“Hey!” he exploded.
He raced through the door to the kitchenette and stumbled over the battered easy chair. He swore, but then wasted no time in inspecting the rest of the house.
“He’s escaped!” snapped Blair, untaping the girl.
“Escaped?”
“Gone. Come on, Sally. We’ve got work to do!”
She nodded. The thing to do was to set up the teleport as quickly as possible. How they would search for Joe Kingsley neither of them knew, but it must be done. And if Kingsley had really escaped and had the authorities out in full cry for them, what better way of escape was there than to walk through the teleport to some distant place? It meant abandoning the thing, but if Kingsley were alive he could eventually be recaptured and tortured into reproducing the machine.
TOGETHER they carried the instruments into the house and put them in neat array in the cellar. Luckily for them Kingsley was a methodical man, for the various bits of equipment—the generators, the supplies, the driving components—were all more or less standard, or had been standard bits of electrical gear at one time, and they were equipped with standard input and output plugs which fit standard cables.
Had the gear been built as a unit the initial move would have been impossible. But as it was, each factor in the generation of the space field was produced by some small bit of equipment or a series of small pieces all cable-connected.
As Norman Blair carried the various cabinets into the cellar, Sally found the right cables and plugged them in. In two hours, Blair smiled wryly, held his breath, and snapped the main switch.
Obediently, the silver plate glistened translucently, then became transparent to show them a view of the forest outside.
“It works!” cheered Blair.
“Now we’ll find Kingsley!”
Blair shook his head.
“First we replace that radio,” he said sourly. “We’ve got to keep one ear out for the cops, and for any news broadcasts.”
He manipulated the dials and sent the plane of view scurrying across the country to a large city. He held it high in the air until he located a store carrying a complete line of radio receivers, then entered the warehouse below the store. Here Blair removed three radio sets in their complete cartons before he turned the gear off.
He opened the sets and plugged them in. They worked, which surprised Blair a bit but would not have surprised a radio engineer. Giving it no more thought, Blair turned one of them to a short wave band that carried police calls from the nearest city, set the second radio to a station in the same city which played phonograph records twenty-four hours a day, and gave the latest news every half-hour. The third radio he did not tune, but left it running as a spare, just in case.
“Now,” said Blair, “We will collect Joe Kingsley.” He sounded confident.
“But where?”
Blair smiled. “Just hope we’re not too late,” he said.
“But where?”
“Sally, if you were a law-abiding, peace loving citizen and you were in the same kind of mess as Kingsley, where would you go?”
“To the police.”
“Naturally. And since Kingsley went afoot, he’d get to the main road and go either left or right. There’s one town about twelve miles up the road to the right, and one about fifteen miles down the road to the left. We’ll take the right-hand road first.”
CHAPTER VIII
A Scientist Disappears
KINGSLEY came to the outskirts of a small town. It would not he too long, now. He quickened his pace along the main street of town. He wanted to get this settled and finished so that he could return to work.
He stopped a man and asked where the police station was, and after getting directions, went to the station and entered boldly.
The man at the desk was scanning a sheet of paper that Kingsley could not see, so he waited a moment until the desk-sergeant finished.
The officer looked up and blinked.
He looked down to the paper again and frowned.
“Sergeant, I’m Joe Kingsley and I want to report—”
“So you are?”
“Yes.”
“And what is it that you want to report?” Unseen, the officer’s hand was pressing a button under the desk.
“I want to report a theft, an escaped criminal, and—”
The door behind the sergeant opened and three uniformed policemen came boiling out, their guns at ready.
“There he is!” snapped the sergeant.
“But what—”
“Up!” snapped the sergeant waving his hand.
Kingsley shook his head in disbelief. “But I want—”
The three officers split as they came around the desk. Kingsley looked into the muzzle of a Police Positive while the other two came at him from either side and took him by the arms.
They carried him backward, lifting him so that his feet scarcely touched the floor. He was forcibly dropped into a hard chair, his hands looped over the open arms, passed across his lap, and handcuffs snapped. Completely trapped, Kingsley looked at the sergeant with pained wonder in his face.
“But I’m Joe Kingsley.”
“So you said. Doctor Joseph Kingsley, suspected of aiding a criminal escape from jail, theft of an automobile, and murder.”
“Me?”
“You! Now where is he?”
“Where is who?”
“Your accomplice.”
“I don’t know, but he’s on his way here—” Kingsley paused. “But he’s no accomplice of mine.”
“No? Make something else of this, then.”
The sergeant held the handbill in front of Kingsley. It was a formal notice of his identity, his photograph, and the usual details of such handbills similar to those posted in police stations and post offices. In addition, there was another section appended which explained that in the case of Kingsley, there might be a discrepancy in the fingerprints, and gave a complete set of reversed prints as an alternative.
Beside that of Kingsley was a similar description of Norman Blair, and on the other side was one of Sally Ransome. A rather large reward was offered for any information leading to capture of any or all of the three.
