CHAPTER 2
They spoke only once more on the half-hour trip. “You evidently know me,” said Rafe gently, after they had left Armstrong Field behind them and were rolling along the freeway through the spring-green countryside with the limo’s spoilers extended to keep them from becoming airborne at a hundred and eighty miles per hour. “But you didn’t tell me your name.”
“Lee,” she said.
There was something hopeless about the way she answered with a single name only—as if she had accepted the unimportance of being no more than a factotum or a pet animal. Rafe turned his gaze back to the ribbon of concrete that was the high-speed lane, extending itself endlessly before them. He said no more until they ended their journey.
The end came after they had left the freeway and turned in, some distance down an asphalt road, at the gate to what looked like either a very large private home or a small institution. The gate area and the grounds were scattered with men and women in clothes of civilian colors, but wearing the same professional aura as the secret service man in the limo’s front compartment.
“Here?” said Rafe, as the limo pulled up before a large front door.
“We’ll go right in,” Lee answered. She got out of the car and he followed her.
They were let through the front door and met inside by two more secret service men types.
“Just a moment, please,” said Lee. “Wait here.”
She went ahead down a carpeted hallway with a wide stairway rising from it. Past the foot of the stairway she knocked at a white-painted door and entered. After a moment she came back.
“This way, Mr. Harald,” she said.
Rafe followed her, holding the briefcase and followed by the two men. At the door, Lee stopped and turned to him.
“The briefcase, please?” she asked, holding out her hand. Rafe smiled and gave it to her.
She passed it to one of the men, who backed off with it. The other man followed Lee and Rafe into the room.
It was a library, or a study of sorts. Seated in large armchairs flanking a fieldstone fireplace in which paper, kindling, and logs were laid but not lit were the two men with whom Martin Pu-Li had had an appointment this morning. It was not hard for Rafe to recognize them.
Willet Forebringer, the Marshal appointed by the United Nations to hold extraordinary powers over all the world’s police forces as long as the emergency created by the soporific effect of the broadcast power from the Core Tap units continued, was a thin, stiff-backed man in his fifties. The black silk solitaire he wore about his neck instead of a cravat emphasized the white boniness of his face above, with its gray hair clubbed at the back of his head and gray eyebrows. Pao Gallot, seated opposite Forebringer, was sixty and looked forty, with a close cap of perfectly black hair and a round, hard body under a round, inoffensive-looking face. Neither of these two evoked the empathy response in Rafe. Of the two men, Forebringer was by far the man most likely looking to begin an interrogation, but in fact it was Pao Gallot who spoke first—in English, but with a slightly hissing French accent.
“I take for granted,” he said, “you brought some kind of authorization from Martin Pu-Li.”
Rafe shook his head. He looked at Lee and the man who had accompanied them into the room. Pao also looked at the man.
“Did you search him?” the Chairman of the Core Tap Project asked.
“No, sir. He’s one of the cosmo—”
“Search him now,” said Forebringer. The man came forward almost apologetically and ran his hands over Rafe’s body. Rafe smiled at him, reassuringly. Behind them there was a rap on the door. Lee turned and went to it—to return carrying the briefcase.
“He’s all right,” said the man.
“This is all right, too,” said Lee.
“Give it to him, then,” said Pao. “And wait outside, both of you.”
Lee and the man obeyed. As the door shut behind him, Rafe walked forward with the briefcase under his arm and took a chair facing the other two men.
“We didn’t ask you to sit down, Harald,” said Forebringer. “You know you’ve made yourself liable to arrest, showing up here? None of you on the Moon Project had authority to return to Earth, except Martin.”
“Where is Martin?” asked Pao Gallot.
“Back on the Moon,” said Rafe.
“He sent you, did he?”
“No,” said Rafe. “I locked him up and took his place.”
“And the shuttle brought you down without orders?” broke in Forebringer.
“I let them think I was carrying word of a breakthrough—a solution finally to the problem of nerve decay under the freezing process that’s been holding back the Project from its first Star shoot for nearly three years now,” Rafe said. “I let them think there were secret reasons why I had to bring Earth the news about it, without authorization, instead of Martin bringing it.”
“There isn’t any such solution, is there?” Pao asked.
“No,” said Rafe.
“I see.” Pao hesitated for a moment. “Then you’d better tell us why you’re here, hadn’t you?”
“Abner Carmody Leesing,” said Rafe. “A biophysicist I recommended for work on the Project three years ago, only a committee decided against him. I phoned down to Earth yesterday, Moon time, and couldn’t get him. I was told he disappeared eight days ago.”
He paused and sat looking at the other two men.
“Well?” demanded Forebringer after a minute. “What about this—this Leesing?”
“That’s what I asked Martin,” Rafe said. “Before I locked him up and took his place on the shuttle. He claimed he didn’t know anything about Ab’s disappearance.”
Forebringer looked at Pao. Pao lifted his dark eyebrows, looking back.
