by Alan K Baker
The car braked immediately, and a man got out. He was tall and athletic, with a swimmer’s supple yet powerful body. He had left his hat in the car, and his blond hair fluttered in the humid breeze. His face was wide-eyed and open-mouthed as he watched the naked woman half running, half staggering towards him.
‘Please help me!’ Rusty repeated, her face twisted in terror.
‘What the hell?’ said Aldous Bradlee. ‘Oh God, what the hell?’
‘Please,’ cried Rusty. ‘They’re after me.’
‘Ma’am, what happened?’
Rusty flung herself into Bradlee’s arms. ‘Please, get me away from here!’
Bradlee cast a fearful glance at the dunes from which Rusty had come. He took off his suit jacket and flung it around her shoulders. ‘Come on,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Let’s get you out of here and to the police.’
In an instant, Rusty’s expression of terror vanished. She smiled at him and said: ‘That won’t be necessary.’
Bradlee frowned at her in confusion. The frown became a grimace of agony as her knee came up savagely into his groin. He gasped and collapsed on the sandy ground. Rusty reached down, took his head in both hands and twisted sharply, feeling the crunch of bone and cartilage as Bradlee’s neck snapped. His body went limp. Rusty placed a finger on the side of his neck, under the jaw-line. There was no pulse.
She stood up and looked at his body. A shadow of remorse flitted across her mind, but it was gone almost before she noticed it. She bent and reached under Bradlee’s armpits and dragged his body behind the dunes, briefly adding mass to her muscles to aid in the dragging.
Ten minutes later, Rusty Links, wearing Aldous Bradlee’s form and dressed in his clothes, walked from behind the dunes to his car. She climbed in, started the car and continued along the highway towards Cabo Cañaveral, leaving his naked body buried beneath the sand.
*
Rusty brought the car to a halt at the entrance to the approach road leading from the East Coast Highway to Cabo Cañaveral. She had never been one to dwell upon romantic notions; for her, they were mere distractions that only served to divert her from the more important business of survival. It took a lot to impress her, to give her pause and make her consider anything but her own agenda.
Cabo Cañaveral was one such thing.
The rocket complex was dominated by two objects rising from the flat land like metal cathedrals and pointing at the blue sky and the depths of interplanetary space beyond. One was the gargantuan Vehicle Assembly Building, the largest building on Earth, looking like an aircraft hangar with a parabolic cross-section, but many, many times larger. It was in this behemoth, whose white flanks reflected the sunlight as if it were its own source of illumination, that Rocketship X-M had been built, and it was here that construction of the X-M 2 was nearing completion.
The other object was the launch gantry standing three miles from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Like the VAB, it was five hundred feet high, but looked much more delicate – unfinished, almost, as if some grand architectural project had been abandoned upon completion of its underlying structure: a glinting metal lattice speckled with machinery so complex that its details were lost in the haze of distance – a Kandinsky painting in three dimensions.
The rocket complex struck Rusty as both magnificent and ludicrous: magnificent for its expression of human ingenuity and the desire to know the universe and its secrets; ludicrous for its assumption that there was any place for humanity in the vast darkness beyond the tiny sphere of Earth.
In her opinion, humanity was a child running towards a busy freeway…
The thought conjured an image of Crystalman, chuckling behind his quartz mask while he examined his prize. No, she corrected herself, the prize wasn’t the Martian Falcon, but whatever was inside it.
A child running towards a freeway, she thought. But was Crystalman the child… or the freeway?
She gunned the car’s engine and glided swiftly along the approach road to the complex’s main gate. She stopped at the security checkpoint as a uniformed guard approached. The guard bent to look inside the car as Rusty took Aldous Bradlee’s security pass from an inside pocket of his jacket.
‘Good morning, Mr. Bradlee,’ said the guard.
Rusty smiled. ‘Good morning.’
The guard frowned as he checked the pass. ‘Everything all right, sir?’
‘Of course. Why do you ask?’
‘Nothing. Your voice just sounds a little odd.’
‘Oh! Just a sore throat. Nothing, really.’
