by E. C. Tubb
“I’m acting under orders, Mister Cardew,” the guard said, his keen eyes darting about the room. “You know as well as I do that we cannot afford to take chances these days, particularly with potential spies.”
“Spies!” Buck exclaimed. “What in blazes do you mean? I assure you—”
“Look here, Mister Cardew, my time’s valuable, and I know you must be wanting to get back to bed. Better let me search the place, then I can report back to headquarters.”
“Where’s your authority?” Buck snapped—but in face of the official card the guard displayed he had no power to say anything further. Grim-faced and inwardly apprehensive he prowled directly behind the officer as he made a routine search of the downstairs rooms, until presently he reached the kitchen.
“Look, man, do you think I’d be idiot enough to try and house a spy?” Buck demanded.
“You might. Anybody might.” The guard’s eyes pinned him. “Sorry. No personal offence intended but anybody and everybody’s suspect these days. The fact remains that the woman you were with on the bridge tonight, with Mister Bradley was not Worker Ten.”
The guard peered inside the food-manufacturing machine and then eyed the washer thoughtfully. The small transparent inspection panel at the front showed only the borrowed clothes Lucy had hastily showed in front of her. He strolled towards it and put his hand to the lid, then his attention was arrested by something in a wicker-basket in the corner. Moving over to it he lifted out a brown silk dress and other odds and ends of feminine finery, including an old-fashioned pair of shoes.
“What are these?” he asked curtly, as Buck stared at them.
“Eh? My wife’s of course. Get your hands off them!”
“I want the truth, Mister Cardew. These garments cannot possibly be your wife’s. I’m married myself and I know that no woman in her right senses wears this kind of thing now. Hundreds of years ago maybe, but not today. What’s the answer?”
“We—er—” Buck rubbed his neck. “We’ve been putting over an amateur television play recently and an old-fashioned character was in it. That was the clothing my wife used.”
“I’d like the name of the play, the public access station from which it was televised, and a copy of the permit to present it.”
Buck became silent. His none too swift brain had run out of excuses.
“All very unconvincing, Mister Cardew,” the guard snapped. “I have no proof, of course, that these extraordinarily old-fashioned clothes belong to the woman I’m looking for, but I will say that it’s a reasonable assumption! Now, are you prepared to give me the facts and save yourself a great deal of trouble later?”
“There are no facts to give,” Buck retorted. “And the sooner you get out of my house the better I’ll like it.”
“I’ll leave when my investigation is complete. Let us go upstairs.”
Bundling up the clothes the guard pushed them into a plastic bag, which Buck sullenly handed to him from a kitchen drawer, then the search continued upstairs. Eva, feigning sleep, felt her heart hammer as the guard switched on the light and went silently but thoroughly around the bedroom—then he came out again and looked at the adjoining door.
“What’s in there?” he asked briefly.
“Vis—visitor’s room.” Buck clenched his fists. He had no idea whether Lucy was in there or not.
“Open it.”
Buck obeyed and the lights came up. He sighed within himself at beholding everything orderly, the bed coverlet drawn up and giving a ‘not-slept-in’ appearance. The guard looked under the bed, then straightened and went to the wardrobe and slid back the door. The rails were empty.
“Very well,” he said, turning. “I’ll take a look at the other appointments in the house and then go—and I think you are a very foolish man, Mister Cardew. You will have to do a lot of thinking to explain away this!” and he held up the plastic bag significantly.
Buck did not answer. A glint of fury in his eyes he kept beside the guard until he had finally satisfied himself—so far as he could tell—that the girl he sought was nowhere in the house. Only then did he depart, and even then Buck waited until the noise of the official car died away in the distance.
“Blast!” he muttered to himself, and then at a sudden clangor from the kitchen he hurried in to find Lucy just disentangling herself from the washing-machine.
“Nice cold thing to hide in,” she panted as he helped her free.
