“Does he want me this afternoon?” Arnold asked.
“He didn’t say. He’s been in conference since nine. Some jerk from the District Attorney’s office.”
“Ouch! What have we done?”
“I haven’t the faintest.” Miss Shue regarded him with interest. “I didn’t know you had a bogy, though I suppose you’re as much entitled to one as anyone else. Mr. Armbruster blanches that way when anyone mentions the Interstate Commerce Commission. Mr. Riley is terrified of Internal Revenue, only that doesn’t count because everyone is terrified of Internal Revenue. Mr. Horner—”
“Did I blanch? I didn’t intend to.”
“Of course not. No one ever intends to. Why are you afraid of the District Attorney?”
“It all dates back to that afternoon I murdered my mother,” Arnold said, and walked out, leaving her gaping after him. He threaded his way through the battery of clicking typewriters in the outer office, drawing hardly a side glance from the typists. If Darzek had walked through that office, he told himself glumly, every typewriter in the place would have come to a dead stop.
Darzek. “Where the devil is Darzek?” he muttered.
Back in his own office, he made a telephone call before he tilted back meditatively and placed his shoeless feet on his desk. It was nearly noon in New York, and late afternoon in Europe, and Universal Trans had yet to record its first Friday disappearance.
Arnold looked in at Darzek’s office before he went upstairs at four o’clock. Jean Morris and Ed Rucks were blearily examining photographs. Photographs were piled high on the desk. Photographs had spilled onto the floor, in all directions. Cartons of photographs were stacked about the room—opened and unopened. They did not hear Arnold come in, and he backed out discreetly without disturbing them.
Again he climbed the stairs with an armful of blueprints, and Miss Shue directed him to a conference room. “The Old Man is still busy with that D.A. fellow,” she said. “They’ve started without him. You didn’t really murder your mother, did you?”
“Of course not,” Arnold said. “My baby sister did it, but I got blamed.”
There were only three men in the conference room—Armbruster, a nondescript vice president who had not been present when Darzek was hired; Cohen, a similarly nondescript vice president who had been; and Grossman, the Universal Trans treasurer.
“Board meetings shouldn’t be called on such short notice,” Armbruster was grumbling when Arnold walked in. “Strictly illegal. Anyway, no one comes.”
“They shouldn’t be called without a darned good reason,” Cohen said. “That’s why no one came. Everyone is fed up with listening to Miller’s harangue about the freight business. I wonder why Watkins doesn’t turn him off.”
“There’s money to be made in the freight business,” Grossman said cheerfully.
“Let the railroads have it. I say, Arnold, could we run a railroad train through a transmitter?”
“Certainly,” Arnold said, “if we built a big enough transmitter.”
“That might be the answer. Build railroad transmitting points at strategic places about the country, and charge the railroads for using them. The railroads could handle the freight, and we’d handle the railroads. Make a nice profit without all the fuss and bother of setting up warehouses and storage and delivery and that sort of thing. We’d cut days off the railroads’ long-distance freight runs. How about it, Arnold? Are you listening?”
Arnold started. “Excuse me. I was half listening. The other half of me was wondering if a train could run through a transmitter and stay on the tracks. Might be messy if it couldn’t.”
“Build one and find out,” Cohen suggested.
“Why don’t you take it up with the Boss? I don’t make policy here. I just follow orders.”
“I’ll take it up with Miller. Where is he, anyway? I thought this was his meeting.”
“He’s detained out of town,” Grossman said. “I just talked with his secretary. She doesn’t know when he’ll be back.”
“Great. He calls a special meeting, and then he can’t make it. What are we hanging around here for?”
“That was Miller’s meeting that was canceled this morning,” Grossman said. “Watkins called this one.”
“If he called it, the least he could do is attend. Those disappearances, I suppose. Anything new, Arnold?”
“What did the Boss tell you about it?”
“He said we have the situation well in hand.”
“We have the situation well in hand.”
Cohen glowered at him. “Where’s that detective fellow?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought he was reporting to you.”
“He is.”
“Then why doesn’t he report? I know the company’s finally making money, but that’s no excuse for throwing the stuff away. Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone on your engineering staff was behind that monkey business. No one else knows anything about the transmitter, and you guys know all about it, and it seems dratted queer that the disappearances should be such a mystery to you. We should have hired our own detective, instead of one of your pals. We might have learned something—like what engineer has come up with a neat scheme for blackmailing the company.”
“For your information,” Arnold said hotly, “if there’s a crook inside Universal Trans, he’s one of the directors. We do know that much.”
“Nonsense,” Grossman said, hastily gushing large quantities of soothing oil. “Why would a director—”
He broke off as Watkins slipped quietly into the room and took his place at the head of the table. He looked haggard, and so utterly exhausted that Arnold wondered if he’d had any sleep at all the previous night. Before he spoke he closed his eyes for a moment, and pressed a hand to his head.
“I’ve been waiting for Harlow,” he said. “But he can’t get away. What’s the trouble?”
“Nothing much,” Grossman said. “Here—let me quiet everyone’s nerves with a financial statement.”
