by Jerry Sohl
He knew that neighborhood people must have been witness to a subtler, more extensive change that did not show from the outside. If his plans had been carried out during the past sixty days, there should have been feverish activity inside, ready-mixed concrete trucks should have rolled up to the rear entrance at regular intervals around the clock, shifts should have reported for work three times a day and smoke should have flowed from the chimney in an endless ribbon across the sky.
To Loop-bound workers and area residents the building still stood, though it was now obviously occupied. How was anyone to guess two buildings stood now where one had stood before? And if they did guess it, could they also guess why?
Like a nesting block, a strong, reinforced concrete building was completed inside. That much he could be sure of. The outside brick was merely the outer shell, the camouflage for the inner building twenty feet smaller on all sides. But the old floors between it and the outer walls had been retained; otherwise the shell might have collapsed. As it was, the floors made a corridor running around its perimeter on each level.
There were a lot of things he knew ought to be finished by now, but he had had no way of knowing how they had come along. Orcutt’s letters had been too general, his telephone conversations too guarded to tell much. He had been aching to get back, had been anxious to know.
He pulled his hat down to withstand the stiff, late March breeze, crossed the street and entered the building.
“Mr. Traylor!” A girl whose name he could not remember was at the information desk and she rose and smiled at him. He saw that the concrete wall was hidden by paneling, as he had suggested, and that the area between it and the front of the building was occupied with a random array of desks. “You are Mr. Traylor, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He returned her smile and stepped through the gate. “How is everything?”
“Just fine.” The girl moved back a bit when he came through. She was ill at ease. He was a crisis. “I have to be sure about the identity, Mr. Traylor.”
“Yes, of course.” He fished in his billfold for his driver’s license. “I’ve forgotten your name.”
“I’m Dorothy Janssen.” She took his license in trembling fingers.
“You used to be at the West Side plant, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She returned the card, seemed much relieved and when she smiled this time she gave him the five dollar one. “Thank you, Mr. Traylor.”
“You keep on being sure of people, do you hear?”
No one bothered him when he went through the door on the right that he knew opened to a corridor that ran the length of the building. On the right was the wall of the old building, on the left the rough concrete of the inner building.
At the rear were the same stairs he and Orcutt had climbed to get to the plywood shed on the second floor, but he knew the shed was no longer there. A much bigger room replaced it.
Devan turned left and crossed the old wood floor to a small doorway in the inner wall. It was next to a closed entranceway that was big enough to admit the largest truck made.
He pushed the red button in the wall. A moment later the door started to open and he walked into a small, softly lighted room, the door hissing to a loud click shut behind him. A clean-cut, neatly uniformed man in a recessed office space came to the waist-high counter.
“Miss Janssen in the front office said you’d be back here, sir,” he said. “I have a badge for you. Will you sign in, please?”
Devan wondered where they had dug up the old picture of him as he pinned the identification to his lapel. Then he signed his name in the book, putting the time in the proper column. He noticed there was also a column for entering the time one left the inner building.
The plant policeman pressed a buzzer and Devan walked past the opening door.
The big room took his breath away, though he knew exactly what it was going to look like. He had to stop and look at it; seeing it and planning it, he decided, were two different things.
The walls of the room rose nearly five stories and seemed taller than the outside building simply because nothing broke the smoothness of the reinforced concrete. There were at least a hundred lights blazing in the ceiling, erasing shadows of objects and men working on the ground floor. The room reminded him of the Pennsylvania Station and a mixture of recollections of other large places, yet he knew it could not possibly compare with any one of them.
The sounds in the room were deafening—the nerve-shattering howl of drills, the clatter of riveters, the banging of hammers and other construction noises he could not identify and not all of which he could see. The men who had constructed the building had done their work fast and well and were, he was glad to see, completely out of the way. In the center of the vast room, scaffolding was going up and already a few pieces of the bottom of the giant Costigan tube were being put in place.
Behind him was the electrically operated steel-doored entranceway and the small office through which he had just passed. Along the wall on his right, workmen were installing control panels. On his left were the project offices, concrete boxes built out from the wall. A vast project, no matter how you looked at it. All a man had to do was poke his nose in here and he’d see how big it was.
He moved now to one of the offices along the left wall, the last and largest in the line. That would be Dr. Costigan’s. As he walked across the floor, he was surprised to see many strange faces. He nodded or waved to those he knew.
When he closed the door of the scientist’s soundproof office and stood just inside, he saw that the physicist was not there, which surprised him because he thought Dr. Costigan would live with the job until it was done.
A young woman who had been bent over a drafting table, running a line out with a ruling pen, turned to him.
“Dr. Costigan isn’t here,” she said, brushing a lock of hair from in front of an eye. “Is there anything I can do?”
Devan had never seen her before, found himself interested in the way her dark blue eyes looked into his, the graceful way she had pushed back the errant forelock. He guessed her age at about twenty-five. She was a head shorter than he, had black hair that fell in a girlish way to her shoulders. She had an artist’s smock over her dress.
