Читать книгу All the Colors of Darkness - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 5

CHAPTER 1

A sagging floor board caught Ted Arnold’s foot. He stumbled and released the door, which slammed with a hollow, echoing clap. Fifty feet away, in the pale wash of light from a dangling bulb, young Jack Marrow leaped to his feet and threw up his arms. When Arnold reached him he was huddled behind the low plywood wall that protected the instrument board.

“Ready to crack,” Arnold thought. “Too bad.”

Marrow got to his feet and extended one trembling hand to steady himself.

“Everything set?” Arnold asked.

Marrow licked his lips, and glanced behind him nervously.

“Ten minutes,” Arnold said.

He glanced at the setup, found a dial out of position, and moved over to correct it. “Newark,” he said.

Marrow swallowed, said, “Oh, I didn’t—”

“It’s all right now,” Arnold said. “You won’t be needed. If you’d rather wait in the office, go ahead.”

Marrow swallowed again. “I think—”

He broke off, and headed for the office. Arnold watched him go. The door slammed again, and then there was silence, except for the footsteps that moved tirelessly back and forth behind the rough partition that walled off the office. Pace, creak, pace, pace, creak. Pause. Pace, pace, creak, creak, pace. Arnold listened and counted. There were seventeen creaky floor boards in that office. He knew them all, knew precisely every shade of difference in timbre.

At the distant end of the old warehouse was another shallow oasis of light. In between was drafty emptiness, surrounded by sagging floors and begrimed walls, bare ceiling rafters, and, at one point, a jagged patch of starry sky where the roof gaped. Arnold started the long walk to the other end.

Walt Perrin saw him coming, and waited for him with a grin on his face. Arnold grinned back at him, happy in the thought that there was no chance of Perrin’s cracking. He moved around to check the instrument setup. No errors there, either.

Perrin was poking the toe of his shoe at a floor board. The board responded to pressure by bending sharply into subterranean blackness. “All the time I’ve been walking around here,” Perrin said, “I never touched this particular board. Then a minute ago I stepped on it and nearly broke my neck. This dump should be condemned.”

“It has been,” Arnold said.

“Yeah? It’d be quite a joke to have the sheriff show up with an eviction notice just as we’re getting started.”

“No danger,” Arnold said. “The landlord is fighting it. After tonight it won’t matter one way or the other. Either we’ll be back in decent quarters, or we’ll be out of business. Would you mind handling the X-7-R? You’ll have plenty of time to get back here.”

“What’s the matter with Marrow?”

“Nerves.”

“Tough. Can’t blame him. Combing glass out of your hair gets tiresome. Sure, I’ll handle it.”

Arnold looked at his watch. “Four minutes,” he said. “Better get up there.”

He walked back with Perrin, left him at the X-7-R, and returned to the office.

The Universal Transmitting Company’s engineering office looked like the corner of a dilapidated warehouse that it was. The unpainted plywood of the partitions contrasted oddly with the blackened opposite walls, and the plywood was already dusty and smeared with handprints. There was one dirty, unscreened window high up in the wall. From a ceiling rafter hung a single unshaded light bulb. The furnishings were a battered table, a filing cabinet, and a few folding chairs. On the table were three telephones and a fluorescent desk lamp. The small electric fan on the filing cabinet rattled noisily.

Marrow had placed a chair in the protective shadow of the filing cabinet. The other man in the room continued to pace the floor.

Arnold went to the table, lowered himself cautiously onto a folding chair—at least two of those in the room had been known to collapse upon slight provocation—and reached for a telephone.

The pacing stopped. “Ted?”

Arnold turned.

“Anything yet?”

“A little over a minute,” Arnold said, looking at his watch.

The pacing started again.

Arnold fumbled for a handkerchief, and as he mopped the perspiration from his bald head the pacing stopped a second time. “A minute, you say?”

