“Perhaps we could put that off till tomorrow,” Crader said. “I really must be getting back to headquarters.”
Nobel Kinsinger seemed about to protest, but finally he dismissed them with a wave of a hand. “Just track down whoever’s swindling me, Mr. Crader. Find them, and I’ll see you get a bonus from the government.”
“That’s hardly necessary.”
“Find them,” Kinsinger said, holding out his hand, and Crader saw that he was trembling. He was a man in fear. The most powerful person in the country, next to the President, and he was afraid.
* * * *
From his window the following morning, Carl Crader watched the nuclear ferry moving across New York harbor toward Staten Island. A few years ago the very idea of it had touched off demonstrations among the ban-the-atom brigades, but now it traveled back and forth every ten minutes without a murmur. Times were changing. He wondered, thinking about it, if even Nobel Kinsinger himself had been passed by in this 21st century world. Men no longer led invading forces down the streets of Havana or even ran for office on the theories Nobel Kinsinger had espoused back in the 1970s. The only war of importance in recent years had been fought by robot submarines on the floor of the Indian Ocean. It had lasted 12 hours, without any loss of life, and had finally been settled by a flying squad of United Nations inspectors.
“Thinking about it?” Earl Jazine asked, entering with his usual soft knock.
“Kinsinger? I suppose so.” Crader sighed and reached for a charfilter cigarette. “What do you think? Can you scam it?”
“Maybe, maybe not. You might be interested in talking with Kinsinger’s assistant, John Bunyon. He’s outside.”
“Bunyon? Here?” Somehow he had expected it. “Well, bring him in. We might as well talk to him together.”
Bunyon was a tall young man who looked pretty much as Crader had supposed he would. Black hair worn fashionably long, a brief-purse dangling from his waist. Somehow these new fashions hadn’t caught on with the over-thirty crowd, but Bunyon was still young enough to bring it off. Crader would have guessed his age at about 28.
“I’m pleased you came,” Crader said, continuing to study the man from across his cluttered deskette. “I wanted to have a talk with you. How was Rio?”
“Fine,” the young man answered. “But one day is too short a trip to enjoy it. It’s summer there now. I hated to come back to the cold weather.”
Crader nodded. “About the SEXCO…”
“He said that was the trouble. Old Kinsinger. He sent me here to see you.”
“Did he now?” It seemed that Kinsinger might almost be pointing the finger of suspicion at young Bunyon. “What do you know about the business?”
“Next to nothing, really, except that something’s happening with his SEXCO unit and it’s serious enough to get the Computer Cops in on it.”
Crader shot a glance at Jazine and saw him chuckle silently at the term. “Any idea who could be using the SEXCO besides Kinsinger?”
“Not unless it’s Linda Sale—his secretary.”
Crader nodded. “We’ve met Linda. You know her well?”
The young man shrugged. “Around the office.”
“Date her?”
He grew uneasy. “I’m a married man.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“A drink after work once or twice. Nothing more.”
“Do you have any other explanation to offer for the tampering with the SEXCO?”
“Sure. I think the old man made it all up.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
Bunyon shifted in his chair. “He’s gone a bit nuts lately. Frankly, I’ve been looking for another job. He’s got this whole room full of computers that are supposed to be projecting sales figures for Airwiper, and what does he do with them? He uses them to try and prove the existence of an Anti-Earth!”
“A what?” He saw that even Jazine had come alert.
“Anti-Earth. It’s a theory that apparently was quite popular a few decades back in the days of the flying saucer sightings. Some people said there was an undiscovered planet, of about the same size as Earth, whose revolution around the sun was always exactly opposite of Earth’s. It was always on the other side of the sun, eclipsed by the sun, and therefore could never be seen from Earth. They even had a name for it back then—they called it Clarion. Today, some believers call it Vulcan.”
“And Nobel Kinsinger believes this?”
“Of course he believes it. In fact, he’s getting ready to lead an invasion of Clarion-Vulcan, as soon as he can get enough spacecraft built.”
“An invasion?” Crader mused. “Like in his days of Cuban glory?”
“Exactly!” John Bunyon said. “Actually, computer work 40 years ago established that there could be no planet on the far side of the sun, because the pull of its gravity would have affected the orbit of Venus. Kinsinger is attempting to prove this old data wrong, and at the same time establish a trajectory for a space shot at the planet.”
“Why does he want to invade it?” Jazine asked. “Even supposing the planet is there.”
“They’re the enemy,” Bunyon said. “Like Cuba, 35 years ago. That’s the only reason he needs.”
Crader cleared his throat. “Of course if there were a hidden planet on the other side of the sun, it could have been observed from our moon station, in all probability—especially during a period of eclipse when the Earth passed between sun and moon.”
“He’s charted all that. He claims a small planet such as he imagines Clarion-Vulcan to be could still remain unseen behind the sun. The moon isn’t far enough from Earth to afford a sharp enough angle of observation.”
“Small planet? You said the same size as Earth.”
John Bunyon smiled. “In the Universe, Earth is a small planet.”
Fifteen minutes later, after he’d departed, Crader faced Earl Jazine. “What do you think, Earl?”
