Читать книгу The Lagrangists - Mack Reynolds - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

Rex Bader looked at the other as though he had slipped completely around the bend. He said, “Bodyguarding! In this day and age? Who in the name of Holy leaping Zen needs a bodyguard, except possibly the President and a few other top politicians?”

Susie Hawkins cleared her throat and said, “In actuality, the term we were going to use was Research Aide. You’ll be a Research Aide.”

“With a Gyro-jet pistol,” Mickoff grinned.

Rex ignored him and looked back at the young woman. He said suspiciously, “What’s a research aide?”

She nodded at the validity of the request and said, “That’s a good question. I, among others, am a research aide. It’s an imposing sounding title. What it actually means is a Man, or Girl, Friday. The one who does the real work, a flunky. Call it what you will. It’s the sort of title one can have that is never questioned, in the sciences. You can be on the payroll as a research aide, and nobody ever thinks to wonder why, or exactly what you do. The professor has at least a dozen research aides. You’ll be invisible among the rest of us.”

“What professor?” he said. For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, he didn’t like the sound of this. Possibly it was because of the presence of John Mickoff. He’d never exactly prospered whilst in Mickoff’s vicinity. To the contrary, he usually wound up with his ass in a sling.

Mickoff said now, more seriously, “Professor George R. Casey, the inspirational guide, the—what would you call it?—the motivating intellectual symbol, or something like that, behind the Lagrange Five Project. Call him a prophet of man’s expansion into space.”

“That was very well put, Mr. Mickoff,” Susie Hawkins said. She blinked her blue eyes. “Everybody who works on the project or under the professor is inspired by him.”

“Now wait a goddam minute,” Rex blurted. “You mean that Professor Casey needs a bodyguard? Now come on. Who’d want to kill Professor George Casey? Why, everybody in the world is caught up in the explosion of humanity into space.”

John Mickoff cleared his throat. “Not quite everybody, it seems. At least two, perhaps more that we don’t know about, attempts have been made on his life in the past couple of weeks.”

Rex Bader stared at him for a long moment, then got up and took their glasses and went over to the autobar and refreshed them, forgetting that this was going to drain his current treasury. He brought the new drinks back to his visitors and reseated himself.

“Wizard. Let’s have the story,” he said. “I still can’t get a picture of someone wanting to kill Professor Casey. What do they call him? The Father of the Lagrange Five Project. It would be like somebody wanting to kill Albert Einstein, back in the old days.”

John Mickoff snorted and said, “Younger brother, suppose you were an Arab sheik, sitting on a lake of oil. What happens to you when Island Number One, the first space colony, is completed, and it damn near is, and begins to turn out the SPSs, the Solar Power Satellites? They figure the first power will be microwaved down only nine years from the beginning of the construction on the moon and at Lagrange Five. They figure that the building of Island One will take eight years, but Island Two, three times as big, only two years. From then on, it’s a geometric progression; each island builds more islands. On the stable orbit, they figure there’s room for several thousand of them, each capable of turning out the Solar Power Stations which in turn will milk the sun for what amounts to practically free power. Younger brother, what happens to that sheik’s oil?”

Susie added, “For that matter, what’s going to happen to the coal barons in Pennsylvania, or wherever?”

“I see what you mean,” Rex said, scowling. “But what would be accomplished by assassinating George Casey? He’s just one man. Finishing him off would hardly stop the project. Hell, the Lagrange Five Project has some two thousand men up doing the actual construction alone. There’s other thousands involved in getting materials up to them in the space shuttles and space tugs, not to mention the tens of thousands here on Earth working in all the other aspects of it.”

Susie admitted to that and said, “No, it might not stop it, but it wouldn’t do it any good. You see, in a way the professor is our catalyst. He was right from the beginning. Something like Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project; something like Von Braun in the early days of space travel. It’s his dream. He’s the focal point. It’s he who worms through the appropriations. It’s he who converts the hardest nosed Congressmen to the need for the building of space colonies. It’s he who goes on Tri-Di every week and brings the people up to date on how the construction of Island One is progressing. He keeps the whole country inspired with the dream.”

“There are other aspects,” Mickoff got in. “If whoever is behind this attempt to get Professor Casey would pull such a callous romp as an attempt on his life, how do we know who’s next? How do we know what other aspects of sabotage might be planned—or even already accomplished?”

