Tomorrow Is Too Far

by James White

  The man who had phoned Pebbles had not, of course, belonged to Production Control. He had said so but the call could have originated from any one of the eight hundred-odd internal telephone extensions within the Hart-Ewing complex. That same man, or one of his colleagues, would know by now that the fire had been put out rather than being allowed to burn itself out. He would also know that a member of Carson’s comic Gestapo had been asking questions and knew that Security now knew that the waste had been moved to the storeroom. But he did not know whether the material he had wanted destroyed by the burning waste had been burned or not.

  The question now was whether he or his friends would risk going back to the storeroom to make sure. If there really was a Most Secret project being worked on at Hart-Ewing--if Carson had not been working himself into a lather of excitement over a list of mis-copied figures and some engineer author’s plot notes for a science-fiction story--the answer was that they most certainly would.

  Assuming the existence of such a project there could be no doubt at all that the people concerned were very security conscious regarding their activities and paperwork. They could not risk sending Pebbles to check on the situation--apparently the man was incapable either of telling a lie or concealing a fact--so the chances were that one of the project personnel would be sent to check for himself. If they were really worried it would be as soon as possible--tonight, in fact.

  Carson went to the wide, flat drawer built into the top of his triple filing cabinet and withdrew a large-scale drawing of Factory Three. As well as giving the positions of walls, partitions and storerooms it showed the power and lighting cable runs, high pressure air supplies, fire pumps and emergency exits. He studied it carefully for several minutes, looking for a good hiding-place. His problem was complicated by the fact that he did not want to trap a man, just to have a good look at him without the other realising it. He replaced the drawing, looked at his watch and began to compose a memo to the chief maintenance engineer.

  In it he drew attention to the recent fire and suggested that the power, lighting and internal telephone lines in the section should be checked immediately for possible damage. He knew that if he waited until late afternoon before sending it the internal postal system would not deliver it until early next morning, so that the maintenance people could not send an electrician to check the area tonight. But the memo would have today’s date on it and, if someone later became worried about lights flashing on and off all around them, it should stand up to the perfunctory investigation well enough to reassure the culprit.

  The disquieting thought occurred to him that the man was not a culprit, a saboteur or a wrong-doer of any kind. Instead he was on Carson’s side, helping guard a secret so important that the chief security officer had not been made aware of it. With that thought came another which suggested that Carson had no business poking his nose into the affair and might be serving the best interests of his country and his company by letting it drop.

  He did want to serve the best interests of his country, and of the company which entrusted him with its internal and external security. He knew that he was good at the job--conscientious, meticulous, exacting where even the relatively unimportant details were concerned, so much so that in certain quarters he was described as a fussy old woman. But was he considered good at his job by the people who really mattered, Carson asked himself suddenly, or merely as a nosey old woman whose curiosity about everyone and everything rendered suspect his ability to keep his own mouth shut? Was that the real reason he was being kept in the dark?

  That was the most disquieting thought of all. Carson tried to force it out of his mind by concentrating on his paperwork. But much later that evening, when he was sitting on a hard and very cold tool-box in Factory Three with only the top of his head showing above a nearby bench, the thought recurred. This time there was no way of avoiding it.

  Either he was good at his job or he was not. If he was not, then the company would have eased him out before now--they would not wait six years before deciding whether he was efficient. And if he was fulfilling his function as a security officer, then it could be argued that his duties included the protection of any and all secret work in which Hart-Ewing’s was engaged, that it was his duty to protect it even when he had no real idea what ‘it’ was all about.

  Carson sighed. Around him the metal benches and structural supports creaked and tinkled faintly as they gave up the heat of the working day. The night-shift at the other end of the section contributed its quiet clangour and the kittens, who were the furry debris of the continuing population explosion among the factory cats, romped among the now safe and silent machinery.

  Security and counter-espionage, so far as Carson was concerned, was far from being an exciting and glamorous job. Security meant checking fire extinguishers and hoses, checking lights and doors left on or open, checking safety precautions during aircraft refuelling, checking pilfering when it began to assume the proportions of grand larceny, checking trespassers on other people’s parking spaces, checking everything everywhere several times a day or week.

  Counter-espionage did not, on the other hand, mean a constant war against industrial or foreign spies who were bending every effort to penetrate the company’s security defences with cuff-link cameras and sub-miniaturised electronic devices. Instead it involved a constant round of checking doors, drawers and lock-up filing cabinets to make sure that classified material was returned to its proper place and not left lying around where any one of the cleaners, night maintenance staff, decorators or telephone repairmen could see it. In short, Carson’s job lay not so much in defending his company’s secrets as to try to prevent them being given away.

  He even had his own Index Expurgatoria of forbidden photographs and subjects which operated in reverse to keep over-enthusiastic sales and publicity people from rushing into print with classified material in the technical journals.

