“What is this?” he demanded. “How’d I get here anyway? And if it comes to that, just where am I?”
“In the North Tower,” answered Margie. “Dirk used to live here when he was a boy and he rigged up a few small gimmicks to plague people. One of them was a gadget to alter the directional signs. He had the controls in here. This was his room.”
“You still didn’t tell me why I’m here.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Dirk. “You’ve been had, Fletcher. That uncle of mine has led you around with a ring through your nose.”
Mal looked at him narrowly.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
Dirk stepped over to one of the walls, pressed a button and a panel slid back revealing an assortment of switches, speakers and screens.
“I listened to your conversations,” he said. “Both of them.” He pressed two buttons and the screens above each lit up, one showing the interior of Vanderloon’s office, the other the Alien Mal had seen earlier represented on the screen. It was still so dark he could barely make the Sparrian out. Mal turned back to Dirk.
“Well?” he said. “What of it? Aside from the fact you’ve been prying into something that isn’t strictly your business?”
“My business? It is my business!” said Dirk. “You’re blind like most of the rest of the world. The Aliens are out to take us over; and my uncle’s working hand in glove with them.”
“Archaist nonsense,” snorted Mal.
“Nonsense!” echoed Dirk vehemently. “Do you believe what you heard from my uncle and that?” He pointed to the second screen.
“I’m a scientist,” replied Mal a little stiffly. “If the evidence warrants it, I’ll believe it.”
“I’ll give you evidence,” said Dirk. “How’d you like to have another talk with that so-called Alien?”
Mal stared at him. “What do you mean?” he asked. Dirk turned to his secretary.
“Take him down, Margie,” he said.
“Down where?” demanded Mal. Dirk indicated the Alien’s room on the screen.
“There,” he said succinctly.
Amused, Mal let himself be led by the hand through another panel in the wall and down the stationary steps of an archaic stairway. The light in this narrow passage was so dim as to be practically nonexistent; but Margie’s small fingers in his own led him surely on. He followed her down the stairway, along a narrow winding passage and out through another panel into a hallway. The hallway had a dissolving window opening on the little lawn Mal had crossed previously on his way to the Alien’s apartment. With Margie he crossed it again and entered, and found himself once more facing the Sparrian. •
“Now what?” he demanded of Margie, lowering his voice in spite of himself to a whisper, for the dim shape at the far end of the dark room was still impressive.
“Now, what do you think?” demanded the
Sparrian, suddenly, in its flat mechanical tones. “Turn on the light.”
Mal jumped.
“You turn on the light, Margie,” directed the voice.
Behind him Mal heard a muted click and the room stood out suddenly in bright illumination. Blinking his eyes against the sudden glare, Mal made out the Sparrian, a green-colored sausage shape with—he had been right—two antennae sprouting from one end.
“Is that you, Ten Drocke?” he asked incredulously. For having once made up his mind that the Sparrian was a living creature, he found giving up the idea was hard.
“It sure is,” replied the Sparrian. “Now, do you start to believe me?”
Mal strode over and stretched out his hand to explore the green skin. It was leathery to the touch and cold.
“Give him the knife, Margie.”
Mal looked up as Margie pressed the hilt of a small, sharp blade into his hand. Cautiously he slid it edgewise over the skin until a flap fell back, to reveal a maze of metal rods and wires, the interior supports for the so-called Sparrian.
“Good job, huh?” said Dirk, still speaking from the voice-box in the dummy’s head.
Mal’s lips thinned to a hard line. He straightened up and stepped back, letting the hand holding the knife fall to his side.
Margie produced a little instrument that she ran over the edges of the cut pseudo-skin, flowing them back together once more. Then she took the knife from Mal, and led him again out and back to the tower apartment.
“Satisfied?” inquired Dirk, as the two of them re-entered.
“Not by a lot,” said Mal. “What’s your angle in all this?”
