'Tombaugh,’ He was disgusted, ‘You mean, you’ve already forgotten?’
‘Oh, that!’ said Susan. She made a gesture of indifference. 'Go ahead. Do what you have to. Don’t mind me.’
It was not an ideal environment. But at least she stood silent.. ‘ His visualised scene on Tombaugh accordingly went dutifully back to the pages of a book he had read in his student days. Mentally, he reread the paragraphs involved, of how a Professor Clyde Tombaugh, an astronomer (discoverer of the planet, Pluto), became convinced that earth had in its long history captured a train of meteorites ranging perhaps as large as half a mile in diameter. He called these predicted earth-orbiting bodies, moonlets. And he spent years vainly searching the heavens trying to locate the elusive satellites. Naturally, after Man moved out into space and discovered a number of moonlets, the largest was named... Tombaugh!
The phone rang shortly before nine, and a jittery Estelle grabbed it off the hook.
‘Mother,’ said Susan's voice into her ear. ‘We’re just leaving Tombaugh. Peter says he’ll have me home by ten.’
The woman formed the name, Peter, with her lips, but did not speak it. She raised her eyebrows, and obviously regarded the vise of the first name of Captain Seenes as a significant development. However, all she said was, ‘I’ll be waiting?’
Is dad home?1'
“Not yet.’
‘Has anyone called?’
‘A girl. But she didn’t give her name.’
‘Sack. I’ll see you, mom.’
There was the click of disconnection. The blonde woman replaced the receiver, and sat there with the look of someone whose stress-filled day was not yet over. Abruptly, she moaned aloud, ‘Just leaving/’ With that, she slumped down on the settee, and sagged there, eyes closed. Presently, a thought seemed to strike her. Eyes flicked open. Hand grabbed at phone, button-pressed a number. Waited as the ringing sound came out of the receiver. At last, the reply: her husband’s voice.
She told him what Susan had said, and then asked, ‘Where is Tombaugh right now?’
‘On the other side of the planet. But don’t worry. Omnivulture can bring them home in the time named.’
‘Omni - who?’
‘Darling,’ he said in a tense voice, ‘I can’t talk to you right now. I’m terribly tied up.’
After she had hung up, John Lane put the receiver down; then he turned to face once again the members of the commission with whom he had been in continuous session for nearly eight hours. ‘That was my wife,’ he told the silent group. ‘She is worried about our daughter, who went to the moonlet for the day with an active flight officer. Gentlemen, in listening to the disturbance in her voice over just that, I have decided that I shall vote against any publicity on this mysterious destruction of one of our scouting vessels. My feeling is that some time this week after we have verified what happened out there, if it is indeed the enemy, then I shall quietly take the fleet and attack. But absolutely no advance warning to anybody. I think a good portion of the population of this planet would go insane if they thought even once that an alien fleet may be out there on the other side of the Pluto-Neptune orbit. As you gentlemen may know, Pluto in its oval orbit will for some decades be closer to earth than Neptune.’
At the Lane home, Estelle had barely replaced her receiver when the phone rang. It was a familiar girl’s voice at the other end. ‘Have you heard from Susan yet?’
‘She’ll be home at ten,’ the woman replied. ‘Was it you that phoned earlier?’
‘Yes. I’ll try again right after ten.’ Hastily: ‘Good-bye.’ The hang-up sound was clear and loud. Estelle shrugged, and spoke in the general direction of the ceiling. ‘That’s all we need, a mystery.’
Three blocks away, having replaced the receiver, Dolores Munroe emerged from the phone booth, v/ith an expression on her face of a cat that has just caught and gobbled the mouse. Her eyes were cynical, her lips curled with anticipatory triumph even greater than the victory provided her by the information she had achieved from Susan’s mother. She walked across the street into a coffee shop, and there was an insolent confidence in the way she held her body.
By 9:20, she was too jittery to stay in the coffee shop any longer. At that time she left the shop and walked rapidly along a side street that in less than ten minutes brought her to the Lane home. Four times during the next twenty-three minutes she changed her hiding place opposite the gate, in the end retreating behind a tree across the street which was lined up with the tree where Mike and Lee had gone to avoid Captain Sennes ... a few days before.
