"But Englehardt—for God's sake, man—the spaceships caused the crash. The whole country went insane over that. You know that, you lived through it."
"The crash came because we could not build those spaceships the way we were building them at that time," Englehardt said. "The crash was not because of the spaceships; it was because of the expense, the drain on our resources."
"But it would be the same thing again. Do you want us to go through another crash?"
"We have the Vanner-Elling system now, and the computers. We can harness them to provide a surplus in the form of spaceships the same as you have them set up now to provide a surplus in the form of entertainment."
But the entertainment is necessary for social control," Adams said. "If we took away the entertainment and counseling, and expression programs, the tensions would begin to build up all over again."
'And isn't a spaceship an expression just the same as a city, or a set of laws? Doesn't it represent a definite step in the development of the people?"
"A backward step," Adams said angrily. "A regression."
"Nonsense," said Englehardt.
Adams attempted to laugh. "Really, Mr. Englehardt, I think you're disturbed. Emotionally upset. It's not an unusual syndrome among formerly technical people, of course—a fixation on spaceships. Tell me, have you ever . . ."
"Gone to a psychiatrist?" Englehardt's face blanched. "Nol Nor felt the urge, and let me tell you something else while we're on the subject of fixation and living in the past: your precious DEPCO for the past fifteen years has been doing nothing but trying to stay in one place, and keep the whole country and economy in one place, and if that isn't fixation, then I'd like you to please explain just what else it is!"
"Hold it," Bahr said sharply. "We aren't interested in holding DEPCO up for inspection right now, nor Mr. Englehardt's psyche, for that matter. But one thing is certain: we have to have an aggressive plan of action. I personally can see many points in favor of being able to mount a small space fleet, if for no other reason than investigation and early-warning. It's certainly a better solution than simply digging holes for ourselves, or sitting with stunners across our laps waiting for whatever the aliens are going to do next. The question is, can we do it?"
"We have the technology," Englehardt said.
"How do you know that?" Bahr asked.
"I know the men and techniques I have available. My University . . ." Englehardt habitually spoke of the Robling-owned Harvard University as his personal property ". . . Has an astronautics library of four thousand tapes. There are plenty of good engineers in my ... er ... in the private industries who could pick up where the men in the Nineties left off. I can guarantee that we have the technology."
Adams was shaking his head violently. "There's no use even debating it. Psychologically it's out of the question. We're only now getting stabilized on the Oedipal corrections that Larchmont introduced."
"Aberrations, you mean," Englehardt said. "The man was psychotic. I was around Washington when he broke. He tried to disembowel himself with a fingernail file."
Adams glared at him. "You do have ego problems."
"Let's forget the smears for a while," Bahr said. "I'll go along widi Carl Englehardt, at least to the point of letting him show us that it is technologically practical to build spaceships. We don't know that it is, any more than we know what the public reaction to the idea would be." He stood up, and the rising clamor of voices and disagreement stopped. "I put it to a vote," he said. "To determine whether spaceships are possible and practical on engineering grounds."
Adams lurched to his feet. "This is not something to be voted on," he cried. "We can't just brush aside fifteen years' policies of social control. DEPCO has the power to approve the plans and projects formulated by the other departments, and we cannot accept spaceships as a solution. They are hostility symbols, and an economic peril."
"All right," Bahr said harshly. "You're opposing the idea without the slightest factual grounds for opposition. DEPCO hasn't investigated the spaceship problem for twenty years. You don't have a legal leg to stand on."
"The Stability Act of '05 specifically states . . ."
"You can recite amendments for us some other time," Bahr broke in. "I'd like to see right now how many here agree with me that an investigation is a reasonable solution." He looked around, counting thumbs.
The military, of course, went along with Englehardt. DEPEX, always willing to implement new programs, went along. DEPOP, conservative and crusty as usual, opposed. DEPRE, always willing to take on another research job, and politically jealous of DEPCO's restraints on their research into DEPCO methods, went along with Bahr.