The tall young man took him feverishly by the arm and led him over to a window.
“Do you see that?” said Dirk, indicating the estate spread out below. “This was waste land before the Federation stopped that ship headed for Arcturus. Skills taken from Alien botanists replaced the top soil. Alien science dreamed up the materials for the buildings. Alien technology constructed them. Money from Alien trade keeps it going. You can’t point to one human item in this whole structure. Can anyone look at that and say the solar system still belongs to humanity?”
Mal gently freed his arm from the other’s grasp.
“I’ve heard all this before,” he said. “From other Archaists.”
“But you don’t believe it,” said Dirk. “Not even now when I’ve pointed out how it concerns you yourself!”
“Can’t you see what Dirk is saying?” said Margie. “He’s pointing out to you that the Company is deliberately killing the faster-than-light drive research.”
Mal snapped his head around to stare at her.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “Why would they do that?”
“Because the Company stands to benefit from things as they are,” said Dirk. “And because there’s a small group in it, with my uncle at the head, who see their chance to take over—not only the Company, but the whole system, if they can be given a few more years to get themselves dug in. That’s the trouble with people nowadays—they don’t care any more. My uncle is out to take over. And the Aliens are behind him.”
“Why?”
“Because they can’t take us over openly without open war. But they could through a puppet leader like my uncle.”
Mal snorted noncommittally.
“Doesn’t make sense,” he said. “When they could blow us to bits before breakfast and never notice the effort..”
“Maybe they can’t blow us to bits—ever think of that?” said Dirk. “What do we know about them, except that they’ve got a faster-than-light drive and bigger ships than we have?”
Mal snorted again. But in spite of himself he was stirred. Fantastic as it seemed, Vanderloon had actually lied to him in an attempt to stop work on his drive—his theory—and the theory was Mal’s obsession, the one big work-to-be of his life. He wandered away from the other two and stood looking out the window, thinking.
Dirk looked at him, his lean face searching. “Do you want to do something about the situation?” he asked.
“I’ll resign and build it myself!” said Mal. “How?” demanded Dirk. “Even if my uncle would let you get away with it—which he won’t—where would you get the money to do it?” Dirk’s speech sobered Mal. The principle of his drive was what might happen if weak force fields were used to align and synchronize the basic wave components of the object to be moved. A simple-sounding job, but not one that was undertaken with what every man has lying around the house. Mal himself had a few thousand saved; but these were about as adequate as the contents of a child’s piggy bank. He turned back to Dirk and Margie.
“I don’t know,” he said heavily. “What sort of idea have you got?”
“It’s Dirk’s idea,” said Margie.
“It all hinges on my gaining control of my Company stock,” said Dirk. “It’s that stock that gives uncle Peer his authority in the Company. He doesn’t own much in his own right. But he’s been administering the estate since I was fifteen. My age of discretion was left up to him, and he keeps delaying the time when he’ll
have to hand the stock over.”
“Well, how are you going to get it?” asked Mal. “That’s the thing. It’ll take a court battle to end all court battles. And that’ll take a young fortune in cash, which I haven’t got now. But the point is, there’s a way to get it. I grew up in this house for fifteen years before Uncle Peer moved in. There’s a time-lock safe in one of the ground-floor rooms keyed to the personal vibrations of all living family members. In it there’s ten million in cash that my father kept on hand for emergencies. If I can get my hands on that—”
“Why haven’t you done it before?” asked Mal.
“It’s walled up,” said Dirk. “My uncle didn’t know it was there so he had it built over when he added on a new section about six years back. There’s Company Police making regular rounds of this place. The most you can count on is half an hour’s free time to tear down the wall and open the safe. And one man can’t do it in that length of time. On the other hand, with ten million, cash, I couldn’t just hire the first person I met to help me.”
Mal hesitated. The whole business had a fantastic flavor to it. Unconsciously, he turned to Margie for confirmation of this wild tale. She nodded seriously.
