by Jerry Sohl
The jangling telephone roused him from his thoughts with a start. He answered it. It was Orcutt.
“Dev?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Ed. Dev, for heaven’s sake, where have you been? Where did you go last night? I thought maybe you’d gone back to Florida.”
“Nearly did, Ed. I guess the fact that people go in and never come out has me down.”
“I know just how you feel. I’ll never forget that one policeman sobbing. That was awful.”
“I had to get away from the Needle, Ed. I had to think of something else for a while.”
“Everybody else, too.”
“Anything interesting going on?”
“No. Nobody’s being charged with anything and the city’s putting the thing right back into our hands. They’re giving us a clean slate and telling us to get to work bringing those guys back.”
Devan laughed feebly. “Yeah. That’s easy to do. We build a big thing like a Needle and then we don’t know how to use it.”
“Oh, we’ll find a way, yet.”
“I’ve heard that before. ‘Operation Otto.’”
“The newspapers aren’t indicting anybody, Dev. Editorials blame the police department more than they do us. They say the Needle is a purely scientific curiosity and that the police had no business fooling around with it.”
“What’s the public reaction?”
“We’ve had a million calls this morning. Half the people say turn the Needle off, destroy it and all the plans for it. The other half say leave the Needle turned on and encourage us to work to find a solution and bring the men back.”
“The Needle still on?”
“I’ve left orders to leave it on, Dev. The city’s still giving us police protection. We’re going to need it, too. But from now on we’re going back to private investigation. No peanuts and Cracker Jack this next time.”
“If there is a next time,” Devan said.
“There will be. Say, what the hell is wrong with you? I’ve never heard you so dejected. You’d better come on up to the office. You need cheering up.”
“I will, later.”
“Why later?”
“I’ve got a lot of thinking to do right now.” He hung up, leaned back in his chair again.
Well, it was nice of the city not to blame anyone. If he had had his way, though, he and Orcutt, Dr. Costigan and the others would probably be where the policemen were. They’d have been on the disappearing end of the human chain. At least then he’d know what the other side of the Eye looked like....
Miss Treat came in smiling, Devan thought, a little too ingratiatingly. She put the cup and saucer on his desk. The coffee smelled good.
“Half a teaspoon of sugar and light on the cream.”
“You’ve done it just right, Miss Treat.”
“I remembered...”
He sipped the coffee and looked at her, regretfully realizing how little it would take to make it a matter of moonlight and roses and... There was something on her mind.
“You say you don’t want to be reminded about last night,” she said.
“Did I? Do you want to say something about it?”
“Yes.” She colored faintly. “You want to get the men out, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well...” She seemed embarrassed.
“Go on, Miss Treat. Do you have any ideas?”
“This is sort of silly,” she said. “I’m sure somebody’s thought of it. At least you can tell me why it won’t work.”
“Go ahead.” He didn’t expect much, but he was desperate enough to listen to anything.
She cleared her throat. “Well, Mr. Traylor, did you ever play Twenty Questions?”
“Of course.” What was she driving at?
“Things are divided into three classes, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Animal, vegetable and mineral.”
“Don’t you see what I mean?” she said eagerly. “There could be two divisions—animate and inanimate, really. But in Twenty Questions you tell which class it is, subdividing the animate.”
A great light was turned on in Devan’s mind. The warmth of its glow spread through his tired body, traveling down every nerve channel and relaxing him.
“Both animal and vegetable matter are alive,” she said triumphantly.
Devan reached for the phone, dialed a number. He hoped Betty Peredge had reported for work. “You’ve done it, Miss Treat—maybe, that is. I don’t want to say anything to anyone until I have the answer. We’ll have to see about it first. Like Sam’s idea, it may seem as if it’s a solution and... Hello, Betty? Listen, Betty, have you plants in the windows there yet? Yes.... But you still have the sansevieria?... Good. Here’s what I want you to do. Put it on a long board and shove it into the Needle, draw it out and tell me what happens. Call me back.... Yes, that’s right. If it works we have Miss Beatrice Treat to thank. She’s my secretary and she’s standing right here right now.... Yeah. Call me back, will you? Right away.”
A few minutes later the phone rang.
“Devan?”
“Yes.”
“Betty.”
“Yes, I know. Well...?”
“The flowerpot comes out but the flowers stay in.”
When Betty Peredge proved that animal matter was not the only living substance that would go through the Eye, Devan did not shout for joy, remembering the madness that resulted from Sam Otto’s suggestion, which, intelligently handled, might have proved to be of value but which could not be tried again.
Devan asked her first whether or not anyone had observed her little experiment. She said the policeman on duty inside the reinstalled fence had watched her closely but that she was sure he didn’t see exactly what she had done.
“Let’s assume he doesn’t know what happened, then,” Devan said. “And then let’s keep quiet about it.”
So Betty put down the phone and stared at her flowerless flowerpot while Devan and Miss Treat walked up to Orcutt’s office.
“My God!” Orcutt said, his hand on the phone ready to lift it and call. “Let’s get right on it! Now we know how to get those boys back!”
