“Probably just a mast,” Friendly said. “That’s a Coast Guard station. The Navy base is just beyond—about two miles up the coast. Right on the nose.”
Robert carefully sat back down and stowed the binoculars. “We just chug right in?”
“No. We go ashore about half a mile past the house. The sub continues past the base and on out to sea. We have to assume that their listening post has already picked us up, and if we beach the sub they’ll just send men out after us.”
“You mean I put on my dress blues just to swim ashore?”
“Heaven forfend!” Friendly lifted his large hands into the air and waggled the fingers in mock horror. Reaching behind his seat, he pulled out a cylinder the size of a baseball bat. Five minutes later, when the tiny submarine was just where he wanted it, Friendly pulled a lanyard on the side of the cylinder. It unrolled and expanded until it had taken the shape of a canoe and was just about as long as the submarine. The ribs, gunwales, and keel were plastic tubes, rigid with compressed air; the thin, plastic skin stretched taut by this bracing. A pair of solid, rigid thwarts were in place fore and aft, and two compressed paddles were expanding to shape on the floor between them. “It’s all done with mirrors,” Friendly explained.
“What happens if I stick a pin in it?” Robert wondered.
“Nothing. Once this plastic is pushed into shape, it locks. Something to do with the bonding of the long-chain molecules. Now climb aboard and let me program this decoy to continue its run before any listeners notice that it stopped. Here, take my case.”
Grabbing the leather dispatch case, Robert climbed into the canoe and squatted, holding the open hatch of the submarine to keep the two craft together. Friendly slid a thin metal rod horizontally through the spokes of the wheel. He fastened one end of the rod to the deck with a long cord, and the other end with a cord-and-coil-spring combination. Then he tied a third cord between the first two, leaving about a foot extra before he cut it. He leaned back and surveyed his handiwork. “That should do it, or I’m not a avia adamsii,” he said, standing up on his seat and carefully stepping over into the canoe.
“What is it?”
“Fuse.” Friendly lit the loose end of the cord with his pipe-lighter, flipped the sub’s starter, opened the ballast tank, and closed the hatch. The sub moved off in a straight line toward the base. It was lost from view after a few seconds and within a minute its electric keening had faded away.
They paddled toward the shore, a dark blotch between the faintly luminescent sea and the bright, starry sky. “I’ll bite,” Robert said “What’s that thing programmed to do?”
“Well,” Friendly explained, “it’ll go under, but not too far. Without our weight in it, that ballast tank won’t take it past neutral buoyancy. It’ll keep headed toward the base until that fuse burns through; then the spring will pull on the rod and turn the wheel. The spring should pull the rod all the way out from between the spokes, and it’s a self-righting wheel; so the submarine, like a good little beast, will turn until it’s pointed somewhere out to sea and then keep going until it reaches China or the fuel cells run out. The fuse will burn away, eliminating the evidence in case they decide to catch the sub. Cela suffit.”
There was no shore as such; the sea terminated at a line of rocks fronting a thirty-foot cliff, which stretched away to the north and south. They scrambled up on one of the larger rocks by the base of the cliff and then spent ten minutes dumping enough stones into the canoe to sink it by the side of their rock. The paddles wouldn’t stay down. After trying to sink them for a couple of minutes, Robert finally gave in to his growing frustration and shoved them deep into a cleft in the cliff wall. The cliff was jagged and rough, and would have presented little challenge to climb in daylight. At night it was painstaking, bone-chilling, frightening work. Robert slowly worked his way up one piece of cliff while Friendly, his dispatch case slung over his back, attacked another. It Was twenty minutes before they met at the top.
“That was work,” Robert said, glancing back down the dark abyss he had just emerged from. “I hope we can find this spot again. Places have a way of looking totally different in daylight.”
“With any luck,” Friendly said, unslinging his dispatch case from his back and tightening the leather strap, “we won’t have to.”
“What sort of luck did you have in mind?” Robert asked. “Good or bad?”
