When Beryl walked in, Westervelt was at one of the tall windows with
Simonetta, dialing filter combinations to make the most of the setting
sun. They had the edge of it showing as a deep crimson ball beside
another building in the vicinity.
"What are you two doping out?" asked the blonde. "Some disappearing
trick?"
Simonetta laughed as Westervelt shoved the dial setting to afternoon
normal.
"It's an idea," he said, scowling at Beryl.
"For underwater?" she demanded mockingly.
"Ever hear of a squid?" retorted Westervelt. "_They_ hide themselves
underwater. Maybe a cloud of dye would be as good as a filter."
"Willie, that _is_ an idea!" said Simonetta. "You ought to tell Mr.
Smith."
Westervelt looked at her sourly. Now Beryl knew that they really had
been wasting time, and had a point to score against him in their next
exchange.
_Oh, well. I can't hold a thing like that against Si_, he thought. _I
can think of people who'd be on the way to Smitty already, calling it
their own idea._
Beryl had done a ladylike collapse into her chair and crossed her legs.
She dug into her purse for cigarettes and requested a light.
"Why don't you buy a brand with a lighter in the box?" asked Westervelt.
Nevertheless, he walked over to the switchboard cubicle for the office
desk lighter that had been appropriated by Pauline. Returning with it
after a moment, he lit Beryl's cigarette and inquired, "Well, what did
you and Parrish dig up?"
"I don't know," she sighed, leaning back, "but, boy, did we dig!"
"Yeah, I thought I heard the shovel clink once," said Westervelt,
thinking of the laughter he had heard through the door of the dead file
office.
Beryl, concerned with her own complaints, ignored him.
"We must have looked up thirty or forty cases," she went on. "I never
even heard of most of those places on the newscasts!"
"Did he find anything that gave him an idea?" asked Simonetta.
"Not a thing! There seemed to be some real crazy spots in the records,
but nobody ever got in jail at the bottom of an ocean."
"You'd think it would have happened sometime," said Simonetta
thoughtfully.
"I suppose," suggested Westervelt, "that on any planet where Terrans
were taken underwater, they didn't live long enough to be one of our
cases. On a place like Trident, they usually wouldn't have any trouble.
They'd stay on land, and any local life would stay in the sea. It took
a nut like Harris to go poking around where he wasn't wanted."
"That's what Mr. Parrish hinted," said Beryl. "All I know is that it
sounds like a story out of a laughing academy. They shouldn't allow
them to get into places like that."
"Then we'd all be looking for work," said Westervelt. "Don't complain,
Beryl--maybe it will happen to you someday."
The blonde shivered and turned to face her desk.
"Not me," she declared. "I'm staying on Terra, even if they do offer me
a field trip as a sort of vacation."
_Ah, he's already started that line on her, thought Westervelt. I
wonder if there's anything in the files on how to spring a secretary
from a penthouse?_
Lydman and Parrish walked in, the latter pausing to exchange remarks
with Pauline, the switchboard operator. A moment later, Smith opened
his door as if expecting someone. He must have phoned them for a
change, Westervelt realized.
"Oh, there you are, Willie," said the chief. "I suppose you might as
well sit in on this too. We might need something, and meanwhile, you
can be picking up a tip or two."
Westervelt rose and followed the others into Smith's office, where he
took a chair by the window. The others clustered around the chief's
desk, a vast plateau of silvery plastic strewn with a hodge-podge of
papers and tapes.
The office itself was like a small museum. The walls were lined with
photographs, mostly of poor quality but showing "interesting" devices
that had been used in various department cases. The ones in which the
color was better usually showed Smith in company with two or three
men wearing space uniforms and self-conscious looks. Sometimes, a more
assured individual was shown in the act of presenting some sort of
memento or letter of appreciation to Smith. Lydman and Parrish also
appeared in several of the pictures.
_The record of our best cases_, thought Westervelt. _The bad ones are
buried in the files._
Standing along the walls, or on little tables and bases of their
own, were a good many models of spaceships, planetary systems, and
non-humanoid beings. A few of the latter statues were enough to have
made Beryl declare she was perfectly happy to stay out of Smith's
office and be someone else's secretary. One model, which Westervelt
secretly longed to examine at leisure, showed an entire city with its
surrounding landscape on a distant planet.
