Читать книгу The Lagrangists - Mack Reynolds - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

Rex Bader frowned at Susie Hawkins. “No position?” he said. “Professor George R. Casey? Why, he’s the head of the whole operation. I just wondered what his official title was.”

Susie laughed wryly. “Nevertheless, he holds no governmental position. He still lives on his university salary.”

He couldn’t believe her and said, “You mean those dizzards in Greater Washington have squeezed him out of a project he practically came up with single-handed?”

Her smile was rueful now. “Not exactly. But, you see, in modern science single individuals seldom come up with a breakthrough. It’s invariably a team at work and the team might consist of a dozen, scores or even hundreds of persons. Who would you start with on the Manhattan Project? Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer? I could name a score of others who were vital members of that historic team.”

“But still, he’s George Casey, Father of the Lagrange Five Project. And you say that he’s not even connected with the space colonization.”

“Oh, that’s not what I said. I said he had no position, no title, no definite job. It’s his own suggestion. You see, the professor is a physicist, specializing in high energy experimental particle physics. The Lagrange Five Project involves practically every science known; everything from Astronomy to Zoology. Even such social sciences as socioeconomics. He does not consider himself to have the administrative training to coordinate all of the top men in all of these fields. There’s another thing, too: he doesn’t want to make a cent from the whole thing. If it became profitable to him, his enemies would have a lever to use against the project.”

“Well, what does he do then, so important that somebody is trying to chill his old bones?”

She bit her lower lip, as though wondering how to put it. Then: “It’s like I said back at your apartment. He’s our catalyst, our inspiration. He’s the man we all love. As you put it, he’s the Father of the Lagrange Five Project.”

“Or godfather.”

She glanced at him in curiosity. “Suit yourself. I’m not sure I like all your metaphors.”

Their speed dropped off and shortly they branched off the main road, went on possibly a kilometer and took a still smaller branch. They approached an entry and the vehicle came to a halt on the dispatcher. Susie took over the controls again and shortly they came upon a building entry and entered it, obviously heading for underground garages. The building, though nothing like Rex’s high-rise, seemed large, of recent construction, and expensive.

They pulled up before an entrance and a doorman, very military in posture and dressed like an Hungarian Field Marshal, opened up for them. He said, “Good afternoon, Doctor Hawkins.”

Susie nodded at him and flashed a quick smile and moved toward the entrance briskly, Rex following. Nobody else seemed to be around and Rex Bader got the impression that this was a private entrance. Possibly the professor refused to feed at the government’s public trough but he wasn’t actually at work in a garret.

Inside, there were only two elevators. Rex followed his guide into one of them.

She said into the screen, “Professor Casey’s private office, please.”

“Carried out, Doctor Hawkins,” the robot said.

On the way up, Rex said curiously, “And you’re on the same basis? That is, you don’t work for the Lagrange Five Project directly either?”

She shook her head. “No, I am on the project payroll, assigned as a research aide to the professor. All expenses involved in the professor’s work are borne by the government, usually through NASA.”

Rex said, “And that’ll be my position, eh? Always supposing I accept it.”

She nodded. “That is correct. You will be on the payroll as a research aide.”

“What happens when some sage character in administration checks me out and finds that I’m not exactly qualified to be a research aide?” he demanded. “The computers in the National Data Banks would come up with that information from my Dossier Complete in ten seconds flat.”

“That’s John Mickoff’s problem,” she told him. “He’s handled worse. Ah, here we are.”

The elevator stopped and its doors slid open.

Rex had expected to emerge on the floor on which were the offices of the celebrated Professor Casey and that they’d have to proceed to the offices themselves on foot. Instead, they emerged directly into his office. It would seem that the elevator was a private one.

It was a large office and somewhat colorless. It had four identical desks of steel. The walls were lined with steel files and book shelves that reached the ceiling. In some respects, it looked more like a library than a standard business office. There was practically nothing in the way of decoration save three ancient photographs depicting serious-looking types wearing the clothes of earlier generations. Rex assumed that they were pioneers in the emergence of man into space, such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard and Hermann Oberth. The floors were lacking in rugs but were of some dark plastic, probably for the sake of easy, automated cleaning.

Only two of the desks were occupied. At one of them sat an overly earnest young man, somewhere in his late twenties and wearing a white smock, who was dictating what sounded like gibberish into a voco-typer. The other was Professor George Casey, Father of the Lagrange Five Project. The latter came to his feet upon their entry and advanced around the desk to greet them.

