The Big Eye

by Max Ehrlich

  of bright light, which finally drowned in the dull, gray screen. "Why don't they stop?" Carol cried. "Why don't they stop?" "They don't know how to stop," David answered quietly. "Not

  any more."

  After Carol had left, David tried the long-distance operator again.

  The lines were still tied up, and he swore softly as he hung up.

  He prepared a hasty breakfast, but he had no appetite. His ignorance of what had happened back at Palomar kept gnawing at him; the trembling in Francis's voice over the phone haunted him.

  He checked his watch.

  It was nine o'clock. And General Hawthorne had named the time of the meeting at eleven, somewhere outside the city itself. He had to make a decision, and make it quick. He might be too late by now, as it was.

  He went to the phone and asked the local operator for military headqarters. New York area, R-Section.

  A couple of voices finally routed him to a Colonel Hatch.

  "Hughes?" The colonel was curt. "Where have you been? We've been waiting for you."

  "Sorry, Colonel, I "

  The colonel interrupted, asked for the address. "You damned near missed that meeting, Dr. Hughes. As it is, we'll have to work fast to get you out where you have to go. We'll send a car up for you right away!"

  The colonel hung up, and David fidgeted about Carol's apartment, waiting. He washed the dishes, put them away, turned on the television set, turned it off again, sat down, got up again, paced the room.

  What had happened at Palomar?

  He looked at his watch again, did some rapid calculating. The meeting was at eleven. It might take hours, probably would. He would be lucky if he got out of it by late afternoon. The decision they expected to make wasn't a quick, cut-and-dried affair. There would be a lot of argument back and forth.

  In any case, he couldn't get to a phone and find out what was going on back at the observatory. Once in that meeting, they'd lock the doors and seal them with MPs.

  Maybe they'd be through at five, he thought. Maybe. He might be able to call the Coast then, the lines might be clear. Might, might, might. He'd try Carol once more over the phone; he'd know something then, know it for sure. If they decided to let go, to start it rolling, to throw the first punch, he'd have to come back and get Carol.

  It might be very tough getting out of town. He had a reservation, a high priority. But only for one seat, not two. He'd have to find a way, some way to

  The phone rang.

  David sprang to the instrument.

  "This is the long-distance operator calling Dr. Hughes, Dr. David Hughes."

  "I'm Dr. Hughes," he almost shouted.

  "The lines have just been cleared, sir, and Palomar, California, is calling." There was a pause, and David waited rigidly. Then the operator said: "Here's your party."

  A voice came thinly, distantly, over the wire.

  "Dr. Hughes. Dr. Hughes, is that you?"

  "Francis!" David yelled into the mouthpiece. "Francis, what's happened out there?"

  The steward's voice came over clearly now. "Dr. Hughes, I've been trying to get you all night. I wasn't sure you got my message before we were cut off."

  "If hat happened, Francis? What's it all about?"

  "We had hoped you'd be on your way by now, sir. Dr. Dawson wanted you here. Oh, one moment." There was a pause. "Here's Dr. Dawson now. Dr. Hughes."

  Thank God, thought David. Thank God the Old Man was all right.

  Dr. Dawson came on. His voice was strange, feverish; it shook a little.

  "David, I want you back here as fast as you can make it. Take the first plane out. Don't delay a moment, do you understand?"

  "But, sir, what's it all about?"

  "I can't tell you over the phone."

  "But the meeting, Dr. Dawson. They expect me there "

  The Old Man's voice suddenly became harsh. "Forget the meeting, David. There is no necessity for you to attend. I'll guarantee you immunity for any consequences resulting from your absence. You have my word for it. The important thing is to get back here to Palomar -- at once!"

  The Old Man hung up.

  David Hughes put the receiver back on the hook numbly.

  There was no rebelling against an order like this -- not the way the Old Man had put it.

  The hell of it was, he still didn't know what was happening at Palomar.

  Dazed, his mind whirling in a pinwheel of confusion, David put on his hat and coat and tucked his brief case under his arm.

  Then he walked out of the door and heard the lock snap shut behind him.

  4.

  Thursday morning, on the seventeenth of November, in the year 1960, was crisp and sunny.

  The air was invigorating; it had a winy snap to it and was cleaned and sweetened by a northwest wind.

  The sun was bright; it razzle-dazzled the rivers and glinted on the windows of New York and warmed the brick and stone walls of the canyons.

  As David walked rapidly up Cathedral Parkway and then turned right down Broadway, he reflected on the incongruity of the weather.

  It was not the kind of morning to expect sudden death, not the traditional backdrop for cataclysm. In the operatic and literary tradition, such events were augured by black skies, flashes of lightning, roars of thunder.

  But the weather was not being literary or operatic this morning. It refused to be moody and provide a stage. Whatever schemes man was contriving, it was having none of it. It simply insisted, contrarily, on being itself.

