Westervelt sat at his little desk in the corner, doodling out possible
ways and means of breaking out of a cell thirty fathoms or so under
water. From time to time Beryl or Simonetta offered a suggestion. He
knew that everyone in the office was probably engaged in the same
puzzle. Smith believed in general brain-storming in getting a project
started, since no one could tell where a good idea might not originate.
"If I ever get into space," Willie muttered, "it will never be to a
planet as wet as Trident. What ever made this Harris think he was a
pearl diver?"
"Is that what he was after?" asked Beryl.
"No, I just made that up."
He glanced over at Simonetta, who winked and continued with the letter
she was transcribing. An earphone reproduced Smith's dictation from
his tape. As she listened, she edited mentally and spoke into the
microphone of her typing machine, which transcribed her words as type.
Westervelt realized that it was more difficult than it seemed to do
the job so smoothly. He had noticed Beryl rewriting letters two or
three times, and Parrish was more likely than the boss to set down his
thoughts in a logical order.
"I've heard so many wild ideas in this office," said Beryl, "that I
simply don't know where to start. How do they decide on a good way?"
"They guess, just the way we've been doing. They're better guessers
than we are, from experience."
"It's just a matter of judgment, I suppose," Beryl admitted.
"They make their share of mistakes," Simonetta put in.
"Yeah, I read an old report on a great one," said Westervelt. "Ever
hear of the time they were shipping oxygen tanks to three spacers
jailed out around Mizar?"
Simonetta stopped talking her letter, and the girls gave Willie their
attention.
"It seems," he continued, "that an exploring ship landed on a planet of
that star and found a kind of civilization they hadn't bargained for.
The natives breathed air with a high chlorine content; so when they
grabbed three of the crew for hostages, the ship had to keep supplying
fresh tanks of oxygen."
"How long could they keep that up?" asked Beryl.
"Not indefinitely, anyway. They weren't recovering any carbon dioxide
for processing, the way they would in the ship. The captain figured
he'd better lift and orbit while he tried to negotiate. Meanwhile, he
sent to the Department for help, and they came up with a poor guess."
"What?"
"They got the captain to disguise some spacesuit rockets as oxygen
tanks and send them down by the auxiliary rocket they were using to
make deliveries and keep contact. The idea was that the prisoners would
fly themselves over the walls like angels, the rocket would snatch them
up, and they'd all filter the green-white light of Mizar from their
lenses forever."
"And why didn't it work?"
"Oh, it worked," said Westervelt. "It worked beautifully. The only
trouble was that when they got these three guys aboard and were picking
up stellar speed, they found that the Mizarians had pulled a little
sleight of hand. They'd stuck three of their own into the Terran
spacesuits--pretty cramped, but able to move--and sent them to spy out
the ship. Well, the captain took one look and realized it was all over.
He couldn't supply the Mizarians with enough chlorine to keep them
alive until they could be sent back. He just kept going."
"But the men they left behind!" exclaimed Beryl. "What happened to
them?"
Westervelt shrugged.
"They never exactly found out."
Beryl, horrified, turned to Simonetta, who stared reflectively at the
wall.
"For all we know," said the dark girl, "they were dead already."
"It was about even," said Westervelt. "The Mizarians never heard
exactly what happened to theirs either."
There was a period of silence while they considered that angle.
Simonetta finally said, "Why don't you tell her about the time they
gave that spacer the hormone treatment for a disguise?"
"Oh ... you tell it," said Westervelt, trapped. "You know it better
than I do."
"That one," began Simonetta, "happened on a world where there's a
colony from Terra that isn't much talked about. It's a sort of Amazon
culture, and they don't allow men. They were set to execute this fellow
who smuggled himself in for a lark, when the Department started
shipping him drugs that changed his appearance."
Westervelt admired Beryl's wide-eyed intentness.
"Finally," Simonetta continued, "his appearance changed so much that
he could dress up and pass for a woman anywhere. He just walked out
when the next scheduled spaceship landed, and was halfway back to Terra
before they finished searching the woods for him. It made trouble,
though."
"What happened?" breathed Beryl.
"They never quite succeeded in changing him back. His wife wound up
divorcing him for infidelity when he gave birth to twins."
Beryl straightened up abruptly.
"Oh...! You--come on, now!"
Westervelt reminded himself that the blush must have resulted less
from the joke than from having been taken in. They were still laughing
when a buzzer sounded at Beryl's desk phone. She flipped the switch,
listened for a moment, then rose with a toss of her blonde head at
Westervelt.
"Mr. Parrish wants me to help him research in the dead files," she
said. "I bet _he_ won't try that kind of gag on me!"
"No," muttered Westervelt as she strode out, "he has some all his own."