“But this isn’t true—”
“No? We’ll take your prints and see whether you have left or right-hand prints.” The sergeant took Kingsley’s wallet and opened it. His brow furrowed. “Anybody got a mirror?” he asked, scowling.
“Why?” asked one of the officers.
“Everything in this wallet looks as if it had been passed through a mirror, like ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass,’ ” he said. “If nothing else, Kingsley, this would be enough. How do you do it?”
“It’s the teleport.”
“The what?”
“Teleport. A means of teleportation.”
“Yeah. I’m sure. A bit more of that double talk and you’ll learn how to talk easy,” the sergeant threatened.
“But it is.”
“Bah! Go on, bright guy.”
“The teleport transmits objects through space by bringing two locations side by side in superspace. The trouble is that superspace—or space itself— is twisted as a Mobius Strip is twisted so that everything that goes through it comes out reversed.”
“Forget it, chum. Boys, plant this guy in Cell Four. We’ll save this for the F.B.I. This guy ain’t saying a thing.”
“I can tell you where Norman Blair is.”
“Good. Where is he?”
NONE of them saw the faint shimmering circle because it came in through a window and was lost in the dust-spreckled shaft of sunshine that slanted down toward the floor. It was there but a moment, then it slid downward into the floor edgewise, but tilting with its lower edge forward as if to come toward Joe Kingsley on a glide.
Below the surface of the floor it went. Its edge came up once halfway across the floor, then dipped downward again after Blair had caught his bearings.
“I’ll have to show you,” Kingsley
said.
“Can’t you tell us?”
“Yes, but remember that I’m reversed and every right-hand turn looks to me like a left-hand curve. We’d get all mixed up.”
“Could you draw us a map?”
“Yes but—”
“Draw us a map and we’ll look at it through a mirror.”
“It’ll be crude.”
“Just give us an idea, that’s all.”
“I’ll be more than glad to hel—”
Kingsley’s offer of help was cut off by a yelp of fear. He and his chair and a three-foot circle of the floor dropped down and out of sight into a room that stood side-ward from that hole in the floor.
The desk sergeant caught one glimpse of equipment, a man, and a woman apparently standing against a wall, and he saw Kingsley fall down from the police station, then take a curve below the floor, falling side-ward against that strange wall.
The scene disappeared abruptly. The policemen were looking through the three-foot hole in the floor at the basement of the police station.
“The crooks who own that could steal anything!” The desk sergeant exploded.
He headed for the telephone quickly…
“Well, how do you do?” sneered Blair, planting a kick against Joe Kingsley’s sprawled form.
Kingsley was helpless, and all he could do was glare. Blair shrugged and stood the chair upright roughly.
“Take it easy,” he said. Then a thought came to Blair. “Look, Kingsley, can’t we make a deal?”
“Deal?” asked Kingsley.
“Yeah. This thing will make us rich quick. Maybe I could do something to make up for the rough way I’ve handled you, and we could throw in together.”
Kingsley shook his head. “It’s murder,” he said.
“Murder’s easy,” said Blair callously. “And with this thing they’ll never catch us.”
“No? You might think differently.”
Sally shrugged. “Money makes people think differently,” she said. “Why not show him?”
“Did y’ever think of that?” sneered Blair. “Just watch!”
He manipulated the controls and sent the field of view flying across the country. He located the money vault of the Chase National Bank in New York and lifted package after package of currency from the vault, handing them to Sally, who stacked the packages neatly on a table near the wall.
Then Blair headed the field of view for Chicago, and in a similar fashion rifled the First National Bank. Next was the San Francisco branch of the Manhattan Trust Company.
“Money?” he laughed happily. “Or,” he added seriously, “maybe jewelry.”
Tiffany’s vault appeared behind the circle and Blair waved Sally forward. She selected a ring and a necklace and strutted a bit when she put them on.
“Or maybe revenge,” growled Blair angrily.
He found the State Prison and thickened the circle just behind the warden’s head. Quickly he reached through and slammed a fist into the back of the warden’s head. The warden dropped like a limp rag and Blair gloated a bit before he turned the teleport off.
“Anything you want,” he told Kingsley.
JOE shook his head.
“Come on, fellow. We need you.” Blair picked up a hand-ax and headed for Kingsley. Joe shuddered, but Blair hit the chair arms and broke Kingsley free. “Now,” he told Joe, “we both know how to get you out of those bracelets. We’ll do it as soon as you decide to throw in with us. We need a technician to keep this thing in operation—or to build another one, larger and better.”
“No,” said Kingsley.
“Think it over, chum,” said Blair. “You’ll work for me willingly or not, you know.”
“No.”
Blair laughed ominously. He knew that Kingsley would, ultimately…
WALTER Murdoch was waiting for the airplane when it landed on the small field outside of Holland. He said hello to the pilot and climbed into the jet fighter and was borne into the sky with a swoosh. The plane streaked north at six hundred miles per hour while Murdoch called Monroe over the plane’s radio.