It was exactly seven minutes to ten when the figure of Peter Sennes and Susan emerged from the Subsurface and walked along to the gate of the Lane home. Or at least, from where Dolores watched, they disappeared behind the tree that concealed the gate from her view. And she guessed that they were in the act of going through the gate. Swiftly, she came out from behind her own tree, and hurried to the other one. Moments after that she was peering around the hole, and was able to see the man and the girl on the veranda.
Up there Sennes was unlocking the front door. He turned and handed the key to Susan, and said, ‘You’ve made it clear enough all day. So this is good-bye.’
Susan offered him her cheek. He pecked at it gently. As he did so, her face changed. She drew back, startled. ‘Good-bye? You mean good night?’ she said.
The man smiled faintly, shook his head. I’m a man, Susan,’ he said. ‘And a man wants a woman. Today, I’ve discovered that you’re a jabber to the bitter end.’
‘But,’ Susan protested, ‘I’ve enjoyed being with you. It’s so - different. Why, that’s another world out there when you go along with somebody like you.’
She was not looking directly at him; and so he flicked his gaze over her face to make sure that she was indeed reacting correctly. And then he said gently, ‘Thanks, Susan. I appreciate the compliment. But I’ve only got a few weeks left of my leave. Best thing is for me to forget you as quickly as I can. Perhaps if I come back safely , you’ll be older. Then it can mean something.’
Having spoken, he again glanced at her quickly. And there was no question. This girl was now disturbed. She touched his arm with a fluttering motion, as if to reassure him. The action was involuntary, which Sennes noticed. It was the signal he had been awaiting. Without further hesitation, he took her firmly in his arms. ‘Now, do I get a good-bye kiss?’ he asked. Without pausing for her to say to him yes or no, he kissed her on the lips.
And that was Dolores’s moment. She walked from behind the tree with a loud clicking of her heels and, pausing at the gate, called out, ‘Phony!’
On the veranda, the man released the girl. As they both looked toward the gate, Dolores waved derisively, and walked, head high, off down the street. Sennes glanced back at Susan, puzzled. Saw on her face, shock. ‘What was all that?’ he asked.
‘That’s Dolores. She hates me. She’ll report to my outfit that she saw me being lip-kissed.’
‘Oh!’ It was an unexpected development. The man was briefly nonplussed. But after a moment he saw how what had happened could work in his favor. He caught the stunned girl’s arm, urged her toward the open door. ‘You go inside,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch Dolores. I’ll speak to her.’
Without waiting for Susan to reply, he went down the steps at one leap. He did not pause to open the gate - simply hurtled the fence with the total ease of perfect physical condition. Dolores, hearing the rapid footsteps behind her, glanced back. Seeing who was coming, and at what speed, she became frightened, and began to run. Sennes called softly from the near distance behind her, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.’ His tone was reassuring, and besides the girl was already having second thoughts. Her expression changed to a more seductive shaping of eyes and lips. She stopped, and as he came up, she said in her worldliest voice, ‘So you’re Susan’s sailor?’
During the brief silence that followed, the two sophisticates sized each other up. Sennes said finall
y, ‘I didn’t realise I was running after such a prize package.’ He now shrugged aside what she had said. ‘Susan? That’s over. I said good-bye to her tonight for good.’
Dolores had her cool back completely. She gave him her Utter Disbelief look together with faint cynical smile. ‘It seemed more like an affectionate good night,’ she said, significantly.
‘It never was anything. Which is why I made it good-bye. So I hope you’ll forget what you saw.’
He sounded the faintest bit anxious, and the sullen little brunette showed by the tilt of her shoulder that she considered that negotiation time had arrived. She said airily, ‘I remember or forget things, depending on the way I feel.’
Sennes persisted. ‘I would like you to feel like forgetting it,’ he said.
Dolores’s immediate answer was to turn away from him and start walking along the street. When she had gone only a few steps, she looked back in simulated surprise and said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’
It was an unnecessary question. The man had made up his mind - which is all that it ever took with him. In a moment he was beside her. Tentatively, he took her arm. When she did not pull away, he tightened this grip. ‘You’re a very beautiful girl,’
be said.