He looked up to find Simonetta watching him with a grin. She shook her
head ruefully as Westervelt grew a flush to match Beryl's.
"Willie, Willie!" she said sadly. "You aren't letting that bottle
blonde bother you? I didn't think you were that kind of boy!"
Westervelt grinned back, at some cost.
"Is there another kind?" he asked. "After, all, Si, she's only been
around a few weeks. It's the novelty. I'll get used to her."
"_Sure_ you will," said Simonetta.
She returned to her letters, and Westervelt hunched over his desk
to brood. He wondered what Parrish and Beryl were up to in the file
room. He could think of no innocent reason to wander in on business of
his own. Perhaps, he reflected, he did not really want to; he might
overhear something he would regret.
He passed some time without directing a single thought to the problems
of the Department. Then the door beyond Simonetta opened and Smith
strolled out. He carried a pad as if he, too, had been doodling.
"Well, Willie," he said cheerfully, "what are we going to do about this
Harris fellow?"
"All I can think of, Mr. Smith, is to offer to trade them a few people
we could do without," said Westervelt.
Smith grinned. He seemed to be willing to make up a little list.
"Some who never would be missed, eh? And let's head the page with
people who take messages from thinking fish!"
He pottered about for a few moments before winding up seated on a
corner of the unoccupied secretarial desk.
"I was actually thinking of skin divers," he confided. "Then I realized
that if it takes a twenty foot monster to wander the undersea wilds of
Trident without being intimidated, maybe those waters wouldn't be too
safe for Terran swimmers."
"Unless they could get one of the monsters for a guide," suggested
Westervelt.
The three of them pondered that possibility.
"I can see it now," said Simonetta. "My name Swishy. Me good guide. You
want find pearl? Not allowed here; we no steal from other fish!"
They laughed, and Smith demanded to know how one _thought_ in pidgin
talk. They discussed the probability of fraud in the reports that Smith
had received, and concluded reluctantly that, whether or not some trick
might be involved, there was bound to be some truth in the story.
"I suppose we'll have to use this fishy network to locate him," sighed
Smith at last. "It would take too long to ship out parts of a small sub
to be assembled on Trident. The whole thing makes me wonder if I'll
ever eat another seafood dinner!"
"Maybe somebody else will think of something," said Westervelt, partly
to conceal the fact that he himself had come up with nothing.
"Tell you what," said Smith, nodding. "Suppose you go along and see how
Bob Lydman is making out, while I sign these letters. You might check
at the com room sometime, too, in case anything else on the case comes
in."
Westervelt agreed, made sure he had something in his pocket to write
upon should the need arise, and left.
A few minutes later, he reached the end of the corridor, having cocked
an ear at the door of the old file office as he passed and heard Beryl
giggling at some remark by Parrish. He unclenched his teeth and knocked
on Lydman's door.
He waited a minute and tried again, but there was still no answer.
He hesitated, wondering what would happen should he walk in and find
that Lydman was physically present but not in a mood to recognize any
one else's existence. Slowly, he walked back to the washroom on the
opposite side of the hall.
Washing his hands with deliberation, Westervelt decided that it might
be best to get Lydman on the phone. He could not, in fact, understand
why inside phone calls were not more popular in the office. He supposed
that the face-to-face habit had grown up among the staff, probably
reflecting Smith's preference for getting everyone personally involved
in everything. There might even be a deeper cause--they were so often
in contact with distant places by the tenuous beaming of interstellar
signals that there must be a certain reassurance and sense of security
in having within physical reach the person to whom one was speaking.
"I'll have to watch for that if I stay here long enough," Westervelt
told himself. "You don't have to be a prizefighter to get punchy, I
guess."
He examined himself critically in the mirror over the sink, thinking
that he could do with a neater appearance. A coin in the slot of a
dispenser on the wall bought him a disposable paper comb with which he
smoothed down his dark hair.
_I need a haircut almost as bad as Castor P._ he thought. _I wonder if
that really stands for Pollux? What a thing for parents to do! On the
other hand, from people that came up with one like him, you'd expect
almost anything!_
No one came in while he was in the washroom, much as he would have
welcomed an excuse for conversation. He dawdled his way through the
door into the corridor, not liking the thought of inflicting his
presence upon Beryl and Parrish. That meant he would have to walk back
as far as the spare conference room to find a phone.
"Of course, there's the lab," he muttered.
That was only a few steps away, and he could hardly do much damage
between the door and the phone.
Reaching the end of the corridor once more, he decided to make one last
try at Lydman's door. Again, there was no reply to his knock, so he
turned away to the laboratory door and entered.