“Are we supposed to know?” demanded Forebringer. “Is that it?”
“One of you two—or Martin,” Rafe said, looking from one to the other of them. “Maybe two or even all three of you.”
“What the hell”—Forebringer came down hard on the last word—“do you think? We’ve got time to keep track of every missing person in the world? We’ve got a world to run.”
“A world to bury,” said Rafe softly.
High in the chimney above the fireplace a little afternoon wind moaned softly. A breath of air came from the fireplace itself, bearing the invisible odor of old, charred wood and unswept ashes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” It was Pao Gallot.
“You know,” said Rafe unsparingly. “Did you think you could put a handful of the best minds of the generation off in a corner on the Moon with nothing to do but think, and not have them figure out a good deal of what was going on? Three years now, the Moonbase Far-Star Project’s been stuck dead on the problem of nerve damage under the cryonics process. Without cryonic suspended animation, there’s no point in trying to send a ship even as far as Alpha Centauri. Meanwhile Earth’s dying.”
“Dying?” Pao bristled. “No one goes hungry nowadays. No one. And with the Core Taps powering the food manufactories we can hold out a thousand years—let alone until you lick some little freezing problem.”
“Dying,” repeated Rafe. “Man doesn’t live by bread alone. That woman who brought me here’s half-dead already. So are people on the Project, back on the Moon. But that’s not what bothers me. One of you, two of you, three of you, maybe, are deliberately letting it die.”
Pao grunted.
“You re psychotic,” said Forebringer between tight lips.
“That’s what Martin said to me,” answered Rafe. “And he knew it wasn’t so when he said it. You know it’s not true yourself. If any two men know, you both know the world’s dying. And for some reason, even if you’re not actively helping the process, you’re choosing to let it die, rather than fight the situation. What is it you’re afraid to fight?”
“Judas Priest!” said Forebringer to Pao. “Let’s not listen to this.”
“Another moment or two,” said Pao, lifting a square hand slightly from the knee of his plum-colored half-pants. “What’s the point, Harald?”
“I told you,” Rafe said. “I want to know where Ab Leesing’s gone, and who’s taken him.”
“But not why?” Pao leaned forward a little, and his blue jacket creased over his belly.
“I know why. I think you do, too.” Rafe looked steadily back at him. “Ab’s work must have come up with something that would break the deadlock on the Project. So picking him up’s going one step further. Not just sitting back and letting the world die, but taking steps to make sure it does. Which one of you made him disappear?”
“Not I,” said Pao, sitting back in his chair. “I don’t have time for anything but the Core Taps and the food factories. In fact, my job’s gradually wrecking me.” He looked over at Forebringer. “Bill?”
Forebringer’s white face was ugly.
“I don’t have to dignify questions like that with answers,” he said.
“You’re saying no, too,” Rafe said. “And one or both of you is lying.”
He looked at them. Both men moved restlessly. Forebringer put his arms on the padded arms of his chair as if to push himself to his feet.
“All right,” said Rafe. “You’re ready to quit talking. Let me show you something first. Could I have one of your men from outside the door there come in so I can demonstrate something for you?”
“Demonstrate what?” asked Forebringer.
“Just let me show it to you first, before I get into any explanations,” Rafe answered.
They hesitated.
“This man,” said Pao. “Your demonstration won’t—you don’t plan on harming him?”
“Does it matter?” asked Rafe.
“No,” said Forebringer sharply before Pao could speak again. He pressed a button on the base of a phone standing on a table beside his chair, then picked up the phone.
“Send Jim in,” he said.
Behind Rafe, the door opened. Rafe got to his feet and went to meet the secret service man who stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
“This way,” said Rafe, taking him by the elbow as they came face to face. “We need you over here—”
As he spoke, he braced himself against his own reluctance to hurt, and dug the stiffened fingers of his free hand up under the breastbone of the man. The other collapsed upon him. Rafe caught and held him upright with the hand that had originally taken him by the elbow. Rafe’s other hand slid in between the man’s coat and waistcoat to come out with a palm-sized pill-gun. He slipped the gun into the waistband of his own pants and half-dragged, half-carried the other man to the chair in which he himself had been sitting earlier. He lowered the unconscious body into the chair.
“What happened?” It was Pao Gallot. Both the other men were on their feet now, watching him.
“You didn’t see?” Rafe asked. “My reflexes are pretty fast, of course.”
He turned around to face them, drawing the pill-gun.
“Sit down again,” he said.
They stared at the gun and sat.
“Good,” said Rafe. “Now, as I said, my reflexes are pretty fast. Fast enough that I can put the gun back in my pocket and use both hands to tie this man up—and still reach the gun again in time to shoot you both if you start to move out of your chairs or make any noise. You understand?”
“Mr. Harald—” began Pao, almost soothingly.
“No noise. No talk,” said Rafe. Pao closed his lips. Rafe put the gun back into the waistband of his trousers.