“You’ve got no idea how efficient Vanderloon’s spy system is,” she said. She hesitated, as if gathering courage, then went on. “For instance, I’m supposed to be informing on Dirk.”
Mal stared at her in amazement. Then, wrenching his thoughts back to the matter at hand, he turned back to the tall man.
“What happens if I help you?” he asked.
“We take the money and hide out somewhere,” answered Dirk. “I get my court fight under way—and you go ahead with the drive, financed by me.”
“But look here—” Mal said. “They’ll be looking for me now—”
“No, they won’t,” answered Dirk. “The attendant at the landing field’s a friend of mind. He won’t be reporting that you haven’t left yet; and with all the other flitters and flyers out there, nobody’ll notice that yours is still on the ground.”
Mal sighed. He did not like Dirk’s ideas; but they seemed at the moment the only alternative to giving up the drive altogether.
“It’s a deal,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE THREE OF them waited in the apartment that had once belonged to Dirk until the sky faded beyond the dissolving windows and sunset gave way to night. As the automatic lighting of the room came on, throwing the space beyond the windows into deeper, purer blackness, so that they seemed walled off and more secluded than before, Dirk gave the signal and they started off, down another of the secret passages such as that by which Margie had led Mal to the Sparrian. It led them by a route too complicated for Mal’s sense of direction to follow, down and around until they finally came out on a different lawn.
“There!” whispered Dirk, as the three of them emerged into the night air.
They halted. Across the dimly lit, open space was what appeared to be a small summerhouse attached to a wing of the main building.
“In there,” said Dirk.
They flitted like silent-winged owls across the grass, up the few shallow marble steps that led to the summerhouse’s dim, cool interior.
“Sh!” whispered Dirk, halting them again. Mal, startled, caught himself with one foot in mid-air. He put it down cautiously.
“There goes the guard,” said Dirk. “We timed it just right.”
There was a whisper of booted feet on pavement, and the shadow of a man carrying a warp rifle looped over his shoulder went past on the screen of one window opening. The sound of footsteps died away.
“Now,” said Dirk. From the inside of his doublet he produced a couple of collapsible crowbars and a pocket cutting torch. He fumbled with the latter. There was a snap, a sputter, and the hot blue flame of the torch sprang to life, throwing gigantic shadows on the summerhouse wall.
“Stand back now,” said Dirk. He applied the torch to the walls and cut an outline of something the size of a small door. When he had finished, he turned off the torch, unfolded the crowbars, and handed one to Mal.
“I’ll take this side,” he said. “You take that. Stick your point in where the torch cut, and pry.”
Mal obliged. A quick thrust of his arm drove the point of the crowbar into the crack. He heaved. Dirk heaved. Both men grunted and for a moment it looked as if the section of wall were going to resist the best of their efforts. Then there was a straining creak, the section gradually began to tilt outward, tottered for a second half in, and half out, and fell finally with a tremendous crash.
“Blast!” said Dirk. “We should have put something underneath it. That noise’ll wake everybody.”
“Fine time to think of that,” grunted Mal. Margie was annoyedly brushing dust out of her hair. “Well, now that you’ve got it, open it up.”
Dirk was peering at the lock on the “newly-uncovered” door.
“Just a minute,” he said. “I’ve got to remember how you uncover the lock hole. Let’s see, you twist the lever and lift this little cover—”
“Who’s there?” shouted a voice from outside suddenly.
“Oh,” breathed Margie. “The guard!”
“Hurry up,” said Mal.
“I can’t,” said Dirk, “The cover’s stuck.”
“Let me do it,” said Mal.
“Too late—” said Margie. “Here’s the guard.” The sound on the resilient pavement outside was now the slap of running feet. They turned and dived for the entrance just in time to collide with the guard as he entered. There was a thud, four grunts, and the guard picked himself up just in time to see three figures vanish into the interior of the mansion.