He was faced by a vista of tables, workbenches with power tools, and
diverse assemblies of testing apparatus, most of the latter dusty and
presenting the appearance of gold-bergs knocked together for temporary
use and then shoved aside until someone might need a part from one
of them. By far the greater space, however, was occupied by shelves
and crates and stacks of small cartons or loosely wrapped packages
in which various gadgets seemed to be stored after plans of them had
been transmitted to the field. Half a dozen large files for drawings
and blueprints reached nearly to the ceiling. Racks of instruments in
relatively recent use or consideration stood here and there among the
tables and workbenches.
To Westervelt's right, near the far wall behind which lay the
communications room, he caught sight of a prowling figure. He
recognized Lydman's broad shoulders and hesitated.
The ex-spacer had paused to examine a gadget lying on one of the
tables. From Westervelt's position, it appeared to be a wristwatch or
something similar. Lydman picked it up and turned toward a part of
the wall where a thick steel plate had been fastened to an insulated
partition of brick. He raised the "watch" to eye level, as if aiming.
A thin pencil of white flame leaped from the instrument to spatter
sparks against the already scarred and stained steel. Sucked up by
the air-conditioning, the small puff of smoke disappeared so quickly
that Westervelt realized that the scorched odor was entirely in his
imagination.
Lydman replaced the instrument casually before strolling over to
another table. He inspected an open pack of cigarettes with a grim
smile, but let them lie there in plain sight. Westervelt reminded
himself never to grub one of those, just on general principles. Lydman
went on to a small cylinder somewhat larger than an old-fashioned
battery flashlight. Something clicked under his finger, and from one
end of the cylinder emerged the folding blades of a portable fan. The
ex-spacer pressed a second switch position to start them spinning. He
turned the fan to blow across his face, as if to check its cooling
power, then held the thing at arm's length as he thumbed the switch to
a third position.
A low, humming sound reached Westervelt. It rose rapidly in pitch until
it passed beyond his hearing range. He shook his head slightly. For
some reason, he found it difficult to concentrate. Perhaps Lydman's
presence, unexpected as it was, had upset him, he thought. He decided
that he must be getting a dizzy spell of some sort. Then he became
concerned lest he turn nauseous.
The final stage, hardly a minute after Lydman had last moved the
switch, found Westervelt tensing as a wave of sheer panic swept over
him.
He stepped back toward the door, noticing dizzily that Lydman wore a
strange expression too. Part of the youth's mind wondered if some of
the ultra-sonic effect were reflected from the walls to the ex-spacer;
another part insisted upon leaving the scene as hastily as possible.
He got himself into the corridor again, actually panting as he eased
the door closed behind him. He started to walk, finding his knees
a trifle loose. Passing the washroom, he hesitated; but he decided
that he could make it to the conference room. Once there, however, he
slipped inside and sat down to recover.
"What does it take to have a mind like that?" he whispered to, himself.
"It's like a hobby to him. I think some day I ought to look for a job
with reasonably normal people!"
A few minutes of peace and quiet refreshed him. He returned to the main
office, just as Smith was surrendering a stack of signed letters to
Simonetta Diorio. They looked around as he entered.
"Well, Willie, did he have anything going?" asked Smith.
"I ... uh ... he was kind of busy," said Westervelt.
"What did he seem to have in mind?" Smith started to reach for
Simonetta's phone switch.
"He ... that is ... I didn't ask him. He was ... busy, in the lab."
"Oh," said Smith.
He peered at Westervelt's expression, and added, "Then ... perhaps we'd
better not disturb him. It might spoil any ideas he's putting together."
Westervelt managed a grunt of assent as he turned to walk back to his
desk.
_Whatever he's putting together_, he thought, _I'd rather stay out of
the way._
He hunched over his desk, staring unseeingly at the notes he had
scribbled earlier. He was vaguely conscious of the cessation of talk in
the background, but he did not notice Simonetta's approach until the
girl stood beside him.
"What happened, Willie?" she asked. "You look as if he threw you out."
"No. Not deliberately, anyhow," said Westervelt. "At least, I don't
_think_ he knew I was even there--although how can you tell if he
doesn't want to let on?"
He told her what had happened in the laboratory. She nodded
thoughtfully.
"I suppose it has its uses," said Westervelt. "I hate to think of the
way he plays around with things in there. Wasn't there a time when
someone killed himself in that lab?"
"That was years ago," said Simonetta.
She hugged herself as if feeling a sudden chill, her large, soft eyes
serious. Westervelt realized that she was actually a very beautiful
girl, much more so than Beryl, and he wondered why he felt so
differently about them. Simonetta seemed too nice to fit the ideas he
got concerning Beryl. Something told him that his thinking was mixed up.
_I guess you just grow out of that_, he reflected silently. _Maybe
they're the same under the skin._