“Aren’t we getting a little off course?” I asked.
“Ah—yes. The problem. What is a problem is the chicken that crossed the road. It used its extra-strength beak to peck its way right through this security fence. But the puzzling aspect is its motivation. It crossed that belt highway—a dangerous undertaking even for a human—and headed for the field as if it were going home. And yet the chicken was hatched right here within these walls. How could it be homesick for something it had never known?”
“How indeed?” I stared bleakly through fence at the highway and the deserted field opposite. What was there to attract a chicken—even one of Professor Mintor’s super-chickens—to that barren bit of land? “I should have a look at it,” I decided. “Can you show me the spot where the chicken crossed the highway?”
He led me around a large pen to a spot in the fence where a steel plate temporarily blocked a jagged hole. I knelt to examine the shards of complex, multi-conductor mesh, once more impressed by the security precautions. “I’d hate to meet your hybrid chickens on a dark night, Professor.”
“They would never attack a human being, or even another creature,” Mintor quickly assured me. “The beak is used only for cracking seed hulls, and perhaps in self-defense.”
“Was it self-defense against the fence?”
He held up his hands. “I can’t explain it.”
I moved the steel plate and stooped to go through the hole. In that moment I had a chicken’s-eye view of the belt highway and the barren field beyond, but they offered no clues. “Be careful crossing over,” Mintor warned. “Don’t get your foot caught!”
Crossing a belt highway on foot—a strictly illegal practice—could be dangerous to humans and animals alike. With eight lanes to traverse it meant hopping over eight separate electric power guides—any one of which could take off a foot if you mis-stepped. To imagine a chicken with the skill to accomplish it was almost more than I could swallow. But then I’d never before been exposed to Professor Mintor’s super-chickens.
The empty lot on the other side of the belt highway held nothing of interest to human or chicken, so far as I could see. It was barren of grass or weeds, and seemed nothing more than a patch of dusty earth dotted with a few pebbles. In a few sun-baked depressions I found the tread of auto tires, hinting that the vacant lot was sometimes used for parking.
I crossed back over the belt highway and reentered the Tangaway compound through the hole in the fence. “Did you find anything?” Mintor asked.
“Not much. Exactly what was the chicken doing when it was recovered?”
“Nothing. Pecking at the ground as if it were back home.”
“Could I see it? I gather it’s no longer kept outside.”
“After the escape we moved them all to the interior pens. There was some talk of notifying Washington since we’re under government contract, but I suggested we call you in first. You know how the government is about possible security leaks.”
“Is Tangaway the only research farm doing this sort of thing?”
“Oh, no! We have a very lively competitor named Beaverbrook Farms. That’s part of the reason for all this security. We just managed to beat them out on the ZIP-1000 contract.”
I followed him into a windowless room lit from above by solar panes. The clucking of the chickens grew louder as we passed into the laboratory proper. Here the birds were kept in a large enclosure constantly monitored by overhead TV. “This one,” Mintor said, leading me to a pen that held but a single chicken with its oddly curved beak. It looked no different from the others.
“Are they identified in any way? Laser tattoo, for instance?”
“Not at this stage of development. Naturally, when we ship them out for space use they’re tattooed.”
“I see.” I gazed down at the chicken, trying to read something in those hooded eyes. “It was yesterday that it crossed the highway?”
“Yes.”
“Did it rain here yesterday?”
“No. We had a thunderstorm two days ago, but it passed over quickly.”
“Who first noticed the chicken crossing the road?”
“Granley—one of our gate guards. He was checking security in the parking lot when he spotted it, about halfway across. By the time he called me and we got over there it was all the way to the other side.”
“How did you get it back?”
“We had to tranquilize it, but that was no problem.”
“I must speak to this guard, Granley.”
“Follow me.”
The guard was lounging near the gate. I’d noticed him when I arrived and parked my car.
“This is Barnabus Rex, the scientific investigator,” Mintor announced. “He has some questions for you.”
“Sure,” Granley replied, straightening up. “Ask away.”
“Just one question, really,” I said. “Why didn’t you mention the car that was parked across the highway yesterday?”
“What car?”
“A parked car that probably pulled away as soon as you started after the chicken.”
His eyes widened. “My God, you’re right! I’d forgotten it till now! Some kids; it was painted all over stripes, like they’re doing these days. But how did you know?”
“Sun-baked tire tracks in the depressions where water would collect. They told me a car had been there since your rain two days ago. Your employees use the lot here, and no visitors would park over there when they had to cross the belt highway to reach you.”
“But what does it mean?” Professor Mintor demanded.
“That your mystery is solved,” I said. “Let me have a tranquilizer gun and I’ll show you.”
I took the weapon he handed me and led the way back through the research rooms to the penned-up chickens. Without hesitation I walked up to the lone bird and tranquilized it with a single shot.