Westervelt tore his attention from the mementoes and turned toward the
group as Smith settled himself behind the desk.
"This is no longer even approximately funny," said the department head.
"I've had a few calls put through. Do you know how little we're going
to have to work with?"
"I gather that it is not very much," said Parrish calmly.
"There are less than fifty Terrans on that whole planet!" declared
Smith, running the fingers of one hand through his already untidy hair.
"The nearest colony or friendly spaceport from which we could have
equipment sent in is twenty odd lightyears away."
"Well, that could be done," said Lydman mildly.
"Oh, of course, it could be done," admitted Smith. "But how long do
we have to fool around? We don't know under what conditions Harris is
being held."
Parrish leaned forward to rest his elbows on Smith's desk.
"We can deduce some of them pretty well," he suggested. "In the first
place, if he got out several messages--which we'll have to assume he
did--they must have found some means of providing him with air."
"He could have lived a while on the air in this submarine he built,"
said Lydman.
"Yes, but in that case, he would have used its radio for communication.
We have to assume that they pried him out somehow, no?"
The others nodded.
"He wouldn't last too long in a spacesuit, even if they pumped in air
under pressure," said Lydman judiciously.
"So they must have built some kind of structure to house him, if only a
big tank," said Parrish.
Westervelt stirred, then closed his mouth rather than interrupt.
Smith, however, had seen the motion and looked up.
"Speak up, Willie," he invited. "It won't sound any sillier than
anything else that's been said in this room."
"I ... I was wondering about these Tridentians," said Westervelt.
"Does anybody know how they live? Do they have cities built on the sea
bottom?"
"If they have water jet vehicles, they certainly have the technical--"
Smith stopped as he saw Parrish lean back and roll his eyes toward the
ceiling.
"What now, Pete?" he demanded apprehensively.
"I don't know why that didn't occur to me sooner," groaned Parrish. "A
hundred to one they have a nomadic set-up. It would be typical, with an
environment like that. This is worse than we thought."
"You mean," muttered Smith after a few moments of silence, "how can we
get a direction fix on a thought?"
"Something like that," said Parrish. "I suppose they have bases, where
they keep permanent manufacturing facilities. Probably set up at points
where they have access to minerals--unless they know how to extract
what they need from the water itself."
"Nothing hard about that," agreed Smith. "I'll have to send out a few
more questions. Of course, they'll take the attitude that I should be
doing something instead of asking about irrelevant subjects...."
"We're used to that," smiled Parrish, showing his beautiful teeth.
Westervelt wondered how broadly he would smile if it were his own
responsibility. He had an idea that Parrish might be rather less than
half as charming if he were running the operation and not getting much
help from the others in solving the problem. He had to admit, however,
that the man had a knack for spotting alien culture patterns. When he
had asked his question about the cities, it was merely because he had
half-pictured some Terran-style dome underwater and knew that that
image was unlikely.
"Anyway," Parrish was going on, "we should probably think of them as
being free as birds to go where they like. Even before they developed
machines, they probably migrated about their world by swimming. I
gather that these other ... fish, I suppose we'll have to call them...."
"Thinking fish!" murmured Smith sadly. He ran his hand through his hair
again.
"I suppose those things still do, besides other types we still haven't
heard of, which would fill the place of Terran animals. So, then--we'll
have to look for temporary locations and think in terms of a fast raid
rather than a careful penetration."
"If we could find them, there must be some way we could armor a few
spacesuits against pressure and drop down on them," said Lydman. "I
think I can dig up a weapon or two that will work underwater in a way
these clams never thought of."
"Maybe we could do better to have Swishy the thinking fish hypnotize
them into bringing Harris back," said Westervelt.
They looked at him thoughtfully, and he was horrified to see his joke
being taken seriously. He squirmed in his chair by the window, wishing
he had kept his mouth shut.
"I wonder ..." mused Smith. "If they can actually exchange thoughts...."
"They might have natural defenses," said Parrish tentatively.
"What could we bribe a fish with?" asked Lydman, but hopefully rather
than derisively.