  Thus Nature, in what might have been its own version of an unfunny jest, had provided the kind of morning lyrics were written about, topcoat weather with a tang, the kind of morning to walk through the park, or to take that long ride through the country and forget the office.

  To David Hughes, visually at least, Broadway presented rather a cheerful appearance. True, there were only a few vehicles on the street, but there seemed to be more pedestrians abroad. The night before had been desolate, the street a black graveyard, but perhaps the sun had drawn the inhabitants from their concrete warrens, lured them out with warm promise, infused them with its own optimism.

  But the faces of the people belied the mood of the morning.

  They were still stamped with the Fear; its imprint was indelible. They were gaunt and strained, and they did not smile. They knew that the Fear was still there, that it walked in the sun as well as in the darkness.

  And David Hughes, as he hurried down Broadway, knew it too.

  He kept watching the side streets, on the alert for a cab. Two or three taxis went by, but they were loaded with passengers. David kept on the west side of the street, going downtown. The traffic, or what there was of it, seemed to be moving in that direction.

  At 180th Street, David heard the sound of a siren shrieking up Broadway.

  It was an Army car, and moving fast. Instinctively he shrank back into a doorway. Then when the car sped by he stepped out on the walk and watched it.

  He saw it swerve, with brakes screaming, and turn left into Cathedral Parkway, two blocks away.

  It was the vehicle the Army had sent for him.

  The men in it would find him gone; they would find Carol's apartment empty. The big strategy meeting, wherever it was being held, would go on without him now. And whatever decision the generals, the Secretary of Defense, and the consulting scientists made, it would be made without Dr. Dawson's data in the brief case David carried under his arm, and without David's interpretation of it, as the Old Man's representative.

  They would miss him, and General Hawthorne would find him and ask some pointed questions. He, David Hughes, was in effect and at this moment a hunted man. a fugitive from military law, and subject to its consequences.

  He quickened his step, and now and then, furtively, he turned his head to look back up Broadway.

  The olive-drab car from intelligence would emerge in a few moments, when they found him gone. Its occupants would be watching the streets, looking for him. By their very lack o
f numbers, all pedestrians were conspicuous, and suddenly David felt almost naked on the wide Broadway sidewalk. It was possible that he might be picked up before he had hardly started.

  Between 106th and 105th streets he found a candy-and-tobacco store open, one of the few still doing business. It occurred to him that it would be a good place to hide, to get off the street until the Army car went back.

  David opened the door and went in.

  There were several men in the place, all apparently regulars. At least they all seemed to know the man behind the cigar counter, a short, bald man with thick glasses. David had entered in the middle of a discussion. One of the men lounging on a stool at the now inactive soda fountain was saying to the proprietor:

  "So you sent your family to the Catskills, Sam?"

  The proprietor nodded. "Ellenville. I figured they'd be pretty safe there till I sell out and close up." He glanced around at his depleted stock. The store was almost empty of goods. "And that won't be long, Bernie. Tomorrow or the day after, maybe."

  He turned to David, and David bought a pack of cigarettes. The price was a dollar, the transaction matter-of-fact. The man behind the counter continued:

  "The way I figure, Bernie, if the Reds hit us with a bomb, the blast won't get up into the mountains."

  "Yeah," said Bernie. "If they hit us with a blast. But they won't."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Russians are too smart for that. They got something else up their sleeve. Radiation."

  The proprietor was fascinated. "Radiation?"

  Bernie nodded knowingly. "Radiation. That's it. That's the payoff. I was reading a piece in the Daily News before all the papers folded up in town," he said. "It was something one of these big-shot scientists said, Sara. He said there's no place that's safe any more. Not even the mountains. Nowhere. And all on account of radiation."

  "How do you mean?" Sam was suddenly worried.

  "Here." The man named Bernie took a torn sheet of newspaper from his pocket. "I got the clipping right here." He spread it on the fountain top. "Listen to what it says at the end."

  Bernie paused for a moment, then read the final paragraph slowly. "'In any case, there is no defense against these lethal particles, no place of escape. There is no cave too deep to hide away, no mountaintop too high or remote. As long as men must breathe air and Nature provides winds, the hmnan being, no matter how fast he runs or to what destination, is helplessly and pathetically vulnerable.'"

  The man at the counter folded the clipping, his fingers trembling, and thrust it into his pocket. The bald head of the proprietor, Sam, was shiny with perspiration, and there was agony in the eyes behind the thick lenses. It was easy to see what he was thinking. People breathe air in the Catskills; the winds blow there too. . . .

  "Christ," someone said, breaking the silence. "Christ, what a world!"

  Amen, thought David, watching through the window.

