by Hal Clement
This question started a brief argument, the brothers claiming that since the basic idea was Peter's, he had the right to go first, whereas Peter insisted that Dart, as the youngest, was the logical candidate. They finally settled it by matching coins, and Dart turned out odd man. He seated himself with rather mixed feelings, while the others watched closely. The medical technician at the switches called out, "All aboard!" when the safety belts were fastened and checked, and the chair and its occupant began to turn—not too rapidly the first time, and for less than a minute. Then it was stopped, the straps were released, and the straight line painted on the floor was pointed out to the staggering Dart.
He did fairly well, all things considered, but was in no position to deny that he had been dizzy.
"I think your idea is right, though, Uncle Jim," he said when the trial was over. "If I can learn to believe just my eyes, I think I can do it."
The others followed in their turns, doing about as well as Dart; all insisted that they would be able to control themselves with a little more practice. Bowen was not sure whether they were right, or simply felt that failure here would cancel the whole plan.
"We're not going to give you much practice," he said. "After all, although this does throw your sense of balance out, it doesn't do it in the same way that space travel will. This was just an experiment; you'll do it a few more times, at different speeds and for different lengths of time, also for experiment. This can hurt you, after all, and I'd rather you took your damage in some more useful way."
"What else is there to do, then?" asked Peter.
"Actually, it's hard to say; no one has ever been prepared for space except the crew who went up with the station on the first trip, and we can't say that they were very well briefed. We have to wait for a few days, since your suits won't be ready until then; in the meantime, we were planning to check your acceleration tolerance and then get you familiar with the ships you'll fly if the whole plan works."
The check Bowen had mentioned involved another chair, but this one was set at the end of a long, pivoted, counterbalanced arm. The boys had seen pictures of such devices, and knew that the chair was swung so that centrifugal force tended to throw its occupant outward; and it could reach a speed sufficient to make that force several times that of gravity. Dart, for example, could in effect have his weight raised from its normal one hundred and thirty-five pounds to twice, or three times, or even six times that value—that is, he could be put under two, three, or six "G's" if he could stand it.
As before, this was more of an experiment than a practice session, and a few modifications had been made so that they might learn from it. An imitation instrument board had been placed at the pivot so that it would face the spinning chair constantly and could be read from it—if the occupant were in any condition to read. Bowen wanted the boys to realize that acceleration could interfere with their normal abilities before they became aware that anything was wrong.
Peter was first, this time. At two G's he was somewhat uncomfortable; at two and a half, his eyesight began to suffer—he was reading very peculiar things on the instrument panel. At four, his eyesight failed altogether as the blood was forced away from his eyes by its own extra weight. The Ranger brothers laughed at his attempts to fight off the effects, but they both stopped laughing when their own turns came. Bart stood just about as much as Peter; Dart, shorter and solider than the others, took about half a G more before his eyes became untrustworthy.
"It's nothing to brag about," cautioned Bowen. "I just want you to see that you'll have to be cautious about using power in the rockets. You can get in serious trouble if your brain starts losing blood where no one can even warn you, much less give you any help. Be careful.'"
The boys would have paid more attention to this warning had they not been looking forward to training in their rockets, which Bowen had said would come next. They were a trifle disappointed to find that the training would be synthetic, in imitation control cabins similar to the old Link trainer. It was better than being spun dizzy, however, and they kept telling themselves that the actual take-off could not be delayed much longer.
The centrifuge test had used up most of a morning; Bowen, who had other work to do, suggested that they eat lunch and meet him at the building where the trainers were located. They had long since been given the run of the plant—even guards who did not know them personally knew about them, and the boys had no difficulty entering or leaving the buildings. They ate rather quickly, since they wanted to see the controls they would have to learn, and hastened to the building where Bowen had told them he would meet them. For the first time, a guard stopped them.
"Wait a minute, fellows; no visitors." He was not a man any of them had seen before, so Bart began to explain their position at the plant.
"I know about that," the guard interrupted, "but even your job doesn't mean you can bring visitors. I was told there are only three of you. I don't know which of you is which, but the extra one can't come in."
"What do you mean?" Bart honestly wondered for a moment whether the man were sober. "There are only three of us here."
"So I see. Three and one make four. What about the one already inside?"
"What? Already........ "
"Yes. Already. Did one of you get his wires crossed?
The little fellow with the red hair went in half an hour ago.
7
TUMBLE
BART instantly realized what had happened. "Are there any other ways out of this building?" he asked.
"No doors. The windows are too high to be reached from inside without........ "
"Don't kid yourself. That fellow could probably go straight up a plaster wall." The acrobatic ability of the redhead was the thing which had remained most firmly in the memories of the boys. "Please telephone for enough extra guards to cover the windows. We'll stay with you, so you won't have to worry about whether we're trying to pull something on you. Warn the guards that the person who spied on the Bowen house in Washington is inside the plant—I think Uncle Jim must have told about that to the officials here. If he hasn't, though, tell them that they're facing the best broken-field runner they ever saw—I'd bet this kid could get a football all the way down a field with both teams trying to stop him."