"It looks like an investigation is in order," Bahr said.
Adams jerked to his feet. "I'll stop that if I have to drop every other project in the department," he said.
"What are you afraid of?" Bahr said to him. "Does a big, tall tower give you bad dreams? Maybe you're the one that should be seeing the analyst." The military and Englehardt were chuckling.
T think, Mr. Bahr, that we may be over to interview you very presently," Adams said acidly.
"Well, before you come, you'd better have some explanation for the fact that as soon as a constructive idea is pro-
posed to meet this problem of aliens, you immediately try to block it," Bahr said. He saw his error, he shouldn't have ridden Adams so far. But now there was no turning back. "Maybe when we know more about the aliens' operations, we'll understand why . . ."
"That is a preposterous accusation, and you'll answer for it," Adams said, his voice so tight it was hardly audible.
Bahr looked at him, then turned to Englehardt. "How soon can you give us figures?"
"Three days," said Englehardt.
"That's too long," Bahr said. "Make it two. Because by then we need to know whether spaceships can be built or not, and how soon."
"I'll stop you, Bahr," Adams grated. "I'll stop you and Englehardt both."
Englehardt laughed.
Chapter Nine
IT WAS ONLY a matter of time now, Harvey Alexander realized as he crouched waiting beside the roadstrip, before he would make the inevitable slip that would signal the DIA search units like a waving red flag and bring them down on him. He had known, from the beginning, that BJ would become seriously involved, and he had done his best to talk her out of coming, but she had insisted. Now she had been expended, as he had known she would be. With luck, ingenuity, and full expeditious use of her face and figure she might make her story sell and get away with a fine or warning . . . but that seemed doubtful. At worst, they would hold her for checking, and uproot the connection between them. The ultimate consequences, for BJ, were painfully unpleasant to think about. For him . . .
For him, it was a reprieve, a few more hours to remain free to hunt down the answers that he had to find.
It was not a question of concealment. He knew from experience that he could hide, drop from sight so quickly and effectively that a nationwide concentrated manhunt would not dig him out in years. But such a move would brand him irrevocably as an accomplice in the Wildwood raid, and confirm the charges Bahr had leveled against him.
The alternative was to find out what really had happened at Wildwood and get the information into the hands of authorities who could help him that could not be carried out in concealment. He had to gamble time against exposure.
And the worst of it was that he didn't know what to do.
The trip to Wildwood had been a complete fiasco. BJ had dug up clothes for him and found an old lieutenant's ID card for him from the foot locker of his things she had unaccountably kept. Some amphetamine had routed the last sedative effects from his mind. On the trip down to Wildwood they had listened to the foreign broadcasts on the alien landing in Canada, BJ frowning and shaking her head at the reports, he listening with a puzzling sense of detached curiosity, as though the whole matter, somehow, had no application whatever to him, but was something happening in
a different world.
The reason was easy to see now. Clearly something had happened at Wildwood that he, for all his security and personal handling, had not known about. He had racked his brain for a memory of anything extraordinary or peculiar that had happened there in the preceding few weeks, anything that might have hooked in his mind and been pushed aside for want of explanation or significance, but he found nothing. If aliens had worked from within the plant, they had done so with consummate skill.
It had taken two hours in BJ's Volta to reach the vicinity of the Wildwood plant. They ran into the first roadblock fifteen miles north of the plant, and slid into a series of side-roads that kept them away from the main highway strips. Alexander directed her as they moved through two sleepy towns and across a river to the pillbox apartment buildings used by the civilian engineers who ran the plant.
"Are you sure you can trust this man?" BJ had asked him. "Are you sure he won't just turn you in?"
"No. I'm not sure who I can trust. We were friendly, used to play chess together, that was all. But Powers might have something I can use, and I've got to take the chance. Take this right."