Rex thought about it. “Yeah,” he said. “And I just thought of something else.” He regarded the girl. “Some of the politicians who drag their feet over appropriations for Lagrange 5, claim it’s too dangerous. They put up a howl every time some construction workers up in space or on the moon get hurt, or especially when somebody gets killed. If somebody as big as your professor got killed, supposedly by accident, they’d really have a lever to work with. They might even attempt steps to close the whole project down.”

Mickoff growled, “You can’t have major construction, buildings, bridges, dams and so forth, without a certain amount of casualties. So far, the building of Island One has been amazingly free from tragedy.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Rex told him. “But why me? Why don’t you IABI people put a few bodyguards on him? Since all the police organizations in the country have been merged into one, including the CIA, the FBI and the Secret Service, you must have a glut of experienced agents suitable for bodyguard work.”

John Mickoff said patiently, “Because it’s too controversial. Sooner or later the word would get out that we had bodyguards with Professor Casey. Sooner or later someone would leak the fact. Then the pro-Lagrange Five people would hit the ceiling, throwing accusations all over the place. And the anti-Lagrange Five forces would be indignant over the fact that the professor was so controversial that his life had to be protected. We don’t want a controversial image.”

“Besides,” Susie said, “we’d rather not let the word get out that the attempts have been made. It encourages the crackpot element to get into the act. You’ve seen it happen before. Somebody takes a shot at the President, or whoever, and before the month is out, half a dozen others have taken a shot at him, or whatever. It becomes an epidemic.”

“Wizard,” Rex said. “Now these attempts. You said, at least two. What do you mean, at least? Might there have been more that you don’t know of?”

“That’s right,” Mickoff told him. “The first attempt was on Luna at the mines and the mass-driver which launches the ores up to Lagrange Five for processing. A cable, connected with the mass-driver, snapped and almost caught the professor. It would have sliced him in two. The thing is, it didn’t snap accidently. It had been cut. The second attempt was even more flagrant. The professor was eating alone in a restaurant in Greater Washington. He had hardly gotten his meal when a message came, calling him to Capitol Hill where he was to testify before some House committee. Five minutes after he had left the restaurant, a bomb went off, right under the table next to him. Two high-ranking army officers were badly hurt. It didn’t occur to anybody that the real target had been Casey, until the item got to me.”

“If a man survives two hit attempts without help, either his enemies are amateurs or he’s incredibly lucky,” Rex mused.

“Both jobs bore professional touches,” Mickoff supplied. “The professor’s luck can’t last—so we’re depending on our own professional, and you’re my choice.”

Rex gave him a bogus smile, then looked from one of them to the other. “Where is the professor?”

Susie said, “Until tomorrow, when we’ll return to Island One, he’s right here in New Princeton University City. He still holds his position as professor in the Physics Department, though he’s on leave from teaching.”

Rex Bader got up and went over to a drawer built into the mini-apartment’s wall. He opened it and for a moment stared down at its contents, considering. Then he shrugged out of his jacket, reached down and took up the 9mm Gyro-jet pistol with its holster and harness.

While the girl and John Mickoff watched wordlessly, he brought the gun out and its magazine. It was fully charged with its rocket slugs. He thrust the magazine back into the butt of the gun with the heel of his hand and then jacked a cartridge into the firing chamber and threw on the gun’s safety. He replaced the pistol in its holster, tried it a couple of times to ensure a free pull, and then resumed his jacket. He picked up an extra magazine of the 9mm slugs and dropped it into a pocket. Rex Bader turned to the other two and said, “Wizard, let’s go meet the professor.”

They stood too but Mickoff shook his head. “Not me. I don’t want to be seen in his vicinity, especially by any news hawks. I’m too well known by the boys and they might smell a story in the fact that an IABI man was with Professor Casey. Younger brother, contact me if you need anything, or if anything special comes up. But keep such calls to a minimum. My chief and I are the only two men in the whole bureau who know about you. We’re keeping this as quiet as possible. Here’s an IABI tight beam transceiver, and here’s my restricted call number.” He handed over the device, which looked like an old-time cigar case, and a small card.

“Good backup,” Rex said. “But I’m not sure I’ll take on this job. I don’t consider myself a gunman. However, the least I can do is talk to Professor Casey.”

