"How does the Manhattan Crystal furnish power for New York?"
"I don't know."
"It's transmission of power, isn't it?" demanded Dave, jerking the
wounded arm again.
"I--"
"Good. That's what I thought. Transmission from one crystal to another.
They blow them up the same way?"
The pilot nodded, weakly.
"So _we_ don't manufacture the crystals in the nuclear laboratories.
You and your gang deliver them like Santa Claus, coming down the
chimney!"
The pilot nodded again.
"Now--where is this thing run from?"
The pilot shook his head. Dave snapped the arm sharply and the pilot
screamed. He screamed a name.
"There's no way back?"
"No," groaned the pilot.
Dave let him go. "No way of communicating with the real world from
here?"
"No."
"Do you know where we are?"
"Interstitial time."
"What?" roared Dave angrily.
The pilot winced. "I'm told," he gasped, "that time moves in quanta,
like energy. We're--between two quanta of time."
* * * * *
Dave frowned thoughtfully. The expression, "out of phase" came to
mind, and he decided that the half-world was displaced, out of phase
in time, moving behind one peak of the "real world" and before the
next. He remembered seeing a series of synchronizing pulses depicted
on an oscilloscope; a series of rectangular waves, square-sided and
flat-topped, rising from the baseline sharply. Like the cross-section
of a row of piano keys, the separation between pulses very narrow
compared to the width of the flat top. This half-world, he supposed,
moved along in the separation.
"Where is Claverly--and Phelps?"
"I don't know. Another crew captured them and took them back."
"I think that's about enough," said Dave. "I think we can take it from
here."
"And what are you going to do with me?"
Dave grinned, "We'll make a sporting proposition out of this, superman.
You'll be the bait for a trap. If the trap springs on me, you'll win.
If the trap springs on you, well, that's just too damned bad!"
"You can't trap us!"
"No? You told me I couldn't get anything out of you, either. So just
watch!"
Dave lifted the 'copter once more and drove, at headlong pace, back
to Merion. He hovered thirty feet above the pseudo-ground, less than
half a mile from the main building, and then cut the engine and let
the helicopter drop. For good measure, he tilted it sidewise. The ship
landed with a jarring crash that crumpled the landing gear and folded
one of the rotor blades down. The hull crumpled in on one side, and a
litter of broken glass and some splinters of metal spread out across
the earth. Dave completed the picture by kicking out the fore window
and strewing the ground around the ship with the gear from the various
tool boxes and compartments.
He found a first-aid kit. He charged a hypo needle with a healthy slug
of sedative and placed it handy.
Then he sat back and waited.
An hour passed; two, three, and darkness began to fall. Dave switched
on the landing lights of the 'copter, and then with a vicious smile
he kicked one of them loose so that its beam cut the ground askew,
illuminating the litter on the ground.
Two hours after dark he was rewarded by the distant sound of another
helicopter. Dave went to work vigorously. He clipped the pilot across
the jaw, dazing him. He shoved the needle home and discharged the
sedative into the pilot's body. Then he cut the tape and shoved
the feebly-struggling body half out through the fore window, being
callously rough so that the pilot's face and shoulders were slightly
cut by the broken glass.
The pilot, roused a bit by the pain, waved at the oncoming helicopter,
trying to warn it off. Instead, the other pilot dropped rapidly towards
the wreck.
It landed a hundred feet away and two men dropped to the ground and
came running.
"What happened?" cried the foremost.
"Wreck," groaned Crandall, inside the ship.
He took careful aim with the pilot's rifle and fired, twice. Both men
dropped in their tracks.
Leaping over them, Dave went to their helicopter and climbed in. He
snapped the radio switch and said, "We're back, reporting."
"What happened, M-22?" the speaker answered tinnily, and Dave cheered
himself for guessing correctly that the other pilot or observer had
reported before investigating.
"Complete wreck," he said shortly.
"The men?"
"Dead."
"You're certain, M-22?"
"I am."
"What was the waving, then?"
"Piece of canvas. I thought it was one of them. The light, you know."
"Ah, yes. Over there it is dark. All right, proceed as directed and
return to this wreck once the crystal is placed!"
"Check. M-22 signing off."
Dave snapped off the radio and rummaged about in the helicopter. He
found the crystal, packed neatly in an aluminum box in the compartment
below the dash.
Now to find something to write upon. Nothing he had available would
suffice. And if he took the crystal into the laboratory to write upon
a wall, the video cameras would see him and the enemy would blow the
crystal up, and himself with it. There was--
Jane!
Dave grinned happily. He lifted the 'copter and drove it madly across
the plain, following the ghostly road he recalled so well, until he
came to the farmhouse of the Nolan family. Shamelessly, Dave lifted the
'copter around the farmhouse, peering into the windows until he located
Jane's bedroom. He took the crystal from its packing and forced it
through the window screen. Then he took the whole helicopter in through
the house until he was sitting beside her bed. He tapped her shoulder
with the crystal until she awoke.
"Uh--what?" she gasped, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
She snapped on the light and sat up in bed.
She saw the crystal, apparently floating before her eyes, and she
jumped with fright. Then Dave took the 'copter close to the wall. He
scratched in the plaster:
_Jane. This is Dave!_
"Dave!" she breathed.
_Yes!_ It was hard on the plaster, but necessary.
"You can hear me?"
Dave pointed to the "Yes" with the crystal.
"You can see me?"
Again came the point. And Jane hurriedly wrapped herself in the sheet
and blushed. Then she threw away the sheet and said. "It seems that
this is no time for modesty, Dave."
He tapped the printed "Yes" once again as Jane reached for her dressing
gown and slipped into it.
"What do you want?" she asked.
_Carbon paper_, he wrote on the wall.
