"That's right."
"What's the idea then?"
"You ask too many questions," said the blond man.
"An' that's a fact," the other agreed.
Vickers' mouth set. He still thought he could take the two gunmen, but
his curiosity had the best of him. He sank back in the cushions and
waited.
The cab had gone about three kilometers when it pulled up at the curb.
"All right, Vickers," the blond man said; "here's where you get your
answers."
He crawled out, straightened. The cab had stopped before a door of
opaque blue plastic. Above it in letters of electric blue light was the
inscription:
INTERNATIONAL SPY RING
INCORPORATED
Secrets Bought and Sold
Vickers stared at it in disbelief. There was just the plain blank
door squeezed between a theatre on the right and a travel agency with
posters of the Martian deserts in its windows on the left. The blue
door was hard to focus on--like a slightly blurred picture. He opened
his nictitating lids.
To his utter bewilderment, he found himself looking through the door
into the theatre lobby. The blue door didn't lead anywhere. It wasn't
even a door, he realized, but an illusion!
* * * * *
Vickers had been examined many times. "The peculiarity of your vision,"
one eminent psycho-biologist had told him, "lies in your ability to see
matter as it actually is. Tenuous unmaterial energy. There's more space
between the nucleus of an atom and its electrons in proportion than
between the sun and its planets. It's like looking at the stars"--and
he had waved his hand at the sky--"you can see them but they don't
obstruct your vision."
It was a strange world that Vickers could see with the nictitating lids
raised--a fairy-like insubstantial world, beautiful and shocking. A
glass world without secrets.
But his eyes never lied to him. And the door didn't exist in fact.
There was only a blank theatre wall where he had seen it.
Then the blond man stepped forward and went through the motions of
opening the door.
"Inside," he said and walked through and vanished!
Vickers knew he had vanished, because he could still see the misty
outlines of the wall where the door should have been and the interior
of the theatre. He felt his stomach go hollow. "In you go," the other
man said and nudged him with the pistol.
Vickers allowed his nictitating lids to close.
At once he could see the door again, standing open, and a reception
room beyond. The blond man was just inside motioning for him to enter.
Vickers drew a deep breath and stepped across the threshold.
There was a moment of abysmal darkness, a giddy sensation, then Vickers
found himself standing in the reception room, ankle deep in carpet. He
felt unaccountably heavier--not as much as he would weigh on Earth but
more than he should weigh on the moon.
A girl was approaching him. She said: "Go right in, Mr. Vickers,"
indicating a door across the room; "they're waiting for you."
"Who's waiting for me?"
"Mr. Thorpe. The president of International Spy Ring, Inc. Right in
here, sir."
The utterly absurd title of the company struck him anew. The seven
great nations would no more permit such a business to exist than they
would sit supinely by and allow an armed invasion.
In the first place they all maintained their own very efficient
espionage and counter espionage systems. They couldn't afford to let
one nation grow more powerful than the rest. At any costs they had to
preserve the status quo.
He didn't voice his doubts, but followed the receptionist into a large,
spartanly furnished office. There were no windows, the room being lit
by soft yellow light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
The top of a huge desk of purely functional design was littered with
gadgets, and behind it sat a bald, pink-faced man, wearing a pleasant
expression.
There was one other person in the room--a girl--and she was crying
softly.
"Mr. Thorpe," the receptionist said, "Mr. Vickers to see you," and
withdrew.
The girl turned her back quickly to Vickers so that he couldn't see her
face, but he could watch her hands worrying the material of her dress.
It was an expensive dress, Vickers recognized, an exclusive Venusian
creation of green gossamer that was very nearly transparent even to his
normal vision. He was a little shocked and looked away.
The man called Thorpe beamed at him. "Glad to see you, Vickers," he
said and made it sound genuine. "Won't you sit down?"
Vickers let himself sink into a chair across from the girl. He couldn't
keep from studying her. Her brown hair was done in a sort of halo
effect and she wore wedge type sandals that must have added three
inches to her height and made her feet look tiny.
Thorpe cleared his throat.
"We had a good reason for bringing you here," he said; "I hope it
didn't inconvenience you too much."
"Get to the point," said Vickers.
Thorpe looked startled.
"Vickers, we can use a man with your unique talents. In fact, there's
a job that no one but you--"
"Sorry."
Vickers was on his feet, starting for the door to the reception room.
"Don't be hasty," Thorpe said in an agitated voice. "I really can't let
you go until you hear me out."
* * * * *
Vickers caught the veiled threat in his words, swung around. Thorpe's
finger was resting on a button. The girl had begun to sniff audibly.
"All right," said Vickers, "but make it short. I have to register at
the Parole Board office before the expiration of twenty-four hours."
"No hurry," Thorpe said, waving him back to his chair. "You met your
double on the street. He's gone to the board to register in your
place. He'll also fill any job they see fit to assign you. So you see,
Vickers, you're quite free. You're even supplied with a perfect alibi."
Vickers did see. He saw a number of things, none of which reassured
him. He said: "Fingerprints?"
"They'll check. He's wearing tips with your prints. So will his height
and weight. He's a fine actor, Vickers, one of the best."
"How did you get my prints? My record is in the ISP secret file, but--"
"But that's our business. Secrets, Vickers. Any secrets. State secrets,
scientific secrets." He chuckled. "We make no secret about it."
Vickers looked skeptical.
"Do you mean to tell me that you could steal the plans, say, of the
USSE's new space drive?"
Thorpe rubbed his hands together, his grin broadening.
"We sold them the plans. In fact, we sold those same plans to the
Black Republic, the Arab Federation, China and New Spain as well. The
only reason we didn't sell them to the United States is because they
happened to be the ones who had developed them."
He paused to let his words sink in. "That may seem unethical, but it's
our policy. In our small way, we feel that we help to preserve the
status quo."
"Rubbish!" said Vickers. "If you'd done that, they would have sent the
lot of you off to Jupiter."
"They try." Thorpe looked at his watch. "In fact, Vickers, we have
information that the ISP plans to raid us in exactly twenty-three
minutes."