‘How do I rate beside Susan?’ she asked.
‘It all depends. Are you the unapproachable type of beauty, too?’
It was an attempt to down-rate the value of what she had seen, and Dolores wasn’t having any. ‘Oh, come now,’ she said. 'Susan didn’t look unapproachable.’
‘I surprised her,’ said die experienced male beside her. He himself did not literally regard the statement as true. He had his own understanding of why girls could be surprised. He finished, now, honestly, in a sincere tone, ‘From Susan’s point of view, it was surprise.’
The girl beside him had a short attention span when it came to Susan Lane. And suddenly the moment of disinterest was upon her. Once more, she was her seductive best. “You don’t look like the type that surprises girls. You look steady . . . and honest and aboveboard!
‘I think,’ said Sennes softly, 'we’re beginning to understand each other.’ Having spoken, he swung around in front of her, and in a continuation of the move drew Dolores into his arms and lip-kissed her. He drew back presently, and gazing down into the sultry eyes of the girl, said lightly, ‘See how surprising it can be.’-
Dolores, who had not resisted for a single instant, but being after all only a few kilominutes away from having been a good little jabber, herself, was breathless. In her brief months of total abandon, she had never had a man of this age and particularly one so handsome. She gasped, ‘I guess we do understand each other.’ It was a remark that merited another and longer kiss, and the officer was the man who could recognise that. This time when he drew away, Dolores said, ‘If I don’t tell on Susan, you’ll scrap her for me?’
‘The quieter you are,5 was the reply, ‘the higher we’ll fly. After all, she’s my boss’s daughter. I don’t want him mad.’
The dark-haired girl was not looking at him. Her expression was thoughtful, and when she spoke it was partly to him and partly to herself. ‘If I were to report her, she’d probably talk herself out of it anyway, and then if anyone saw me with you, they’d think Susan and I were playing games. So, then, maybe they wouldn’t believe me,’
Sennes shook his head wonderingly. ‘Are you always this complicated?’
Dolores was slightly defensive. ‘You gotta figure things,’ she said. ‘The outfits just gt> by what they see.’
Her eyes were still slightly narrowed, and she was clearly still in process of figuring, and when he kissed her once more. And, now, when they drew apart, they were both breathless. Sennes said, ‘Look, honey ... all I want to know is, have we just made a bargain?’
The beautiful, sullen face was flushed. For the moment, all memory of Susan was wiped away from it. She was caught in the passion of man-woman stuff. Even the sophistication was gone from her. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, and it was a strangely pure sound. Suddenly, her whole body trusted him, and even begged him a little to treat it tenderly. Which, of course, he would do in his fashion.
Arms around each .other they walked rapidly to the monorail, and presently disappeared into it.
In the Lane house, Susan was fidgety all the time that she described the day to her mother. Presently, Estelle - who was genuinely weary from her long anxious day - stood up, kissed Susan good night. Your father won’t be home till late again,’ she said. ‘So it’s bedtime.’
‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ said the girl. ‘I want a drink.’ She thereupon made a thing out of the drink, and when she returned to the living room discovered that her mother had indeed gone off. Susan headed for the phone, and pushed the buttons that, moments later, produced the buzzing sound in the receiver, of a distant phone ringing. Apruptly there was a click, and Mike’s voice said, “Hello.’
‘Mike . . . Susan. Since you have your own phone, I thought I’d take the chance you were still up.’
Mike said, ‘Glad you called. We’ve got an emergency. Nothing for you to do, but you should be alerted. The fellows are going over to help Bud Jaeger against his father.’
‘Right now?’
‘Now. Now, what was it you wanted to say?’
It was no longer an ideal moment, but the unhappy girl braced herself, and said it anyway. ‘I have to tell you something, Mike,’ she confessed. ‘Tonight, when I came home, Captain Sennes lip- kissed me good-bye. It really was good-bye.’
There was a long pause at the other end. Then: ‘Sack,’ said Mike.
A click, as he hung up.