  But security on this special project was tight and professional--the men concerned made none of the usual mistakes and Carson had had to go to a lot of trouble even to satisfy himself that a project actually existed. He was still not completely sure that it did exist. Their planning was superb and when they had to act openly they did so tracelessly by making use of someone like Pebbles, a nice, simple-minded obliging man who believed everything he was told.

  Quite a lot of people seemed to have a use for Pebbles, Carson thought angrily. He was remembering how proud the man had looked when he said that he could do joined-up writing. Pebbles would have been fired on at least two occasions if someone with influence had not spoken for him. The thought that Pebbles had been kept in the company and used by these people as a sort of organic, unthinking tool did not make Carson feel as the same thought would have made Bill Savage feel, but it made him experience a moment of shame because he was considering making use of him as well, to help him find out something about the purposes of the people who were already using him...

  Carson’s mind froze suddenly in mid-thought. Someone was coming, a dim figure approaching his hiding-place along the aisle between the storeroom outer wall and the ranks of silent machines. In the light which filtered across from the active side of the factory floor he could see that the man wore a cap and overalls. They were not white overalls nor were they the dark blue, green or brown shades worn by inspectors, labourers, apprentices or electricians but some medium colour which he could not identify in the darkness. He kept his eyes on the man while his hand went to the panel of light switches beside him.

  One hundred yards away a group of roof lights blinked on and off several times and a few seconds later a section even farther away was erratically illuminated in similar fashion. The man had stopped dead when the first lights went on, but they were too far away to show Carson his face, and in any case he was merely getting the man used to the idea that lights were being tested in the area. He watched the man hurry silently to the storeroom door and close it behind him.

  An intermittent glow showed in
the uncovered window as he used a flashlamp, then disappeared as the sacking which had dropped from the window was replaced. Perhaps ten minutes later the man came out again.

  This time Carson made sure that the lights which flicked on and off again were close enough to make identification positive.

  The face revealed was that of Wayne Tillotson. He was wearing, not overalls but a flying suit of pale grey which was almost the same shade as his face at that moment. Carson switched off the overhead lights and played with the other switches at random until Tillotson had gone.

  In the storeroom a few minutes later he used his own torch to study the pile of ashes. The two scraps of oil-soaked paper which he had copied and replaced earlier had gone and a few of the ashes were again warm.

  Tillotson had been one of the people who had used his influence to keep Pebbles from being fired, although why the company’s chief test pilot should have concerned himself with the fate of a lavatory attendant was something which still required a full explanation. At that moment Carson decided quite definitely that he would get to know, cultivate and as soon as possible use, Pebbles.

  Everyone else seemed to be doing it.

  He was still thinking about the best way of doing so as he went to the area telephone and began ringing round the gatehouses and patrol offices.

  Chapter Five

  The questions were too many and too general to arouse suspicion among his own patrolmen--he had used his fussy, chronic worrier’s voice. But from them he discovered that some kind of meeting was going on in the office of the chief of design on the third floor of the admin building and that the chief test pilot’s unmistakable bone-shaker was parked outside.

  Carson was there ten minutes later, asking more fussy, seemingly unconnected questions.

  ‘I don’t know who is in there or how many, sir,’ the patrolman in charge told him. ‘When Briggs looked in during his early rounds he said the ashtrays were full and the waste-baskets empty. Maybe they are playing cards ...’

  ‘Are you being sarcastic...?’ began Carson, but he was interrupted by Patrolman Briggs from the other side of the office.

  ‘One of the men was Mr Daniels, sir,’ he said quickly, while his eyes shouted Shut up, you fool--can’t you see he’s in one of his moods tonight? He went on, ‘Mr Daniels was writing on the blackboard. The others had their backs turned to me so I couldn’t see who they were--except for Mr Tillotson, of course, who left the meeting about half an hour ago and came back shortly before you arrived.’

  ‘Any idea of what they were doing?’

  ‘No, sir. Mr Daniels was talking while he wrote on the board but stopped when he saw me. He has been saying something about the major problems on a minus trip home being largely psychological. Yes, that was exactly what he said. The diagrams and maths on the blackboard I couldn’t understand at all.’

  Carson nodded approval. ‘At least you keep your eyes and ears open, even when there is nothing to see or hear … ‘

  ‘It’s breaking up now, sir,’ Briggs said, jerking his thumb at the office window and the corridor beyond. ‘They’re coming out of the elevator.’

  There were only six of them. Somehow Carson had been expecting more than that. But they were all top people: Tillotson, capless now and wearing a topcoat over his flying suit so that the blue-grey gaberdine visible below it might easily have been ordinary sports slacks: Dreamy Daniels, the design chief: the head of electronics George Reece: Brady and Soames from the module production side and Reg Saunderson, the company chief accountant. It was Daniels who tossed the bunch of keys to Briggs and wished him good night. They did not appear to notice Carson, whose face was above the cone of light thrown out by the desk lamp.

  As Briggs was returning the keys to their numbered peg Carson forestalled him. ‘I’ll take them. It’s time for rounds and I need some exercise.’