The night was dark, and what moon there was darted out only occasionally from behind the cirrostratus clouds that stretched across the sky. The shadowed landscape of random boulders, twisted, stunted trees, and outcroppings of naked rock, faded into a uniform gray a few meters ahead of them. The Pacific seascape, a barren, rocky shore meshed with the eastern edge of six thousand miles of ocean, lay behind and below.
A sudden sound, like a slap across the face, jerked the two men up and focused their attention seaward: a sharp, deep, quick, concussive sound, not exactly an explosion.
“What was that?” Robert whispered.
Friendly sat down on one of the larger rocks. “I think we have just heard what a plastic two-man submarine sounds like being blown up under water.”
Robert felt stunned as the implications of that action became clear to him. “This may sound silly,” he said, “but I’ve just realized something; we’re not playing a game here.”
Friendly looked out at the sea. “Centuries ago,” he said, “in that part of the world described as the Far East, petty rulers of minor kingdoms used to play live games of chess, where men fought for each square and the losing piece was killed on the board. This was, nonetheless, a game.” He bent over and pulled off his right shoe to shake a small pebble out. “We’d better get on our way.”
“Doesn’t the idea of getting killed bother you?” Robert demanded. “They just blew up that sub, without even bothering to find out who was in it or what it was doing where it was.”
“The idea of dying bothers me,” Friendly said. “If you ever find a way to prevent it, let me know.” He relaced his shoe.
The naval base was protected by a four-meter high cyclone fence with a roll of barbed wire along the top that met the sea at a sheer twelve-meter cliff, turned a right angle downward, and went halfway down the cliff face. Directly inside the fence was a cleared dirt road for a jeep perimeter patrol. Inside the road was a staked and plowed area about fifty meters wide. Friendly stared sourly at it. “They should at least have the courtesy to erect signs.”
“What signs?” Robert asked.
Friendly indicated the plowed area. “That there is a minefield. It would be polite to post a warning. This dislike of casual visitors is being carried just a bit too far.”
“Perhaps we should reconsider,” Robert said. “I hate to thrust myself where I’m not wanted.”
“We have our duty,” Friendly pointed out. “Our orders, which I typed up right before we left the floatel, are to report directly to the L. Mendel Rivers Undersea Experimentation Section. By some unaccountable mistake, the section clerk hasn’t received his copy of the orders. It is clearly our duty to go to him and inform him of this error. Since they won’t let us in the front gate—”
“Duty it is,” Robert agreed. “But if you get me killed, I’ll never forgive you.”
Carefully checking for trip-alarms, they came up to the fence. Friendly produced a pencil flashlight from his double-breasted jacket and examined the links by the nearest fencepost. “At least I was partly wrong in my predictions,” Robert said, squatting by him. “There aren’t any guard dogs or spotlights.”
“This fence, however, is electric,” Friendly reported.
Robert jerked his hand away. “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not carrying much amperage. I imagine if you cut it or put too much pressure on it, say the amount necessary to climb over, it’ll set off all kinds of alarms.”
“So, of course, we tunnel under,” Robert suggested.
Friendly opened his dispatch case on the ground in front o
f him. “They seem to have made a basic error,” he commented, selecting from the jumbled mess of assorted parts on one side of the case six thin steel rods and a small squeeze-tube. “They’ve electrified the fence, but not the fence posts.” He closed the case and removed the cap from the tube. Grabbing one of the rods, he squeezed a small ball of jelly from the tube at about the rod’s center. He slid the rod through the fence next to the post, about four feet off the ground and pressed the jellied center to the post. When he let go the rod stayed in place. The next rod was placed two feet higher, and the third about two feet above that. Which was about as high as he could reach.
“The stuff takes about a minute to set,” Friendly said. He backed away from the fence and heaved his dispatch case over. It rolled and tumbled almost to the road, and disappeared into a shallow ditch.
“Some glue,” Robert admired.