“How long has he been gone?”
“Not long.” She looked at him curiously. “Would you like to wait for him?”
“Look,” he said. “My name’s Devan Traylor. I just got in from Florida to see how the project is getting along. I thought sure I’d find Dr. Costigan here. Where did he go?”
“Well...” She did not want to tell. “He’s actually here, but not in this office. I’ll get him for you if it’s important. You say your name is Traylor. Is that right?”
“Right. But before you go, would you mind telling me where he is?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
He did not press her for the information. Instead, he watched her take off her smock, put on a cardigan and start for the door. She looked very fetching in the sweater, he thought, and wondered who she was.
“I won’t be a minute,” she explained, her hand on the doorknob. She flashed him a smile and then, the roar from outside bursting in for a moment, she was gone.
He could have seen where she was going by watching her out the office window but he resisted the temptation. He only hoped she didn’t have to go to a phone in some other office and get him out of a tavern.
In a few moments she was back. “It may take him a few minutes,” she said. “But he’ll be here.” She took off the cardigan, put on the smock again.
“Does he have far to come?”
“Not far.”
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
“That depends.”
“That is an admirable trait.”
“What is?”
“To be able to speak when it’s necessary and not when it isn’t. What’s your name?”
“Betty Peredge.”
“You work for Dr. Costigan, ap
parently.”
She nodded. “I’ve been here a month.”
“Ever work for Inland before?”
“No. Mrs. Tudor, who was working for Dr. Costigan, became ill and he needed somebody for drafting in a hurry. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
He saw for the first time two plants in flower pots in the window, one with a long, narrow leaf with yellow bands and without blossoms, and a violet plant, though he had not seen one with such fleshy leaves and large blossoms.
“Are those flowers yours or Mrs. Tudor’s? I’m guessing they’re not Dr. Costigan’s.”
“They’re mine. I asked Dr. Costigan if I could bring them here. I happen to like flowers and they’re something from home.”
“What kind are they?”
“The one on the left is a sansevieria, sometimes called snake plant or mother-in-law’s tongue, don’t ask me why. The other I’m going to have to take home; it’s doing poorly under this light. It’s an African violet and you can see it’s ailing. The leaves are yellow and the buds have been threatening to drop off.”
He grinned. “I suppose it has a technical name, too?”
“Saintpaulia.” She filled the ruling pen with ink, her tongue in her cheek, her hands steady.
“What do you think of the project, Miss Peredge?”
She put the stopper in the ink bottle, turned to him, a trace of amusement in her eyes. “I’ve become rather attached to Costigan’s Needle,” she said.
“Costigan’s Needle?”
She nodded out the window to the floor of the big room. “You’ll have to admit it will look like a needle with an eye at the bottom. You have the blue of an executive’s badge. You ought to know what it’s going to look like.”
“I know, but I hadn’t thought about it as a needle before.” Twelve feet in diameter and more than sixty feet high—yes, with the inward taper on the bottom, that final eighteen feet drawing into a point at the top, it looked very much like a needle. Especially with a four by eight foot hole through the bottom as the needle’s eye.
“Who named it that, Miss Peredge?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard it called nothing else. Even Dr. Costigan calls it the Needle.”
“Are you his secretary or something?”
“In a way, yes. My most important work is making schematic drawings from his sketches so the electricians will have something to work from.”
As she worked on her drawings, he walked to what he guessed was Dr. Costigan’s desk. On top there were several large drawings of circuits she no doubt had made. He picked up the top three sheets and looked at them one at a time.
Three different circuit arrangements, all probably important, with a strange conglomeration of parts: banks of solenoids, time delay relays, voltage boosters, several rugged ceramic capacitors in one drawing, two focus coils and other devices in another, a deflection yoke and trivia in the third. He saw several insulated air-wound coils there, too, and almost laughed out loud. Who did Dr. Costigan think he was fooling?
He sat down, engrossed in following wires around in the top drawing. They went off the page and beneath them at the edge of the page, with an arrow pointing off the sheet, were the words to box six. He looked in vain for the diagram named box six and for that item on any other drawing.
“Look, Miss Peredge,” he said, indicating the top drawing. She came over. “These wires here go to box number six, it says here. But there’s no box number six drawing. Or is that what you’re doing now?”
She shook her head. “I’m not doing it. On almost every drawing the wires go off to box numbers.” She pointed to the box numbers on other sheets. “I haven’t made a box number diagram in all the time I’ve been here.” She paused. “Something else,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Peredge.”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at him sharply and he grinned. He was satisfied to let her take whichever meaning she wished.
“Do you know what the Needle is for, Mrs. Peredge?”
“Heavens no! But I’ve heard people talk about it. Some say it’s a guided missile and others aren’t sure. Do you know?”
“What do you think it is?”
“It doesn’t seem to me it could be a guided missile. How would you get it out of here if it was? And all this preparation for just one of them—it wouldn’t make sense. I think it must have something to do with atomic research, everything is so secret and the building is so closely guarded. Perhaps it’s a cyclotron—a vertical one. They’re usually round and flat, aren’t they? I’m probably amusing you with my guesses. Have I come close?”