Devan put out a restraining hand. “That’s not the way, Ed. We don’t want a fiasco like last night with TV cameras, tickets and speeches, do we?”
Orcutt frowned. “I see what you mean.”
By midafternoon a dozen workmen hired at triple pay dug up a Lombardy poplar tree twenty-five feet high from a back yard not six blocks from the factory site. The owner of the tree had been offered a price he could not turn down, no questions asked. He thought Devan was out of his mind but he was true to his word: he didn’t ask one question.
The tree was laid on a large flat-bottomed truck trailer and moved slowly through city streets to the Rasmussen Stove Company where its entry into the inner building through the large rear door went without mishap. The tree’s roots were enclosed in their original dirt in a hurriedly constructed wooden pot seven feet on the sides and eight feet deep; Devan didn’t want to chance the tree’s dying on the job.
“If it were any other kind of tree we’d have to cut off the branches to get it into the Eye and it might die,” Devan explained as workmen moved it on dollies across the floor.
“When are you going to move it into the opening?” Betty asked.
“As soon as we get the group together. Has anybody come around today?”
“Everybody’s been avoiding this place.”
The news, of course, could not keep. It wasn’t long before newsmen demanded entrance, according to the plant guard in the outside office. Devan went out to talk to them. A dozen men stood there.
“What’s going on?” one of them asked. “Why can’t we get in?”
“Yeah. Last night we were all over the place. What’s up?”
“Somebody said you’ve got a tree in there.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
Devan looked around at the alert faces, some of
them familiar to him by this time, smiled and put his hands up for quiet. “I wondered how long it would be before you boys showed up,” he said. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to deny anything.”
“What’s the tree for?” Pencils poised.
“We’re going to put it in the Eye.” Pencils moved.
“Thought only living matter could go in.”
“This is a living tree.”
“But why put a tree in? It can’t report back.”
“Somebody can crawl out on the tree and back again,” Devan explained.
“When’s this going to take place?”
Devan shrugged. “We’re trying to round up a few Inland people right now.”
“When are we getting in?”
“When we get ready.”
The newsmen and photographers protested, wanted to go in at once, so Devan, though he explained it might be hours before the trial, okayed their entrance, leaving it to the office guard to check their credentials. Devan arranged for them to have one of the unused offices; there were phones there and the office window gave them a good view of the floor so they could tell when things were happening.
A little later Orcutt showed up. “Say, that’s some tree you got.” He moved along it, bent several of the branches and they snapped back into place. “Must be alive. Won’t die in the warmth in here, will it?”
Devan shrugged. “I don’t think it will. If it does, it won’t be right away. There’ll be plenty of time for experimenting.”
“Let’s wheel it to the Eye and see if it goes in.”
A few minutes later Tooksberry and Holcombe came in and the four of them struggled beneath the many ceiling lights to push the tree that now lay across the three dollies.
“Somebody should have oiled the dolly wheels,” Orcutt said between grunts, a shoulder against one of the smooth, bare branches.
“I thought poplar was a light wood,” Devan said. “This one weighs a ton.”
“It’s that big pot,” Orcutt said, jerking his thumb toward the root end.
Several newsmen who were watching the tree’s progress across the floor came out of the office and helped push it toward the Eye. The tree rolled up to the fence, the men moved the fence open and then pushed the tree inch by inch inside the enclosure. Betty assisted by telling them which way to guide the treetop.
“You’re right there,” she announced finally. “A little more and it will be going in.”
The crew pushed with renewed vigor and the dolly wheels protested in shrill screeches.
“It’s in!”
They rushed to the front and saw that the top of the tree had vanished where it entered the energized area.
“It works,” Orcutt said.
“Well,” Devan said. “Let’s push it halfway in, while we’re at it.”
“Might as well.” Orcutt was wheezing from exertion. “But let’s catch our breaths first.” He sat on a nearby chair. “I’ve notified the board. They ought to be here. We sure could use them on this pushing detail, though.”
“It is work,” Holcombe said, sitting in another chair, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Who’s going in this time?” Tooksberry asked.
“You volunteering?”
“Not me. You’ll never get me in there.”
Betty walked over to where Devan was standing beside the tree, felt of a branch and said in a whisper, “How many newsmen did you say there were? Twelve, wasn’t it?”
“I think so.” He thought a moment. “Yes. I’m sure that’s right. Why?”
“Well, they’re all out of the office—I went there to make sure—and I count only eleven. The five who helped are standing over there and six others are sitting in chairs. You count them.”
He counted only eleven, too. “Check with the guard in the outer office, Betty. I could be wrong about that number.”
“I called Lieutenant Johnson,” Orcutt was saying. “Surprised he hasn’t come in yet.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after five.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to get in any deeper,” Holcombe said.
“Who’s going in it?” Tooksberry asked again.
“Somebody’d think you were worried about that, Howard,” Orcutt said. “Why do you keep asking?”
Tooksberry’s face showed his embarrassment. “Well, it’s just something you haven’t thought of. Who’d be silly enough to want to go now that everybody knows you don’t come back?”
“That’s why we have the tree,” Devan explained patiently. “The tree disappears inside just as a human being does.”