“Old family recipe. Two sections in the tube, half whosis and half whatchamacallit. They mix as they come out and set almost immediately. Now for the next step.” He jellied another rod and, climbing up on the bottom one, set it into place. Then, suddenly, he whispered, “Drop!” and dove for the ground. He rolled once when he hit and then froze in place, face down. Robert dropped next to him.
An electric car purred along the road inside the fence. It was low to the ground, showed no lights, and was almost invisible in the sparse moonlight. Robert didn’t make it out until it was almost parallel to them. Even then he wouldn’t have seen it if it was still. Millions of years of hunting and running have enabled Homo sapiens to be extremely good at picking out and identifying, even in the darkest night, anything that moves. Robert flattened himself and ceased breathing. Just because the car had no lights didn’t mean those in it couldn’t see. They were probably surveying the surrounding countryside with apparatus that could see in the dark more efficiently than any cat. If they had infrared screens, the two almost-intruders would show up like candles in the dark.
The car paused.
Robert heard an odd hissing noise, but he didn’t dare move to find out where it was coming from. It didn’t seem to emanate from the patrol car. The tip of Robert’s ear was itching, and his back had gone curiously cold. He was quickly forgetting what it felt like to breathe. The last breath of air he had taken, ages and ages ago in subjective time, was pushing up against the inside of his chest and throat, and the blood-pulse beat against his rib cage with a dull, pounding pressure. He had to fight against the reflex that would push the air from his lungs and suck in the next sweet breath of life. His ears were ringing and a tangible blackness was descending across his brain.
The car moved. In a few seconds it was out of sight, turning where the fence dropped away and following the cliff. Robert gasped, expelling air in a choking cough and filling his lungs again. He repeated the process twice, and then broke into a paroxysm of coughing.
“It’s a good thing hearing is a neglected sense in this modern age of gadgetry,” Friendly said, sitting up. “During the First World War they had listening devices sensitive enough to hear a man breathing two miles away.”
“Lucky the boys in the electric car didn’t have infrared,” Robert said between coughs. He scratched his ear.
“They probably did,” Friendly told him. “We just didn’t happen to be radiating heat at that moment.” He showed Robert the slender spray can in his hand. “Simple high-pressure xenon fluoride. Expanding gas absorbs heat; the principle of refrigeration.”
“I thought I heard a hissing noise.”
“If you’re over your cough, we might climb the fence now.”
The went up the fence pole, gingerly straddled the roll of barbed wire, and descended the inside. “What about the rods?” Robert asked.
“We leave them. They’ll never be noticed, and if I’m wrong they’ll be a wonderful puzzle to whoever finds them.” He retrieved his dispatch case and started across the road. “Now that the major obstacle is passed, all we have to do is go through this minefield and we’re as good as in.”
Robert thought of several nasty comments, and a simile involving rich men and camels, but he said nothing.
Friendly inspected the minefield at a distance with a small electronic instrument. “Mechanical contact mines, as far as I can tell,” he said. “No induction or vibration types. No imagination. That makes it easy; all we have to do is avoid stepping on one and watch for tripwires. Although I doubt that there’ll be any tripwires.”
“How can you tell?” Robert asked.
“Just have faith. The trouble with the younger generation is they got no faith. I will go first; you walk in my footsteps.”
“I am humble,” Robert agreed. “How am I to find your footsteps in the dark?”
“I am dusting my shoes with a powder. There. Can you see this?” Friendly took a couple of tentative steps, and the prints glowed dimly where he had been.
“Fine,” Robert said. “But if those boys in the electric car come back this way, they’re liable to follow in your footsteps right after us.”
“The glow fades out in about fifteen minutes,” Friendly assured him. “Now come along.” With his electronic sniffer held out before him like a dowsing rod, he slowly and carefully trod across the minefield.