He walked around behind the chair in which the unconscious man lay sprawled. Taking the man’s cravat off, he gagged the slack mouth; then pulling the limp figure to the floor, he unthreaded the lacings from the man’s boots and with these, tied wrists and ankles together behind the unconscious back. When the man was completely trussed, Rafe dragged the body out of sight behind one of the couches in the room.
“Now,” he said, turning back to Pao and Forebringer. “You two and I are going to leave in the limo that brought me here. Tell them outside no one is to come into this room until further orders. We’ll take along Lee to drive the limo for us—no one else. You understand?” They nodded. “Up on your feet, then, and go ahead of me out of the door. Think up what you need to say yourselves, and don’t forget I have the gun. I doubt that anyone you have here can kill me quickly enough so that I can’t kill the two of you. Here we go.”
They walked to the door and out into the hall.
“Lee,” said Forebringer. “Come along. This room’s to be sealed until further orders. Mr. Harald, Mr. Gallot, and myself have someplace to go. You’ll drive a limo for us—no one else is going.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “The limo that brought Mr. Harald’s still out front. Do you want to take that?”
“That’s fine,” said Forebringer.
They followed her down the hall, Rafe walking just behind the other two men. The outside air was still cool and fresh on their faces as they got into the limo—the three men in back, Lee in the front compartment. She took the stick in her hand, and the vehicle rose smoothly on its two wheels and curved around the driveway out onto the asphalt road.
“Where to, sir?” It was Lee’s emotionless voice through the speaker connecting the front and rear compartments. Forebringer glanced at Rafe.
“I guess, Armstrong Field. Where I came in,” Rafe said. “Unless you can think of someplace closer where we could get a three-place-or-better VTL aircraft?”
“Armstrong Field, Lee,” said Forebringer. He leaned forward and turned to “off” position a switch among the controls below the small grille in the compartment’s forward wall, from which Lee’s voice had come. “Lee can’t fly a vertical take-off-and-landing craft.”
“I can,” said Rafe.
Once again, the ride was a silent one. It was not until their limo was turning back onto the roadway that ran down one side of the landing field itself that Rafe spoke up once more.
“Now,” he said to Forebringer. “Order that three-place craft. Tell them it’s an emergency—or anything else you want. But they’re to find us one right away. We’ll take anything that’s ready to fly, up to commuter bus size.”
Forebringer reached for the controls under the grille and punched out a call number.
“Terminal Police,” said a voice from the grille.
“This is Willet Forebringer. Reference code Ajax Ten. I need a three-place VTL immediately for an unspecified destination. We’re at the edge of the field now. Can you have it ready for us by the time we reach your office?”
“Sir—I—” the voice rattled in the speaker, almost stammering. “Mr. Forebringer, maybe you’d better talk to the captain here, sir. I’m just a desk patrolman—”
“You’ll do,” said Forebringer grimly. “Just relay the order—and it is an order. Now, tell me, can you have the VTL ready?”
“Sir—I don’t know, sir—”
Forebringer cut off the phone connection sharply. He sat back, looking at Rafe.
“What’s wrong with me?” Forebringer said, sourly. “You’d think I wanted to go on this trip.”
“If you’re an honest man, maybe you do,” said Rafe softly.
They followed the road around past the tall buildings of the ordinary terminal, to a smaller building with glowing yellow letters spelling out POLICE in the air above it.
“We’ll stay in the car,” Rafe said, “right up until we board the aircraft. Speak to them again, Forebringer.”
Forebringer leaned forward and used the phone connection once more. They were told that a five-place ship was ready for them on the landing pad on the far side of the building, and they drove around to it.
Five minutes later, with Rafe at the controls, but with his eyes focused on the mirror showing Pao and Forebringer seated behind him with their hands carefully in view in their laps, the VTL leaped directly skyward from the landing pad, and the foreshortened figure of Lee dwindled away below them.
At an altitude of seven thousand feet, Rafe entered the traffic pattern above the field, and came out of it a minute or two later, headed due east. He lifted to eighty thousand feet, put the controls on auto, and swung his seat around on its gimbals to face Forebringer and Pao.
“Is it too much to ask where you’re taking us?” Pao said.
“I’m not sure,” Rafe said. “We’ll just head east until it gets dark or the two of you fall asleep.”
Both the other men stiffened.
“You damn fool!” Forebringer said. “Don’t you know any airfield we pass over on automatic pilot will try to pull us in unless there’s someone awake at the controls to cut us out of the traffic pattern? And a ship this size hasn’t the response mechs to get itself landed by airport control? You fly us into a broadcast area and we’ll end up a pile of junk on some landing pad—”
He broke off abruptly. His eyes narrowed, staring at Rafe.
“Or maybe you’re figuring on not going all the way asleep,” he said. “What are you? Some sort of zombie?”
“You could say that,” answered Rafe.
He expected one or the other of them to question him further after his saying that. But neither did. Pao sat as he was. Forebringer leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest like a man who has come to a decision.