The Crack in Space (1966) Page 5

  ‘Stop,’ he shouted at her without looking at her. His voice echoed in the bee-zooming plain of flowers.

  The second laser-beam caught him in the back.

  He put his hand out, saw it pass through the haze and disappear beyond. It was safe, but he was not. She had killed him; it was too late, now, too late to get away from her. Why didn’t she wait? he asked himself. Find out who I was? Must have been afraid.

  Again the laser-beam flicked. It touched the back of his head and that was that. There was no returning for him, no reentry into the safety of the tube.

  Rick Erickson was dead.

  Standing on the far side, in the tube of Dr Sands’ Jiffi-scuttler, Stuart Hadley waited nervously, then saw Rick Erickson’s fingers jerk through the wall near the floor; the fingers writhed, and Hadley stooped down and grabbed Erickson by the wrist. Trying to get back, he realized, and pulled Erickson by the arm with all his strength.

  It was a corpse that he drew into the tube beside him.

  Horrified, Hadley rose unsteadily to his feet; he saw the two clean holes and knew that Erickson had been killed with a laser rifle, probably from a distance. Stumbling down the tube, Hadley reached the controls of the ‘scuttler and cut the power off; the shimmer of the entrance hoop at once vanished, and he knew or hoped - that now they, whoever they were who had murdered Rick Erickson, could not follow him through.

  ‘Pethel!’ he shouted. ‘Come down here!’ He ran to Erickson’s work bench and the intercom. ‘Mr Pethel,’ he said, ‘come back down here to the basement right away. Erickson’s dead.’

  The next he knew, Darius Pethel stood beside him, examining the body of the repairman. ‘He must have found it,’ Pethel muttered, ashen-faced and trembling. ‘Well, he got paid for his nosiness; he sure got paid.’

  ‘We better get the police,’ Hadley said.

  ‘Yes.’ Pethel nodded vacantly. ‘Of course. I see you turned it off. Good thing. We better leave it strictly alone. The poor guy, the poor goddam guy; look at what he got for being smart enough to figure it all out. Look, he’s got something in his hand.’ He bent down, opening Erickson’s fingers.

  The dead hand held a wad of grass.

  ‘No org-trans operation can help him, either,’ Pethel said. ‘Because the beam caught him in the head. Got his brain. Too bad.’ He glanced at Stuart Hadley. ‘Anyhow the best org-trans surgeon is Sands and he isn’t going to do anything to help Erickson. You can make book on that.’

  ‘A place where there’s grass,’ Hadley murmured, touching the contents of the dead man’s hand. ‘Where can it be? Not on Earth. Not now, anyway.’

  ‘Must be the past,’ Pethel said. ‘So we’ve got time-travel. Isn’t it great?’ His face twisted with grief. ‘Terrific beginning, one good man dead. How many left to go? Imagine a guy’s reputation meaning that much to him, that he’d let this happen. Or maybe Sands doesn’t know; maybe she was just given the laser gun to protect herself. In case his wife’s private cops got to her. And anyhow, we don’t know for sure if she did it; it could have been someone else entirely, not Cally Vale at all. What do we know about it? All we know is that Erickson is dead. And there was something basically wrong with the theory he was going on.’

  ‘You can give Sands the benefit of the doubt, if you want,’ Hadley said, ‘but I’m not going to.’ He stood up, then, taking a deep shuddering breath. ‘Can we get the police, now? You call them; I can’t talk well enough to. You do it, Pethel, okay?’

  Unsteadily, Darius Pethel moved toward the phone on Erickson’s work bench, his hand extended gropingly, as if his apperception of touch had begun to disintegrate. He picked up the receiver, and then he turned to Stuart Hadley and said, ‘Wait. This is a mistake. You know who we’ve got to call? The factory. We have to tell Terran Development about this; it’s what they’re after. They come first.’

  Hadley, staring at him, said, ‘I - don’t agree.’