The rush of sound came in as the door opened.
“Mr. Traylor!” Dr. Costigan pumped his hand. “When did you get back?”
“Just today.”
“This is certainly a surprise. I thought Mrs. Peredge said you were here, though it’s hard to hear distinctly through that thick door. How is everything in Florida?” He arranged two folding chairs. “Sit down.”
“Just fine, Doctor. How’s everything up here?”
“You see, don’t you? We’re ahead of schedule. A couple more weeks and—well, we’ve got everything stockpiled around town ready to put in. It shouldn’t be too long. A month at the outside.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I was wondering when you’d get back. Didn’t want you to miss the test. You’ll be around for a while?”
“Couldn’t keep me away. It’s all I’ve been thinking about in Florida, to be frank.”
“We’ve all been thinking about nothing else, I guess.”
“Where’s Sam?”
Dr. Costigan wiped his watery eyes with his handkerchief. “We put Sam in purchasing. He’s happy there and he’s doing a good job. They tell me Sam gets material that’s impossible to get. He’s out on a buying errand right now.”
“And Orcutt?”
“He doesn’t get out here much. He and Basher, Holcombe, Tooksberry and—”
“Tooksberry? Does he come nosing around?”
“He doesn’t like what we’re doing, but he comes out to have a look once in a while. He and I just don’t get along, Mr. Traylor.”
“We don’t either.” Devan offered him a cigarette, not remembering whether or not the doctor smoked. Dr. Costigan shook his head. “What’s this door you mentioned, Doctor? The one you said is so thick.”
“Well...” The doctor gave him a sidelong glance. “I hope you weren’t too set on those plans of yours. I did a little changing. This is my office, really, just as you said, but I’ve built another office down at the end of this line of offices. We chopped a few feet off each office so I could have it. Did you notice it when you came in? My workshop is in there. It’s more private.”
Devan studied his face. “Why do you need a workshop? You have this whole building, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but—” The doctor was having difficulty. “You see, there are some boxes to be put in the Needle.”
“Needle? We called it a tube before.”
“I don’t know how it started, but suddenly everybody was calling it that. Anyway, there are several vital parts of the Needle I’m building myself. If I didn’t, the secret would be easily revealed.”
Devan picked up the diagrams he’d been examining. “That’s what you mean here, eh? ‘To box six.’ That’s one of those boxes you’re working on, is that right?”
“Yes. There are to be ten of them.”
“Ten vital spots.” Devan fingered the charts. “Tell me, do all these things work you have indicated here—relays, focus coils, deflection yokes?”
The doctor smiled. “Well, some do and some don’t. I run all the wires to the boxes and just connect the ones that run to equipment to be used. A safety precaution.”
“Sounds like diverting tactics to me. You say it will be ready in a couple weeks, Doctor?”
Dr. Costigan glanced at Betty Peredge.
“I’ve seen that look before,” she said, smiling an
d rising from her work. “I know when I’m not wanted.” She exchanged her smock for a sweater again and left the room.
There was much about the girl Devan liked. He decided she wasn’t what he’d call pictorially beautiful, but she was beautiful by animation, especially when that smile was aimed at him... and then he remembered she was married and so was he and so he tried to get his mind off her blue cardigan.
“I mentioned something about the Needle being ready in two weeks,” Devan reminded the doctor.
Dr. Costigan leaned closer to him. “There is a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Yes. Evidently nobody’s thought about who is to go through the Needle’s Eye first. Have you?”
5
The giant chamber echoed every movement, every scrape of a shoe, even the scratch of a paper match one of them struck to light a cigarette. The six men sat in a small group near the Eye of the Needle, while the seventh man worked. They sat close to each other as if for warmth or safety, though the real reason was easier communication. When they talked, they did so softly.
It was the night of the big test.
Orcutt sat with his legs crossed, one foot moving slowly up and down, a forefinger curved around the stem of the pipe in his mouth, his eyes on Dr. Costigan, who had removed a plate from the polished metal side of the Needle and was working with wires inside.
Sam Otto, Glenn Basher and Howard Tooksberry were having lively discussions about a variety of subjects—the weather, the stock market, the international situation and football—though Devan thought April was an odd month to be talking about football. James Holcombe didn’t enter into the talk much. He kept fidgeting in his chair, cracking his knuckles and watching the doctor.
Workmen had completed the Needle in the middle of April. Since then Dr. Costigan had been promising the executive committee a demonstration. It had taken a few days to install the secret boxes. Then had come the tests. Never the Needle itself, always some circuit that the doctor wanted to balance just right.
He’d work from point to point with the test probes, volt-ohmmeters, signal generators, videometers and some testing devices that looked homemade to Devan. They were in small plywood boxes with the usual meters on the outside. One of the boxes was equipped with a headphone set and the physicist walked around with the phones, making adjustments with a knob on the box and recording figures on a pad. It could have been a Geiger counter, except it wasn’t.