“You—you were in there?” Buck gasped. “Sweet cosmos, thank heaven he saw your old clothes, just as he was about to look in this washer.”
“My clothes?” Lucy’s face tautened visibly.
“He took them, I’m afraid—and trouble will be bound to follow. We’d better go up and tell Eva just how we’re fixed. Come along.”
They hurried upstairs together, in time to discover Eva just emerging from the bedroom.
“How’s things?” she asked anxiously. “I managed to get Lucy’s room straight in time, but—”
“We’re in trouble,” Buck broke in. “Serious trouble—and I don’t know how long it’ll be before the storm breaks. I’d ring Clem and ask his advice only the lines might be tapped. Better sit tight till morning if we can.”
Meantime Clem was just being aroused by the zealous guard, and much the same routine was followed as at Buck’s house. Clem, a far more wary man than Buck, made no statements at all. He had nothing to fear since his bachelor home was entirely deserted except for himself.
“Can you explain clothes belonging to a period many hundreds of years old being found in Mister Cardew’s kitchen?” the guard asked, as he was about to leave. He jerked at the bag he was carrying.
“How can I?” Clem asked quietly. “Buck Cardew may be my business partner but I don’t know what he does with his private life. You’re wasting your time asking, officer.”
“I never waste my time, Mister Bradley: I’m not allowed to. I am simply giving you the opportunity to explain away a woman with no index-card with whom you and Mister Cardew are definitely connected.”
“If I have anything to explain it will not be to you.”
The guard hesitated, then with a shrug he went on his way. He finished up at the Headquarters Building where he made out his report. There was nothing more he could do now until he could see the Master, and that would not be until morning.
When morning came he presented himself in the great and isolated sanctuary far above the town, clutching his plastic bag. The Master, looking not in the least refreshed after a night’s sleep, eyed him questioningly,
“Reporting investigation into mystery of Worker Ten, Master, as instructed,” the guard explained.
“Ah, yes. I would remark that guards are supposed to be spruce and freshly-shaved. You are a disgrace to your uniform!”
“I apologize, Master. This matter is so very urgent. I have not located the woman we’re seeking, but I did find these articles of feminine apparel in Mister Cardew’s home, pushed into a clothes-basket. The significant thing is that the clothes belong to a period of many centuries ago, so I am at a loss to understand it. See for yourself, Master.”
Eagerly the guard opened the hermetically self-sealed bag top and tipped it upside down over a clear space on the desk. Shaking vigorously he watched for the clothes to tumble out…instead there was a sigh of escaping air—which had caused the bag to retain its shape overnight—and what appeared to be a cloud of dust, which dissipated as the air escaped from the bag. Otherwise the bag was completely empty.
“Well?” The Master raised his eyebrows.
“I—I just don’t understand it, Master! This bag has never left me all night. There was a dress and—and other things, a pair of ancient shoes too, and a belt.…”
Silence. Then the Master sat back in his chair. “I would suggest you shave,” he said, “and then, when you have thoroughly cleared your mind, come back and explain. This kind of work will not do you any good, Officer Sixty-Seven. That is all.”
“But, Master, I tell you—”
“That—is all!”
CHAPTER FOUR: THE PAST IS PRESENT
In the east of the great city the experts in the analytical laboratory were at work. Under intensely powerful lights and surrounded with instruments, they had sections of the steel which had proved faulty in the great Mid-City Bridge, and the more they examined the metal the more puzzled they became.
Barnes, leading technician of the group, finally summed the whole analysis up in one word.
“Age!” he said, and gave a bewildered glance at the men around him.
“That’s what it looks like, but it’s incredible,” declared Forsythe. “This sort of steel, the same as we use on our cannon-ball express train tracks, is tested to the limit and it certainly wasn’t cast more than a hundred-and-fifty years ago. Then there’s been regular overhauling—”
“The fact remains,” Barnes interrupted irritably, “that age is the cause of this trouble. The metal itself has corroded away. It’s like a rotten biscuit inside. Honeycombed and crawling with advanced ferrous oxide decay. That means age no matter how you look at it.”
