“One of them. A control capsule, I suppose you’d call it—or an instrument capsule. They snap in and out. Easily.”
The three officers gathered around them to listen.
“I don’t know if they’re machined, or cast, or stamped,” the scientist went on. “I’ve never seen anything like them. I also can’t find any way to disassemble them. We took one over to the hospital and had it X-rayed. Nothing. Maybe the case is lined with lead—or something. These capsules come in two sizes, of exactly the same shape except that they’re keyed. It would be impossible to put one into the wrong hole.”
“Any special significance to that?” Colonel Stubbins Wanted to know.
The scientist shrugged. “Perhaps not. Of course it could mean that the instruments are in some way expendable and have to be replaced frequently. Or that the U.O. is being mass-produced and the keys are to prevent assembly line errors. Or both.”
Stubbins blanched. “Mass-produced! All we’d need would be a fleet of these things, aimed at population centers!”
“So far we haven’t found any way to aim this one—if that’s any consolation,” the scientist said. “We also don’t understand what the controls are supposed to control—if they are controls. We have turned up one interesting point. That hole at the top of the instrument panel is definitely designed for one of these capsules. So one control, or one instrument, is missing.”
Stubbins looked at Frazier. “Did one of your men swipe a souvenir?”
“All my men have done is guard the thing. None of us, not even myself or Major Wardle, looked inside. Until Haskins’s men got here we didn’t even know how to open the hatch.”
“Karvel?”
“Never got within fifty feet of it, and it’s been under observation ever since he first saw it.”
“Could anyone have gotten into it before he saw it?”
“It’s possible,” Frazier admitted. “But I don’t think it’s very likely.”
“What about the men who were doing the rescue work?”
“I’ll have them asked,” Frazier said. “Yes, Sergeant?”
“Colonel Vukin called, sir. You can see Major Karvel now.”
“Tell him we’re on our way,” Frazier said. “Want to come, Haskins?”
Haskins nodded. “Mind if I bring a couple of people along?”
“I don’t mind. Vukin said he’d admit the four of us, and a stenographer, and that’s all. A hospital room is not, and I quote, ‘the Roman Coliseum.’ We also have a time limit— fifteen minutes.”
“Starting now, or when we get there?” Haskins asked with a grin.
Frazier grinned back at him. “I suppose we’d better hurry.”
They stopped at Wing Headquarters to pick up Sergeant Gore, a stern-looking, middle-aged WAF who carried her stenographer’s notebook with authority. Lieutenant Colonel Vukin, a tall, somber man who might have been more appropriately cast as an undertaker, met them at the hospital’s main entrance and did not bother to welcome them.
“How’s the patient?” Colonel Frazier asked.
“Considering the concussion, and the loss of blood, and the nine stitches in his head, and the couple of miles he managed to walk on that knee, and the various iniquities he committed with three broken ribs, he’s in fairly good shape. I want you to remember that he breathes—and therefore talks—with difficulty and considerable pain. Under no circumstances is he to be excited. I’ll take your word for it that it’s imperative that you talk to him, but you’ll conduct your business quietly and allow him plenty of time between questions, or I’ll throw you out—individually and severally.”
“Surely, Colonel, sir,” Sergeant Gore said, wickedly deadpan, “you wouldn’t throw out a lady.”
“Any female who is party to a ruckus in a patient’s room is ipso facto no lady, and gets bounced. Come along.”
Vukin entered Karvel’s room first, and exclaimed, “What the devil! I left strict orders—”
Major Karvel already had company. The officer seated beside the bed, a plump, jolly-looking captain with a chaplain’s cross on his blouse, smiled at them innocently. The tavern owner Whistler, whom Haskins had met that morning, was sprawled across the foot of the bed. Karvel was sitting up supported by pillows, and if he was in pain he concealed the fact expertly.
“I should have thought of it,” Colonel Frazier muttered. “A chaplain is the one person who can talk back to a doctor!”
Vukin recovered his power of speech, and pointed at Whistler. “Out!”
