Psi Hunt

by Kurland, Michael

  Friendly glanced around conspiratorially. “Are they ready for—The Day?” he whispered.

  Leem looked shocked. Live dangerously, Robert reflected. If I have but one life to live, let me live it in a state of nervous apprehension. “Later,” Leem whispered back, examining the walls and ceiling to see who might have overheard. “Let the Admiral tell you about that—not everyone, even here, is cleared for Top Secret Jones.”

  Friendly put one hand to his mouth, looking amazingly like a performing bear. “Terribly sorry. An inexcusable slip.”

  The rest of the tour was comparatively uneventful. The quarters, mess, machine shops, power rooms, pile, stores, and other underground treasures were all Navy in concept and execution. The only notable differences between this and other bases were its underground location and the excessive zeal with which the men went about their duties. “You have a dedicated crew on board,” Friendly remarked as they left one of the work areas.

  “It’s amazing how much loyalty and hard work you can get out of men when they feel they’re doing something really worthwhile,” Captain Leem said proudly. “All the men here are volunteers—carefully screened, I assure you. Men who realize that they are the first line of defense of an America surrounded by foreign enemies. Men who are proud of their country, their service, their jobs, and themselves.”

  Paranoid, Robert thought, setting a look of approval about his face.

  The evolutionary process has, over the past two hundred million years or so, given the human race very impressive powers of discrimination within the normal sensory apparatus. The eye will be attracted to the merest flicker of motion in its range of vision. The ear can pick up the slightest breath of hostile sound from loud and varied background noise. This sets off an instant, autonomic reaction that keys in the body’s defenses and sets mind and senses working at hyperspeed.

  Robert froze. The medulla, the core of his adrenal gland, pumped adrenaline and noradrenaline into his bloodstream. His liver released stored sugar and his heart went into overdrive. The blood vessels in his skin and the arteries feeding his digestive system closed down, forcing the extra blood to his muscles and brain. An extra clotting agent was released into his blood. All this within a second, and out of his conscious control.

  Consciously, Robert was aware of great danger from some external source, but he had no idea of where it was coming from or how he had recognized it. He could feel his heart slamming the extra blood through his body, and he felt keyed up to a hypernormal sense of awareness.

  His two companions continued their conversation, not noticing that Robert was now two steps behind them. He looked around; nothing in sight. He listened; a door clicked shut around the corner. Traces of a conversation came to him.

  “—sorry but that’s all there is, Commander. Nothing more has come in.”

  “T-t-tolerable. Just b-barely t-t-tolerable. I’ll m-m-make the rep-p-port.”

  Pickwick! Around the corner! The one man who could blow their cover and probably get them killed—for the good of the United States of America, the Navy, and the John Paul Jones Society, in that order, of course. Let’s see—fast—how not to turn that corner. The sick bay, two stops behind on the tour, was several doors back along the corridor. “Oh!” Robert called, softly, crumpling to the deck. He did not have to fake a paste-white face. He rolled his eyes up toward his forehead and clutched his stomach.

  “What the—Lieutenant! What’s wrong?”

  “Burrows! Are you all right?”

  “Stomach,” Robert gasped. “Cramp. Hurts. Think I’ll be all right. Lie down.”

  “Sick bay’s right back here. Come, we’ll help you. Can you walk? I’ll get a stretcher.” Captain Leem bustled with efficiency and the urge to take control.

  Friendly, after one quick glance at him, nodded slowly. Good boy, he sent. I was preoccupied. Lifesaver.

  “I think I can make it,” Robert said, haltingly. “If you’d both help me. Sorry about this.”

  They lifted him up, one to a side, and paced carefully down the corridor. “No trouble,” Leem assured him. “Glad to help. I hate to ask, but, how’s your appendix?” Leem had a fear conditioned by years of shipboard experience. Men in isolated situations without medical help seem to love bursting their appendixes.

  “Gone since I was twelve,” Robert assured him. “Temporary cramp. Lie down for a minute. Be all right.” They were at the sick bay door.

