They watched. Stratford introduced him around to the other Space Force
officers, including a short little man with nervous eyes named Colonel
Green who was evidently Stratford's superior. Then everything became
silent as they watched the generator being built.
Crayley smiled inwardly as he saw that the hulking generator had
already blocked off the view of the one waldo he'd gimmicked. No one
would be able to see what happened on the screen, and those who saw it
directly wouldn't tell anyone.
Exultant, Crayley watched the screen through the mask of his face. Very
shortly, he would again be Director. When Klythe had gone to Denver to
take the Big Gamble, he'd left Crayley as Acting Director, with the
stipulation that he was to become Permanent Director if Klythe failed
to live through the grueling torture of the Rejuvenation chambers.
Naturally, Crayley had had every right to feel that the position was
already his. He had never considered that Klythe might be one of those
few who would live through the Big Gamble.
Even when Klythe had come back, Crayley hadn't immediately considered
him as a block in his path; there was always the chance of the
Breakdown.
Sometimes something went wrong with Rejuvenation, even when the patient
lived through the year. Instead of being better than normal, the body
went out of kilter. Some little thing, probably--they hadn't pinpointed
it yet. A gland that malfunctioned, a nerve blockage, something.
Whatever it was, the rejuvenee suddenly began to age rapidly after a
few months, dying of acute senility within the year.
But when a year had passed and Berin Klythe was as healthy as ever,
Lewis Crayley had begun to plot murder. And now the plans had matured;
soon they would bear fruit. Soon he would be Director--_Permanent_
Director. As Director, it would be easy to erase the end of that tape
before anyone else got their hands on it. He, himself, would be the one
to head the investigation of the accident.
Crayley watched the assembly impatiently from behind his face.
The hands and arms and fingers of the waldoes in the screen worked
together with precision as they put the last finishing touches to
the generator unit. Finally they were finished; the arms assumed the
"ready" position.
Crayley almost held his breath. Everything depended on Klythe now.
Klythe, with his impatience, his pride in a piece of work well done,
his eagerness to be sure of perfection; Klythe himself was the only
weak link in the chain that led to his own death.
The tunnel was still flooded with radioactivity. In production, that
wouldn't matter; the next set would slide into place and the hands
would begin again. But this was a test run; the record would be allowed
to run to the end instead of recycling, while the huge pumps replaced
the argon atmosphere with air suitable for breathing. The radioactive
stuff was pumped to a cooling chamber, where its silent violence would
be allowed to expend itself below the danger point.
Five minutes. Crayley could see in his mind's eye that tape running
through the pickup head, running through five minutes of nothing. Then
a light flashed above the door to the tunnel as the detectors signalled
the all-clear. It was safe to enter the tunnel now.
Crayley found himself clenching his teeth for a fraction of a second
before Klythe opened the door and stepped through. There was a long,
almost timeless instant as Crayley watched Klythe's face on the screen.
Then there was a sudden sound, a brilliant light, and the screen went
dead.
* * * * *
Crayley smiled inside himself as he yelled and sprinted out to the tube
lift. The hidden hand of the secondary had reached up and ripped off
the regulator coil--housing, innards, and all. The resulting explosion
had been felt, even up here, as a dull rumble.
The lower level was a mess. The emergency door had slammed down to
prevent the spread of contaminated air, and the huge pumps were going
full blast to clear the area. At the first door, Lesker, one of the
safety engineers, stopped him.
"You can't go in there, Lew. One whiff of that stuff, and you'd be
gone."
"What happened?" Crayley asked briskly.
Lesker shrugged. "Who knows? That new generator blew, somehow. Not much
harm done, really; as far as we can tell, the only real damage was in
the tunnel itself. The temperature must have averaged better than a
thousand Centigrade for a few seconds, though it was a lot hotter than
that at the center of the blaze. It's cooled down a little now, but
that generator must still be burning." He stopped for a second, then:
"Nobody got out of it alive. We're sending in the mobiles now. The
secondaries in there won't work. It's going to be a rough job because
we'll have to use cables; we couldn't possibly get a UHF beam through
that static."
The safety men were setting up a monitor screen bank for the mobile
waldoes. Two of them, four-foot wheeled robots with TV cameras mounted
where human heads would be, rolled up to the closed door.
"It's safe in that first section," Lesker said. "Roll 'em in." He
turned back to Crayley. "You'd better get on a radiation suit if you
want to watch this. We've got to seal off this section from the rest
and open up the corridor all the way down to let the cables through.
There's still a lot of hot air in there in spite of the pumps."