“Bah,” Whistler said, not moving. “Wait’ll the next time you try to buy beer.”
“Have you finished?” Vukin asked the chaplain coldly.
“Now, Colonel—you know perfectly well my obligations to your patients don’t end until you bury them. And not even then, of course, but after that I can manage without the use your facilities.” He got to his feet, and clasped Karvel’s hand. “I think the major represents more of a challenge to my profession than he does to yours. Some men have mountains in their souls—mountains they are compelled to climb. Major Karvel owns an unusually lofty range. The summits are not only out of reach, but they are quite lost in the mist of self-doubt. I’ve never been able to decide whether I should be helping him to the top, or showing him a way around.”
“Did you ever try just giving him a kick in the pants?” Whistler asked.
The chaplain smiled. “It isn’t the sort of task one can ever consider finished. One never knows what one will find on the other side. More mountains, perhaps.” He nodded to the colonels, and winked at Karvel. “Coming, Bertram?”
Whistler got leisurely to his feet. He said to Karvel, “You oughta be grateful for the knock on the head. At least, now you got an excuse.”
“Just a moment,” Colonel Stubbins said. “As long as he’s here, why don’t we go over the whole thing with both of them?”
“You already talked to me,” Whistler said. “Anyway, I don’t like to stay in a small room with so much brass. Afraid I’ll get lead poisoning, or something.”
Sergeant Gore suffered a sudden attack of coughing, and by the time Colonel Stubbins had stopped glowering at her Whistler and the chaplain had left. Colonel Vukin motioned an orderly with extra chairs into the room. Introductions were performed, Colonel Frazier got everyone seated, and there was a brief pause while Colonel Stubbins eyed Vukin suspiciously.
“This meeting is confidential,” he announced.
“In that case I’d better close the door,” Vukin said, and did so, and went to stand at the head of Karvel’s bed. The three colonels shrugged in turn, and Haskins concentrated his attention on Major Bowden Karvel.
His left knee bulged with a cast, and the pajama leg was tucked neatly around the stump of his right leg. His head was heavily bandaged. His pajama jacket, open at the throat, revealed the binder about his chest.
That he appeared to be less than medium height was probably due to his wiry build. There was a touch of gray in the hair that the bandage did not cover, and he looked older than his thirty-six years; but his face revealed none of the defeat, or self-pity, that Haskins had half expected to find there. His bearing was that of a man who intended to get up and fight again.
“Did you get the surveyors, sir?” he asked Colonel Frazier. There was a twang to his speech that Haskins could not place.
Frazier nodded. “They haven’t finished yet, but so far they confirm everything you said. That sphere—unidentified object, we’re calling it—represents dead center, and whatever it was—”
“Force X,” Colonel Rogers murmured.
“—Force X spiraled out from there. The tree you picked out last night was the first obstacle it struck.”
Colonel Stebbins cleared his throat ostentatiously. “If you don’t mind an interruption—” He looked at the others. No one minded. “This is an important point, Major. Did you notice anything at all before that tree fell?”
“No, sir,” Karvel said.
“Think carefu
lly, Major. That U.O. didn’t materialize on the spot. It had to come from somewhere. We’d like to know how it got there.”
“I can’t help you, sir. I’d been sitting there in Whistler’s garden for maybe three hours when things started to happen, but obviously I didn’t spend that time staring fixedly in any particular direction.” He was speaking slowly, with frequent pauses. “I may have been looking toward that tree for a minute or two before it fell, but I couldn’t swear to it, and I didn’t see anything.”
“He couldn’t have seen anything anyway,” Colonel Rogers said dryly. “I told you the U.O. wasn’t visible from Whistler’s, not even with binoculars. It was resting in a depression.”
“He might have seen it arriving,” Colonel Stubbins said. “It had to come from somewhere, and it didn’t pop out of the ground. If it floated down by parachute, for example—”
“In that case, where’s the parachute?” Colonel Rogers demanded.