  They lay Robert on the nearest cot, and he relaxed as the door click shut behind them. Suddenly he did feel physically ill, and he was glad he was lying down. I am not, he mused, cut out to be a spy. Tommy Hambledon would not approve.

  You did fine!

  Robert found that he didn’t mind the alien voice in his head.

  The corpsman came over and prodded Robert’s stomach, seeming very relieved when Robert reported no abnormally sensitive areas. He asked if Robert wanted to see a doctor, and Robert assured him that the cramp was even now going away.

  “If it doesn’t clear up in the next ten minutes, or if it comes back, let us know right away. I’ll bring you an antispasmodic. Can you take a pill, or do you want a shot?”

  “Pill,” Robert assured him.

  He returned with two gray pills and a glass of water and made sure Robert swallowed them down. “Drink the whole glass,” he insisted.

  “Does this happen often?” Captain Leem asked anxiously. “Ulcer?” Robert knew what he was thinking without being telepathic. The occupational disease of the career officer; ulcers and alcoholism, resulting in increasingly frequent collapses and hospitalization and eventual early retirement or discharge, “for the good of the service.” Every commander watched for the signs.

  “First time,” Robert assured him. “Must have been something I ate. I feel better already.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot.

  Leem looked reassured. A man with a bleeding ulcer doesn’t recover nearly so fast. “Possibly a stomach virus, some sort of flu,” he said, looking worried again. A good stomach flu could put two-thirds of his base on the sick list, and the new strains seemed to appear as fast as the vaccines were produced for the old.

  “None of the other signs,” Robert said, not wanting to be poked or probed if he could help it. “No weakness or dizziness, no diarrhea. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  “Glad to hear that, Lieutenant,” Leem said. “Ah—”

  “Why don’t you go about your work, Captain?” Friendly suggested. “I’m sure you’ve got more important things to do than shepherd us around. It’s only an hour till the meeting. I’ll stay with the lieutenant until he feels better, then we’ll meet you there.”

  “Ah, yes. Take care of yourself, Lieutenant. I’ll meet you in an hour, then.”

  Friendly shook hands with him. “Thank you for showing us around, Captain. It’s been very instructive.”

  “Yes. My pleasure.”

  “Our honor, sir, I assure you.”

  The captain scurried out, the model of a man with important business. Friendly sat down at the foot of the cot. “What luck,” he said. “As you can see, Lieutenant, telepathy isn’t infallible. You have sharp ears, Lieutenant Burrows.”

  “What do we do now?” Robert asked. “And I seem to remember asking you that before. Pickwick is sure to be at the meeting. Have you enough information now from your mindpicking for us to get the hell out of here?”

  “I would like a bit more explication.” Friendly said. “As for the commander: we will have to. I believe the expression is, take him out. Preferably not permanently, but certainly for the duration of our visit.”

  “Fine,” Robert agreed. “How?”

  “Let us find the gentleman and use the expedient of the moment. No way to predict where he’ll be or how to get rid of him until we stumble across him. We have an hour.”

  “Telepathy is no help?”

  “None whatever. No way to isolate his thought from the hundreds of others. If he were running scared, he’d
be broadcasting: but he’s not. He doesn’t stutter in his thoughts.”

  “What do we do then?”

  “Go back to where you heard him and try to trace him down. Subtly, very subtly. By the way, let me commend you on an excellent collapse. Artistic.”

  “Thank you.”

  They retraced their steps to the site of Robert’s seizure and rounded the corner. The corridor was empty, and their quarry wasn’t in any of the rooms. “Was Commander Pickwick in here?” Friendly asked a sailor knee-deep in gas masks in one of the rooms.

  “Yes, sir. About fifteen minutes ago. I believe he went up to Communications, or try the wardroom.”

  “Thank you, sailor. Don’t lose count.”

  “Gas masks!” the sailor said emphatically. “Sir.”

  “You can never tell,” Friendly said. They headed nonchalantly to Communications and then casually to the wardroom, finding him at neither location. In the wardroom they stopped for coffee, much to Robert’s impatience.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Friendly leaned his metal chair back precariously on two legs. “Love,” he declared, “will find a way. Drink your coffee.” He closed his eyes and teetered thoughtfully.