Arnold nodded, and picked up the telephone. He dialed a number and waited, scowling impatiently at his watch. Finally someone answered. Arnold heard heavy breathing before he got the irritated growl of response.

“You guys camping out somewhere?” he demanded. “I want someone on that phone. All the time. Everything ready?”

“Sure. Meyers is ready to step through, if he hasn’t already.”

“Twenty seconds, yet,” Arnold said. “Keep someone on the phone.”

He hung up. “Newark is ready, anyway,” he said, his eyes on his watch. “Meyers will be stepping through—just—about—now.”

The white telephone buzzed. Arnold snatched at it.

“Meyers is through,” Perrin said.

“All right, Perrin. Anything—”

The explosion rocked the building. Debris crashed against the plywood partition. Dust rolled over the top and settled slowly. The fan toppled from the filing cabinet, narrowly missing Marrow, thudded onto the floor, and continued to rattle. Marrow sat with his face buried in his hands and ignored it. Arnold caught his desk lamp just as it was going over. He took a deep breath, got too much dust, and sneezed violently.

“Anyone hurt?” he asked the telephone. There was no answer. He shouted, “Hey, there, anyone hurt?”

“Everything under control, Skipper,” Perrin said. “Just scratch one X-7-R.”

Another telephone rang. “Carry on,” Arnold said, reaching for it. “Hello. Arnold.”

“Baltimore station. Our X-7-R just blew.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“Couple of minor cuts.”

“All right. Try to keep on schedule.”

Arnold hung up and leaned back carefully, still dubious about the folding chair. The floor-pacer had slumped onto a chair in the far corner. He sat looking at the floor.

“We’ll know pretty soon, now,” Arnold said.

The face jerked upwards and stared at him, haggard, almost spectral-looking. Arnold felt a flash of sympathy for Thomas J. Watkins III. As chief engineer of the Universal Transmitting Company, Arnold had nothing more at stake than his pride and his job. His pride had been deflated so often it was immune to punctures, and his job could be replaced in no more time than it would take him to make a phone call.

But Watkins had invested every penny of his own money in Universal Trans, not to mention sizable amounts that were not his own money. He was on the verge of ruin, and he knew it. He looked decades older than his sixty-four years. A younger man would have been able to bounce back, Arnold thought, but let an elderly financier lose his money and he was out of work permanently.

“We’re finished, aren’t we?” Watkins asked.

“Just getting started,” Arnold told him. “That was an X-7-R that blew. The old model. The one in Baltimore blew, and Philadelphia—this should be Philadelphia.”

He answered the telephone, listened briefly, and got the Philadelphia engineer’s watch synchronized with his.

“That makes it unanimous,” he said as he hung up. “Those were our controls. Three X-7-Rs. Now we try the X-8-Rs.”

“Then—there’s still a chance?”

Arnold said gravely, “I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance.”

Watkins smiled. “I’ve gambled on worse odds than that, and won,” he said wistfully. “But right now—this thing—”

Arnold silenced him with a wave of his hand. He was on the white telephone, and getting no answer. He reached the door in one leap, and flung it open.

Perrin called to him, “Sorry. Meyers and I are patching each other up.”

“I thought you said—”

“Just a few cuts. Meyers got a nasty one on the cheek, but he’ll be all right. Maybe he could use some stitches later. We’ll keep on schedule.”

Arnold walked down to look at Meyers. The scrappy little engineer was grinning as Perrin applied adhesive tape.

“If it’s as bad as that,” Arnold said, “we’ll use someone else.”

“Nuts,” Meyers said. “I’ve been dodging flying glass for weeks. You think I’m going to quit now? One trip without being blown out of the place when I get there—that’s all I ask.”

“I hope you’ll get what you ask,” Arnold said. He looked at his watch. “I have two forty-seven—right—now.”

“Check,” Perrin said. “Three minutes. We’ll be ready.”