“Arnold says one of the directors is behind those passenger disappearances,” Cohen said. “I say only the engineers would have the necessary know-how.”
Watkins turned to Arnold. “A director, Ted?”
“Darzek’s idea,” Arnold said. “He said he’d certify it. Shouldn’t have shot off my mouth, but Cohen ruffled me. I’ll give you the details later.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing them. I’ve been out of touch today. How many disappearances?”
“None.”
Watkins looked startled. “None? Do you suppose Darzek is responsible?”
“Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s his usual effective self.”
“And Darzek has fingered—that’s the term, isn’t it?—one of the directors. I regarded that young man highly from the first, but not highly enough, it seems, because he happens to be right.”
The three directors stared at Watkins, who ignored them completely. “Did he say who it is, Ted?”
“I don’t believe he knows who it is.”
“Strange that he should happen onto the idea at all.”
“It struck him suddenly a couple of nights ago,” Arnold said dryly. “He’s been working at finding out who it is.”
“The next time you see him—” Watkins paused. “He won’t need to work at it any longer. I know who it is. I’m sorry we couldn’t have more of the Board here, but it was rather short notice. Charlie, I’ve had auditors on your books since yesterday.”
Grossman froze in the act of lighting a cigarette. He blew out the match, tossed the unlit cigarette into an ash tray, and smiled palely. “So that’s what you’ve been up to.”
“They say it’ll take weeks to get things unscrambled, but they’re certain the shortage will run a hundred thousand, and perhaps much more. We’ve had a specialist in from the D.A.’s office, and the police are waiting now to take you into custody. The D.A.’s man would like to talk with you. You don’t have to, of course.
”
“I won’t.”
“In a way this is my fault. If I’d devoted more time to managerial problems, where I’m an expert, and less time to technological problems, where I’m not, it wouldn’t have happened. But I’ve known you for thirty years, Charlie, and you’re almost the last person—” His voice trailed away.
Grossman had recovered his poise, but he avoided Watkins’s eyes. His voice was higher pitched than usual, and tense. “I thought Universal Trans would flop anyway, and I hated to see all that money go down the drain. You say the police are waiting?”
Watkins nodded.
Grossman got to his feet slowly, and started for the door.
“Just a moment,” Arnold called. “Where’s Darzek?”
“Darzek? How would I know? I haven’t seen him since the Board hired him.”
“How did you work the disappearances?”
Grossman looked wonderingly at Arnold. “Do you really think I had something to do with that?” He laughed. “I always thought you knew your stuff, Ted, but maybe you’re a lousier engineer than I am a treasurer. Either that, or one of us is crazy.” He opened the door carefully, stepped outside, and closed it.
The two vice presidents had been stunned into silence. Watkins said thoughtfully, “Maybe he’s trying for a deal. He’ll tell us what he knows if we agree not to prosecute. He’s holding back something to bargain with.”
“You bargain with him,” Arnold said. “I’m going back to work.”
As he hurried past Miss Shue’s desk, she flagged him down with an afternoon paper. “I meant to ask you. What do you think about this?”
Arnold gazed unseeingly at the headlines. “Think about what?”
“You mean you haven’t heard? Why, everyone’s been talking about it all day. The explosion on the Moon, that’s what. The government says we didn’t do it, and the Russians have just gotten around to claiming they didn’t do it, and everyone is accusing everyone else. It’s all very confusing.”
“Both we and the Russians have men up there. Did anyone think to ask them about it?”
“Oh, it wasn’t anywhere near any of the Moon stations. Look—there’s a map on the back page, showing where it happened. A scientist like you ought to be interested in these things.”
Arnold waved the paper away. “I’m just a dumb engineer with problems. Don’t bother me with your Moon explosions. I wouldn’t care if the whole damned thing blew up.”
CHAPTER 9
Darzek floated.
He was fully relaxed and ready to end his dive with a neat flip onto his feet, automatic in hand if circumstances required it. He was also prepared to talk his way out of an awkward predicament in the Paris Terminal, if that was where he and Miss X emerged.
But he knew instantly that he was not in the Paris Terminal.
And he floated.
He soared completely over Miss X, who stood looking up at him, arms half-raised, face immobilized in an expression that had no parallel even in Darzek’s considerable inventory of facial expressions. Momentarily he experienced an exhilarating sensation of flying, but his mind was much too preoccupied to enjoy it. He collided gently with the far wall, rebounded a short distance, and twisted to memorize the room with a glance as he dropped easily to the floor.
Instantly his attention was arrested by a grotesquely tall, grotesquely thin apparition that presided over an enormous instrument board near the transmitter frame. Darzek’s dramatic entry had caught it in the act of rising from a tall stool. It remained in a half-crouch, one hand frozen in position at the controls, the other waving aimlessly, as though to banish Darzek from its sight.
Darzek had only a second or two to contemplate its impossible expanse of bald head, its weirdly wide face and peculiar, swathing apparel before a sudden movement by Miss X triggered a lightning snatch for his automatic.
But the figure at the instrument board had held his attention too long. Before his hand could reach the gun, darkness crashed down on him.