They wove through the winding roads of the apartment development. Alexander motioned her to stop, peered out at the neatly-kept lawns, yellow under the streetlamps. "I'll go from here. You go back to the road, and wait outside the entrance. Give me an hour. If I'm not back then, you get back to Chicago as fast as you can."
"I'll wait for you," she said.
"You do what I tell you," he said sharply. "If a police car blocked the entrance to this place, you'd never get out. I'll be all right."
He waited until the red tail light of the Volta had disappeared around the circle toward the entrance gate, and then moved across the lawn and into the building. The buildings were familiar; he had been quartered in a similar development farther down the river, and he remembered Bob Powers' door combination. He let himself into the building without signaling, took the stairs by the elevator, and stopped before the door marked 301.
The door opened a crack when he knocked. He saw Powers' lace, puzzled-angry at first, then startled in recognition. "Alexander! Good lord, what are you doing here?"
"Let me in. I've got to talk to you."
The man hesitated for just a moment. Then he unlatched the chain, held the door open as Alexander stepped into the Hat. "Look, do you want to get me blitzed?" Powers' voice was a harsh whisper. "They're looking for you, they've got a red alarm out."
"Nobody followed me," Alexander said. "This will only lake a couple of minutes, you—"
He broke off as the man shook his head violently, jerking a thumb at the TV set in the comer. Alexander bit his lip. Of course they would have all Wildwood personnel on audio-control. He jerked open the door, pulled the engineer out into the hall. "You were on duty in the power pile before the raid," he said desperately. "You must have seen something, noticed something out of the ordinary."
"No, there was nothing."
"Think! There must have been something."
"Look, Harvey, they grilled me for hours. There was nothing."
"I don't mean anything obvious," Alexander said. "I mean somebody behaving strangely, anything . . ."
The engineer was almost beside himself. "Look, they're liable to be here any minute. I tell you, there was nothing. Everything was running according to plan. They . . . they think you were the one. Didn't you hear the broadcast?"
"What broadcast?"
"The DIA director. There's a general Condition B on communications, travel permits canceled . . ."
Alexander swore. That meant BJ would be cut off from Chicago where she belonged, and that she would inevitably be picked up. "And he said I was implicated in the raid?"
"He didn't mention your name, but some scientists have been picked up under alien control."
He knew then that he couldn't rejoin BJ. If the bug monitor had been alert, DIA cars would already be moving in on the apartment development. He nodded to Powers and started down the corridor toward the fire escape stairs. It was an outside stairwell, and he saw the two DIA cars moving toward the building from the central circle.
He cursed, crouched close to the wall, and moved as silently as he could. A spotlight broke into the darkness from one of the cars, roamed the grounds, while the other started bumping across the lawn to cover the rear.
Then the spotlight caught something, and moved back to the row of hedge along the adjacent building. Suddenly BJ's Volta broke from the cover of the hedge, did a pirouette on the slippery grass and spun down the road toward the entrance, doing ninety from a dead stop in five seconds. The DIA siren screamed, and both cars broke into pursuit.
From the stairwell Alexander saw them skid on the circle as the little Volta in the lead met spotlights from the gate head-on, crashed through the hastily-arranged roadblock, and accelerated on the main road strip.
Alexander reached ground, and ran, keeping in the shadow of buildings as much as possible, then darting down the hill that separated the apartment houses from the fringe of woods along a secondary road. He stopped at the road, catching his breath in great gasps, and then ran, dropping down in the ditch whenever oncoming lights flickered into view.
He had given her a cover story: she had heard about the Wildwood incident and come down to see if her ex-husband bad been hurt in the blast, since she had not heard anything from him. It might conceivably hold up, since he had been quartered in apartments nearby. They could hold her for not having a travel pass for more than 200 miles radius of Chicago, but maybe she could sell them that she was too excited and confused to remember. As long as they didn't put her under the polygraph, her story might hold up.
Until they grilled Powers, and then it would fall apart like cotton candy.
He shivered.