Arnold returned to the office. Marrow seemed to have got a grip on himself. He had moved his chair over by the table, and Arnold considered finding something for him to do and decided there wasn’t anything that needed doing. Watkins had resumed his floor pacing. Arnold sat down, got the Newark station on one telephone and Perrin on another, and waited, wondering if he had been ridiculously optimistic in rating their chances at fifty-fifty.

“Meyers is ready,” Perrin announced.

“All right, Newark,” Arnold said. “Get ready.”

Newark informed him that it had been ready for five minutes, and where the hell was Meyers?

“Look at your watch,” Arnold snapped. “Now, Perrin.”

“He’s through,” Perrin said.

“He’s through,” Newark echoed.

Arnold clapped the Newark phone to his ear, and waited. He laid down the white telephone, and it was seconds before he realized that Perrin was noisily demanding what had happened.

“Nothing happened,” Arnold told him.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Newark said. “Shall we send him back?”

“Right. Reverse it, Perrin. He’s coming back.”

Silence followed. Then, from Perrin: “He’s back. Everything is all right.”

“Right. Keep it moving. Reverse it, Newark.”

“We have,” Newark said. “He’s through again.”

“Keep it moving.”

Arnold hung up both telephones. Philadelphia called, and then Baltimore. Arnold listened, and told them to keep it moving. He leaned back to look at Watkins. Suddenly he felt very tired. It had taken three years, and he had won—perhaps—and it all seemed anticlimactic.

“I guess that does it,” he said. “The X-8-R. We’re in.”

“It works?” Watkins demanded.

Arnold nodded.

“Then we can go ahead. Then—” Watkins leaped to his feet. “Then we can start operating,” he said excitedly. “We’ll get some money coming in, and we’ll be all right.”

“At the last minute of the last hour,” Arnold murmured. “How’d you like to take a quick trip to Newark?”

“Now?” Watkins said, eyes sparkling. “Do you mean it?”

Arnold led him down to the far end of the warehouse, where a grinning Perrin was presiding at the instrument board. Meyers, in the middle of perhaps his tenth round trip between Newark and Manhattan, darted forward to grab Arnold’s hand.

“We did it, Skipper!” he shouted.

Arnold pointed at a metal frame. “Just walk through there,” he told Watkins.

Without the slightest hesitation Watkins stepped forward and disappeared. Meyers leaped after him.

Perrin scowled. “Meyers will be breaking his neck, the way he jumps through. Know what that idiot wants to do? Perform a high dive over a concrete floor, pass through a transmitter, and come out over a swimming pool in Miami.”

“Sounds like a good stunt,” Arnold said. “We may need ideas like that, for publicity.”

Perrin glanced at his board, and threw a switch. Nothing happened for so long that Arnold became uneasy, and then Meyers reappeared.

“The Old Man wouldn’t believe he was in Newark,” Meyers said. “He had to go look out a window.”

Arnold sniffed his breath. “You’re tight!”

“Well—the Newark boys have a little celebration going. They give me a couple of shots every time I touch down there. How long do we keep this up?”

Watkins bounced out in front of them. His face was flushed, his white hair ruffled. He was waving a bottle of champagne.

“Isn’t it against the law to bring that stuff across a state line?” Perrin asked impishly.

Watkins roared. “I didn’t see any state line. I’m going to get the directors down here. Every one of them. We’ll throw a real party.”

“You may not find them in a party mood,” Arnold said. “It’s three in the morning.”

“They’ll be in the mood for this one. I want you to join me. All of your boys, too. They can transmit over here.” He waved a hand at the distant end of the warehouse. “Plenty of room here for a big party.”

“Sorry,” Arnold said. “You’ll have to count us out. And I’d rather you didn’t hold your party here.”

Watkins looked at him, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. We still have work to do. I have to keep this test going, and I have to think about rebuilding a couple of hundred transmitters. Meyers? Where’s—oh. Make this the last run. Newark can tune on Miami, and we’ll take San Francisco.”

“Right!” Meyers said, and took a running leap into the transmitter.