“Why did you do that?” Mintor asked.
“To answer your riddle.”
“All right. Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Because somebody wanted to play back the contents of a tape-recorder implanted in its body. For some time now you’ve been spied upon, Professor Mintor. I imagine by your competitor, Beaverbrook Farms.”
“Spied upon! By that—chicken?”
“Exactly. It seemed obvious to me from the first that the fence-pecking chicken was not one of your brood. It was much too long and much too homesick. But if it wasn’t yours it must have been added to your flock surreptitiously and that could only have been for the purposes of industrial espionage. Since you told me Beaverbrook was doing similar work, this has to be their chicken. I think an x-ray will show a micro-miniaturized recorder for listening in on your secret conversations.”
“Damnedest thing I ever heard,” Professor Mintor muttered, but he issued orders to have the sleeping chicken x-rayed.
“It was a simple task for them to drop the intruding chicken over your fence at night, perhaps lassoing one of your birds and removing it so the count would be right. Those fences are all right for detecting any sort of bugging equipment, but they aren’t very good at stopping ordinary intrusion—otherwise that wandering chicken would have set off alarms when it started to cut a hole there. Beaverbrook has been recording your conversations, probably trying to stay one jump ahead on the next government contract. They couldn’t use a transmitter in the chicken because of your electronic fence, so they had to recover the bird itself to read out the recording. At the right time, the chicken pecked its way through the fence and started across the highway, but when the guard spotted it the waiting driver panicked and took off. The chicken was left across the road without any way to escape.”
“But how did the chicken know when to escape?” asked Mintor. “Could they have some kind of electronic homing device�
�?”
I smiled, letting the Professor’s puzzlement stretch out for a moment. “That was the easiest part,” I said at last. “Imprinting.”
“But…”
“Exactly. The highly distinctive stripes on the car. The Beaverbrook people evidently trained the chicken from—ah—hatching to associate that pattern with home and food and so on.”
A technician trotted up to the professor, waving a photographic negative. “The x-rays—there was something inside that chicken!”
“Well, Mr. Rex, you were right,” the professor conceded.
“Of course, in a sense the chicken did cross the road to get to other side,” I admitted. “They always do.”
“Have you solved many cases like this one?”
I merely smiled. “Every case is different, but they’re always a challenge. I’ll send you my bill in the morning—and if you ever do need me again, just call.”
ABOUT “THE DALTONIC FIREMAN”
In an interplanetary fire department in which green suspenders are a symbolic link to earth, one fireman has taken to wearing red suspenders. Barnabus Rex is given the task of finding out why.
First Publication—Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine, October 1980.
THE DALTONIC FIREMAN
I’d been summoned to the Mid-America launch center by its director of operations, a white-haired man named Ben Frilay, who had a problem. It was always an impressive place to visit, with its rows of launch vehicles at the ready, waiting to blast off in a day or two or three for destinations as close as the moon colonies or as distant as the planets of Barnard’s Star. It made me aware of all the people who wanted to escape our crowded planet.
“Barnabus Rex, the solver of scientific riddles?”
“Correct,” I acknowledged. “And you would be Ben Frilay.”
He ran a nervous hand through his long white mane. “This may be a bit out of your line—”
“If there’s a riddle to be solved, I’m always interested.”
“It’s one of our firemen here at the Launch Center. He’s taken to wearing red suspenders.”
“What’s so unusual about that?”
“Well, you’ve probably noticed we all wear green. Green is the earth color, and it’s becoming something of a symbol with us. It’s the last color departing spacemen see, and the first color they see on returning. These criss-crossed suspenders don’t really hold up our uniform—their function is purely decorative. But three times in recent weeks a chief fireman named Scott Amberson has come on duty wearing red suspenders! We’ve had to send him back to change each time, but he has refused any explanation.”
“Is he on duty now?”
“I’m not certain of his schedule. We can go see.” He led me along a polished metal corridor that connected the office with Firing Control. “You understand the reason for my concern. If Amberson has mental problems it’s essential we discover them at once. We can’t have an unbalanced fireman launching ships into outer space. One false estimate, a single miscalculation, could cost us the lives of hundreds of people.”
“Of course,” I agreed, letting my gaze shift to a trim young female fireman who’d just left Firing Control and passed us in the corridor.
Once we entered the massive central chamber with its control consoles and hologram viewing screens, I saw that fully half the on-duty firemen were women, working the colored buttons and knobs before them with all the skill of the men. A fireman was an occupation perhaps unique to the demands of 21st century space travel, though certainly it had its roots in the professions of the previous century’s air traffic controllers and moon launch experts. In those days a fireman had been a person who fought fires—a fire fighter—rather than one who fired the great rockets for their voyage across space. Oddly enough, women didn’t object to being called firemen, so long as their pay and working conditions were identical with those of the males.