  ‘This is more important than what you think or I think, more important than Sands and Cally Vale, any of us.’ Dar Pethel began to dial. ‘Even if one of us is dead. That still doesn’t matter. You know what I’m thinking about? Emigration. You saw the grass in Erickson’s hand. You know what it means. It means the hell with that girl on the far side, or whoever it is over there who shot Erickson. It means the hell with any of us and all of us, our sentiments and opinions.’ He gestured. ‘All our lives put together.’

  Dimly, Stuart Hadley understood. Or thought he did. ‘But she’ll probably kill the next person who …’

  ‘Let TD worry about that,’ Pethel said savagely. ‘That’s their problem. They’ve got company police, armed guards they use for patrol purposes; let them send them over, first.’ His voice was low and harsh. ‘Let them lose a few men, so what. The lives of millions of people are involved in this, now. You get that, Hadley? Do you?’

  ‘Y-yes,’ Hadley said, nodding.

  ‘Anyhow,’ Pethel said, more calmly, now, ‘it’s legitimately within the jurisdiction of TD because it took place within one of their ‘scuttlers. Call it an accident; think of it that way. Unavoidable and awful. Between an entrance and an exit hoop. Naturally the company has to know.’ He turned his back to Hadley, then, concentrating on the vidphone, calling Leon Turpin, the chief of TD.

  ‘I think,’ Salisbury Heim said to his presidential candidate James Briskin, ‘I have something cooking you won’t like. I’ve been talking to George Walt…’

  At once Jim Briskin said, ‘No deal. Not with them. I know what they want and that’s out, Sal.’

  ‘If you don’t do business with George Walt,’ Heim said steadily, ‘I’m going to have to resign as your campaign manager. I just can’t take any more, not after that planet-wetting speech of yours. Things are breaking too badly for us as it is, we can’t take George Walt on in addition to everything else.’

  ‘There’s something even worse,’ Jim Briskin said, after a pause. ‘Which you haven’t heard. A wire came from Bruno Mini. He was delighted with my speech and he’s on his way here to - as he puts it - “join forces with me.” ‘

  Heim said, ‘But you can still …’

  ‘Mini’s already spoken to homeopape reporters. So it’s too late to head him off media-wise. Sorry.’

  ‘You’re going to lose.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll have to lose.’

  ‘What gets me,’ Heim said bitterly, ‘what really gets me is that even if you did win the election you couldn’t have it all your way; one man just can’t alter things that much. The Golden Door Movements of Bliss satellite is going to remain; the bibs are going to remain; so are Nonovulid and the abort-consultants you can chip away a little here and there but not …’

  He ceased, because Dorothy Gill had come up to Jim Briskin. ‘A phone call for you, Mr Briskin. The gentleman says it’s urgent and he won’t be wasting your time. You don’t know him, he says, so he didn’t give his name.’ She added, ‘He’s a Col. If that helps you identify him.’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Jim said. ‘But I’ll talk to him anyhow.’ Obviously, he was glad to break off the conversation with Sal; relief showed on his face. ‘Bring the phone here, Dotty.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Briskin.’ She disappeared and presently was back, carrying the extension vid-phone.

  ‘Thanks.’ Jim Briskin pressed the hold button, releasing it, and the vidscreen glowed. A face formed, swarthy and handsome, a keen-eyed man, well-dressed and evidently agitated. Who is he? Sal Heim asked himself. I know him. I’ve seen a pic of him somewhere.

  Then he identified the man. It was the big-time N’York investigator who was working for Myra Sands; it was a man named Tito Cravelli, and he was a tough individual indeed. What did he want with Jim?

  The image of Tito Cravelli said, ‘Mr Briskin, I’d like to have lunch with you. In private. I have something to discuss with you, just you and me; it’s vitally important to you, I assure you.’ He added, with a glance toward Sal Heim, ‘So vital I don’t want anybody else around.’

  M
aybe this is going to be an assassination attempt, Sal Heim thought. Someone, a fanatic from CLEAN, sent by Verne Engel and his crowd of nuts. ‘You better not go, Jim,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Probably not,’ Jim said. ‘But I am anyhow.’ To the image on the vidscreen he said, ‘What time and where?’