In an elegant house not too far from where the Lanes lived, a man and a woman had gone to bed early and were sound asleep
as their phone rang. The man was evidently in the fourth (deep) stage of sleep, for it was the woman who finally groped for the receiver on the bedside table between the twin beds. She murmured an acknowledgement of the call, then listened for a long moment, and finally turned on the light. Which revealed her as being a rather pleasant-looking woman in her mid-thirties. It was impossible at this stage to make out the appearance of the man, because he was lying with his back to the light and his head was half-nestled in the sheet and the blanket.
By the time these facts became apparent, the woman had crawled out of her bed and was over at the other one shaking the man. It required several firm shoves, but finally he blinked and sat up. She watched him closely, and when she saw the light of reason begin to manifest in his face - which was that of a fairly good-looking man about forty - she said, ‘Arthur, you’re wanted as a witness for the outfit you sponsor.’
The man rubbed his eyes. Then he picked up his watch and looked at it. What he saw seemed to astonish him, for he said, “At this hour! Who’s on the phone?’'
‘Lee David.’
‘Oh - Lee.’ He was instantly more alert. His legs swung out from under the covers. He reached for and lifted the receiver with sudden purposefulness. Spoke into it in a firm voice: ‘What is it?’ Pause. ‘And what is the address?’ His wife had pen and paper for him at this point. He accepted the pen from her, and wrote on the paper while she held it. Finally: ‘Listen, Lee, I’ve got to get my clothes on. But I should be over in ten minutes. Meanwhile, do what’s necessary to protect the boy . . . Bud, what did you say his name was? . . . Sack, too.’ He replaced the receiver, climbed to his feet, and headed for the bathroom door.
As it developed, it took him longer to get dressed than he had estimated. It was actually almost ten minutes before he finally got out of the house.
The invisible’ watcher made his jump over to the Jaeger house after his longest absence of the day, and found the male members of the Red Cat outfit were milling around in front of the gate.
Bud was there with them.
The observer noted that the door of the Jaeger house was closed, but the veranda and inside lights were on. However, it was difficult to determine what was going on
inside.
What happened, son? asked the father anxiously.
Before answering, Bud shuffled casually closer - away from the gate. Then: Mr Jaeger stayed home tonight, and he seemed to be sober for a change. So he noticed my outfit badge for the first time. He got mad, and started to beat me up. That alarmed his wife - who, as Fve told you, knows what I've been doing - and she called the outfit. So the confrontation now has to take place. Which is too bad, because it really wasn’t a difficult situation. However, he's gone off to the corner bar, and we're going over there to face him.
Fm sorry I wasn't here to help you, apologised his father.
It really wasn't serious, said the son. He hit me three times, and each time struck the hard - you know. It nearly broke his knuckles, so he stopped. Where were you?
Fve been jumping between the Lane home and the Desmond Reid home, with an occasional glance at the various takeoff hangars. We have a feeling important decisions are being made, and we should know where Lane, particularly, is every minute of the next few days. I thought you were safe in your room at home.
The telepathic communication ended as the observer saw that Lee David was coming along the street toward the little group of boys. He realised that the identity of the approaching figure was not as apparent to the others as to him, with his almost perfect night vision. They heard the rapid footsteps, and they peered into the shadows of the street in that direction. Suddenly, they also recognised who it was, for there was relief. Moments later, Lee joined them, and said, ‘Bud, you stay here. And when Mr Arthur Laurieux our witness, arrives, tell him where we’ve gone. Sack, Bud?’
“You mean, I can’t go along?’ The boy sounded disgruntled. ‘I wanna see what you do.’
'Where possible,’ said Lee, obviously quoting, for his voice changed, ‘outfit members refrain from facing a parent in front of his children. Sack?’
‘Sack.’ Bud spoke reluctantly.
The blond leader of the Red Cats turned to the youthful outfitters. ‘Come on, jabbers.’ Without any additional comment, he started forward past Bud. Moments later, the other boys were also in motion. The group made a long, thin line on the sidewalk. The sound of their footsteps faded rapidly.
Children of Tomorrow Page 10