He regained consciousness slowly, and found himself totally paralyzed. A painful, tingling sensation throbbed through his entire body. It was at once terrifyingly strange and familiar, like the inexplicable recurrence of a half-forgotten nightmare. He struggled furiously, he cried out for help again and again, and when finally he desisted and lay quietly vanquished and soaked with perspiration, he had neither moved a muscle nor uttered a sound.
He was unable to open his eyes, and his head seemed to gyrate strangely. He wondered whether his hearing was affected. The voices in the room sounded enormously distant and babbled impossible, unending chains of hissing and buzzing consonants.
His mind began posing a series of childish questions, and he found, much to his disgust, that he did not know where he was or what had happened. Finally he asked himself, “Who am I?”, immediately responded, “Jan Darzek,” and felt better.
Footsteps padded softly towards him. A hand touched his forehead, a dryly cold, almost abrasive hand that grated his skin, and then lifted his head and dropped it. The strangely familiar tingling sensation had receded to his limbs, and to his delight he found that he could feebly wiggle his toes.
The hand touched his forehead again before the footsteps padded away. The remote conversation continued. “She shot me!” Darzek’s mind exclaimed suddenly. “Miss X shot me—with—” There had been something in her hand, but he had not even recognized it as a weapon.
A surge of memory flipped him abruptly into the past. He lay on the sidewalk outside his office building, looking up into the patrolman’s worried face. His hands and feet tingled oddly.
“So that’s how it was,” he mused. “Just like that night, only a stiffer dose. No wonder they couldn’t find a lump on my head!”
The aftereffects faded rapidly. Soon the pain was no more than a dull, numbing throb, and he had full control of his toes. He could have opened his eyes and looked about, but he was determined to risk no movement that might attract the attention of those in the room. He remembered only too well the terrible weakness he had experienced before, his inability to stand without assistance. He would feign unconsciousness until that weakness had passed, and he could, if he chose, come up fighting.
He inventoried his mental picture of the room he had entered so unexpectedly. It was shaped like an enormous cylinder laid on one flattened side. The curved surface was milky white, and it diffused light. At first Darzek rejected the notion; but he had seen no lights anywhere, and yet the room was brilliantly lighted. The soft white glow of the curving walls and ceiling lighted the room.
The transmitter frame stood at one end, with the instrument board angling out from it. A wide ledge ran the length of the room on both sides—for sleeping purposes, perhaps, for there were long objects like sleeping bags lying on it. A curving, glittering metal surface, as tall as the room, bulged from the flat wall by the instrument board. Except for the one stool he had noticed no furnishings.
And he had floated. He thought long about that, hesitant to face up to the obvious implications. He had floated, and therefore there was no gravity. And yet, when he reached the end of the room he had dropped to the floor, so there was gravity. Or would complex factors such as his momentum and the angle at which he bumped the wall control his movement? He wished he had Ted Arnold’s knowledge of physics.
If his own specialization was people, what could he make of that person—that thing—at the instrument board? The place defied all logic, and so did its inhabitants.
He continued to listen to the voices, and thought he made out the overtones of an argument. For a time he occupied himself with sorting the voices out, and labeling them, and trying to estimate the number of people in the room. He had positively identified four different voices when someone spoke out from close by, and again a cold hand rasped against his forehead. It was all he could do to keep from recoiling.
“You can get up now,” a voice said in English. “We know you are awake.”
He continued to feign
unconsciousness. The argument resumed, and became voluble. A fifth voice joined in. Hands seized Darzek, pulled him to a sitting position, and supported him there. He kept himself relaxed, but in the movement he managed to nudge his shoulder holster. They had not taken his automatic. Or had they unloaded it and replaced it?
He weighed his chances carefully, and dismissed the idea of coming off the floor with automatic in hand. For a second or two he would be vulnerable from the rear, and he could not handle five of them unless he chose his position carefully.
He decided on a plan of action, opened his eyes, and went through the motions of struggling to his knees.
The argument spiraled away into silence. There were five of them grouped about him, and as they watched him he feigned dizziness, regained his balance, and calmly stared at each of them in turn. To his amazement, they avoided his eyes.
Miss X was still wearing the disguise he had followed into the transmitter. Madam Z was there, in one of her disguises. There was a strange male, an attractive-looking boy in his late teens or early twenties.
And there were two things.
At first Darzek had difficulty reconciling the things with the apparition he had seen at the instrument board. That figure had been tall and absurdly thin; these were tall and absurdly wide. Only after he had struggled to his feet did he realize that they were wide when seen from the front; thin when seen from the side. Either view was like looking into a distorting mirror.
He continued to stare at them. They appeared not so much like living beings as a patented fabrication for populating nightmares. Their facial features were hideously concave, the enormous, widely separated eyes, the single, gaping nostril, the puckered mouth all weirdly inverted as though to open inward on some misshapen fantasy of a drunken artist. There were no ears; there were no hair, no eyebrows or lashes, not even a suggestion of eyelids. The necks were slender pipes. The flesh, what was visible of it, was a ghostly, flaccid blue. They were swathed in what appeared to be unending, overlapping layers of bandage from feet to throat to hands. The hands—
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