very good of you. About fifteen minutes. Thank you ...’
Carson refilled his coffee cup and said, ‘I didn’t know Bill Donaldson had such influence. Getting a Transport mechanic to check out a private car--during nightshift, too--is quite a trick ... ‘
‘Settle down, Bill. Stop worrying about it, there’s probably a very simple explanation. Dammit, I suppose we won’t get any constructive thinking out of you, or anyone else, until you know what is wrong with that blasted scrap-heap ..!’
‘Sir! You are speaking of the woman I love ...!’
‘Dreamy Daniels seems to have mellowed with age,’ Carson remarked. ‘This is an important meeting. I would have expected him to stamp hard on anyone who dared mention private troubles like sick relatives or cars. It doesn’t sound right, somehow. I wonder what could have happened to...’
He began by wondering, but as the aimless chitchat continued Carson began to feel a little anxious. He thought back on the conversation they had already heard--useless, inconsequential conversation which had, perhaps, sounded just a little bit forced--searching for possible double meanings.
He found them.
‘Joe,’ said Jean sharply, ‘what’s the matter with you?’ His anxiety had built up rapidly to a fear that was close to panic. His mouth was too dry to speak. Before he could reply the tape-recorder made the sounds of a door being knocked and opened the negative sound of a sudden silence falling in Daniels’s office.
‘I’ve traced the fault, Mr Donaldson,’ said a new but oddly familiar voice. ‘No need to worry about it any more. Good night, sir.’
‘Good night, and ... and thank you. I must say that was quick ... Hey, Bob! Your girl has left her phone off the hook again. I’ll rep ... ‘
The recording ended abruptly at that point. Jean said, ‘What is the matter with you, Joe? Why are you looking at me like that...?’
‘Nothing,’ said Carson harshly, ‘except for a belated rush of brains to the head. Get your coat and things, Jean, and leave at once. Make sure you don’t forget the scarf you left behind last week, or gloves or anything belonging to you. If anyone asks, and somebody surely will, you’ve spoken to me only during working hours. Stick to that story no matter what. Now get going! Walk home or catch a taxi--but don’t ring one from here, there isn’t time. I’ll explain tomorrow at lunch, if I can. You must get out of here quickly before ... ‘
He broke off suddenly as the realisation came that she was staring, not at him, but at someone behind him. Carson swung around.
He was not really surprised to see Donovan standing there.
‘I’d prefer for you both to sit just where you are,’ said Donovan quietly. ‘Don’t move. Don’t even talk ...’
Donovan was capless, his topcoat collar turned up to hide the collar of his tunic and both hands were in his pockets. One of the pockets, indeed the whole coat on that side, was pulled off balance and deformed by what could have been a length of pipe carried horizontally in the pocket. Carson thought of the movie equivalent of this scene where the baddie’s gun made a barely perceptible bulge in a coat which had been tailored with barely perceptible bulges in mind. He wanted suddenly to laugh, but then he reminded himself that Donovan’s pocket would have concealed the weapon from passers-by when it was being carried vertically, that it came obvious only when it was being levelled, and that to be as obvious as this one was it had to be a very large-calibre weapon fitted with a silencer.
‘This looks bad, Donovan,’ he said, trying to keep his voice from squeaking, ‘but it isn’t as bad as it looks. We were eavesdropping on that meeting--I’ve done it once before on the internal phone which, unlike this one, can’t be traced from the other end. That was the only risk I took and you were right on to it ... But the point I’m trying to make is that we are concerned over the security of your project, too. We are on your side...’
It was not so much that Donovan was not believing him, the other man looked as if he just did not care one way or the other. Carson doubted if he was even listening.
‘For God’s sake take that thing out of your pocket!’ Jean burst out. More quietly she added, ‘You look ridiculous.’
Too quickly for them to have done anything, even if they had considered doing it, he had the thing out of his pocket and levelled at them again. It looked as if it would stop an elephant.
‘I don’t want anyone to think,’ said Donovan, ‘that I was pointing a stiffened index finger at them.’
This was much better, Carson thought. He laughed without overdoing it and said, ‘Doctor Marshall is involved in this because I needed professional advice--about a suspect, that is, not for myself. My own interest in the project stems from the fact that as the company’s chief security officer I considered it my job to protect this project even if the project ha
d no official classification and only a few people inside the company knew it existed--the security officer not being one of them.
‘Maybe I was being over conscientious,’ Carson went on quickly, ‘but a security man is, well, a security man. When my suspicions were first aroused--by small, apparently unimportant and senseless things like irregularities in accounting, planning errors which weren’t caught until they had reached the very top and small, carefully set bonfires which were intended to burn more than waste paper--I began to dig. Gradually I began to turn up more and more information on this project that never was. A lot of it was guesswork, deduction on very slim evidence, but when I began to realise how big it was, that it involved no less than ... ‘
‘If you don’t stop talking,’ said Donovan, ‘I’ll kill you now.’
For a long time nobody spoke. Donovan’s eyes kept flicking to one side and back to them again, like a spectator watching a tennis match from one side of the court. There could be no doubt that he meant what he said but not, Carson hoped, exactly what he said. It was the subject, not talking itself, which was forbidden.
‘You don’t have to worry about an accomplice skulking in the bedroom or kitchen,’ Carson said. ‘There are only the two of us. But I don’t suppose you believe that, either. And as for the project, we have a right to have our explanation heard and I should have thought you would be curious enough to ... ‘
‘He isn’t curious, Joe,’ Jean broke in, an edge of desperation tinging the clinical calm of her voice. ‘He isn’t really listening to you. He doesn’t care what you say...’
‘That’s right, Doctor,’ said Donovan. ‘And you, Mr Carson, have no right to an explanation or anything else. But to save you wasting your breath and because I’m in a hurry to settle this business, I’ll explain very briefly. I am solely responsible for the security of a very important project, perhaps the most important project the world has ever known. That is all I have been told and that is all I need or want to know. The project consists of the people --not very many--who are actively engaged on it and one watch-dog, me, to advise on security matters and to act when and where indicated. Project activities take place in the open alongside the normal day-to-day work of the departments concerned. Paperwork originates, has very limited circulation and is destroyed without going outside. There is no code name, no classification grading, nothing known about it outside except for a remembered but not recorded conversation with someone very high in the administration which took place about five years ago. You see, Mr Daniels thought that naming and classifying the project would attract attention to it, first from the various security organisations engaged in protecting it and later, as the inevitable leaks occurred, from the other side. Mr Daniels went right to the top and his project was so important that the top man agreed to throw away the rules.’
