But right now I'm going home. We're having a roasttonight. Say, why don't you come to supper with us? Alice would bedelighted--she was just wondering what happened to you. I'll phoneher...."
"No, no! I have to--look, I got to find out what this means, you see?It isn't that--explain it to Alice, will you? We need this contract,need all the work we can get, you understand?"
"Sure, sure. How about next week? OK? Well, see you in the morning."Charley left, grinning to himself as he closed the door behind him.
* * * * *
Norm didn't see the grin. He was already puzzled enough; ICWEA behavedherself perfectly on the next five cards, and kept her mind on herbusiness. Meanwhile, Norm studied the first curve again. Funny Charleycouldn't see it--the figure was puzzling at first, until you got theidea, but then it was so clear. Or was it?
Suddenly, he couldn't see it himself. He turned it upside down andsideways; it was just a funny closed curve, having neithermathematical nor structural significance. Maybe he was going crazy!
He threw the curve down on his desk and, soothed by the whirring ofthe tracer motor, fell into a brown study. Suddenly, the image of thebrunette with the violet eyes appeared. No reclining nude, she; sheshook her head in that habitual gesture and her long bob fellperfectly in place. She turned, with demurely downcast lashes andlooked up at him with her violet eyes, and Norm came out of his trancewith a start.
He removed the last curve--a simple hyperbolic curve, probably aproblem in attenuation or decay of some kind--and put in the lastpunch-card. The machine started up immediately; the curve waselliptical. Then a vertical down-stroke, retraced and with a gentlehalf-loop added. It was writing! P-r-o-p-i-n-q.... What might this be?He watched, fascinated, as the letters continued. "Propinquity is themother of love," it said, and stopped.
His trained mathematical logic gave him an immediate solution to theenigma: he was cracking up. It was utterly impossible to derive theequation to write "propinquity" in Spencerian script in less than ahundred man-hours, nor could a mathematical calculator be hired for sofrivolous a purpose. It was fantastic, impossible; therefore, it wasnot so, and he was either dreaming or crazy. Maybe thinking about thatlittle brunette.... Surely not; still, he had been driving himselfpretty hard. In the morning he would be fresh and alert. If it were atrick, he'd catch the trickster. And if it turned out to be aperfectly logical curve, he'd see a doctor.
He left the curve in the machine, closed the ventilator in the wallover his desk, and turned on the burglar alarm. This was nothing socrude as a loose board with a switch, but a quite elaborate electroniccircuit that produced a field near the door. It wouldn't work onghosts, but if any material body entered that field, it would trip thealarm and start a regular Mardi Gras. Security required by governmentcontracts hardly demanded so much, but for a small plant it wassufficiently cheap, and Charley had had a lot of fun with it. Charley!Have to keep him out, too; and being its daddy, he'd know how todisable the alarm. Of course, it would really be sufficient to tie athread across the door which would break if anyone entered. He had nothread, but after a moment's thought, he pulled a three-cent stamp outof his bill-fold, and turned out the office-light. After glancing upand down the hall, he stuck the stamp on the door so that it wouldtear if the door opened.
* * * * *
In the morning, the stamp was still intact, and it was hard to see,even in broad daylight. The paper in the curve-tracer was perfectlyblank, and there was no punch-card in the transmitter head. It mightstill be an elaborate joke, but the chances were small. He might becracking up, or may have imagined the whole thing. The best thing todo would be to put it entirely out of his mind.
He succeeded in this until mid-morning, when ICWEA called him a"handsome devil." He jerked the punch-card out of the transmitter andcalled Vic.
"Hermosa."
That voice! It made chills run up and down his backbone. A man had noright to a voice like that. "Vic? Bring up the calculations for thelast batch of punch-cards, will you? I want to check something. Thecard numbers are F-141 through F-152."
"Right away."
Vic wasn't especially gabby. A good-looking young Latin, who knew asmuch math as most, they'd probably lose him to the draft any day now.Presently, someone knocked on the door.