“I only used that as an example. The U.O. wasn’t hauled in by truck, or there’d be tracks. It didn’t fall out of a plane, or get dropped from one, or it would have been smashed or at least embedded in the ground. Also, the base radar would have picked up the plane. It didn’t arrive under its own power—”
“We can’t be certain about that. Shall we get on with it?”
“Ten minutes, gentlemen,” Colonel Vukin said crisply.
“The condition of the grass it was resting on should give you some idea of how long it had been there,” Karvel said.
“We have something better than that, Major,” Colonel Rogers said. “A farmer drove a jeep across that pasture shortly after one o’clock yesterday. He passed within twenty feet of the spot—we measured from the tracks—and he thinks he would have noticed the U.O. if it’d been there. We think so, too. As for the condition of the grass—”
“Never mind,” Colonel Stubbins said. “Major Karvel says he didn’t notice anything before that tree fell. Let’s leave it at that. What happened next, Major?”
“I doubt if anyone ever saw a tree fall the way that one fell,” Karvel said thoughtfully. “The trunk was knocked right out from under it. As I found out later, it fell with its upper branches on the stump, and the lower part of the trunk was shredded, as if someone had wielded a gigantic sledge hammer.”
“What did you think at the time it happened?”
“It just vaguely registered as an odd way for a tree to fall.”
“And then?”
“The spiral pattern was obvious almost at once. It—your Force X—kept getting broader, as did the space between the spirals. It left the valley first in the vicinity of the Mueller farm, but it kept cutting back. I didn’t see it again after it hit me. By the time Whistler picked me up it was no longer in sight.”
“You didn’t see it again,” Colonel Stubbins mused. “Did you actually see Force X at any time?”
“Bad semantics,” Karvel said with a grin. “No, sir. All I saw was what it did.”
“There was no optical distortion, or anything like that?”
Karvel shook his head.
“Or—when it came close to you—any sound?”
Karvel shook his head again. “The destruction was highly audible, but I neither saw nor heard Force X. I felt it, if that’s any help to you.”
“What did it feel like?”
“Like a silent, invisible, speeding truck.”
“No, sir, not that I can recall.”
“Very well,” Colonel Stubbins said. “Force X was invisible and silent and odorless, and it spiraled. The other survivors didn’t see or hear or smell anything, and the crew of surveyors confirms the spiral. What else can you tell us?”
“In the way of facts, very little. I can offer a few conclusions. Or guesses.”
“We’d like to hear them.”
“For one thing, Force X gradually got weaker. In the beginning it was knocking the trunks out from under the trees. Later the trees fell normally. I’d say this was fortunate for me. If Force X had struck me with the impact that it had down in the valley, you would have found me looking like those dead cattle. For another thing, although Force X weakened, it didn’t slow down. I’ve thought about this, and I discussed it with Whistler. We’re both certain that Force X didn’t lose any speed at all. In fact, it was constantly accelerating.”
Colonel Stubbins took a moment to ponder that. “I suppose you know that you’re postulating a physical impossibility.”
“I’m not postulating anything, sir. I’m just trying to describe what I saw. The best analogy I can think of is the turntable of a phonograph. Every point on the diameter of a phonograph record is making the same number of revolutions per minute, but in terms of distance traveled the outer edge is going a whale of a lot faster than a point located close to the center. The outer edge of a ten-inch record travels roughly thirty-one and a half inches with each revolution. A point half an inch from the center travels a little over three inches in the same time. To the best of my recollection your Force X made regular revolutions, which means that it had to be accelerating tremendously. Otherwise, I would have had a distinct impression of the spiral slowing down as the force moved away from the center. Each successive revolution would have taken longer, because the force had farther to go.”
“Interesting,” Colonel Stubbins said. “But still impossible. Think of the resistance it was encountering! Everything it struck must have slowed it down, even if infinitesimally.”
“Not to mention air and ground friction,” the army colonel put in.
“Was it traveling on the ground, sir?” Karvel asked.
The colonels stared at him.
