"Now they'll stellarfax plans of this out to Antares to our field
agents. After one is made and smuggled in to our case, all they have to
do is run in a fast ship to pick him up when he breaks out."
"Speaking of that gadget," Simonetta suggested, "why don't you take it
down to Mr. Smith? He must be waiting out the message in the com room."
Westervelt agreed. He took the package and the envelope of blueprints,
and walked into the hall. He turned first to his right, along the base
of the U-shaped corridor, then to his left after passing the door to
the fire stairs at the inner corner and the private entrance to Smith's
office opposite it.
The walls were covered by a gray plastic that was softly monotonous in
the light of the luminous ceiling. The floor, nearly black, was of a
springy composition that deadened the sound of footfalls.
Along the wing of the "U" into which he turned, Westervelt passed doors
to the department's reference library and to a conference room on his
right, and portal marked "Shaft" on his left. Beyond the latter was a
section of blank wall behind which, he knew, was a special shaft for
the power conduits that supplied the department's own communications
instruments.
The place was a self-sufficient unit, he reflected. It had its own
TV equipment and a sub-space radio for reaching far-out spaceships,
although most routine traffic was boosted through relay stations on the
outer planets of the Solar System.
Some lines of communication with the field agents were tenuous, but
messages usually got through. If the lines broke down, someone would be
sent to search the confidential files for a roundabout connection.
_I wonder how many of us would wind up in court if those files became
public knowledge?_ thought Westervelt. _I'd like to see them trying to
handle Smitty! Nobody here can figure him out all the time, and we're
at least half as nutty as he is._
Down beside the communications room, though normally reached by the
other wing of the corridor that enclosed the core of elevators, shafts
and rest rooms, the department even had a confidential laboratory.
Actually, this was more in the nature of a stock room for peculiar
gadgets and implements used for the fell purposes of the organization.
Westervelt did not like to wander about in there, for fear of setting
something off. It was more or less the domain of the one man in the
department whom he knew to have been in an alien prison.
Robert Lydman was an ex-spacer who had joined the group after having
been rescued from just such an incarceration as he now specialized in
cracking. Westervelt had been told that the sojourn among the stars had
left Lydman a trifle strange, which was probably why they no longer
used him as a field agent.
He came to the blank end of the corridor, the last door on the right
being that of the communications room. He opened it and stuck his head
inside.
The room was dimmer than the corridor. The operators, who sometimes
had to contend with much-relayed faint images on their screens, liked
it that way. They kept the window filters adjusted so that it might
as well be night outside. Here and there, small lights glowed at
various radio receivers or tape recording instruments, and there was a
pervading background rustle of static blended with quiet whistles and
mutterings.
At the moment, the operator on duty was Charlie Colborn, a quiet
redhead who kept a locker full of electronic gadgets for tinkering
during slow periods. Smith sat near him in a straight-backed chair,
watching the screen before Colborn.
A message was coming in from the Pluto relay--Westervelt recognized
the distant operator who spoke briefly to Colborn before putting the
message through. The next face, blurry from repeated boosting of the
image, was that of a stranger.
"This is Johnson, on Trident," the man said. "Capella IV tells me they
gave you the facts about Harris. That right?"
Smith hitched himself closer, so the transmitter lens could pick him
up. Westervelt tip-toed inside and found himself a stool.
"We just got the outlines," Smith said. "You say this spacer is being
held by the natives, and they won't let you communicate with him. Have
you reported to the D.I.R.?"
The distance and the relaying caused a few seconds of lag, even with
the ultra-modern sub-space equipment.
"I _am_ the D.I.R.," said the face on the screen, after a bitter pause.
"Along with several other jobs, commercial and official. There are only
a few of us Terrans at this post, you know. The natives won't even
admit they have him."
"Then how can you be sure they do? And why can't you get to him
somehow?"
"We know because he managed to get a message out--we think." Johnson
frowned doubtfully. "That is, he did if we can believe the ... ah ...
messenger. We made inquiries of the natives, but it is impossible
to make much of an investigation because their civilization is an
underwater one."
Smith noticed Westervelt.
"Willie," he whispered hastily, "get on the phone and have one of the
girls stop in the library and fetch me the volume of the _Galatlas_
with Trident in it."
Westervelt dropped his package on a table and punched Beryl's number on
the nearest phone. Meanwhile, with its weird pauses, the interstellar
talk continued.
