"After that," Trelawney remarked, "we may be able to take things a
little easier."
"What's the quantity you're using in there?"
"No real reason I should tell you that, is there? But I will. The
sixty-eight kilograms the Overgovernment's been grieving about are
under the machine platform. We're using all of it." He grinned briefly,
perhaps at Dowland's expression. "The type of job we had in mind
required quantities in that class. Now, about yourself. We're not
murderers. Jill tells me you can't be bribed--all right. What will
happen, when this thing's settled, is that you'll have an attack of
amnesia. Several months of your life will be permanently lost from your
memory, including, of course, everything connected with this operation.
Otherwise you won't be harmed. Understand?"
"I've heard of such things," Dowland said drily.
It wouldn't, however, be done that way. It was the kind of thing told
a man already as good as dead, to keep him from making a desperate
attempt to save himself. The Freeholders really wouldn't have much
choice. Something had loused up their plans here, and if Dowland either
disappeared or was found suffering from a sudden bout of amnesia, the
IPA would turn its full attention on Terra at once. If he died, his
death could be plausibly arranged to look like an accident or a killing
for personal motives. These people were quite capable of sacrificing
one of their group to back such a story up. And it would pass. Terra
was under no more immediate suspicion than any other world. Dowland had
been on a routine assignment.
* * * * *
There were a few brief preparations. Paul Trelawney checked the
batteries in the radiation suits he and Jill were wearing, then
exchanged his set for that of the spare suit. Dowland left his own
AR field off for the moment. It was at least as adequate as the one
developed by the Trelawneys' suits, and in some respects a much more
practical device. But the suit batteries had an effective life of
twenty-four hours, expending them automatically while the suits were
worn. His field would maintain itself for a minimum of an hour and a
half, a maximum of two hours. In this situation, Dowland wasn't sure
how long he would have to depend on the field. A few more minutes of
assured protection might make a difference.
He saw Trelawney studying the mountaineering rig on the floor; then he
picked up the harness and brought it over to him.
"Here, put it on," he said.
"What for?" Dowland asked, surprised.
Trelawney grinned. "We may have a use for it. You'll find out in a
minute or two."
They left the house by a back entrance. Clouds were banked low on the
eastern horizon now; the first sunlight gleamed pale gold beneath them.
In the west the sky was brown with swirling dust. Jill stopped twenty
yards from the laboratory building and stood on the slope, rifle in
hand, watching the men go on. At the door, Dowland switched on his AR
field. Trelawney tossed the disk-shaped key over to him.
"Know how to use it?"
Dowland nodded.
"All right. After you've snapped it in and it releases again, throw
it back to me. It may be the last one around, and we're not taking
it into the laboratory this time. When the door starts moving down,
step back to the right of it. We'll see what the lab is like before we
go in." Trelawney indicated a thimble-sized instrument on his suit.
"This'll tell whether the place is hot at the moment, and approximately
how hot." He waved the IPA gun in Dowland's direction. "All right, go
ahead."
Dowland fitted the key into the central depression in the door, pressed
down, felt the key snap into position with a sharp twisting motion of
its own, released his pressure on it. An instant later, the key popped
back out into his hand. He tossed it back to Trelawney, who caught it
left-handed and threw it over his head in Jill's direction. The disk
thudded heavily into the grass ten feet from her. The girl walked over,
picked it up, and slid it into one of her suit pockets.
The slab of metasteel which made up the laboratory door began moving
vertically downward. The motion stopped when the door's top rim was
still several inches above the level of the sill.
A low droning came from the little instrument on Trelawney's suit. It
rose and fell irregularly like the buzz of a circling wasp. Mingled
with it was something that might have been the hiss of escaping steam.
That was Dowland's detector confirming. The lab reeked with radiation.
He glanced over at Trelawney.
"Hot enough," the Freeholder said. "We'll go inside. But stay near the
door for a moment. There's something else I want to find out about...."
* * * * *
Inside, the laboratory was unpartitioned and largely empty, a great
shell of a building. Only the section to the left of the entrance
appeared to have been used. That section was lighted. The light arose
evenly from the surfaces of the raised machine platform halfway over to
the opposite wall. The platform was square, perhaps twenty feet along
its sides. Dowland recognized the apparatus on it from Trelawney's
diagrams. The central piece was an egg-shaped casing which appeared to
be metasteel. Near its blunt end, partly concealed, stood the long,
narrow instrument console. Behind the other end of the casing, an
extension ramp jutted out above the platform. At the end of the ramp
was a six-foot disk that might have been quartz, rimless, brightly
iridescent. It was tilted to the left, facing the bank of instruments.
"A rather expensive bit of equipment over there, Dowland," Trelawney
said. "My brother developed the concept, very nearly in complete
detail, almost twenty-five years ago. But a great deal of time and
thought and work came then before the concept turned into the operating
reality on that platform."
He nodded to the left. "That's Miguel's coat on the floor. I wasn't
sure it would still be here. The atomic key you were searching for
so industriously last night is in one of its pockets. Miguel was
standing just there, with the coat folded over his arm, when I saw him
last--perhaps two or three seconds before I was surprised to discover
I was no longer looking at the instrument controls in our laboratory."
"Where were you?" Dowland asked. "Six hundred thousand years in the
past?"
"The instruments showed a fix on that point in time," Trelawney said.
"But this was, you understand, a preliminary operation. We intended
to make a number of observations. We had not planned a personal
transfer for several more weeks. But in case the test turned out to
be successful beyond our expectations, I was equipped to make the
transfer. That bit of optimistic foresight is why I'm still alive."