"Come in."
It wasn't Vic; it was the girl. She laid the pack of problems andtheir attached work-sheets on the desk, shook her hair into place--didshe even have to comb it in the morning when she got up?--looked himbriefly in the eye, and turned to go.
"How is Vic these days?" Norm inquired, whimsically. "Is he able toget about?"
The girl smiled politely at this obvious badinage and left.
He checked the problems against cards as he came to them. He knew thepunch code well enough to do this in his head, since the kind ofoperation indicated was quite obvious. But the problems ended withF-151, and the "handsome devil" card was F-152. He got on the phoneagain.
"Vic? What's your next card number?"
"F-153." One expected a little guy to have a high voice; this one wasquite deep, but soft.
"Are the cards numbered very far ahead?"
"We usually number a couple of dozen cards, and assign the numbers tothe problems as they come in, from a scratch sheet."
"Any of the cards been lost?"
"Oh yes, on occasion. So far, we've recovered them all--there are onlytwo rooms where they could be. Up there or down here."
_That voice!_ How could a man have a voice like that? And why shouldhe care if one did? Why even notice it? Instead of going to thecafeteria for lunch, he drove downtown and consulted the familydoctor, who laughed at him. Reassured, he returned to the plant andgot a sandwich and milk before going to his office. Old DocHeffelbauer might be wrong, but he usually wasn't. Norm liked severalmen, but he didn't dream about any of them; if he was off his rocker,it was in some other manner. Visual delusions, for instance.
The thing to do was to see Vic face to face. He called the officemanager. "Henry? Send Vic Hermosa up there, will you? I want to talkto him."
"Vic Hermosa? He's in the Army. Didn't you know?"
"No, I didn't. Who is the guy that answers the phone in that fruityvoice?"
Henry lowered his voice. "Guy? That's Vic's sister Virginia. She tookVic's place when he left. Simplified the security investigation, andshe's good, too. About as good as Vic, I'd say."
"You mean to tell me a little girl like her could have a voice thatdeep?"
"Startling, isn't it? Of course, it's actually a low contralto ortenor, but you expect her to be a lyric soprano. Shall I send her upto see you?"
"No, no. I want to think a bit first. Say, who interviewed her?"
"Charley, I suppose. Just a formality, anyhow; the Hermosas and theOglethorpes are neighbors, you know."
* * * * *
Wonderful stuff! Esoteric phenomena in a sealed office! His very owncalculating machine made calculated love to him; his best friend wasevasive, and the junior mathematician he thought he had been talkingto every day for a couple of weeks was in the army. He might hammeraway at all concerned until all the cards were accounted for, but thatwould disrupt office routine. Strategy, that was the thing! Be mightypeculiar if he couldn't break up this business, now that he had anidea what was going on.
But did he? Whoever punched the cards needed the proper equationsderived first, and that called for a digital or an analogue computer.Preferably his own ICWEA, because she was especially good at curves.Deriving them by the old methods was just too much horse-work for anyjoke. And it didn't have to be a joke, either. The joke might be justthe cover for a more sinister activity--_bosh!_ If that were thecase, why call attention to it with funny-business?
But what hurt was the girl's being mixed up in it. He could take a ribfrom Charley, for instance, but the girl was practically astranger--unfortunately. Women could be cruel, as his mother had oftenwarned him. He thought of his
mother's last year in the hospital andwinced. She had sacrificed so much for him; and yet, was it reallybetter to be a free bachelor than an old family man like Charley?There wasn't anything the matter with Alice that he could see. Charleyloved her; that was plain.
Tonight should solve the thing, once and for all. He left the plant,speaking to everyone he met as he usually did. Then he sneaked backin, with the guard's help, and hid in his own office with the lightsout.
His phone rang and he almost answered it before he remembered that hewas supposed to be gone. The building was by no means deserted;probably there was someone working overtime in more than onedepartment, though the main business for the day was finished. After abit, the phone rang again, and he
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