“Which one do we believe? Have we got a computer swindle or a nutty old guy who wants to conquer the universe?”
“He’s too wealthy to be just a nutty old guy, Earl. And if he is, the whole thing is out of our field. We deal in computers, not planets.”
“So what do we do, Chief?”
“I try to get some other work done around here. You go talk to the secretary, Miss Sale. That shouldn’t be too hard an assignment.”
“It’ll be a pleasure, if she’s still wearing that blue body-stocking.”
“She’s probably changed to a pink one today. Flesh-colored. I hear they’re all the rage.” He allowed himself a slight smile and then added, “Find out whose side she’s on, anyway. I’ll bet in advance that she backs up Bunyon’s story.”
Once he was alone, Crader turned his attention to the other reports on his desk. Some trouble with the master tax refund computer at Andover. Could be sabotage. He marked that one for his top technical team. The government always demanded the best of service. He turned over the next report and saw it concerned the traffic control computer at Kennedy Airport. They’d had trouble there before—and at Nixon Airport in New Jersey. With almost all airfreight routed by computer these days, there was a great temptation to attempt a rerouting of it for personal gain.
Crader put down the reports after a time and found his mind drifting back to Nobel Kinsinger. Finally he dialed a Washington number he knew by heart and asked for some information about Nobel Kinsinger’s activities. He held the phone for five minutes, waiting, until a voice came back to report that Kinsinger was indeed building two spacecraft, under the permission granted by the lndependent Space Exploration Act of 2003.
He was still thinking about that an hour later when Earl Jazine came back from talking with Miss Sale. “You look happy,” Cradcr commented.
“Why not? I ju
st spent a most enjoyable 90 minutes with a lovely lady. I might even arrange to see her again.”
“So get to the point. What does she say about the SEXCO flap?”
“You lose your bet. She says someone is getting to the machine somehow. She knows it, because one of the sell orders was put through on a day when Kinsinger wasn’t even in the office. He was home sick, and she swears no one went near the machine all day.”
“She’s sure of the date?”
“Positive. It was Friday the l 3th, and she remembers connecting that with her boss’s illness. She’s superstitious, I guess.”
“And what about John Bunyon? Anything between them?”
“Nothing. She had a few drinks with him after work, but she thinks he’s queer or something. Spends a lot of his time in the South Village with the flippies.”
“I’m surprised. He didn’t look the type.”
“How can you tell, without seeing him naked? She says she saw him buttoning his shirt in the office one day, and his chest was all painted.”
Crader sighed and shuffled the reports on his desk. “So where does that leave us?”
Jazine shrugged. “Either the girl’s lying, or the machine’s being bugged from off the premises.”
“I don’t like either possibility at the moment, but you’d better check out the bugging possibility. Wiring, induced current, the works.” He remembered a case in San Francisco the previous year, in which an induction coil around a cable had been used to feed false information into a payroll computer.
“I’ll get right on it, Chief. Who should I use?”
“Carter and House. They’re the best I can spare. And send Judy in on your way out. I’ve got some letters to dictate that I can’t trust to the Autotype.”
The girls in the CIB were forbidden to wear body-stockings on duty, but Judy still managed an air of quiet sensuality in her old-fashioned miniskirt. Crader was past the age where it mattered, but he noticed that Jazine always gave her a second look in the morning. He was never one to let his family hamper his girl-chasing activities.
“Judy, take a letter to Washington. I want it to go out by rocket mail this afternoon…”
* * * *
That was Wednesday. On Thursday morning, glancing casually over Jazine’s notes, he made a discovery. “Earl,” he spoke into the wireless intercom, “can you step in for a moment?”
Jazine was smiling. He always smiled in the morning, though it sometimes wore thin by noon. “What’s up, Chief?”
“You made a list of the dates last month when Kinsinger’s SEXCO was tampered with.”
“Sure. You’ve got it right there.”
“Notice anything strange about it?”
“Not especially.”
“The false orders always go out over SEXCO on Fridays. Sometimes there are other days as well, but there’s always something on Fridays.”
“You’re right,” Jazine agreed, looking over his shoulder. “And Linda Sale mentioned a Friday the 13th, too.”
“Have Carter and House had any luck checking out the circuits?”
“None so far. They should be just about finished now.”
Crader nodded. “If they don’t find anything, suppose you and I go over there tomorrow and baby-sit with that SEXCO? We’ll see if it really can be gimmicked without anyone touching it.”
“Good idea,” Jazine agreed. “Although we’ll probably scare away our villain.”
“Maybe not.”
But before they could put the plan into operation, there was a noonday report from Carter and House. The news was brought in by Jazine right after lunch. “The SEXCO isn’t gimmicked in any way, but they turned up something else of interest. While they were testing the induction coil on a telephone line, they accidentally tapped into a conversation between Linda Sale and our boy Bunyon. He’s taking her down to the South Village tonight, to some sort of flippie gathering.”
“Oh?” There were times when Crader’s mind ran to wild ideas. This was one of them. “Could you and Judy dress up like a couple of flippies and crash the gathering, do you think?”