Jane disappeared, and Dave smiled at the scribbling on the wall. Its
disjointed message was bearing fruit. But what could one make out of:
_Jane. This is Dave!_
_Yes!_
_Carbon paper._
Nothing but the safety of America!
* * * * *
Instead of carbon paper, Jane brought a "Magic Slate", one of those
wax-based tablets covered with a celluloid sheet that can be written on
with a stylus and then erased by lifting the celluloid. It was better
than carbon paper, and Dave cheered to himself at her brain-work.
"What is that?" she asked.
_This crystal is the one the enemy was bringing to Merion Laboratory
to replace the one they blew up in the safety-dump yesterday_, he wrote.
"Where are you?"
_I am in some sort of interspace between time quanta. Your guess is
better than mine._
"Who is the enemy?"
Dave wrote it out, and then added the rest of the details.
"What shall I do?"
_Stop them--somehow._
"How can I stop them?" wailed Jane.
_Call President Morgan._ You can do that, he wrote. _Let the President
put a stop to it!_
Jane nodded and went to the telephone. Dave followed. _I'm putting this
crystal in Merion_, he said. _I've been away too long--they will be
getting suspicious._
"Dave," cried Jane, helplessly looking for him. It was hard on Dave,
for he knew what she wanted and was unable to stand where her eyes were
trying to focus. He gave up and watched her eyes look aside and through
him, unable to help her see him as he could see her. "Dave," she cried
plaintively, "come back to me!"
_When I can_, he promised.
Jane waved the pad. "I have that in writing," she said. Her face showed
it to be a hard try at humor.
Dave tapped her gently on the forehead with the crystal, and then it
took off in a long swoop towards the window as he left. He did not
know, but he assumed that a certain amount of time must be permitted
the placers of those crystals since the operator could not open a
door, nor must he permit the crystal to be seen floating through a
busy corridor. How much of this grace period he had left he did not
know, but he wanted the crystal placed under the eye of the television
cameras of the enemy before they became suspicious.
The crystal was a deadly thing under any circumstances, but now it was
like a gallon tin of nitroglycerine; Jane, knowing the facts, would
keep people out of its sphere of death.
Meanwhile, as Dave drove the helicopter towards Merion, the avalanche
of action that he had initiated was rolling higher and higher.
A common, garden-variety citizen of no especial degree of public
acclaim is normally supposed to be able to shake the President by
the hand and/or complain about the weather or the administration,
or taxes, or anything. It has never been determined just what might
happen if Peter Doakes, of South Burlap, Idaho, became possessed of
vital information that must be handed to the President within the
hour. Without a doubt the country would be blown sky-high by the time
Mr. Doakes succeeded in proving to ninety-odd undersecretaries that
he had something truly important and was not a crank or a crackpot.
But Dr. Jane Nolan of Merion Atomic Laboratory had both a name and a
reputation, and when she placed her call to the White House, it took
her exactly twelve minutes to convince the powers that be that she had
something vital to discuss with President Morgan. Four minutes later,
the President had been awakened and was on the telephone. It took
another fifteen minutes for Jane to tell her story.
Then the President haled a pompous little man out of bed and made
him stand at the telephone while the President of the United States
gave the Foreign Ambassador a bit of the Official What-For, and began
explaining that it was not necessary for Congress to convene in order
for the United States to rise and defend herself against a sneak attack
from a Foreign Power, and that under the Circumstances, the President
was going to present the Foreign Power with a fine collection of
American Military Secrets, and that the first of these Gifts would be
presented within the hour unless the Foreign Power surrendered first.
The President had a few other suggestions regarding the Return,
unharmed, of a couple of American Scientists, and the well-being of a
certain American Newspaperman, and some other items of mutual interest,
and Furthermore, Mister Ambassador--
* * * * *
Dave Crandall flew his helicopter towards Merion, wondering how things
were going. His job was done. He, too, was finished. There was no
return. Not that Dave felt any great urge to return; doubtless there
was something he could find to do in this half-world that would let him
go on working. He would have to contact them and have them ship him
groceries, cigarettes, and water. But there were many things that a man
could do here.
He thought about Jane, and his heart softened for a moment. This was
just as well, however. She would forget him, while he had no future
worth thinking about. Only hard work, partly because he liked activity,
partly because it kept him from brooding about the date of his certain
death.
A wonderful woman, Jane Nolan; one not to be hurt by fate's little
tricks. But so long as he was here, she--
The crystal he had in his pocket flashed brilliantly, penetrating the
cloth and lighting up the cabin of the helicopter. At once, Dave felt
the hard matter of the seat grow tenuous, and there was a bare instant
of sliding resistance, like the feeling of plunging a foot into the
shifting sand of a beach. Then the helicopter disappeared and Dave felt
himself falling.
"Damned unmitigated liar!" growled Dave. Then he crashed into a tree
and lost consciousness.
Dave meant the pilot who swore that there was no return to the real
world.
He opened his eyes and groaned. He tried to move and found that he
could not. He might as well be covered up to the eyebrows in concrete.
He looked around and saw a crowd of people watching him.
"Welcome home."
"But--?"
"I owe you an apology." Dave looked and saw President Morgan.
"Apology?"
"I got too tough with them. They flashed you back while you were flying
the helicopter. You're banged up a little."
"Nothing that can't be repaired," said Doctor Meteridge cheerfully. "A
beautiful case. Fractures of the tibia, fibula, radius and ulna on
one side, humerus and clavicle on the other. Bruises and a couple of
abrasions. Nothing serious."
"David," said President Morgan, "a grateful people is waiting for your
convalescence so that we can show you our appreciation."
"Yes," said Jane. "Get well. We all have plans for you!"