“It left no marks on the ground, and it didn’t strike anything at ground level. That first tree was struck roughly a foot above the ground. Your Force X followed the contours of the ground, but in addition to accelerating it was also slowly rising. By the time it got to Whistler’s, it, or the bottom of it, was waist high, and I have the broken ribs to prove it.”
“I suppose your injured knee also proves it was waist high,” Colonel Stubbins said.
“It didn’t strike my knee. That was injured when Force X knocked me over, or maybe when I landed.”
A brief silence followed, which Colonel Vukin broke with the words, “Five minutes, gentlemen.”
Colonel Stubbins glared at him and turned back to Karvel. “At least there’s no argument about Force X becoming weaker. The damage decreased steadily until it stopped altogether. And since Force X did become weaker, of course it slowed down. The strength would be proportional to the velocity.”
Karvel shook his head. “No, sir. A phonograph record. The revolutions were as regular as a clock ticking. I’ll swear to that. If it sounds impossible, just tell me one thing about this Force X that is possible.”
“Does Whistler agree with you? About the regular revolutions, I mean.”
“He does. We’re also in agreement about how long we watched together, and of course you won’t believe this, either. Within ten seconds after the first tree fell, I let out a yell. Whistler was passing the rear door, and he heard me. He came out to see what was going on. He says he ran, but that’s a little hard to believe. By walking fast, he made it in less than ten seconds. Within another twenty seconds the spiral pattern was obvious, the Mueller farm had been struck, and I could see that the tavern was in danger. I told Whistler to get everyone into the basement, and he started away. Then it hit me. Allow another fifteen seconds. I make it less than a minute from that first tree to the tavern, and all of those times are estimated conservatively.”
“Indeed.” Colonel Stubbins cocked his head meditatively. “Considering the spiral, Force X traveled a good many miles between that first tree and the tavern. Less than a minute, you say?”
“I wouldn’t believe it myself, sir, if I hadn’t seen it. But I did see it.”
“Even on a straight line it’s several miles from Whistler’s to the tree. Following a spiral path, Force X probably trav
eled—oh, say ten miles for each mile of diameter. The surveyors can give us the exact figures. What you’re saying is that Force X covered perhaps fifty miles in less than a minute, which would require an average velocity of…uh…something in excess of three thousand miles per hour.”
“Something like that, sir,” Karvel said with a grin.
“And since Force X was accelerating—you say—it must have been traveling considerably faster than that when it struck you.”
“That’s the way I have it figured.”
Colonel Stubbins leaned back disgustedly. “If you’d been struck by anything going that fast, your present physical dimensions would be a fraction of a millimeter thick by a good many yards square.”
“I can’t disagree with you, sir. That I survived at all is an impossibility, but what’s one more impossibility among so many?”
“Frankly, Major, I was hoping for something better than that from you—something rational, let’s say. What would be your evaluation of Force X as a military weapon?”
“I don’t know. Against a specific target, it would depend on how accurately it could be delivered. Against a general target, such as a population center, it would frighten me.”
“At least there’s one point we can agree on. If Force X had started its spirals in New York City’s Times Square, we’d have a catastrophe on our hands that almost defies description. We have to decide immediately whether this U.O. was delivered here by a foreign power, and if so, why this particular area was chosen—if it was chosen. The U.O. could have been aimed at this base, but Hatch Air Force Base isn’t as important as all that. Are we being given a few days to survey the damage before we receive an ultimatum, or was the U.O. intended for a major Midwest city and sent with unbelievably bad aim? The military implications— What’s that, Rogers?”
“We’re wasting our time,” the army colonel said. “Obviously the major can’t help us on the critical point, but ask him anyway, and let’s get out of here.”
“Ah—yes. Major Karvel, we’re assuming that the U.O. and Force-X represent cause and effect because the U.O.’s position is the precise center of the spiral. Among other things we’d like to know whether Force X commenced the instant the U.O. arrived, and since you didn’t see the U.O. arrive I don’t suppose you can help us.”
The Fury Out of Time Page 3