  Robert drank his coffee and ate two stale doughnuts. He tried not to look, or even think, worried.

  Friendly opened his eyes, sat up, and decisively drained his coffee mug. “We will have to beard the lion in his lair,” he said. “I have an image of Bert Lahr.” He opened his dispatch case and removed from a small compartment a ring with a massive stone, which he slid over one large finger. “I almost forgot I had this,” he said. “A very cleverly concealed hypodermic nodule. It contains an almost instantaneous hypnotic, which unfortunately, only lasts about half an hour. We’ll have to hope it’s a short meeting.”

  Robert felt his heart start pounding again. “You mean we’re going to—”

  “Exactly.”

  “Right in front of—”

  “I certainly hope so. If not, riding out of town on a rail will be more than we can hope for. Much more. I’d appreciate it if you’d carry the dispatch case, I may need both hands.”

  “You may need three or four. Carry on.”

  Robert suffered silently through another coffee before it was time for the meeting. The chartroom was small, dark-wood paneled, and brightly lit. Ancient, nonfunctional, nautical charts were varnished to the walls. “Welcome, gentlemen,” a lieutenant-commander greeted them at the door. “I’m the Admiral’s adjutant. Your seats—” he indicated two chairs across the round table, farthest from the door. Captain Leem was already seated, the only other person in the room.

  Robert developed a strong sympathy for trapped animals while circling the table to his seat. At any second Commander Pickwick would appear in the doorway, recognize them, and blurt out their death warrants. He sat down and smiled, testing the table unobtrusively for ease of flipping over. It was disappointingly solid and heavy. He decided to leap on the table with an ear-piercing scream that would pin everyone in their seats, and dive over the admiral to the door. Perhaps it locked from the outside. He thought his plan strongly, hoping Friendly was reading his mind. There was no response.

  The other high-ranking members of the John Paul Jones Society filed into the room, and were pointed to chairs. There was still no Pickwick. Let’s see—two chairs left. The admiral wouldn’t appear until everyone else was seated, so they could all snap to attention in the grand old tradition. Someone else was coming in. Not Pickwick. Perhaps he wasn’t coming to this meeting after all. Fat chance. After a few muttered words to the adjutant, the newcomer left. Muttered words? Had Pickwick perhaps spied them through the door and already passed the word? The adjutant seemed to be carefully avoiding his eye. Maybe right now they’d better—

  Friendly yawned, stretched, and stood up, as innocently as a sleepy grizzly bear.

  A dress-blue jacket with a double row of large gold buttons appeared in the doorway, its owner’s face hidden by the cocked tricorn he was removing. Friendly moved around the table as the head was bared. Friendly’s face was the first thing that came into sight when Commander Pickwick focused on the room. He darted out a startled pointing finger. “You!” he screeched. “W-w-w-what—how -d-d-d-d—”

  “Pickwick!” Friendly’s booming voice drowned out the stuttering speech. “God, man, what a pleasure to see you here! Had no idea you were on this coast. What?” He slapped Pickwick on the back, pulling his ear close to the commander’s face and blocking it from view. “Of course, old man! But I’ll buy the first round. No, I insist!” He led the unresisting officer, whose screech had subsided into silence and whose face was developing a noticeable glassy stare, to his seat and carefully placed him in it, pushing it under the table. “A real pleasure, Commander. No, don’t say anything. After, we’ll talk.”

  “You know Pickwick, Captain Friendly?” Admiral Luche, who had entered unobtrusively while this scene was being played, asked softly.

  “Atten-shun!” the adjutant yelped, red-faced at having missed Luche’s entrance. The table, including a thoroughly drugged Commander Pickwick, snapped to attention, twelve senior officers’ bodies at midshipman brace. This subset of the Navy took tradition and military courtesy seriously.

  “As you were, gentlemen,” Luche said, nodding gravely. He waited until the others were seated before snapping stiffly into his own chair. “Captain?”

