Precisely at the end of Meta's two minutes, the lock buzzed on the door
to the reception room. I touched the control which opened the door and
stood as the group filed into the room. My briefings on each of them
had been exhaustive, but I examined their faces for some sign that one
or more might penetrate my disguise as Bartlett.
The redheaded Meta nodded. She had been with Bartlett as his security
secretary for 70 years. Senator Chambers, as a representative of the
electorate, darted rapid glances around the room as soon as the door
had closed, counting noses. General Whit Marshall, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff of the police systems, nodded with the cold
reserve of the high-ranking military to the higher-ranking civilian.
The fourth member of the group, Chet Meyers, chief Master Machine
technician, was the only one to speak.
The lanky Meyers looked around the room. "Where's General Spicer, sir?
Senator Chambers was telling us you were going to invite him because of
this scare today."
The invisible scars which cobwebbed across my body from the
electro-surgical knives tensed so suddenly that I almost screamed. I
made myself reach for my cane casually. I had come so close!
No, wait--there was the bitter rivalry between Chambers and Spicer.
Chambers was too complete a politician to pass up an opportunity to
discredit General Spicer.
His black pin-prick eyes darted up toward the time unit on the wall.
"There's no time to wait, Meyers," he said eagerly. "Spicer knows the
schedule. We must go without him."
Conscious of the stares of Meta and Meyers, I pushed the button which
opened the door into the inner corridor.
I looked directly at the Master Machine technician. "I asked Spicer to
get a late report on the incident for us. But you know that Chambers is
right--we cannot afford to wait any longer. Perhaps he'll catch up."
We followed the corridor toward the hub of the Pentagon. Senator
Chambers led the way, almost at a trot, as though he were afraid that
Spicer would catch up. General Marshall and Meyers, hard put to keep
up, were strung out behind him, with Meta and me bringing up the rear.
That was the way we went through the check points manned by the
security guards. Twice I caught Meta looking at me. At one of the
check points, I thought she was going to say something. I lifted the
tip of my cane and put my finger near the stud, but she remained silent.
* * * * *
The tension began to mount inside me as we approached the door opening
on the invisible force wall. Through the wall, I could see the squat,
ugly building in the center of the hub of the Pentagon, which was our
destination. I held my cane ready. But even a CT-bomb wouldn't break
through the force field.
As we drew near the final guard point, a scrubwoman who had been
working on the floor of the corridor picked up her bucket and fell in
with our party.
Chambers was already gesturing at the guard to set the combination,
which would open the force wall at precisely 1330. I looked at the time
unit on my wrist and saw that we had twenty seconds to wait. I resisted
the betraying impulse to rub the irritated area around the electrodes
set in my neck.
When I looked up from the time unit, everything was too quiet. Senator
Chambers was no longer dancing around impatiently. He was staring at
the bucket carried by the scrubwoman.
The inside of the bucket was not even damp. And the mop she had been
using was dry. The implication must have hit both Chambers and me at
the same moment. I wanted to shout a warning.
Chambers jumped back against the wall, yelling at the guard, "Shoot
her! Shoot! She is an alien!"
The scrubwoman did the wrong thing. She turned and tried to run, her
legs lifting awkwardly against the pull of the unaccustomed gravity.
But the guard's weapon was already at his shoulder. The low-velocity
missile thudded into the body of the scrubwoman, flipping her up into
the air in a graceless somersault. She landed on the concrete floor
with a second thud, which echoed softly down the long hall. A pool
slowly widened around her body and she lay still.
I looked at my wrist time unit again. It was 1330. The door through the
force wall was open. I went past the huddled heap lying on the floor,
careful not to step in the pool of moisture.
_Too hideous to put into words in a public fac-report! That's what the
facsimile sheet had hinted about the broken body of the other "alien."
Two from four left only two. But the door through the force wall was
open. I had to get through the door and into the building._
Senator Chambers stepped out from behind the guard and blocked the
doorway. His little eyes flashed from one expressionless face to
another as he tried to come to some inner decision. His shoulders
slumped.
"I--I don't like it," he said. "The door is open now. I think perhaps
we had better wait for General Spicer, after all."
But Meta shook her head and pushed past Chambers. She said, "No. You
know the routine as well as we, Senator. We are required to inspect the
unit. Leave the guard on duty here."
* * * * *
I took advantage of the indecision of the others and pushed through the
door after her toward the squat, ugly little building that was my goal.
Meta was almost to the door of the building when I heard Chambers yell.
"Stop her, Secretary Bartlett! She's malfunctioning. We've all been
ordered to wait outside for an ID check." I ignored him and he yelled
again. "Guard, open fire on the girl. Don't let her get inside that
door!"
But he was too late. Meta disappeared through the door into the black
building. I stepped inside just as it slammed shut and the first
missile smashed against the door from the guard's weapon.
The building was not large. The Master Machine squatted like a huge,
thick-bodied black spider in the center of the building. A cobweb of
power lines and control cables criss-crossed the floor and fed into the
base of the unit.
A myriad of tiny moving parts, levers and cams and elbowed arms and
gears pulsed and shifted and moved to give the impression that the
Master Machine was breathing, that it was alive. Tiny multicolored
lights twinkled on and off. Giant vacuum tubes hummed and glowed. And
all the while, it munched on endless tapes.
The black monster was the heart of Earth's civilization, and it was the
means of it. As I started toward the machine, a grid at the top turned
slowly and ogled me. Almost immediately, a red tube blinked on, and
the moving parts on one section of the machine plunged into a frenzied
rhythm of action.
I ran forward, breathing heavily under the strain of the unaccustomed
gravity. I had only seconds in which to act. At any moment, Senator
Chambers and the guards would be coming through the door behind me.