Rex hid his surprise; he had seen the professor on Tri-Di shows on more than one occasion. This would seem to be a younger and less serious-faced version of the same man. Perhaps it was because the other was more formally attired when on public display. Now he was in a sweat shirt, khaki slacks and somewhat scuffed blue tennis shoes. He looked less than the forty-eight Rex knew him to be; a trim, dapper man with a modified shag haircut and a fine-boned slender face. His smile was retiring but genuine. Now he advanced with an outstretched hand.

“You must be the Rex Bader who was recommended to us,” His voice was quiet.

“Guilty as charged,” Rex said taking the hand.

The professor turned to the younger man on the voco-typer and said, “Doctor Rykov, I wonder if this wouldn’t be a good time for you to look into that matter pertaining to the advanced lift vehicle development.”

The other looked up, a bit in surprise, but obviously realized that his superior wished privacy.

“Certainly, sir,” he said. He got up and left through a door at the opposite side of the room.

While the door was open in Rykov’s passing, Rex caught a glimpse of the busy office beyond and a dozen persons at desks or business machines, none of which he recognized. For a moment, there were the usual office sounds, then the door closed. Thanks to excellent soundproofing, silence descended again.

The professor himself brought up a steel straight chair for Rex. Susie, obviously needless of masculine courtesy or assistance, brought up her own before Rex could intervene.

“Sit down, Susie, Mr. Bader,” the professor said, resuming his own swivel chair behind his desk which was littered in a sort of controlled chaos.

Rex sat and remained silent. It was Casey’s top; let him spin it.

Casey looked over at him for a long moment, summing him up before saying, “So you are willing to come in with us. Frankly, I’ve never met a professional detective before.”

Rex said easily, “Then we’re even. I’ve never met a Father of the Lagrange Five Project before. But I’m not so sure about coming in, Professor Casey. It’s true that I’m a licensed private investigator but I’m not a professional gunslinger. I can’t see why John Mickoff recommended me to you.”

The professor said, “You have other qualifications. You seem to have studied up on the space colonization project. By the way, we usually avoid public use of the word, ‘colonize’. It’s less controversial to use the terms ‘space manufacturing facilities’ and ‘high orbital manufacturing’ when working on the project with industrial and governmental figures. You also seem to have a certain amount of background in political economy. I understand that your father, Professor Bader, was outstanding in the field of socioeconomics and that some of it must have, ah, worn off on you.”

“What’s political economy got to do with it?” Rex said.

“There would seem to be quite a few ramifications in that direction,” Casey told him. “The plan is for you to be on my staff as a research aide specializing in such matters. I’ll go over it with you some other time, Doctor Bader.”

“Doctor Bader? I’m not doctor. I dropped out of school before even taking my bachelor’s.”

Casey chuckled. “You’re a doctor in economics now. Mr. Mickoff took care of it in your Dossier Complete. Let me give you some background: from the first, the mail that we got from all over the world ran a hundred to one in favor of the project. Also encouraging was the fact that less than one percent of all mail was irrational.”

“How do you mean, irrational?” Rex said.

“Crackpot,” the other told him. “Say, some religious fanatic who would warn us against intruding into the heavens. Possibly, he’d cite the Tower of Babel and how God had become enraged at its being built—up to heaven.”

Rex said, “You think it might be some religious fanatic that made the two attempts on you?”

The physicist shook his head. “I’d hardly think so, since one of them took place in space. A religious nut would hardly be up there. Space calls for intelligent, rational, pragmatic types. Any others wouldn’t last long. Even the so-called hardhat construction workers can’t be semi-illiterates. I would estimate that the average education level of the two thousand who are now in space is a Master’s degree. Even most of the laborers have backgrounds in engineering.”

“Mickoff mentioned the oil sheiks as being opposed to your project for materialistic reasons.”

Susie gave a very unladylike little snort. “And the coal barons, and the United Mine Workers who’d lost their jobs, and everybody else involved in present power production here on Earth, including the nuclear fission people.”

Rex Bader said, “Who else? You said that the letters you got were a hundred to one in favor.”

Professor Casey laughed in self-deprecation. “Perhaps those who were against didn’t write. At any rate, after my two close, ah, accidents, I began to think of just who might be against space colonization and came up with quite a list, which still probably isn’t complete.”