  “Only off-duty, sir,” Friendly said. “We’ve spent some time together at officers’ clubs and the like, but we’ve never worked together. Isn’t that right, Commander?”

  “Yes,” said Pickwick, who would agree to anything.

  “Yes, well.” Admiral Luche pursed his lips and looked sharply around the table, his back mainmast-straight and his eye sharp. Robert gulped and worked at looking sincere.

  “To work, gentlemen. I welcome you all here. Most of you I know well, and have worked with. Others, due to what has been necessary security, I haven’t met. I know the record of each of you, however, and have followed your careers (bullshit, Robert thought happily). You are all excellent men, true patriots, and a credit to your country, your profession, and your ideals. The time has come when you must all know each other and work together as the great team that you have been all this time. But enough of this!” He brushed the words aside with a glance.

  “I have here,” the admiral said, holding up a small stack of papers, “the agenda!” He said this with the pride of Leo IX displaying the Donatio Constantini.

  The adjutant took the papers and walked around the table, putting one document in front of each chair. Robert examined his. The top page was a cover sheet, stapled on all four corners. An all-caps paragraph was carefully centered on the light blue paper:

  t o p s e c r e t c o d e w o r d

  the document or documents contained beneath this cover are classified top secret with code word authorization required for reading. if you are not cleared for this information. do not open or read this document! failure to comply with these instructions can and will be punished as authorized by pl 102/79

  safeguarding of classified documents

  if an unauthorized person finds this document he or she is to immediately turn it in to a qualified official of the united states government, any officer of the armed services. diplomatic corps. or the nearest united states postmaster.

  Robert kept his hands carefully at his sides until the admiral, seeing that everyone was served, ordered, “Remove the staples, gentlemen!” Then he carefully pried up the four staples and peeled off the cover sheet, which was lightly gummed to the paper underneath.

  This paper was pink, and contained a new warning. An undercover sheet? Robert wondered. It had four more staples, and read:

  top secret

  jones

  this document is classified top secret jones. if you do not recognize the code word as one you are authorized for, do not remove this sheet! turn this and all accompanying documentation over to the highest rankin
g officer of the united states navy you can contact. if none are immediately available, burn this document immediately, and notify the department of the navy of the document number and your action as soon as possible.

  document number jpj 148 282

  t o p s e c r e t

  j o n e s

  Robert was beginning to feel impressed with his own importance as he removed the staples and peeled back the next layer of document. This was the bottom sheet, typewritten and mimeographed:

  T O P S E C R E T J O N E S T O P S E C R E T

  AGENDA

  PANEL OF OFFICERS OF THE CONTROL COMMITTEE JOHN PAUL JONES SOCIETY

  Admiral Paul Luche—Chairman

  1. Undersea Control Officer

  2. West Coast BURBAC Command Control Officer

  3. East Coast NORATCOM Command Control Officer

  4. EURCOM Control Officer

  5. AISCOM Control Officer

  6. SATCQM Control Officer

  7. Commander

  THIS IS NUMBER 7 OF SIXTEEN DESTROY AFTER READING

  J O N E S T O P S E C R E T J O N E S T O P

  Somehow Robert felt let down. The document seemed hardly worth the time of the Master Spy photographing it with his button camera. He looked around to see if he could catch anyone furtively fingering a button, but no. And everyone looked desperately serious.

  Admiral Luche tapped the table three times with his forefinger. “I hereby declare this meeting of the Control Committee of the John Paul Jones Society in session. Record that it is starting four hours early, due to the early arrival of all the members.” The adjutant made a note. “We will begin with the report of the Undersea Control Officer.”

  A stocky rear admiral, heavy with gold braid, stood up. He had a large nose which looked as if all the blood going to his head was routed through its prominent veins. “Greetings,” he said. “We have been waiting for this day for a long time, and I would like to express my appreciation to all of you for the hard work which has made it possible. Sometimes I think that we had the easier job, out of sight in our own little worlds. There were no outside pressures on us—except for three miles of water, of course.”