“Is Scott Amberson on duty?” Frilay asked one of the young women.
“Not till four. He’s on evenings this week.”
Frilay turned to me. “We’ll have to visit him in his quarters.”
“He lives here on base?”
“Most of our firemen do—the unmarried ones, at least—because of the duty hours. He shares a room with an apprentice fireman named Sussex.”
“Not a woman, I hope.”
Frilay looked startled at the suggestion. “No, no—the sexes are strictly segregated in the living quarters. We have enough trouble as it is.”
I followed him into an elevator that lifted us effortlessly to the living quarters in a matter of a few seconds. But here too we were in for a disappointment. Scott Amberson had stepped out for a moment. His roommate, Tony Sussex, offered us chairs and a cold beer. We accepted the chairs but declined the beers.
“I hope Scott’s not in trouble,” he said, trying to get a rise out of Frilay.
“Amberson’s one of the best firemen we have,” the director said.
“But you’re concerned about that suspender business.”
“Naturally. Any erratic act by a fireman causes concern. Has he spoken to you about it?”
Tony Sussex shook his head. “I wouldn’t even have known it happened except for bar gossipers.” There was a noise at the door. “I think this is him now.”
Scott Amberson was a man in his mid-thirties—perhaps ten years older than Sussex. He was handsome enough to have attracted the attention of the women firemen, but right at the moment his face reflected the sudden concern of finding the operations director waiting in his room with a stranger.
“Scott, this is Barnabus Rex.”
Amberson eyed me uncertainly. “A doctor?”
“Nothing like that,” I assured him. “I’m more of an investigator. I solve scientific riddles.”
“Is that what I’ve become?”
“Not necessarily.” I glanced at the other two. “Is there somewhere we could talk alone?”
“Stay right here,” Sussex said. “I was going out anyway.”
“And I’ll be in my office,” Ben Frilay told me. “Stop by when you’re finished.”
Once we were alone, Amberson seemed to relax a bit. “It’s about the suspenders, isn’t it?”
“Yes. The operations director is naturally concerned.”
“Naturally.”
“Can you offer any explanation for your behavior?”
He shook his head. “None.”
“Did you deliberately wear those red suspenders against the orders of the director?”
“I have nothing to say about it.”
I stood up. “May I see the drawer where your uniforms are kept?”
“Right here.” He pressed a release button on the top of his dresser and the drawer rolled silently out. I stared at the neatly folded green suits with their darker green decorative suspenders.
“Do you have any red suspenders?”
“For off-duty wear only. They’re kept in a separate drawer.”
“I see. Tell me something, Scott—how much are you paid as a fireman?”
“The standard fifty thousand. It’s a very good position, much sought after.”
“I imagine it is.”
“What will they do about me?”
“I suppose it depends upon my report.”
His eyes were pleading. “The job means a great deal.”
“You know what the trouble is, don’t you? You suffer from a rare malady called daltonism—red-green color blindness. It was rare in the last century, when it was a favorite fictional device of mystery story writers, and it’s even rarer today when research into gene irregularities has reached such a high point. But it still turns up occasionally.”
“You have to realize, Mr. Rex, that it doesn’t interf
ere with my work in the slightest degree.”
I remembered the colored lights on the console. “But it presents the possibility of error when those lights start flashing just before blast-off.”
“No, no,” he insisted. “I’ve memorized all the positions. When a light flashes I know at once whether it’s supposed to be red or green!”
“Still, the director of operations must be told. It’s his decision to make.”
“I suppose so,” Amberson agreed.
“I’ll do what I can for you,” I promised, and left him alone in his room.
* * * *
Ben Frilay was waiting for me in his office. “Had any success, Mr. Rex?”
“A great deal. Your riddle is solved.”
“Solved!”
“Why does a fireman wear red suspenders? Because he suffers from daltonism, a form of red-green color blindness.”
“My God! I never thought of that!”
“People don’t think of it very often these days, because it’s become so rare.”
“The launch lights! How does he manage it?”
“Claims he has the positions memorized. Chances are he’s as skilled as any of your other firemen. And as safe.”
“But the red suspenders—”
“Ah, yes—the red suspenders. He keeps them in a separate drawer from his green ones, you know. It’s impossible to suppose he could make the mistake three times in a matter of weeks after going through several years without that sort of slip-up.”
“But he did make the mistake! That’s why I called you in!”
I shook my head. “Somebody made it for him. Somebody deliberately substituted the red suspenders for the green ones in his drawer on those three occasions, knowing he couldn’t tell the difference. And that somebody could only have been his roommate, Tony Sussex—the one person with the opportunity to make the switch and the motive for doing so.”
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