Planet in Peril (8 page)

One of the group objected: “Berkeley’s not all that big a place, and everyone knows everyone in those campus towns. What excuse is Macintosh going to have for being there—he’ll be noticed as a stranger, sure as H-bombs.” Charles felt a slight twitch of surprise at the use of his new name. It was used very casually; he hoped he would be able to use it as casually himself.

Dinkuhl
said: “Charlie will have two authorizations along with his GD card. One will be a routine authorization of furlough. The other, specially fixed for the trip to Berkeley, will be an arrangement to stay over at Berkeley as a visiting student working on idiopathic decalcification in certain Outer Mongolian tribes. It so happens that they have some stuff on that at Berkeley that isn’t available elsewhere on this continent.”

Charles had started. “What,” he asked, “is idiopathic decalcification in—”

“Their teeth drop out early,”
Dinkuhl
said briefly. “We will hope you don’t happen on another GD man working in that line—I think it unlikely. Anyway, that’s the scheme. Once at Berkeley, it’s up to you, Charlie. We’ll try to keep in touch with you, but essentially you’re on your own.”

Charles nodded. The Atomics man said: “Sounds all right. I can think of about fifty things likely to go wrong.” “We’ll hope they don’t,”
Dinkuhl
said. “All right, then.
I’ll
run Charlie here back to Detroit and ship him on the
stratoliner
to Berkeley. See you boys at the next meeting.”

The gyro dropped at last toward the lights of Detroit, and to
Dinkuhl’s
house by the edge of the lake.
Dinkuhl
brought the vanes into vertical and switched on the landing fight; the gyro dropped effortlessly on to its grounding strip.

Dinkuhl
said: “I'll shove this in its kennel. You know your way about the house by now.” He handed Charles the whistle-key. “Find yourself a drink.
I’ll
be right up.”
Dinkuhl
had put on the path-lights; Charles walked along a narrow strip of light toward the dark house. He reached the door, and whistled it open; the inside lights went on automatically. He made his way up to the first floor, and into the lounge. There was a whiff of some kind of perfume in the air; it was oddly familiar.

He knew what it was when his knees began to buckle:
astarate
, the nerve gas. He slumped to the floor with his head toward the threshold—so it was that he saw
Dinkuhl
appear and stand on the other side of it, looking into the room. He was wishing he could read
Dinkuhl’s
expression when consciousness went.

the cell in which
C
harles awoke was windowless and approximately a cube, with sides of perhaps nine feet. There were two gratings facing each other in opposite walls—small square patches of mesh in a bare expanse of pastel yellow plastic. Ventilation ducts. A door was set in another wall. It was much too centrally placed; in point of fact the bottom of the door-frame was over a foot off the floor of the room, and there was the same gap between the lintel top and the ceiling.

Charles had a shattering headache; as he knew, an inevitable after-effect of
astarate
. He scrambled to his feet, wincing, and walked unsteadily across to the door.
Dinkuh
l’
s
whistle-key had disappeared but he could remember a few standard combinations of notes. He tried them out, despite the dryness of his throat. There was no response; the door remained closed. He pressed his shoulder against it, too, but it remained firm. He went over and sat down in the
airfoam
chair to think
thin
gs out. It folded persuasively about him, and he saw that there were straps by which he could fasten himself in. He couldn’t think why they should be needed.

He heard the usual mounting purr, and looked up to see the TV screen on the wall coming to life. A middle-aged man at a desk. A desk bare of anything that might identify it. And the man wore no managerial badge.

He was fat, red-faced, with a long thin nose and a remote sly look. He spoke with a slight lisp.

"How are you, Official
Grayner
? Is there anything you need?”

Charles said: “Yes. Water, a pain-killer, and an explanation. In that order, if it doesn’t inconvenience you.”

The man nodded. He called, to someone out of camera range: “Water and
neurasp
for Official
Grayner
.” To Charles, he added: “You wouldn’t prefer brandy?”

“Water will do.”

“Let me introduce myself. My name is
Ellecott
.”

“Of…?”

Ellecot
smiled; it was a dreamy unpleasant smile. “Don’t think I want to be awkward. But I would prefer it if you did not press that question—not right at the moment.”

The door opened. Charles went across and took a flask of water and two
neurasp
pills from a tall silent man, again unidentifiable as to managerial. He nodded to the figure in the screen. “Excuse me.” While he was taking the pills and drinking from the flask, the door closed again.

There was an almost immediate lifting of pain. Feeling a great deal more comfortable, Charles dragged the chair over to a position more directly facing the screen, and sat down.

“You were saying?”

Ellecott
said: “Simply expressing a hope that you would not object to my retaining my incognito. In a delicate matter like this
...
I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“I want to see
Dinkuhl
,” Charles said.

Ellecott
shrugged. “And if we haven’t got him?”

“Then get him. He was standing just outside the door when I passed out. I can’t believe you would have left
him
behind to use the story on KF.”

Ellecott
shook his head with what seemed to be an attempt at roguishness. “
We’ll
have to see what we can do. I don’t know what’s happened about
Dinkuhl
, but I’ll try to find out for you. Like to have TV while you wait? You must find it boring in there.”