“Hello, Tony. It begins to jell.”
“I know, Walt. Keep it up. What’s the latest?”
“About the same time you sent me the dope on the rifling of several banks and the abrupt disappearance of Kingsley from the police station, the plane arrived. I’m on my way to Little Superior, Wisconsin, right now.”
“Need any help?”
“No. The local cops can handle it, I think. Besides, we have no time.”
“Why?”
“Well, from the situations that we’ve managed to uncover, it seems as though Kingsley invented some gadget that can ship stuff from one spot to another instantly.”
“Yes.”
“Well, the way to catch a crook that can get around that fast isn’t by frontal attack by a small army. We’ve got to do it by stealth. ”
“You’re right. I just hope we can catch up with them.”
“I’m trying, Tony. Better put the rest of the force on it too.”
“I’ll wait until you see what you can see in Little Superior. I’d rather not get the whole country excited about this thing. Remember, once this gadget gets known all over the world there’ll be cause for international trouble. And we don’t really know what it is, you know.”
“That’s right—but we’ll find out,” said Walter Murdoch certainly.
He shut off the radio and the speech scrambler, but he had an uncertain, queasy feeling that he could not be certain that Kingsley or Blair was not following his every word from some unseen place right in the jet fighter.
It was an hour and twenty minutes of jet flying from Holland, Illinois, to Little Superior, Wisconsin. And then Murdoch was in the police station talking to the sergeant who was still a bit pop-eyed over the absolutely incredible escape of the scientist.
“So he disappeared?”
“Right through that hole in the floor.”
“Dropped right down?”
“Sort of down and side-ward. Beneath there was a room that seemed to be standing on one end.”
Murdoch thought for a moment. He nodded.
“There was a shiny circle?”
“Yes, it—well, from what little we saw, it went like this: First we knew was when Kingsley fell into a three-foot circle. Then we saw this side-ward room, just like looking into the room from that circle in the floor. Next, the circle thickened, sort of, and the room faded from view abruptly. Next the circle—the hole in the floor—was silver-like. Then it disappeared and all we could see was the basement.”
“That thing must have some sort of portal, a doorway-passage,” said Murdoch. “Probably vertical on the machine itself. But the distant portal can be tilted or moved in any direction. Then if the distant portal were vertical, people in either of the places would view right through the circle and see the others in position relative to themselves. So Kingsley fell down, out of here, and the inertia of his fall carried him horizontal a bit into that other room, where the direction of gravity changed abruptly and he fell again downward, but which direction was at right angles to yours.”
“Sounds right. But it looked almighty funny to see the man and woman standing against the wall surrounded by all sorts of gear.”
“What kind of gear?”
The sergeant spread helpless hands.
“What can you tell in a split second of time, especially when you’re completely boffed?”
Murdoch nodded. “Did you notice any thing at all about the stuff?”
“Mostly a gleam of dials and pilot lights.”
“Now that’s something,” said Murdoch exultantly. “Pilot lights mean electricity. The thing must use electricity for power. Can we turn off all the current in the neighborhood and leave ’em stranded?”
“Might work.” said the sergeant. “I can get the electric company to cooperate.”
“Good. And meanwhile I’ll start down the highway to see what I can see.”
<
br /> “Tell you what,” said the desk sergeant. “We’ve got quite a bunch of forest rangers here. They’re well-equipped with walky-talkies. I’ll ask them to help, and we can near canvass the neighborhood. As soon as any of them sight something suspicious, they can call in and we’ll collect the rest of them and see what we can do.”
“Just find ’em,” said Murdoch. “We don’t want to scare ’em off. It’s a ticklish proposition trying to locate and catch someone who An not only follow you unseen but can also be in Melbourne within the twinkle of an eye.”
“Okay. You’re running the show. And I’m glad of it.”
CHAPTER IX
The Man Who Could Not Go Right
AFTER Blair and Sally Ransome had finished showing off what they could do with their stolen machine, Kingsley was taken upstairs. There had been a slight argument about the pile of money, Sally insisting that it be re-reversed at once, and Blair telling her that it would have to be shipped somewhere else sooner or later anyway, and that that would automatically re-reverse it and make it valid.
Meanwhile, Kingsley sat in an easy chair and looked around the room with interest. It was the same room he had been in before, but it looked so vitally different when re-reversed. He preferred it that way because he was used to it, although it was certain that he could learn to live left-handedly.
It would be quite a problem, learning to write from right to left with his left hand so that other people could read his writing, or he could write southpaw with his reversed right hand which was the more agile. Yet he preferred not to go through years of relearning the physical habits of a lifetime, backward.
Blair continued to oversell Kingsley on the mutual benefits of joining, and Kingsley wanted no part of it.
Kingsley admitted the ease with which Blair had amassed a small fortune and at practically zero chance of being caught and with little effort. It would be so easy merely to live in some pleasant place far from authority and to bring to you all of the things that go toward making life pleasant.
Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories Page 11