The missing Terran, Harris by name, had insisted against all advice at
the outpost on one of the watery planet's few islands, upon conducting
submarine exploration in a converted space scout. Since ninety-five
percent of the surface of Trident was ocean, Johnson had only a vague
idea of where Harris had gone. The point was that the explorer had
been too long out of touch. The natives, a sea people of crustacean
evolution, who were to be found over most of the ocean bottom, and who
had a considerable culture with permanent cities and jet-propelled
submarine vehicles, admitted to having heard of Harris but denied
knowledge of his whereabouts.
"So we reported to the D.I.R. sector headquarters," Johnson concluded.
"They sent an expert to coax the Tridentian officials into visiting the
shallows for a conference, but nothing came of it. Then we called in
one of your field agents and he referred us to you."
Beryl entered the room quietly, bearing a large book. Westervelt held
out his hand for it, but she seemed not to see him until he rose to
offer her the stool. When he turned his attention back to the screen,
Smith was probing for information which the distant Johnson sounded
reluctant to give.
"But if they deny everything, how do you know he's not dead instead of
being held in one of their cities? Why do you think he's being made a
sort of exhibit?"
Johnson hemmed and hawed, but finally confessed.
Besides the crustaceans, who were about man-sized and
"civilized," there was another form of intelligent--or at least
semi-intelligent--life on Trident. Certain large, fish-like inhabitants
of the planet's seas had been contacted more than once to deliver
messages to the exploring members of the outpost. This was always
promptly accomplished by having one of the "fish" contact another of
the same species who was in the right location.
"_What_ did you say?" demanded Smith. "Telepathic? A telepathic _fish_?
Oh, no! Don't ask us to--Well, what I mean is ... well, how do you know
they're reliable?"
More in the same vein followed. Westervelt stopped listening when he
realized that Smith was being convinced, willing or not. Stranger
things were on record in the immensity of the known galaxy, but Smith
took the attitude that they were all a plot against Department 99.
Westervelt pried the book from Beryl's grasp and turned over pages to
the article on the planet Trident.
He skimmed the opening, which dealt with galactic co-ordinates and the
type of star at the center of the system, and did the same with the
general description of the surface and what was known of the life forms
there. The history since discovery was laconically brief.
_Here it is_, he told himself. _A species of life resembling a Terran
fish in general configuration, about twenty feet in length and
suspected of having some undetermined sense whereby individuals can
locate each other at great distances. Well, by the time it's in print,
it's outdated._
Someone turned on a brighter light, and he realized the interstellar
talk was at an end. Smith looked around. He held out his hand for the
book, seeming to take for granted that someone should have found the
page.
"I don't see _how_ we're going to reach this one," he grunted, plopping
the volume down on the table to scan the article.
Colborn snatched at a small piece of apparatus he had evidently been
assembling. Only Beryl was impressed; the others knew that Smith said
this of every new case.
"Tell Mr. Lydman and Mr. Parrish I want a conference," the department
head requested. "We'll use the room next door."
Beryl and Westervelt left Colborn examining his gadget suspiciously and
retraced their steps up the corridor. At the door to the main office,
the blonde left him, presumably to go through to the corner office
occupied by Parrish, whose secretary she was. Westervelt dwelt on the
thought of sending her on the way with a small pat, but forced himself
to continue up the other wing of the "U."
He passed two doors on his left: another conference room and a spare
office used mainly for old files. Doors to his right led to washrooms.
This end of the hall was not blank as on the other side; it had a
door labeled "Laboratory--No Admittance." The last door to the left,
corresponding to the location of the communications room, led to
Lydman's office.
Westervelt knocked, waited for the sound of a voice inside, and walked
in. For a moment, he saw no one, then pivoted to his right as he
remembered that Lydman kept his desk on the inner wall, around the
short corner behind the door. Everyone else who had a corner office sat
out by the windows.
He found himself facing a heavy man whose bleached crewcut and tanned
features bespoke much time spent outdoors. Very beautiful eyes of a
dark gray-blue regarded him steadily until Westervelt felt a panicky
urge to run.
Instead, he cleared his throat and gave Smith's message. Lydman always
had the same effect upon him for the first few minutes, although he
seemed to like Westervelt better than anyone else at the office, even
to the point of inviting him home for weekends of swimming.
_I always get the feeling that he looks right through me and back
again,_ thought Westervelt, _but I can't see an inch into him!_