“Help!” shouted the guard. “Stop!” And having missed his chance at his targets, he discharged a blast of his warp rifle straight up in the air by way of a general alarm.
Mal, Dirk and Margie found themselves racing along moving passageways with the mansion beginning to hum like an aroused beehive about them. Voices called excitedly from rooms as they raced past. Somewhere, some kind of an alarm was going off. Over loud-speakers at various intervals along the corridors, a babble of voices could be heard issuing confused and contradictory orders to the contingent of Company Guards on the premises.
“This way!” yelled Mal.
“No, this way!” cried Dirk.
“No. Wait!” called Margie. “Stop!” She grabbed both of them and dragged her heels, forcing a halt.
“Now, look,” she said. “We can’t just run. We’ve got to find some place to hide.”
“My flyer,” said Mal. “We’ll take off.”
“No, wait,” broke in Dirk. “That’s no good. We’d never make it. I’ve got a better idea—my old underground tunnel to outside. You know what I mean, Margie?”
“I’ve heard you mention it.” She thought a minute. “It means we have to go back to your room.”
“That’s all right,” said Dirk. “We’re near the delivery ramp.” And he led the way, again at a run, around a corner and onto a steep, narrow little ramp that rolled swiftly upward.
As the delivery ramp carried them up to the tower, the sounds of pursuit behind them began to die away. This was an older, little-used section of the mansion; and most of the corridor speakers and other devices had evidently not been installed here. They relaxed, and let the ramp do the work of carrying them along.
“They’ll be here in a minute,” said Dirk, as by a back way they entered his familiar room. And, indeed, they had barely closed the door and locked it before they heard approaching feet, the thunder of knuckles on the door panel and Guard voices.
“This way,” said Dirk. He loped across the room, his long legs covering the distance in five big strides, and punched savagely at the frame of an ornate mirror set in the wall. It slid back and aside, revealing another of the antique stairways. Mal blinked a little at Dirk. The tall man seemed to produce secret passages out of his hat. They hurried through and the panel closed behind them just a
s a splintering crash from beyond it told them that the apartment door had at last been forced.
“They’ll never get us now,” said Dirk. “The wall behind that mirror is three feet thick.” They paused a moment to collect themselves and then started off down the stairway.
“Where does this go to?” asked Mal.
“Out of the estate grounds,” said Dirk. “It comes to the surface in open country.”
They came abruptly to the end of the stairway and found themselves in a circular tunnel that led off straight and level from where they stood. They continued along it.
“What surprises me,” said Mal, as they settled down to a steady walk, “is that you were able to construct all these things without your uncle knowing about them.”
“He’s gone most of the time,” said Dirk. “Besides, no one watches what an Archaist nut does; it’s only in business Uncle Peer’s smart. In other ways, he’s stupid.”
“Hah!” said Margie.
Less than ten minutes later they came to three branching passages. Dirk stopped.
“This isn’t right!” he said.
“What isn’t right?” asked Mal.
Dirk scratched his head for a second without answering.
“I think,” said Margie, “he’s lost.”
“These tunnels,” protested Dirk. “I only had one.”
“How’d the other’s get here, then?” asked Mal. “I don’t know,” said Dirk. “I didn’t put them there. They’re building new passages all the time around here, that’s the trouble.”
“I thought,” put in Margie acidly, “that outside of business your Uncle Peer was stupid.”
“I can’t understand it,” said Dirk.
“Well, if they knew about your tunnel and added to it, they’re probably on their way down here. We’ve got to take one of them,” said Mal. “Want to flip a coin?”
“Why not just take the one that goes straight ahead?” demanded Margie.
“Why not?” said Mal. They took it.
But the central passageway, after a short distance, began to wind and dip alarmingly. Moreover, as they went forward, the lights along the way became fewer and dimmer, until at last they were groping their way along in almost complete darkness. Eventually they were forced to join hands and feel their way.