  The conversation turned to rumors. Everybody had heard a rumor. A fat man with a mottled face said:

  "I heard that they stopped the salt-water fishing fleets from going out and won't let anyone sell any more deep-sea fish."

  "Yeah?" Bemie wanted to know. "Why?"

  "They think maybe the Reds dropped a lot of pills in the Atlantic and the Pacific, near the coasts. Made the fish radioactive. Lights 'em up inside like Christmas candles. Eat 'em -- and good-by!"

  "That's a new one on me," said a man thumbing through a magazine on the wall rack. "Remind me to eat hamburgers from now on."

  "God," said the proprietor, finally joining the discussion again. "I had fish last night -- mackerel."

  The fat man laughed harshly. "I hope your wife doesn't divorce you, Sam."

  "What do you mean, Paul? Why should she?"

  "Once you get these radioactive particles in you, they tell me, you're no good in bed. A lot of guys working around this here plutonium stuff found that out. So did their girl friends." He grinned at the others and turned back to Sara. "But I wouldn't worry about it, Sam. You're no kid. You've had your fun."

  No one grinned back. The would-be humorist said good-by and eased his huge bulk through the door.

  The proprietor was still worried. "How do we know what's going on right now? Maybe we're all standing here and breathing in this stuff now, without knowing it. How about it, Bernie? How do we know we ain't radioactive right here and now?"

  "One thing's sure," said the man with the magazine. "None of us have any Geiger counters. We couldn't tell if we wanted to."

  "Maybe you guys can't" said Bernie. "But I can."

  They looked at him curiously, and he drew a small camera from his pocket. It was the ordinary and popular type which developed film within the camera itself, after a few moments of waiting.

  He held up the camera to the others. "I got my own Geiger counter right here," he said triumphantly. "If you did a lot of reading up on this radiation stuff like I have, you'd know film can give you the tip-off."

  They watched him hypnotically. The man called Bernie, now a savant, savored his moment.

  "Like to see whether there's any radiation around right now?"

  They pushed in close to him without replying, their faces tense. David moved in with the others, as interested as anyone else, already knowing what the man was up to, knowing that the camera was capable of indicating, at that moment, life or possible death.

  Bernie did not touch the shutter. Instead, with the air of a demonstrator before a spellbound audience, he pressed the developer button and pulled out a paper tab. He ticked off the seconds on his wrist watch as the developing reagent worked on the unexposed film within.

  Finally, with a flourish, he opened the back of the camera and took out the print.

  The print was clear.

  "Well, gents," said Bernie impressively, "we're still okay. There's no radiation around. Y'see, if there was, it'd go right through the camera like X rays and fog up the film. If this picture came out all fogged up, brother, we'd be in trouble."

  There was a moment of silence.

  Then someone said: "You've got something there, mister. But won't you find out a little late? What I mean is, if the picture's fogged, you'd already be radioactive, wouldn't you?"

  "Yeah," agreed Bernie. "No getting around that. The question is: how much would you be lit up inside? They tell me you can take a certain amount without dying. But the minute you see any fogging at all -- that's the time to scram."

  "Scram where?" asked Sam.

  Bernie shrugged. There was no answer to that one. Still, the men in the candy store seemed impressed. It was something to know whether you were dying or not, even if it might be too late. Automatically their eyes strayed to a case in back of the cigar counter, where there was a stock of film. The proprietor took out a fistful of the rectangular yellow boxes and stuffed them into his pockets. The others quickly bought the rest of his stock.

  David turned toward the window again, watching for the Army car. Bernie's demonstration had been a simple but familiar one. Back at Palomar he had seen the effect of radiation on sensitive film many times. There were other ways to detect it, of course: by the comet's tail of ionized particles in what was called a Wilson cloud chamber; by the action of an electroscope in discharging; and of course by the clicking of a Geiger counter.

  But now, in David's mind, there was a serious doubt. Was the attack, when and if it came, going to he atomic at all?

  Back at Palomar General Hawthorne had been sure that it was something else, something bigger, something perhaps on a cosmic scale. He had come to Palomar to talk to the Old Man personally, so strong was his belief, so determined was he to recruit Dr. Dawson, the greatest of them all in the affairs of the heavens. He had been convinced that the Russians had a secret weapon and that they were applying it when it suited them, as a series of steps to resolve the cold war and break the American morale without entering a full-scale atomic battle.

  If the Russians had something new, thought David, t
heir use of it in this respect made sense, from their point of view. The United States was a rich land, and if the Reds could bring it down and exploit it without too much damage, that would be to their benefit. The trouble with a victorious radioactive attack was that it left nothing to the victor. It was fatal, not only to humans, but to livestock and animals. It polluted the waters and the crops, the buildings, and bridges, the very land itself, contaminated it all with a coat of death. And in the end it left nothing but a vast, desolate, and diseased waste, of no good to the Russians or anyone else.