  Briggs nodded and moved to accompany him. He said, ‘That bunch are usually very good at switching off lights and locking doors and windows--we haven’t caught them out in nearly three years.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ said Carson. ‘But I can do without your company. You two make some coffee and talk about me behind my back until I get back. In case you’ve forgotten I like it black with three lumps and ...’ ‘... Two plain biscuits,’ said Briggs, grinning.

  Carson had chosen to walk up to the design office, not because he needed the exercise but because at this time of night the lift could be heard all over the building and, if it was not heard while he was supposedly moving from floor to floor, the two patrol officers might wonder if something was wrong. As things were they would be expecting him to check all the floors on foot and would not expect to hear the lift until just before his return to the office. And if they needed him for something they, being somewhat elderly and beefy individuals, would come looking for him in the lift, giving plenty of warning of their approach.

  He was intending to spend all the available time in the design office.

  All the windows, filing cabinets and waste-baskets in Daniels’s office were secured, locked and empty respectively. No documents had chanced to fall behind or between the office furniture, no used sheets of carbon paper were lying balled-up and unnoticed in a corner and there were no scratch pads lying around which showed indentations from the writing on preceding pages. But on the long, baize-topped conference table near the freshly cleaned blackboard there was a crisp, neatly folded drawing whose reference number and title were partially obscured by the overflow from an ashtray.

  Three cigarette butts and a small quantity of ash had spilled on to the drawing and the baize. There seemed to be a strange hint of order to this untidiness, in the positioning of the butts, the ash and the angle made by the drawing against the edge of the table.

  The cleaning staff for this particular building had long since gone home, so there would be nobody here to tidy up until tomorrow when Daniels unlocked his office.

  Carson examined the drawing as closely as possible without touching it or allowing his breath to disturb the spilled ash, then he sat down carefully in one of the chairs to think.

  He could not be absolutely sure that the drawing and ashtray set-up was a trap, but his certainty was as close to one hundred per cent as made no difference. That being the case he had to decide whether the trap had been set merely as a precaution or because they thought someone--perhaps Carson himself--was on to them. Again he could not be sure, but he seriously doubted the latter possibility.

  Having Sands question Pebbles about the transfer of the waste to the storeroom was the sort of thing expected of Carson, just as he was expected to fuss and ask questions about the fire for weeks afterwards. The unexpected things he had done--the long-term and heavily disguised enquiries, the business with the lights tonight when he had identified Tillotson and his presence here in Daniels’s office--were not yet known to them. The reason for the trap might simply be Tillotson’s recent fright.

  It would be interesting to see if they continued to set traps after they had an opportunity of seeing his memo to the electricians ...

  All at once Carson felt an overwhelming, angry impatience with the whole stupid project. He knew there was something important going on and that it was his duty to know about it. He dearly wanted to question Daniels, Tillotson and the others directly--he was sure that he knew enough to stampede them into telling him the whole story. After all, a project of this importance needed a security officer.

  Or did it...?

  The thought that somewhere in the company there was a shadow security officer, someone charged with the protection of the really valuable and important work, someone whose organisation might take a very poor view of Carson prying into something which was not his concern made him feel frightened as well as angry and inadequate.

  Who was the other security man and which organisation did he represent? Certainly, if he existed at all, he was operating outside the security department Carson headed.

  This was his busin
ess and whether they wanted it or not they would have his protection. Carson wriggled uncomfortably in the chair and began to consider the anatomy of a project, any project.

  At the top were the men responsible for the original idea or for developing someone else’s original idea. In the middle were the people who helped break down the idea into large numbers of detailed drawings and the engineers who decided how best to convert these drawings into three dimensional metal on someone’s bench. In this age of over-specialisation it was not expected that the man who produced the detailed hardware should understand, or even care, about the part his particular chunk of hardware played in the project as a whole.

  But somewhere within the vast Hart-Ewing complex hardware for this ultra-secret project was being made, modified, re-made and sometimes scrapped--there were always teething troubles with a new project, even the relatively simple and non-secret ones. Carson did not think he would get very far questioning the men at the bottom--there were too many thousands of them. A better bet would be the middle men, the engineers and draughtsmen who had to iron out the bugs and generally see that all the pieces fitted together. They should be able to help him, except that all the indications were that they also were unaware of what was really going on. There were too many middle men to keep a secret of this magnitude so they were being used and subtly misdirected by the people at the top, just as Pebbles had been used but on a more impersonal level.

  The idea, he had already decided, was to use the people they were using to find out what they were using them for...

  As he was switching off the lights and relocking the doors he had to remind himself again that Daniels and the others were not the Other Side. Neither were they careless. They did their own typing, they did not leave project paperwork lying around and they went to a great deal of trouble to destroy that which they did not, for some reason, burn in the privacy of their homes. He wondered suddenly if the material was so sensitive that they dare not risk taking it off company limits because of the very slight possibility that one of them might have a car accident while carrying it.