He came to his feet and went over to a small old fashioned bar set in a corner, which Rex hadn’t noticed sooner.

“A drink? I find all this talk a desiccant.”

Both Susie and Rex agreed. The professor mixed the drinks with the care of a chemist. Obviously, he was not a man who tolerated autobars, nor a man who put up with synthetics such as pseudo-whiskey. Without asking for preferences, he brought both an excellent Scotch and Soda.

When the drinks had been passed around, he said, “By the way, all of those letters that were in favor of the project were not necessarily so for the same reason that motivate us. We had one minister from The Scientific Church, some group based in California, who was for it because of his opinion that the other planets—he mentioned Mars—were occupied and we should get out into space so that we could convert the extraterrestrials to the true faith—whatever that is. Then there was a super-militarist type, a retired brigadier, named Cogswell. He was also of the belief that there was intelligent life out there in the stars and that it was man’s manifest destiny, as he called it, to conquer the galaxy. Ours, he claimed, is the first step.”

“Very convincing,” Rex joked. “But who was on your list of those who were against the Lagrange Five Project?”

The professor smiled ruefully. “For one, religious cranks such as I’ve already mentioned. Then there are the politicians who rebel against the expense, though in actuality we expect it to be no more than two and a half times the cost of the Apollo Project, which, of course, save for some technological spinoffs, paid off hardly at all. We expect the Lagrange Five Project to pay for itself in about twenty-two years. After that, the profits from it will be astronomical. Then there are the reactionary elements who fear that these space colonies, like most colonies of the past, would drift away from the mother country and domination of Earth. That they’ll form new governments; possibly even someday present a military danger to Earth.”

The professor took up a sheet of paper from his desk and checked it. “Oh, yes. A very important element that must be opposed to our project are far-seeing manufacturers in the advanced countries, including the United States, who realize that ultimately they will be put out of business by the ultra-efficient production of the space colonies. Among other things, such as hard vacuum and endless energy from the sun, everything in space pertaining to manufacture will be the very latest. There would be no such thing as obsolete machinery.

“Then there are the militarists. War as we have known it in the past would be antiquated, with our Islands in space hanging above. And here we shouldn’t forget the industrialists who were once called Merchants of Death. Those manufacturers, those aerospace plants, those shipyards, who have fattened on so-called defense expenditures ever since the Second World War. We actually got to the point where we were spending more on the military in peace time than we had ever spent in the war years. But with the coming of the space colony project, our military in the Hexagon and our Merchants of Death are going to be harder put to ram their appropriations through. The money is going to be needed to develop the Solar System.”

“Holy Zen,” Rex said in protest. “Wouldn’t there be anybody with clout in favor?”

The professor smiled at that. “Oh, yes. Astronomers and other scientists. Astronomy will be revolutionized. As things are now, radiation that may have taken a billion years to reach Earth is absorbed, or distorted almost beyond recognition, in less than a thousandth of a second as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. There’s no atmosphere outside the space colonies. Beyond that, the size of the telescopes could tremendously exceed anything now on Earth. And you can imagine the research that will be possible in complete vacuum and without gravity.”

The professor thought about it for a moment, then recalled another group. “Environmentalists are also very gung-ho. The pollution now being spewed from present day power plants will end. And in time the pollution by industry will drop as heavy industry moves into space. We’ll draw our raw materials from Luna and the asteroids, so that depletion of Earth’s raw materials will all but end. We will be able to turn our mother planet back into the garden it was before the advent of the industrial revolution.”

The professor looked at his list again. “Then there are many who want cheap power, in both private life and in industry. And those dreamers who see man’s destiny as being in space, first the Solar System, then other star systems. It was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the 19th century Russian who studied the practical problems of space who said, ‘The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.’ ”

Rex Bader said, “Wizard. So we’ll accept that you’ve got both friends and enemies. All right, but if you’re in continual danger, you need a minimum of three men to guard you on a twenty-four hour a day basis.”

Casey shook his head to that. “No. This must be handled with the utmost discretion. We can’t afford negative publicity. If three men were involved, there would be three times as much likelihood of the news leaking. I have an apartment here in this building, and now one in the administration building in Island One. You’ll simply move in as one of my research aides.”

Rex eyes him doubtfully. “Twenty-four hours a day?”

The professor smiled his soft grin at him. “You’d have your own room, of course.”