The guard nodded, smiled and handed back the pass.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Hope you feel better soon.’
‘Thanks. I’m sure I will.’
The guard signalled for the barrier to be lifted, and Rusty took the car into the complex, annoyed that apparently she had not got Bradlee’s vocal chords quite right. She began to reconfigure them, but then stopped. According to the dossier Crystalman had given her, Bradlee worked until six. She doubted she would stay at Cabo Cañaveral until then, and a sore throat would be a good excuse to leave early, so she left her vocal chords as they were.
The road led her into a miniature town composed of machine shops, design offices, a conference centre and other support buildings, all one or two storeys and all constructed from pristine white concrete.
Rusty knew exactly where to go. She parked the car in Bradlee’s parking space outside one of the larger buildings, got out and, carrying Bradlee’s briefcase, walked confidently through the main entrance.
A couple of corridors took her to a door with a burnished steel plaque which read:
ALDOUS BRADLEE
CHIEF ARCHIVIST, X-M PROGRAM
She opened the door and entered an outer office occupied by Bradlee’s secretary, whom the dossier had named as Bridget Sullivan.
‘Good morning, Bridget,’ she said.
Bridget looked up from her typewriter and returned Rusty’s smile. ‘Good morning, Mr. Bradlee. How are you?’
‘Not great, as it happens. Bit of a sore throat. I wouldn’t get too close if I were you. In fact, I may have to skip out early.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Bridget. ‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’
Rusty smiled and shook her head. ‘I doubt it. But better safe than sorry, huh?’
‘I suppose so. Does this mean you’ll be missing the conference this morning?’
‘Conference?’
‘With Director Olson and the other department heads.’ Bridget offered a smile. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten, sir. It was only scheduled yesterday.’
Rusty gave a rueful grin. ‘Oh, of course! Sorry. Head’s a bit fuzzy. You know, I think it might be an allergy of some kind. No, I, er, I’ll be here for the conference. What time was it?’
Bridget’s smile grew broader. ‘Ten o’clock in the main conference room. The details are in your desk planner. Would you like some coffee?’
‘I’d love some, thank you,’ Rusty replied as she crossed the room to the door of Bradlee’s office.
She closed the door, sat at his desk and thought for a moment. This was inconvenient. The last thing she needed was to spend a protracted length of time in the company of other NCPE personnel. The longer she did so, the more likely it was that someone would notice something odd about ‘Aldous Bradlee’. The dossier which Crystalman had given here was pretty detailed, but it didn’t contain enough information to allow her to impersonate the archivist indefinitely. Her intention had been to get in, grab what she needed, and get out again as quickly as possible. Now, it looked like she would be spending the entire morning here, in the company of people who knew Bradlee well.
I guess I’ll just have to play up the illness angle, she thought.
She consulted the desk planner. The entry under that day read: EMERGENCY CONFERENCE, 10AM, OPEN-ENDED. LOC
ATION: MAIN CONFERENCE ROOM, BUILDING A. SUBJECT: MARTIAN TRANSMISSION, NATURE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR X-M 2 EXPEDITION.
Rusty sat back and thought about this while Bridget brought in a cup of coffee. Rusty thanked her and sipped the coffee as Bridget left the room. She grimaced. Shit. Cream and sugar. Rusty preferred her coffee straight up, like her bourbon. Never mind.
She glanced again at the entry in the desk planner.
Emergency conference on the Martian transmission, she thought. That might be worth sticking around for. She glanced at the bank of file cabinets beside the desk and then looked at Bradlee’s watch. An hour and a half until the conference. I’d better get some reading done – and quick.
She opened the file cabinet, yanked out Bradlee’s files and began to read them, cramming the information into her head as fast as she could, her eyes dancing across the typewritten pages.
By a quarter to ten, Rusty was sitting back in Bradlee’s chair, staring blankly into space and thinking: Oh shit…
CHAPTER 16
Never Trust a Vampire
Fort had just finished packing his travelling valise when the street-door-bell rang. He went to the telephone-box and lifted the receiver.
‘Yeah?’