Smith made another note, then drummed his fingers on his desk top. The
four of them sat in silence. Westervelt hoped that the others were
engaged in more productive thoughts than his own. It was nice to have
their attention, and get the reputation of a bright young man who came
up with suggestions; but when they decided upon some reasonable course
of action they might remember him for making a foolish remark.
"Willie," said Smith, coming to a decision, "circulate around and ask
the others if they can stick it out a couple of hours tonight. Maybe
there's time to pry some useful information out of Trident, and at
least get something started before we close down. If I know some guy
out in space is working on it, I can sleep anyway."
Westervelt left his place by the window and went into the outer office.
He told Simonetta and Beryl. The latter acted less than thrilled.
Westervelt wondered jealously what kind of date she had scheduled for
the evening. He stopped at the window of the switchboard cubbyhole.
"Oh, it's you, Willie!" exclaimed Pauline.
"Yeah, you can turn on the projector again," he grinned. "What is it, a
love movie?"
Pauline edged a small tape projector out from behind the side of her
board.
"It's homework, if you have to know," she told him.
"That's right, you still go to college," Westervelt recalled. "Why
don't you switch to alien psychology? Then you could qualify for office
manager around here."
"When do we have alien visitors here? Once in a ringed moon!"
"Who is to say which are the aliens?" said Westervelt. "There are days
when I think I could feel more understanding to something with twelve
tentacles and a tank of chlorine than to a lot of the mentalities that
get loose right in this office. There's a crash program on for the
evening, by the way, and Smitty wants the staff to hang on a while."
A look of dismay flashed over Pauline's youthful features.
"I know; you have a class tonight," Westervelt deduced. "Chuck it all.
Stay in the file room with Mr. Parrish and you'll learn twice as much."
Pauline offered to throw the projector at him, but laughed. Westervelt
told her that no one would miss her if she connected a few of the main
office phones to outside lines and hooked up the communications room
with Smith's desk.
He left her wondering if she ought to stay anyhow, and headed for the
hall. Halfway along to the communications room, he heard the elevator
doors open and close. He stopped and looked back.
Around the corner strolled one of the TV men, Joe Rosenkrantz.
Westervelt looked at his watch and realized that it was a shift change
for the communications personnel, who kept touch with the universe
twenty-four hours a day.
_In case someone somewhere makes a dumb mistake like Harris_,
thought Westervelt. _They overdo it a little, I think. I suppose
it's the typical pride and joy of Terran technical culture to signal
halfway across the galaxy to fix something that might have been
cured beforehand when Harris was a little boy. I wonder what the
psychologists should have done about me to keep me out of a place like
this?_
"Hello, Willie," said Rosenkrantz, catching up. "Going to the com room?"
Westervelt admitted as much, and gave the operator a brief outline of
the afternoon's developments. Rosenkrantz remained unperturbed.
"Hope they don't get intoxicated with ingenuity, and insist on sending
messages all over," he grunted. "I was looking forward to a quiet night
shift."
They went in to tell Colborn, who took it well. He pointed out to
Westervelt that he would in no case have been concerned with the
overtime operation. When he was relieved, he was relieved--period.
"I forget this crazy place the minute the elevator door closes behind
me," he said grinning, having handed over to Rosenkrantz his log and a
few unofficial comments about traffic he had heard during recent hours.
"There are some who wait till they hit the street, but I believe in
a clean cut. I walk in, push 'Main Floor,' and everything else goes
blank."
He went out the door, refusing to dignify their jeers by any defense,
and made for the elevators. By the time he reached the corner of the
hall, he had slipped into his topcoat. He pushed the button to call the
elevator.
When it arrived, Colborn stepped inside and rode down to the
ninety-fifth floor. He switched to a public express elevator, which
picked up several other people before becoming an express at the
seventy-fifth floor.
"Lived through it again," he muttered to a man next to him as they
reached the main floor.
He joined the growing stream of office workers flowing through the
lobby of the building, taking for granted the kaleidoscopic play of
decorative lights on the translucent ceiling. He noticed them when they
suddenly went out.
There was first silence, then a babble of voices until small emergency
lights went on. Someone spoke of a fuse blowing. Colborn looked
outside, and saw no street lights or illuminated signs. His first
thought was power for his set upstairs.
"No, that's special," he told himself, "but I'd better call and see if
the elevators are working."