He shoved it back to her. "It makes sense, all right. And I'm expecting
a quick reply, so I'll be waiting across the street in Switzer's Cafe."
"It may take some time--"
"That reply will come as quickly as you people can handle it," Morrow
retorted. "A crop-dusting pilot is accustomed to getting telegrams in
the middle of the night--and answering them, before some other outfit
can grab the job being offered!"
The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. "All right, then. You'll be over
at Switzer's--"
"Right."
She scribbled a note on a memo pad. Morrow turned and strode out.
A feeling of elation tingled through him as he crossed the street.
Calling on D.P. Smith had been a natural reaction, once the plan had
begun forming in his mind. If he'd ever wanted anyone murdered, Smitty
was the one man he could trust!
But there was a more immediate cause for elation. It was after
midnight, and Gwyn went on shift at Switzer's Cafe at midnight. She'd
been on the dawn patrol for the past week, and the only time he'd seen
her was when he dropped in for a quick breakfast coffee every morning.
Gwyn Davidson was the only daughter of old Pat Davidson, the plant
superintendent at Western Electronics. Bill had worked under Pat as a
production engineer; he'd met Gwyn two months earlier when she returned
home from college. Gwyn's mother had died the year before from cancer,
after a lifetime of suffering and hospital bills. Old Pat was still
paying off those bills, and Gwyn had been working her own way through
school. Now, she was a waitress with an M.A. degree, helping out with
the expenses at home.
He saw her through the front window, leaning on the counter in the
deserted cafe, reading the comics in a newspaper. She was a small,
curvaceous girl in a blue waitress' uniform carefully chosen to fit to
her best advantage. Soft, dark hair tumbled back from a tanned, healthy
face that sported only a trace of lipstick.
Her wide, steady gaze flicked up as he strode in, then she smiled
warmly. "Hi, Bill. What're you doing up at this ungodly hour?" Pretty,
firm-fleshed, and bouncy.
_Even though her feet are killing her!_ Bill thought. "Hello, Gwyn," he
said. "I came down to send a telegram. Pour me some coffee, huh?" He
straddled a stool before her.
"I'll give you what we serve as coffee," she answered brightly, "but
you'll have to pay for it!"
"Fair warning. How's tricks?"
"Haven't seen her lately. What's with this telegram all of a sudden?"
She grabbed cup and saucer, turned, and drew a cupful from the chrome
coffee-maker.
"Invitation to an old friend," Bill replied half-truthfully. "All of a
sudden, I'm lonesome."
She swung back and slid the coffee before him. Her eyes were teasing.
"Wouldn't a wife do just as well?"
"A good question," he quipped back. "Come sit down and have coffee with
me, and we'll talk it over!"
"_What?_" She grinned brightly, wide-eyed. "Don't go 'way, now!"
She whirled, grabbed a cup and saucer, and filled it. "I'll be right
there!" She moved briskly around the end of the counter and perched
herself on the stool beside him. "Now! Tell me more!" She began ladling
spoon-fulls of sugar into her coffee.
It was a good comedy act, done with a natural flair for perfect timing.
Morrow leaned weakly on the counter, laughing silently.
Gwyn gave him a glare of feigned contempt. "Oh! Just another
fast-talker, huh? I might have known!" She stirred her coffee
furiously. "You engineers are all alike. If father warned me once--"
"Don't overdo it, honey," he cautioned her, lightly. "You know
perfectly well I've enjoyed those long goodnight kisses when I've
walked you home."
She sobered reflectively. "All right, Bill. But just what was this
mid-morning telegram about--or don't you want to tell me?"
It was a casually-spoken question, and the circumstances made it a
perfectly logical one. As a research engineer, Morrow worked on a
number of things which had top-secret classification, and Gwyn knew he
did.
_And I'd better classify this, too!_ Morrow thought slyly.
"Afraid I can't," he answered her, calmly.
She nodded and sipped her coffee in silence. Finally, she asked, "Will
you be glad when I'm back on a day-shift?"
Morrow took his turn sipping coffee and took his time forming an
answer. "I want to take you swimming out at the Lakeshore Lodge,
again," he said. "I still dream about the way you rolled up your
two-piece suit so it was a Bikini model--"
"Uh huh," she interrupted. Her tone was hardly enthusiastic. "If we do,
you'd better not try making the passes at me you did the last time!"
"You expect me to resist the temptation of all that beautiful skin?" he
retorted, grinning down at her.
She gave a pert shake of her head. "When I give in to a man, he'll be
my husband," she said firmly. "And he'll be my husband because he loves
me--not because he drools over my body!"
"Ummm," Morrow ummed, doubtfully. He decided it would be best to change
the subject. "Read the latest _Universe_?"
"Uh huh! What'd you think of Sturgeon's story?" She was at once bright,
smiling, interested. "Wasn't it wonderful? I mean, the way he so
perfectly defined an alien being's intelligence--"
* * * * *
That was science-fiction. Gwyn read the science-fiction magazines
avidly, from cover to cover. Morrow read a few, along with his other
reading--the _Post_, _Harper's_, the _Digest_, and half a dozen
technical journals--and he'd even written and sold a science-fiction
story once. Nineteen editors rejected it, but the twentieth bought it
after having him revise it three times.
But that one mutual interest had gone a long way in winning his esteem
in Gwyn's mind, slight though it was. And she was cute as a bug, the
sort of female who set a man's blood a-tingle.
So they talked science-fiction. Alien creatures that inhabited other
planets, trips across space and out to the other stars, travels through
time and into other dimensions, civilizations which spread clear across
the galaxy....
It was over an hour before a young messenger boy came in with the
expected telegram. Morrow tipped the boy, excused himself to Gwyn, and
ripped open the envelope.
The message read:
DENVER, COLORADO
AUGUST 6 1960
BILL MORROW
WESTERTON, NEW JERSEY
ROGER, WILCO. E-T-A NEWARK AIRPORT 3:10 A.M. SUNDAY AUG. 8TH. WHERE
IN HELL IS WESTERTON?