Chapter Nineteen
New Hollywood Bowl, resting in the Santa Monica Mountains at what had been Beverly Glen, was the largest outdoor focus in the world; more than twice as large as the stadium Hilter had planned for Nuremberg but never built. Over one million people could come together here, and all of them could find seats. Of course, about two-thirds of those seated were too far away to be able to see anything that happened on the stage, but that was all right. The sound system was excellent, and the too distant could either use binoculars or some other refracting aid, or watch on the holo stages scattered through the upper stands. The important thing was the human mass.
A huge group of people, gathered together for a common purpose, generate a group energy, a group determination, a group will and dynamic belief that is considerably greater than the sum of its parts. This is the principle of revival meetings and lynchings.
New Hollywood Bowl was used by religious groups, which had a use for the focused fervor built up by such mass meetings. Other groups, such as real estate agents and encyclopedia salesmen, would hold occasional rallies there, with sometimes frightening results.
Today there was going to be a poetry reading, and a capacity crowd was expected. Leah read the posters with delight, thinking of how Addison Friendly would have roared if he’d been at the hotel instead of playing spy games up the coast.
Under a stylized drawing of a pair of clasped hands:
T H E P R O P H E T L A S S A M A
WILL READ AND TEACH
A P O E T I C S Y N T H E S I S
of the secrets of Mystical Truth and Factual Science as it is known on this plane.
ALL ARE WELCOME
There will be NO LEVITATION.
New Hollywood Bowl Thursday 1:00 pm
The Sibhood of Scientific Karma of Los Angeles
$50.00 $30.00 $20.00 $10.00 love offering
The Prophet’s specialty was divination and mind control, and he claimed to have had some success; a claim that was supported by seemingly impartial observers. He now had several million followers who paid money to listen to his poetry and take his courses, working not toward a degree but a mental or metaphysical condition which he called “Triply Aware.” The only acknowledged Triplets so far were Lassama, his second wife, and his business manager, although several disciples had been quoted as saying they thought they had a good chance of making double before they ran out of money. The Prophet claimed that a man in Connecticut had made the Fourth Level, but the Connecticut State Police had a nasty suspicion that this supposed “Quarto” was not wandering freely among the nebulae, but was buried somewhere on the six-thousand-acre estate he had loaned to the Sibhood shortly before disappearing.
The Sibhood of Scientific Karma, like so m
any other pseudoscientific religions, claimed that TRUTH could only be discovered by a series of mystical revelations, achieved by a system of “processing” toward higher levels of awareness. All those who wanted to UNDERSTAND, but were unwilling or unable to go through the intellectual discipline of mathematics or physics; all who had never grown beyond the Disney concept that Wishing Makes It So; all who were attracted by costumes, staging, secret rites, and ceremonial mumbojumbo: these were the lambs.
Leah knew the Sibhood well, from the time about a year before when the Prophet had tried to take over Astral Emprise and, failing, had forbidden all Sib from so much as breathing the name. But she had never actually met the Prophet, or heard him speak—or recite. His poetry, as read aloud by him, was a part of the process of Awareness, and millions of his tapes had been sold. Strange things were reputed to happen when he spoke in person. Leah decided to go.
Ticket room #7 was speedily processing orderly lines of smiling people. Eight visible front teeth seemed to be the badge of identity, and “Hello, there!” the hailing sign. The conversations formed a mesh of patterned obfuscation that Leah weaved her way through to the window. A warp of science on a woof of patter:
“The alpha-rhythms of my bio-chain are stronger in Virgo.”
“His pigram chart goes down and down, but he still can’t exteriorize worth a damn!”
“Never trust a man with a mu-meson in his front quadrant, all they care about is sex, sex, sex!”
“We left our synergistic masses to coagulate while he probed me as deeply as he could with the instrumentation available. It was thrilling . . . thrilling.”
“On that time-line he was a princess of Mars, but he couldn’t find his glasses.”
“My husband didn’t want me to head triple. He wanted to save the money for the kid’s college. I tried telling him that when we take over there won’t be any need for college, and he filed for dissolvement.”
Psi Hunt Page 13