The guard did not argue; he could see what must have happened. It was not an error which would have been made in a war-conscious country where everyone was security-minded, but it had been long enough since the last serious disagreement between nations so that the guarding of scientific secrets was not being taken too seriously. In spite of that, the guard realized perfectly well that if the spy he had let into the building got away again, he himself would probably be looking for a new job.
He picked up his phone and relayed the information that Bart had supplied. During the minutes that it took the help to arrive, the boys were scarcely able to remain still; all of them were picturing the redhead's making his way out one of the windows and vanishing as he had before. It was broad daylight this time, it was true, but they felt that the little fellow would never have come if he hadn't felt just as well able to take care of himself by day as by night. Once Dart went to the corner of the building to see whether their quarry was getting out on that side, but his brother called him back.
"Hold it. The guard here has no way of knowing that we're not doing something funny, too. We stay here until Uncle Jim or someone else in authority comes and identifies us." Peter nodded approval of this, and Dart came back.
After what seemed an incredibly long time to the boys, a group of a dozen guards appeared, and to their joy Uncle Jim was with it. In a few words they confirmed to him what he had already heard indirectly. Immediately he told all the guards but two to spread out around the building.
"The boys, you two, and I will go inside," he concluded. "If this fellow is still there, we'll try to get him. Close and lock the doors after us. You on the outside, stand away from the building; if he goes out a window and you're under it, he'll go
right over your heads. I have the outer fence patrolled, too, but I'd rather he didn't get that far. Does everyone understand his job?"
The guards claimed that they did. It was evident that some of them felt Bowen was exaggerating the spy's abilities, but they surrounded the building as he had ordered. Then the boys, Bowen, and the two guards he had designated went inside and the door was closed after them. Bowen stayed by it until he heard the lock click.
"All right," he said, "now we have the job of finding out whether he's still here—and catching him if he is. This building is mostly one big room, but there are some smaller offices at the far end where he could hide, and of course the machinery on the floor here is big enough to hide a couple of football teams. Our first job will be to go around the walls and check on every window. They are supposed to be latched from the inside, though there are no real locks on them. If the latches are all closed, we can assume he's inside and go on from there.
"We'll split in two parties. Dart, one of the guards, and I will go to the left; Bart, Pete, and the other guard to the right. Call out if you find any window unlatched or open."
It was not possible to see all the windows from the door, since many of the machines on the floor were a good deal taller than a man, and cut off the view. The party spread out as Bowen had instructed, Peter and his group turning right and proceeding along that wall. They went rapidly at first, since all the windows in this wall were visible, but they had to slow down after they reached the corner and made their first left turn. At this point, naturally, they lost sight of the other party. The windows were well above eye level, and it was not easy for the guard to see how anyone—least of all a boy not much over five feet tall—could get to them, but Bart and Peter knew better. They checked each one carefully, particularly those within six feet of any of the taller machines. They had had one experience with the redhead's jumping ability.
Even with this care, they must have gone faster than the other group, for they reached the corner at the end farthest from the door earlier. It was Bart who first came around the last machine, and who saw the spy at virtually the same instant. The small fellow had apparently intended to enter one of the offices whose doors opened in this wall, but Bart's yell told him that he had been seen, and he evidently realized that he could be easily cornered in such a room. He reversed his direction instantly and disappeared between two bulky pieces of equipment. Bart leaped after him, but in the second or two it took to reach the point where the other had disappeared there had been time to dodge behind any of a dozen machines.
"Uncle Jim! He's still inside—somewhere in the middle of the room! Are all your windows fastened?"
"Yes!" came the instant answer, as Bowen's group appeared at the far corner. "Where did he go?"
"There." Bart pointed. "He could have dodged a dozen times and be anywhere in the room by now, though."
"All right. You and I," Bowen spoke to the older of the guards, "are probably slowest. You stay at this corner and watch the two walls you can see; I'll get to the opposite one and cover the other two. If you see him try for a window, call 'north' or 'east' according to the wall he's at. The rest will scatter through the room, looking at, under, over, around, or inside everything as you go. Anyone who sees him, give your location briefly and loudly—'a little northeast of the center' or something like that will be enough—and tell in which direction he's going if he's not cornered inside something. The others will try to intercept him. I'm betting he won't corner himself; it will be work for us."
"Wouldn't it be better to organize in a line, and sweep across the room slowly, covering everything as we go?" asked Peter.
"No, for two reasons. One is that we haven't enough people to make a solid line; second, anything that regular can be worked out by the opposition, and he can then make definite plans to get around you. If we're searching at random, he'll never know when one of us will stumble across him, or vice versa. All right, let's go." He headed for the corner he had assigned himself. The others scattered, except the guard who was to remain in position.