‘Good morning, Charles,’ said the voice of Lovecraft.
‘Morning, Howard,’ said Fort, checking his wristwatch. Nine o’clock on the dot. He was gratified but not surprised that Lovecraft was on time. He pressed the button to open the street-door. ‘Come on up.’
When he opened the corridor-door, Fort noted that Lovecraft was visibly excited. ‘You’re chirpy this morning,’ he said as he led him through to the living room.
‘I’ve never flown before,’ Lovecraft replied, putting down his own valise by the sofa. ‘The furthest from Providence I’ve ever been is Key West, and I’ve certainly never been anywhere near an airliner.’
‘Well, you’re in for a treat, I guess. Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
Lovecraft followed Fort through to the kitchen.
‘Do you think we’ll encounter them?’
‘Encounter what?’
‘Why, the sky beasts, of course!’
‘Oh. Well, I guess. Longer flights usually do. That’s why big airliners are fitted with heavy weapons.’
Fort poured a cup of coffee, handed it to Lovecraft and pointed to the sugar bowl on the countertop.
‘Thank you,’ said Lovecraft. ‘I’ve always wanted to see them, in the flesh, as it were. I’ve seen photographs of them, of course, in the National Geographic, which carried a fascinating piece on them by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a few years ago, but they must be a truly magnificent sight up close.’
‘Be careful what you wish for, Howard. They’re pretty impressive, no doubt, as long as they don’t get too close. Most of them are harmless enough, but some are pretty nasty – especially if they’re hungry.’
Lovecraft hesitated before sipping his coffee. ‘Indeed,’ he said.
At that moment, the street-door-bell rang again.
‘Damn it,’ said Fort. ‘If that’s Carter and Wiseman, I’m going to shit bullets.’
He went back to the telephone-box and lifted the receiver. ‘Yeah. What is it?’
A voice he recognised immediately replied: ‘Now is that any way to greet an old friend?’
‘Cormack!’ said Fort, pushing the button. ‘Come on up.’ He opened the corridor-door and waited while O’Malley climbed the stairs. Lovecraft stood in the middle of the living room with an expression of curiosity on his long face.
‘Charlie, my lad,’ said O’Malley, stepping into the apartment. ‘How have you been?’
‘Just dandy, Cormack,’ Fort replied, shaking the priest’s hand and beckoning him through to the living room. ‘How about some coffee?’
‘I won’t, thank you.’
‘This is Mr. Howard Lovecraft,’ said Fort. ‘A new associate.’
‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lovecraft,’ said O’Malley, offering his hand.
Lovecraft shook it, replying: ‘How do you do, Father.’
‘I’m sorry to say this,’ said Fort, ‘but I’m afraid we don’t have much time to talk. We have a plane to catch.’
‘Working on a case?’
‘Yeah.’
O’Malley nodded. ‘Then I’ll be brief. Charlie… I need your help.’
Fort motioned him to the sofa. ‘Sure. What’s up?’
‘I need you to help me find the Martian Falcon,’ said O’Malley.
Fort and Lovecraft glanced at each other. ‘Well now,’ said Fort with a grim chuckle. ‘Sounds like half of New York wants to find that damned thing, and they’re all coming to me for help. I wish I’d never heard of it!’
‘So do I, Charlie, believe me,’ said O’Malley.
Fort sighed. ‘Howard and I are working on the same case, and it looks like it’s about much more than a turf war between two gangsters. All right, Cormack, suppose you tell us how you’re involved with this caper.’
The priest echoed the private detective’s sigh. ‘You don’t know who has the Falcon right now, do you?’
‘Not a clue.’
O’Malley hesitated, and then said: ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Charlie, so I’ll just come out with it. Crystalman has it.’
Lovecraft gasped, reached for his coffee cup and drained it in a single gulp.
Fort looked at his old friend for a long moment, fists on his hips, his face set in a grim expression. ‘How do you know that, Cormack?’
‘Johnny Sanguine told me.’
‘Sanguine’s dead,’ said Fort. ‘Really dead – the kind of dead you don’t come back from.’