Rex came to his feet in sudden decision. “I’m going to regret this—but I’m in. When do I start?”

“You just have. Tomorrow morning we leave for Los Alamos where we take off for Island One.”

Susie said briskly, “If you’ll go get your things, on your return I’ll show you your room. Not too much weight, mind. Practically everything is supplied at Island One, including clothing.”

It took Rex Bader but a little over an hour to pack a single suitcase and return to the professor’s building. He ran into only one difficulty upon his arrival.

At the elevator banks was a stern looking young man of a type Rex Bader had known long and all too well. In the old days, supposedly, you were able to spot them by the size of their feet. These days you spotted them by their sincere, dedicated, usually intelligent, brightness and their conservative, very earnest, attire.

This one took in the bag and said, “What is your destination, sir?”

“Professor George Casey’s suite,” Rex told him, inwardly impatient.

“With what view in mind?”

“I’m a new member of his staff.”

The other looked at the bag again. “That doesn’t exactly look as though it contains papers pertaining to the Lagrange Five Project.”

Rex said, “Could I see some identification?”

The other brought forth a wallet and flicked back its cover. “Ron Peglor,” he snapped. “Security. Assigned from the IABI. And now, sir, may I see your identification?”

Rex sighed and brought forth his Universal Credit Card, which bore everything pertaining to the papers a citizen carried these days. It was even his driver’s license.

The other got out a pad and made notations, then returned the card to Rex.

Rex began to bend down to pick up his bag again. One of the elevators was available.

“Just a minute,” the other said coldly. “What is your position on the professor’s staff?”

Rex stared back. “Ask him; He can tell you better than I can.”

And Peglor rapped out, “You’re carrying a shooter, mister. Do you have a license for it? Very few of Professor Casey’s staff go armed.” One hand hovered near the man’s waistband while he pointed with the other. “I intend to learn more about that bulge under your left arm.”

Rex sighed again and brought forth his IABI license to carry a firearm. He presented it.

Peglor examined it carefully. “I’ll check this out,” he said. “Now, what is your position on the professor’s staff?”

Rex gave up. “I’ve become one of his research aides.”

“Researching what?”

“Look, pal, I know you’re just doing your job. So am I, but I’m pretty new at it. Couldn’t you just phone up the professor or Doctor Susie Hawkins, his personal secretary, and one of his research aides, and check me out?”

The other eyed him flatly. “So far you haven’t told me one damn’ thing.”

Rex said, “I’m a socioeconomist checking out some of the ramifications of the space colonization—whoops; of the space expedition, I mean. Casey warned me about that,” he added, with a smile intended to disarm.

The IABI man handed back the gun license. He obviously didn’t like even one piece of his puzzle. He said, “What would an economist need with a shooter?”

“I’m not sure; it was a job requirement,” Rex told him. “However, there are rats up in the penthouse.” He stooped again, took up his bag and got it into the elevator compartment. He announced the professor’s floor aloud.

“Carried out, sir,” the robot voice said.

When he was underway, Rex assessed the encounter and decided he had botched it miserably. “Shit,” he muttered.

The elevator said, “I beg your pardon, sir. Would you repeat that order?”

“Never mind,” Rex said, and gave the professor’s floor again.

“Carried out, sir.”

Susie showed him to his room, which looked like any standard room in a first class hotel. She left him to unpack telling him that they’d all meet later for dinner.

He put his bag onto the bed but didn’t open it yet. Instead, he went over to the small desk and sat down before the TV phone screen. He said, “I want this call scrambled.”

“Carried out,” the mechanical voice said.

He dialed the restricted number Mickoff had given him and the stocky IABI official faded in.

“You already, younger brother?” he said. “We were supposed to keep our communicating at a minimum.”

“Wizard, but something’s developed. When I was coming up here to the professor’s carrying my bag, I was stopped by a security man. He was suspicious and asked for my I.D., particularly when he spotted the fact that I was wearing the Gyro-jet pistol under my left arm. He wanted to know all about my job with Casey.”

“Who was he?”

“One of your boys. His name was Ron Peglor.”

John Mickoff eyed him. “How do you know that he was one of our men?”

“He showed me his IABI identification. Ron Peglor.”

John Mickoff said, very slowly, “I would very much like to study his I.D. at leisure, younger brother. We don’t have anybody named Ron Peglor stationed in New Princeton or anywhere else.”