There was one way of checking whether he was still on the North American continent, although he had no reason to think he wasn’t. He said casually:

“Thank you. Red League will do. Unless you can get me KF?”

“I
believe
,”
Ellecott
said, “that KF is temporarily off transmission. Red League coming up.”

It was on the cards that
Ellecott
was telling the truth about KF—it was so much a one-man affair that
Dinkuhl’s
absence for more than twelve hours would probably knock it out. But in any case they would hardly have been likely to give him information that would tell him explicitly that he was or was not in the Detroit area. He found himself watching some sort of ceremony. On the screen serried ranks of men stood on a wide expanse of parade ground. At signals, blocks broke away and marched forward to salute the UC flag. That told him the date—November 21st. Graduation day. He watched the marching squads with something of nostalgia, something of pity. With the aid of Psycho and Med, their minds had been sifted, their
psychoplans
prepared. And so they advanced—Squads A and B destined for leadership, the administrators and rulers of the future—Squads C, D and E for research and development work—Squads F, G, H and I for foremen and generally supervisory jobs—and at the end all those other squads who were now embarking on an adult life of routine and security and
Cosy
Bright in steady doses. The workers. Charles watched the gaily-colored standard flap in a sharp northeasterly breeze. He had
been a Squad D man. He wondered…
Dinkuhl’s
view that the managerial world was breaking down
...
could the explanation lie somehow in these neat military formations and the billowing flag?

The screen clicked to emptiness, and then the emptiness gave way to
Ellecott’s
face again.
Ellecott
was still smiling.

"Good news for you, Official
Grayner
.
We’ve
got
Dinkuhl
. We can arrange for you to be quartered with him for the period of your—for the period while we are fixing things up.
We’re
putting you into rather more comfortable quarters, too. I imagine you will be finding your present place on the cramped side.”

C
harles said warily: “
That’s very good of you.”

‘Two of our men are coming along to collect you now. I know you will co-operate.”

It was when, at the bidding of the two men, he climbed through the door into a peculiar tunnel-shaped passage that he realized what his surroundings were. The original cell, of course, should have put him on the track —the functional bareness, the door equidistant between floor and ceiling, the chair with straps and the hammock. Now the convoluting corridor, the evidence of bulkhead construction, and, above all, the handrails for maneuvering in non-gravity conditions, made things quite unmistakable. He was in a spaceship. A spaceship at rest, it was true, since gravity was the normal gravity, not the artificial variety, and there was nothing of the inevitable background vibration. But a spaceship nevertheless. He glanced at his two
badgeless
guardians with private satisfaction. So it was Interplanetary who had him.

He recognized the room into which he was shown as one of the
messrooms
, converted hastily for his own and
Dinkuh
l’
s
accommodation. The fine seams in the walls were indicators of the presence of pop-out tables, and there was the hatch in one comer, through which food would normally arrive. The TV screens on facing walls were
messroom
style, too.

A certain amount of odd furniture had been brought in, including, he was surprised and pleased to see, a bookcase.
Dinkuhl
was standing behind this with a book in his hand. He looked up when Charles came in, and waved.

“Glad to see you, Charlie.
They’ve
already written me of as a big-mouthed recalcitrant so I will begin with a word or two of warning. Those TV screens may be blank, but don’t think they aren’t registering. And I know enough about modem microphones to be able to assure you that if you or I whisper loud enough for the other to hear, we are whispering loud enough for our friends to listen, too. That being so, I think they should be warned that we are taking the reasonable precaution of not discussing anything that in our view is likely to help them in any way.”

Charles said: “Fair enough. How did they get you, by the way?”

“
Astarate
—but a milder dose than you, I gather. At any rate I have been awake for a few hours, and I took it you were newly risen. They told me you had insisted on our being reunited before you answered any questions.”

Charles watched
Dinkuhl
, trying to probe whatever might underlie the familiar sardonic friendliness. “I thought it a good idea.”

Dinkuhl
nodded. “Very sound. I can’t say what they planned to do with me—I was presumably picked up in the first place because I could hardly be left behind in the circumstances. But I take it I am dispensable. And that is something else that I think we must have out in the open, where we can see it as well as the eyes that watch, the ears that harken. To what extent are you to
trust
me? The fact that you asked to see me doesn’t signify, except insofar as it makes things easier for them —supposing I am on their side.”

Charles grinned. “The company is welcome, anyway. You restore my morale, Hiram.”

“And that, too, can work both ways. But this seems a good time to tackle a point that I imagine may have begun to worry you—the question of your own importance. You will have realized that quite a number of people are more interested than a little in the work that was being done at the UC laboratory where you had so short and eventful a stay.
Humayun
and the
Koupals
may not have been captured by the same managerial. There is no reason to assume they were, and if they weren’t, some of the apparent confusion in leaving Sara
Koupal
for a fortnight after
Humayun’s
apparent death is removed. Now, is there anything that still strikes you as odd?”

Charles hesitated. Then: “The lab wasn’t particularly well protected. All
Humayun’s
reports were on file there. I admit I was a bit confused at first, but as soon as Sara explained what
Humayun
had been after, the pieces clicked together. Now these people who are showing such an
interest
in the whole business—I take it they must know what it is they are interested in. So in that case, why not simply pick up the reports? Why grab me?”