“And the same thing can be said of that flywheel which burst apart in the power house,” remarked Dawlish, head of the metallurgy branch. “Take a look at this sample: it’s from the flywheel.”
The puzzled but interested men peered at it as it lay in the scientist’s hand, and there was no gainsaying the fact that it had the same ‘honeycomb’ texture as the steel from the bridge. It looked exactly like wood that has been eaten through by white ants.
“Well,” Barnes said at length, “we’ve found the reason even if we can’t explain how it occurred. Only answer I can think of is sabotage. Maybe the Eastern agents are using some kind of electronic device, which rots the composition of metals. We’d better report it to the Master and let him take the responsibility. After all, we’re not magicians.…”
So the Master was informed and brooded, definitely perplexed, over the problem. He had good reason for being worried, for the case of the flywheel and the Mid-City Bridge was not the only one before him for consideration. In more than a dozen places steel had behaved contrary to law. In fact, several buildings had been endangered by the mysterious collapse of some of their supporting girders. The railroads too had experienced two disasters caused by the rotting of certain sections of the rails.
Finally the Master called a conference, in mid-morning, and attending it were all the men charged with keeping law and order throughout the city and the western hemisphere generally. They waited for the tired man at the desk to speak. After surveying his reports, he spoke quietly. “Gentlemen, we have in our midst a group of ruthless saboteurs who are doing their best to wreck our utilities and our morale. What is more, if they keep on successfully practicing their diabolical art, they will succeed in their object. The people, not un-naturally, are raising a storm of protest over these mysterious and dangerous happenings. Somehow we have got to get to the root of this insidious attack and smash the perpetrators!”
“Do you suspect Eastern agent saboteurs, Master?” asked the Chief of A-Law Division.
“I do.” The Master inclined his head. “Since this meeting is strictly secret I can air my views freely without the fear of international repercussions. I suspect the East most strongly, yes, because war with that hemisphere is unpleasantly imminent. The Eastern Government, so our ambassador tells me, is becoming more vociferous every day in its demands for certain illegal claims to be met. However, it would obviously suit them perfectly if we could be thrown into a state of confusion by the subtle wrecking of our lines of communication and the morale of our people. Somewhere agents are at work with scientific equipment that eats away steel. I have reason to suspect one particular woman, but she alone cannot be responsible for such widely spaced incidents. She must be one of hundreds. Use every means in your power to detect these wreckers. We must get this thing stopped!”
With this admonition ringing in their ears, the men departed to their different sectors to formulate plans. All of them were worried, and the Master most of all since his was the major responsibility.
There was also a very worried man to the north of the city, and his troubles were not even remotely connected with steel.
Caleb Walsh was a master-agriculturist. Under his care, Government-controlled, were some thousands of acres of crops and foodstuffs in the raw state. He was also responsible for extra hard beechwood trees, which formed the basis of many things even in this age of metals and plastics. And, at the moment, it was an area of two-hundred beechwood saplings, nurtured by artificial sunlight and fertilizers, which was worrying him. The previous day he had been convinced they were thriving almost too well to be normal. Now, this morning, as he went on his rounds, he was sure of it. At the sound of smashing glass behind him he wheeled round and then fell back, astounded.
Four of the tender saplings had abruptly grown to titanic proportions and smashed their way through the lofty glass roof. It was impossible! Yet it was there.
Walsh went forward slowly, swallowing hard, staring up at the giants rearing through the broken glass. Their side branches, too, had thrust forth incredibly and smashed down all the young trees in the neighboring area.
So much Walsh took in and then he raced for a visiphone and lifted it with a hand that shook. He made a report in a cracked voice to the Controller for Agriculture. The Controller listened sympathetically because it was not the only report he had received that morning. From all parts of the country within a hundred-mile radius of the city, it appeared, news kept coming in of beech trees becoming mysteriously hypertrophied.