His hand touched something in his pocket, and he drew it out—money. Simple, practical, typical of BJ. She knew he had none, that he wouldn't ask her for it, that he needed it. Stupid, he thought with a sudden pang of bitterness, when people got married and split up and still felt that way about each other, and yet had to be all wrapped up in the inhibitions and conventions that kept BJ from saying, "I'm sorry we couldn't work it out, I was selfish, and I still love you, and I'd try it over again but I'm too bitter now, and still I feel guilty about it just the same and want to make it up to you somehow." Instead, she had just stubbornly driven him down here, given him money, and set herself up to give him the time he needed to break from his first bad blunder.
She had already paid for the ruined fragments of their life together. Even the tightest control couldn't make them forget what life had been before the crash—all the unscientific group pressures and outmoded mores, the things that would always be right and wrong to them, and speakable and unspeakable. Of course, now the new educational programs were gradually removing that alleged stewpot of all emotional woes—the family—from existence in society. For the new generations that was fine, maybe, but for those like himself and BJ there was only the bitter hopelessness of trying to exist in the present and think in the past, as all exiled castes do.
The road crossed a secondary highway strip, and he turned toward the south. St. Louis was forty miles away.
Half an hour later headlights sprang up behind him that were too yellowed and dim to be police, so Alexander took a chance and stepped out beside the roadstrip to thumb. The old rattletrap Hydro slowed and stopped, and Alexander ran down the strip to climb in, slamming the door behind him. The driver was a worker, his yellow Wildwood plant badge still exposed. He was a man of thirty or thirty-five.
He looked Alexander over as he started the car again. "In a fight?" he asked.
Alexander carefully slipped into the speech pattern of his cover identity in the Mexican incident. "Uh? No, no' me. Spill. Took 'turn t'fast. Zip. In 'a ditch." He looked at the driver. "Gemme to St. Louis, huh?"
"Yeah, sure." The driver accepted his story without a frown. He was overheavy, with a flat moon face,
and he was a talker. Already he had started talking about car wrecks and how his Hydro could only take a corner so fast any more, and he was too involved in his own bubblings to do any analytical thinking about why a man should be hitchhiking at two in the morning.
Alexander sank back in the seat, allowing the man to ramble without paying too much attention. He was worried about what was happening to BJ, and he was worried about the gulf that seemed to stretch before him. He could get to St. Louis, yes, but then what? From there, what could he do? As the car buzzed through the flat countryside, he probed at the problem against the background of the driver's chattering until a word jerked him up sharply and set his heart hammering in his throat. Alien.
"How's that?" he asked, trying to recall how the driver had begun his longwinded surrogate sentence.
"Like I said, the aliens," the driver said. "I was tellin' my nymph last night, 'a way I figger it the second wave will be comin' in any day now, like it said in the book, and maybe there'd be riots in town an' all, but she said maybe people wouldn't get too scared, I mean, knowin' what was comin' next, you know, 'cause they told her plenty of times in Tech School how it was not knowin' what was comin' that made all the riots so bad back in the crash days. So I told her not to worry, 'cause if it looked like they were comin' to Wildwood again I'd stay home and take care of her an t' hell with work."
"Oh," Alexander said, still not comprehending. " 'Course she gets scared kinda easy that way, you know. Maybe they'll wanna use her for a breeder unit or something, like they do with cows, you know—sort of like an incubator, it says in the book. She's afraid if they do anything like that to her she won't be able to, you know, sex it up any more. She's kinda hot, yTcnow, and we still got four months contract to run before we switch off."
"Breeder units," Alexander said slowly. "Yeah, the aliens. You know. You seen the book, huh?" "Y' got me runnin'," Alexander said. "What book?" "The alien invasion book, o'course." The man looked at him in surprise. "Ain't you seen it yet?"
Alexander shook his head numbly. "Don't read much . . ." "You're fixated, Jack. You're really repressed. That pulpie's been goin' the rounds for six months; everybody's seen it. What a lover-cover! Say, you ain't a book-snooper?"
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