‘I wish that were true,’ said O’Malley in a quiet voice. He went on to describe his encounter with the ghost of Johnny Sanguine.
When he had finished, Fort said: ‘Now let me get this straight. Sanguine wants you to help him get the Falcon back from Crystalman and return it to Mars so he can redeem his soul in the sight of the Almighty.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ said O’Malley.
‘Does anything about that story strike you as… oh, I don’t know… bullshit?’
‘Of course it does!’ cried O’Malley. He stood up and began to pace back and forth. ‘The only part of his story I believe is that he wants to get his hands on the Falcon – although God knows why. And speaking of God, all that stuff about the “Primal Mind” and cleansing his soul of all the evil he’s done… well, we all know Sanguine. I’ve spent my life guiding God’s children towards redemption, but that little bastard is beyond it. But I do believe he wants the Falcon.’
‘Because of what it contains,’ said Lovecraft.
‘Exactly. There is something inside that thing, something of immense power. I don’t know what it is, but I do know I don’t want it in Sanguine’s hands.’
‘Or Crystalman’s,’ added Fort.
‘But how on earth can we go up against Crystalman?’ asked Lovecraft, glancing desperately from the private detective to the priest. ‘No one knows who he is or where he is, and those who have tried to find out…’
‘Have all wound up dead,’ said Fort, ‘in a variety of unpleasant and imaginative ways. I should have told Capone to go screw himself. At least a bullet in the head’s quick and simple.’
‘Really, Charles,’ said Lovecraft, ‘that’s no way to talk.’
‘Mr. Lovecraft’s right,’ said O’Malley. ‘A defeatist attitude breeds its own defeat.’
‘Wise words, Cormack,’ said Fort in a tone which suggested he thought they were anything but.
‘Just a moment,’ said Lovecraft. ‘How could Sanguine know all this? The nature of the Martian Falcon, the fact that Crystalman has it. As far as we know, he was killed almost immediately upon taking possession of it.’
; ‘He didn’t tell me,’ replied O’Malley. ‘But the answer seems plain enough.’
‘He must have followed Rusty Links,’ said Fort. ‘When he died the final death, his spirit was released, and he followed her to Crystalman. So he knows where Crystalman’s hideout is. He didn’t tell you, Cormack?’
The priest shook his head.
‘I have another question,’ said Lovecraft.
Fort sighed. ‘Ask away, Howard.’
‘Why would Sanguine tell you that the Falcon must be returned to Mars?’
‘What are you getting at?’ asked O’Malley.
‘Well, it seems a very specific necessity, don’t you think?’ Lovecraft replied. ‘Why would Sanguine say it if it weren’t true, or if he didn’t believe it to be true? Why not simply tell you that the Falcon must be disposed of on Earth?’
O’Malley glanced at Fort. ‘Good question.’
‘Funny thing is,’ said Fort, ‘returning it to Mars may be the best thing to do with it.’
‘How so?’ asked O’Malley.
‘You’ve read about Tesla’s discovery in the papers?’
‘The transmission from Mars?’ O’Malley hesitated, and then whispered: ‘O good Lord!’
‘Yeah,’ said Fort. ‘Right now, my guess is that the transmission was triggered by the X-M mission two years ago, and I’d put money on it having something to do with the Falcon. Howard and I are heading out to Colorado to get the rest of the story from Tesla.’
O’Malley lowered his head. ‘A vast and ancient evil, he said; a scourge from the depths of space. But what in God’s name could Sanguine want with such a thing?’
‘More to the point,’ said Fort, ‘what does Crystalman want with it?’
‘On the subject of Crystalman,’ said Lovecraft, ‘since we know that he has the Falcon, shouldn’t we just go to the police and tell them? They’re doubtless better equipped to go up against him than we are.’
‘That shower of bastards?’ said O’Malley. He shook his head. ‘This is too important to leave in the hands of New York’s finest! No, we need to handle this ourselves, but to do that we need more information.’ He paused. ‘Yes, we need more information. And I think I know where I may be able to get it. Of course, I’ll need to call in a big favour…’