There was, for instance, a beech tree at an old-world farm some distance out of town. With his own eyes the astounded owner had seen it rear from a tiny sapling against the moonlight to a mammoth giant overshadowing his house. Being a somewhat old-fashioned man he wondered if, after all, there had been some truth in Jack and the Beanstalk.…
Once again, the Master found himself surrounded by his new set of problems and his face became grayer than ever as he tried to cope with them. That saboteurs could tamper with steel was a logical possibility, but that they could make beech trees grow to fantastic size within a period of minutes was neither logical nor sensible. No agent, surely, would waste time on such a fantastic and pointless diversion?
Inevitably, the facts about the beech trees leaked out, as did the news of collapsing buildings and dissolved railroad tracks. Clem Bradley heard the details when he arrived at the Cardew home in mid-morning. He, Buck, Lucy and Eva all listened to the information being given over the public broadcast.
“At the wish of the Master,” the announcer said, “the public is asked to keep calm in face of mysterious happenings around us. The collapse of the Mid-City Bridge has been followed by other incidents, equally peculiar, in which the steel girders of buildings and the permanent way of a main railroad track have been involved. Analysts are now at work on the problem and a speedy solution is anticipated. Another unusual item, which can hardly have any relation to the odd behavior of steel, is contained in a report from the Agricultural Controller in which he states that certain beechwood trees under his jurisdiction have suddenly assumed gigantic proportions. Various possibilities can be conjectured for these bizarre happenings, and—”
“We’ve more things to do than listen to this,” Buck said briefly, speaking above the announcer’s voice. “Did you manage to get here safely, Clem? You weren’t watched, or anything?”
“Of that I can’t be sure. I’m hoping for the best. Best thing we can do is whip along to the underground site and, once there, we can defy all-comers. I gather you had a visit from our zealous friend the guard during the night?”
Eva grimaced. “We certainly did. Fun and games were had by all.”
“He tackled me too, and got nothing out of it. But he did ask about some old-fashioned clothes, which I suppose were yours, Lucy?”
The girl nodded and Buck gave an anx
ious glance. “That’s the part I don’t like,” he said. “Once the Master takes a look at those clothes the inquiry will intensify and then we’ll be—”
“The answer to that is to get out while we can,” Clem interrupted. “You’ll have to do without your domestic help, Eva, I’m afraid.”
“Of course,” she assented, unable to disguise her relief at getting Lucy off the premises.
“You’d better get ready, Ancient,” Buck added. “Put on your overalls.”
Lucy nodded and then hurried away. Buck gave a thoughtful glance towards the public speaker. The announcements had now ceased.
“What do you make of things, Clem?” he asked, puzzled. “The queer antics of beech trees, for instance? Surely Eastern sabotage can’t be responsible for that?”
“Hardly,” Clem answered absently, and with an abstracted look in his eyes he watched Eva hand over to Buck one of her own belts.
“This do until I can get you a fresh one later today?” she asked.
“Perfect,” Buck grinned. “Even if I do feel a bit of a she-boy wearing it.”
He buckled it into place about the top of his trousers and Clem watched the proceeding with interest.
“What’s wrong with your own?” he questioned.
“Bust! Rotted away down the back for no reason. It went last night.”
“Oh?” Clem’s expression changed a little, but whatever he was intending to say did not materialize for at that moment Lucy came hurrying back, wrapped in her overalls.
“Right!” Buck said. “Let’s be on our way before it dawns on somebody to try and stop us. What about a car, Clem? Got one fixed?”
“Yes, it’s outside. My compensation claim was allowed right away and I’ve a far better car now than I had before. Come on.”
They took their leave of Eva and hurried outside, glancing to right and left along the traffic-way. There was no sign of official cars, and even less of watchers. They could not know, of course, that officialdom was concerning itself with the departure routes from town, along which people must pass to leave the city. Because of this, pinpointing of a suspect was unnecessary.