Crayley climbed into a suit and adjusted the air flow. Then he walked
over to where the safety technicians were putting on the primary gloves
for the mobile waldoes. From each control board, a long snake of cable
ran to the mobile it controlled. The safety men switched on the power
and the mobiles rolled down the corridor out of sight.
Crayley watched their progress over the shoulder of one of the safety
techs. The screen showed the walls of the corridor sliding by. Then
there was a shifting as the camera panned to the left. After several
more turns, the robot came to the door of Tunnel Nine. The door itself
lay crumpled against the far wall. Two bodies lay near it. The robot
glided into the tunnel itself.
The inside of the tunnel was still fiercely hot; the new generator
glowed a yellow orange, and the waldo secondaries had been warped and
ruined by the heat.
And on the floor, human in shape only, lay what had once been Berin
Klythe.
The mobiles went to work to take care of the glowing hulk of the ruined
generator.
Crayley looked at the safety engineer. "There's not much I can do down
here," he said. "You take care of the bodies, will you?"
Lesker nodded. He seemed suddenly to realize that he was speaking to
the new Director. "You can shuck your suit in the next section. I'll
let you know how things are going."
Crayley felt quite light-hearted by the time he reached the upper
levels again. In fact, he was almost ready to sing. It had been so
easy, so simple! They had called Berin Klythe a genius and given him a
chance at the Big Gamble; well, let them see who was the genius now!
The plan itself had been a stroke of genius.
There was only one thing left to do; slip into the control room and
erase the tail end of that tape. The explosion would go down as
"unexplained." Berin Klythe had died in an industrial accident--and
Lewis Crayley would replace him.
* * * * *
When he opened the control room door, only his mask of a face saved
him. The room was full of men.
"What's going on here?" he asked softly.
One of the younger engineers turned toward him. "These men say they're
going to confiscate the tape, Mr. Crayley." He waved in the direction
of the uniformed Space Force men.
Crayley looked mildly at Major Stratford. "I'm Acting Director here,
Major. I'm afraid I can't let you take our property."
The major turned to the smaller man standing nearby. "Colonel, perhaps
you'd better--"
"I'll take care of it," the smaller man said choppily. "We're not
confiscating it, exactly, Mr. Crayley. The tape will remain where it
is. Immediately after the accident, I phoned the Executive Secretary at
the capital. He is sending down an investigating board by special jet."
"May I ask why this rather high-handed action, Colonel Green?"
The colonel patted the air with a nervous hand. "Calm yourself, Mr.
Crayley. I am Fenwick Greene; the 'colonel' is merely a military title
I have to put up with."
"_Fenwick_ Greene!" It was one of the few times in his life that
Crayley's screen, his wall, his defense, collapsed. "My--my apologies,
sir! I didn't realize--I mean, I had no idea it was you--in the Space
Force!"
He had never seen Fenwick Greene's picture, of course. No newspaper
would dare commit such a flagrant violation of privacy.
Greene accepted Crayley's hand for a few seconds, then withdrew his own
hand. "I was--ah--drafted," he explained.
Major Stratford smiled. "When the Space Force needs men, they pick the
best."
Crayley nodded dumbly. Fenwick Greene was undoubtedly the greatest
co-ordination engineer who had ever lived. The late Berin Klythe
couldn't hold a candle to him. His waldo recordings were like
symphonies of precision and speed. Someone had once said that, given
enough recording technicians and enough time to train them his way,
Fenwick Greene could build a spaceship faster than parts could be made
for it. It was an exaggeration, of course, but it showed what the trade
thought of Fenwick Greene.
Greene tapped his teeth with his thumbnail. "We aren't confiscating the
tape; we simply want it run. We're guarding it."
"Why?" Crayley asked bluntly.
Greene pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. "This is a
communication from Berin Klythe to the Construction Command of the
Space Force. In it, he notified us that the test would be run today.
He also says--" Greene held up the paper. "Quote: 'due to the fact
that the Space Force has insisted that I use their technicians for the
recording of this unit, I hardly feel I can claim that the recording is
up to my usual standards. Had I been permitted to use my own men, I am
sure better construction would have been obtained.'" Greene replaced
the paper in his pocket.
"Naturally," he continued, "we don't think there is anything really
wrong with the recording. Klythe, like myself, was a perfectionist.
However, we would like to have the tape played before an examining
board in order to clear ourselves and possibly clear Berin's own name.
I watched the construction from beginning to end, and I could find
no fault with it. However, we want a qualified board to check it.
You see--" He coughed apologetically. "--I trained those technicians
myself."