The first call came even before Bowen had reached his corner. It was from Bart, as he caught a glimpse of a form too small to be his brother vanishing behind a dummy control cabin.
"Near the northwest corner!" he called as loudly as he could. At the same instant he leaped toward the point where the fugitive had disappeared; then he checked himself as a thought struck him. Where he was standing, he could see between the machines all the way to both the north and west walls; if he stayed where he was, the spy could not cross his line of sight in either direction without being spotted. If Bart attempted to follow there would be no telling where the little fellow might go. He controlled himself, therefore, held his position until the others arrived, and explained the situation to them. They immediately moved into the much smaller area where the spy must be and resumed the search, while Bart remained where he was to call a warning if the fugitive crossed his line of sight.
This did not happen, and it seemed likely that the quarry would be sighted again very quickly, but minutes passed without a call from anyone, and Bart began to grow uneasy. Had he failed to watch closely enough? He could hardly believe this, but he grew more and more worried as the minutes passed.
Peter, prowling among the machines, was also bothered. The area in which the redhead had to be was small—about twenty yards one way and not more than a dozen the other, perhaps a tenth of the whole floor space in the great shed. It was occupied by four of the big, cylindrical affairs which he understood were imitations of the control cabins of the rockets, and about twenty smaller assemblies, such as motors. Any of these would be big enough to hide behind, but it seemed strange that with several searchers the fugitive could be "behind" something all the time. The most obvious way around that argument was that he was not in the area, but there had been no alarm from Bart.
A person could, of course, get inside any of the four training dummies, but Peter felt the way Bowen had about that possibility; the spy would hardly corner himself in a place like that. Nevertheless, after some minutes of fruitless search, he decided to inspect the interiors of the devices.
They were about twelve feet high and eight in diameter, made in imitation of the nose section of the one-man rocket which had been designed at the Niagara plant and, so far, had never been used. A rectangular door seven feet long and three wide opened at one side, its bottom about four feet from the floor of the shed. All these doors were closed, but none was locked, though they had the regular sealing machinery which the real rockets were to use. Peter, after a moment's thought, examined one of them carefully and found that it could be dogged shut from outside; so before looking in any of the devices, he quietly went around to all four of them and sealed their doors. That would keep the fugitive inside if he were already there, and delay any attempt to dodge into one if the pursuit grew too hot for comfort. During this operation Peter met Dart, who had also had no luck, and explained what he was doing.
"I get it," the younger boy said. "Have you got them all locked?"
"All but this one," replied Peter. "Why don't you stand by while I look inside it? You run faster than I do, and might have a chance if he comes out over my head."
"All right." Dart stood back a little way, and Peter opened the door.
It opened outward, like those on the real rockets. Inside it, scarcely a yard away, was another; the space between served as an air lock if it should be necessary to leave the ship while outside a breathable atmosphere. Peter opened the second door and stepped through.
Directly in front of him on the far wall, four or five feet away, was an instrument panel which for a moment almost made him forget his reason for being there. It was not as complicated as he had expected, but there were a number of dials which were not labeled and whose purpose he could not quite understand. For several seconds he examined these before remembering with a start that he was not there for training at the moment. Then he looked around the little room.
It was a cylinder, seven feet in diameter and six in height, with the side opposite the instrument panel cut into by the air lock. Above, in the real rocket, would be the nose of the ship with ports through which it would be possible to see out; in this mock-up, there was a flat ceiling which Peter suspected could be used as a movie screen for training purposes. He could imagine a picture of the moon being thrown on it, expanding as though the rocket were falling onto its rough surface while the student inside operated the controls in an effort to avoid the simulated crash.
Below was a circular hatchway leading to a tiny food storeroom and then to the longer rooms containing the necessary machinery for keeping the air breathable and for condensing water; below—or behind—that would be the engine room. In this model, the hatch led only to a small space under the floor, scarcely two feet deep; and Peter lay down and put his head through the trap to make sure it was empty. Then he went out through the air lock to the waiting Dart.
"What took you so long?" Ranger complained as Peter stepped down the two-foot drop to the outer floor.
"I had to make sure," was all Peter said. "Let's dog this one shut so he doesn't sneak into it behind our backs." He suited action to this remark, and the two went on to the next mock-up.
One by one the four were examined, found empty, and locked. Still no cry had come, either from Bart or the guard who was searching with them.
They took the time to check with Bart to make sure that the spy had not managed to sneak out of the area, and found him worried about just that possibility. The guard joined them, equally mystified; while they were wondering what could have happened and what they should do next, a faint sound reached their ears. It was a barely audible scraping, but they turned toward it instantly. Nothing was visible, but after a moment Peter gave an exclamation that was mostly disgust at his own stupidity, and leaped for the nearest of the mock-ups.