Susie bit her underlip a little at that but turned and let him open the door for her. She and Rex took one elevator and the IABI man another.

On the way up to ground level of the high-rise, Rex Bader looked over at Doctor Susie Hawkins, over and down. He hadn’t realized before how small she was. Her posture was so excellent, the head held so high, and her tweeds were so trim and businesslike that somehow she looked taller.

He said, “I’m surprised that Professor Casey is here at the New Princeton University City. I’d think he’d be at Los Alamos, one of the manufacturing plants, one of the schools teaching construction workers how to operate in space, at the Luna base, at Lagrange Five at the orbital manufacturing facility, or even at the Island One construction site, although it must be a little rugged out there at this point. There aren’t much in the way of living facilities, are there?”

“Oh yes. The shell of Island One has been completed, you know, and the atmosphere and most of the water, installed. They are actually working, at this point, in finishing the interior and constructing the manufacturing facilities on the outside. It’s a shirtsleeve environment. We even have apartment buildings and a hotel completed. You’ll be surprised. The Tri-Di shows don’t begin to put over the whole picture. At any rate, the professor goes zipping around the whole shebang in his special space taxi.”

“Space taxi?” Rex said. “That’s a new one. I thought I was more or less up on this subject. That’s why I’ve been living at the university, taking Ellfive courses.”

She grinned at him, a grin that came out nicely on the too businesslike face of Susie Hawkins. She said, “We on the project have our own slang. Various craft have been developed using no more than the basic equipment initially designed for the space shuttle. We have a space tug that hauls crucial materials from Earth orbit, after the space shuttles and heavy lift freighters get the staff lifted from Earthside. The tugs, usually automated, carry it over to L5. From there, still other versions of the original space shuttle can run it down to the Luna mining base, if that’s its destination. The space taxi, as we call it—although some are large enough to be called space buses—is used for running back and forth from the orbital manufacturing facility to Island One, or to hang about where the principal operation is going on. They’re actually quite efficient and comparatively simple and inexpensive. As you can imagine, very little power is needed to propel a space vehicle about at Lagrange Five. It isn’t very seriously affected by the gravity wells of the Earth and Luna.”

They had reached ground level and left the elevator and headed for the main entry. As they left the edifice, both of them simultaneously looked back and up at the one-hundred-and-ten story aluminum sheathed towers of the high-rise apartment building. The girl shook her head in rejection. “Why would you choose to live in a place like this, Mr. Bader?”

“If I get to call you Susie, you get to call me Rex.”

“Especially in that underground, windowless miniapartment, Rex. I’m sure that I’d get claustrophobia. But even higher up, and I’d think the higher the better, would be bad enough. I would estimate that a building of this magnitude would afford at least two thousand apartments. Surely, yours must be one of the least attractive.”

“It is,” Rex told her wryly. “And as I said, it’s also one of the cheapest. I’m down on the service levels, along with the ultra-market, the automated restaurant kitchens and the garages and theatres.”

“I see,” Susie said. “Well, here we are.”

They had come up upon a conservative but efficient hover-car, a two-seater. Rex eyed it in surprise while the physicist popped into the driver’s position behind the manual controls. As a city dweller, Rex Bader seldom saw a privately owned car. Automated hover-cabs, yes, but not private cars.

She activated the small vehicle, dropped the lift lever and trod on the accelerator. The electro-steamer smoothed into motion under her manual control.

“We’ll head for the offices,” Susie told him. “At this time of the day, that’s where the professor would be.”

Rex said, in the way of idle conversation, “I thought it was against the rules to bring a privately owned vehicle onto city streets.”

They were proceeding through the acres of parks and playgrounds, gardens and small lakes surrounding the high-rise which housed his tiny apartment.

“Against the rules, Rex, but one is able to pull a few wires when one commands the professor’s prestige. Anything to speed up the efficiency of his activities.” There was prim satisfaction in her tone.

“By the way,” he said, as they pulled up to the entry of the expressway and she skillfully came to a halt on a dispatcher.

She threw a switch, deactivating the manual controls, then reached to the dashboard and dialed what was obviously their destination before relaxing back into her seat. The auto-controls of the underground expressway took over and within moments they were proceeding at full cruise speed.

“Yes?” she said.

“Just what is the position that Professor George Casey holds down on the Lagrange Five Project?”

“Why, none,” she told him, evidently surprised that he should ask.