“You, maybe. Not me.”
“Whoever goes in this next time can go in on the tree, just move along it and, after he’s been inside long enough, move on out and report.”
“Look who’s coming,” Holcombe said, looking toward the outer office door.
Dr. Costigan and Sam Otto slowly and erratically were moving across the floor, their arms about each other’s waists. When they got close, the effects of their drinking were visible in their faces and in their eyes.
“What’s goin’ on?” Sam asked in a thick voice.
“Yeah. What’sha matter?”
Sam pointed to the doctor, said in an aside, “He always talks kinda funny when he’s had a few.”
The doctor stared straight ahead of him, his eyes steady, but because of a motion that began somewhere down by his ankles, his head had an erratic circular motion.
“We’ve been gone long time, Sham. A treesh growing outa the Eye.”
Sam focused his eyes as best he could. “There is a tree there. Remarkable.” He turned to Devan. “When did it start to grow?” He hiccupped, his unlighted cigar falling out of his mouth. He stooped, finally managed to pick it up.
“You fellows better go to the doctor’s office,” Orcutt said.
“You’re a total loss as you are. Mrs. Peredge will order you some coffee.”
“C’mon, Doc. Le’s go see Mrs. Peredge.”
“Yesh.” The doctor would have bowed but Sam yanked his arm, pulled him away.
A few minutes later half the poplar tree went into the Eye. The tree’s tight branches made it possible to move it into the four-foot opening without trimming a single one, as Devan knew it would. Looking at it from the side, it was as if someone had chopped the tree neatly off at the halfway mark. Those who had been pushing stood back to observe it.
“Well?” It was Tooksberry again.
“Yeah, I know,” Orcutt said. “Who’s going in it? Frankly, I don’t know. I’d like to.”
“Uh-huh,” Devan said. “I’ve got as much right as you.”
“Look,” Orcutt said, turning to him. “We’re not going to argue again, are we?”
“I hope not.”
“Your problem is solved.” A young man who had been standing near by came over to them. “I’m Jed Huston of the Sun-Times. I’d like to go.”
“You’re crazy,” Tooksberry said. “Don’t you know nobody’s come back?”
Jed, a medium-sized, crop-eared man in a neat plaid suit, flashed him a smile. “I know what it’s all about; I’ve kept up with it. It would be dangerous just to walk in. But now that you have a tree to climb in on, how could a guy lose? You climb in and climb out just as if the tree was out over a riverbank.”
“Yes,” Tooksberry said gravely, “but being out on a limb can be a dangerous thing.”
“I’m willing to take the chance. I’d bring back quite a story if I succeeded. What do you say?” He smiled again. There was a lot of humor in his blue eyes and, though he was slight of build, there was a certain sureness and smoothness about his actions that spoke well for his muscular fitness.
It was after six o’clock when the matter was finally settled. As soon as the other newspapermen heard Huston had volunteered to climb into the Eye on the tree, they all wanted to do it. But since Huston had been the first to volunteer, he was given the job.
By the time Jed Huston was ready to climb
on the tree and edge his way into the Eye, all the board members, Lieutenant Johnson, and Miss Treat had answered Orcutt’s invitation by appearing for the test.
“We thought it might prove an impossible task, this trying to find a way to rescue the men in the Eye,” Orcutt explained to everyone. “But Miss Beatrice Treat, whom I’m sure many of you know as Mr. Traylor’s secretary, came to our rescue with a simple solution. It takes an alert mind to think out a difficult problem so that the result seems quite simple and everybody can do it after that.” There was applause from the small group and Orcutt explained further what Miss Treat’s idea was and how the experiment was to be conducted.
Then Orcutt introduced Jed Huston, who had disrobed to his underwear. He would have worn nothing, since he knew he was going to lose his clothes in the Eye anyway, but he wore his shirt and shorts in deference to Miss Treat, Mrs. Peredge and Mrs. Petrie.
He flashed them all a smile, then jumped athletically from the floor, catching hold of several branches and swinging himself to the top of the lengthwise tree.
He started to work his way cautiously toward the Eye.
“Wait!”
The yell came from another part of the room and heads swiveled on necks trying to locate the owner of the voice.
“Don’t go in!”
Eyes came to focus on the far wall where, atop one of the large instrument panels, stood a man, his arms held high to draw attention. He was too far away to identify.
“No one is to go into the Needle’s Eye, brethren.”
Devan knew who it was then.
“The Grand Director of the Rescue of the Willing and the Wise has spoken,” Orvid Blaine said. “Even now Director Sudduth, Sister Abigail and twenty-two Workers for Rescue and Redemption are praying for you who have led five to their deaths in violation of God’s will.”
Jed Huston had stopped to stare at the man. Now he started toward the Eye again.
“Stop, I say!” The man bent down, picked up a long, iron pipe. “One step farther and I’ll throw this pipe down into all these wires. That will stop you.”
Huston stopped then and sat on a branch, elbow on knee, chin on fist.
“I forgot to tell you,” Betty whispered to Devan. “There were twelve newspapermen. I couldn’t get the information to you because I had to get some coffee for the doctor and Sam Otto.”