Earl Jazine rolled his eyes. “What’ll my wife say about that? Getting all painted up…”
“Tell her it’s for the Bureau,” Crader said with a smile. “She’ll understand.”
* * * *
He drove them to the South Village area himself in one of the less blatant official cars. Judy’s face was a blazing mixture of flippie colors, and she wore a modified body-stocking with the traditional flippie boots and belt. “I’ll freeze to death in this outfit,” she complained.
“Come on,” Jazine said with a chuckle. “Flippies aren’t supposed to mind the cold. They’re supposed to be flipped out.”
Crader remained in the car, turning on the one-way polarization so no one could see inside. He knew that wouldn’t attract attention, because many people used it when they parked their cars, to discourage thieves. No one was going to break into a car when they couldn’t see what—or who—might be waiting for them inside. He was especially interested in the arrivals at the meeting hall across the street, and he realized quite quickly that the gathering was open to non-flippie types as well as the usual South Village residents. He saw Bunyon and Linda Sale arrive together, dressed in regular office clothes. Perhaps he wasn’t as much of a flippie as they’d been led to believe.
Ten minutes after the beginning of the gathering, Crader left the car and crossed over to the entrance. A large sign outside depicted the joint U.S.-Russian moonport and space observatory. It was to be an evening of lunar happenings. The interior of the place was bathed in a cold white light of the intensity to suggest moonlight, and several of the flippie couples were swaying to some computerized musical sounds. He saw Jazine and Judy at once, standing against one of the foam rubber walls, but there was no sign of Bunyon and Linda.
Crader had been watching the multi-media proceedings of light and sound and smell for some fifteen minutes when a cry went up from the far end of the room. Someone had shouted, “Blue moon!” and others had taken up the chant. “Blue moon! BLUE MOON!” Then the nearest of the flippies fell upon the chanters, and a tussle was in progress. Crader knew that the “Blue Moon” people opposed the joint U.S.-Russian moonbase. They wanted the moon to stay blue, or American, rather than become even partly red, or Russian. The base had functioned well, with surprisingly little friction, for more than five years, but that didn’t cool the tempers of the “Blue Moon” people.
Crader was startled to see Linda Sale fighting her way through the crowd to the side of the Blue Moon chanters. What was she up to? What…? Someone yanked at the smooth stretch fabric of her body-stocking and a seam ripped at her shoulder. Then suddenly John Bunyon was at her side, fighting off the grasping hands. The loudspeaker bellowed a cry for order, but the situation was already out of hand. Crader was shoved aside by the panicking crowd. He had a glimpse of Earl Jazine drawing the M-3 pistol from beneath his flippie costume, and then someone crashed into him from behind. He went down on his face beneath the crowd.
* * * *
When Crader opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Earl Jazine’s painted face peering down at him. “You all right, Chief?”
“I guess so. What happened?” The area of his vision gradually enlarged and he saw Judy standing by Earl’s side.
“The flippies got into a fight with the Blue Mooners. Bunyon and the girl were right in the middle of it somehow, and I saw a guy go at them with a knife. That’s when I used my gun.”
Crader struggled to his feet. “Sorry to involve you in all this, Judy. I didn’t know it would be dangerous.” The moonlit hall was almost empty now, except for a few riot police and hangers-on.
“That’s all right,” she said. “It was exciting while it lasted. Better than being a secr
etary all day.”
“What about Bunyon and the girl?”
Earl Jazine shrugged his broad shoulders. “They got away in the confusion. Apparently unhurt. The police are questioning the guy with the knife, but he’s not talking.”
“A flippie?”
“No. One of the Blue Moon crowd. He seemed to know them. He went right for Bunyon with his knife.”
“Did you have to shoot him?”
“In the arm. He’ll be all right. We got the guy that landed on you, too, but he’s harmless enough. Just a bit high on moon juice.”
Crader smiled. “Let’s get out of here.” He gazed up at the great diorama of the moon base. “From now on maybe we’d better stick to computers.”
* * * *
Friday was a busy day in the offices of Airwiper Inc., and Nobel Kinsinger was not particularly pleased at the prospect of Crader and Jazine spending the entire day camped in his offices. They’d arrived early, before any of the other employees, and hadn’t taken their eyes from the locked SEXCO unit since the start of the business day.
“I have things to do, stock to buy!” Kinsinger protested.
“It’ll wait till Monday,” Crader assured him. “The false buy and sell orders usually come on Fridays, and this is the only way to track them down. Nobody uses the machine—not you or Miss Sale or John Bunyon—and that’ll at least confirm or deny Miss Sale’s story that orders went out without anyone touching it last Friday the 13th.”
All went well until just before noon. “I have to use it,” Kinsinger decided. “I want to sell some Radiostar shares.”
“Call a broker,” Crader told him. “Nobody unlocks this machine.” Kinsinger sighed and went meekly to the telephone.
When the Stock Exchange finally closed for the day at three o’clock, Crader relaxed a bit. “Should I check with them?” Jazine asked.
“Yes. Get on the phone and have them run a computer check on this SEXCO unit. Tell them to report back to us at once.”
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