  Tito Cravelli said, ‘There’s a little restaurant in the N’York slum area, in the five hundred block of Fifth Avenue; I always eat there when I’m in N’York - the food’s prepared by hand. It’s called Scotty’s Place. Will that be satisfactory? Say at one p.m., N’York time.’

  ‘All right,’ Jim Briskin agreed. ‘At Scotty’s Place at one o’clock. I’ve been there.’ He added tartly, ‘They’re willing to serve Cols.’

  ‘Everyone serves Cols,’ Tito said, ‘when I’m along.’ He broke the connection; the screen faded and died.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Sal Heim said.

  ‘We’re ruined anyhow,’ Jim reminded him. ‘Didn’t you say, just a minute ago?’ He smiled laconically. ‘I think the time has arrived for me to clutch at straws, Sal. Any straw I can reach. Even this.’

  ‘What shall I tell George Walt? They’re waiting. I’m supposed to set up a visit by you to the satellite within twenty-four hours; that would be by six o’clock tonight.’ Getting out his handkerchief, Sal Heim mopped his forehead. ‘After that …’

  ‘After that,’ Jim said, ‘they begin systematically campaigning against me.’

  Sal nodded.

  ‘You can tell George Walt,’ Jim said, ‘that in my Chicago speech today I’m going to come out and advocate the shutting of the satellite. And if I’m elected …’

  ‘They know already,’ Sal Heim said. ‘There was a leak.’

  ‘There’s always a leak.’ Jim did not seem perturbed.

  Reaching into his coat pocket, Sal brought out a sealed envelope. ‘Here’s my resignation.’ He had been carrying it for some time.

  Jim Briskin accepted the envelope; without opening it he put it in his coat-pouch. ‘I hope you’ll be watching my Chicago speech, Sal. It’s going to be an important one.’ He grinned sorrowfully at his ex-campaign manager; his pain at this breakdown of their relationship showed in the deep lines of his face. The break had been long in coming; it had hung there in the atmosphere between them in their former discussions.

  But Jim intended to go on anyhow. And do what had to be done.

  FIVE

  As he flew by Jet’ab to Scotty’s Place, Jim Briskin thought: At least now I don’t have to come out for Lurton Sands; I don’t have to follow Sal’s advice any more on any topic because if he’s not my campaign manager he can’t tell me what to do. To some extent it was a relief. But on a deeper level Jim Briskin felt acutely unhappy. I’m going to have trouble getting along without Sal, he realized. I don’t want to get along without him.

  But it was already done. Sal, with his wife Patricia, had gone on to his home in Cleveland, for a much-delayed rest. And Jim Briskin, with his speechwriter Phil Danville and his press secretary Dorothy Gill, was on his way in the opposite direction, toward downtown N’York, its tiny shops and restaurants and old, decaying apartment buildings, and all the microscopic, outdated business offices where peculiar and occult transactions continually took place. It was a world which intrigued Jim Briskin, but it was also a world he knew little about; he had been shielded from it most of his life.

  Seated beside him, Phil Danville said, ‘He may come back, Jim. You know Sal when he gets overburdened; he blows up, falls into fragments. But after a week of lazing around…’

  ‘Not this time,’ Jim said. The split was too basic.

  ‘By the way,’ Dorothy said, ‘before he left, Sal told me who this man you’re meeting is. Sal recognized him; did he tell you? It’s Tito Cravelli, Sal says. You know, Myra Sands’ investigator.’

  ‘No,’ Jim said. ‘I didn’t know.’ Sal had said nothing to him; the period in which Sal Heim gave him the benefit of his experience was over, had ended there on the spot.

  At Republican-Liberal campaign headquarters in N’York he stopped briefly to let off Phil Danville and Dorothy Gill, and then he went on, alone, to meet with Tito Cravelli at Scotty’s Place.

  Cravelli, looking nervous and keyed-up, was already in a booth in the rear of the restaurant, waiting for him, when he arrived.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Briskin,’ Tito Cravelli said, as Jim seated himself across from him. Hurriedly, Cravelli sipped what remained of his cup of coffee. ‘This won’t take long. What I want for my information is a great deal. I want a promise from you that when you’re elected - and you will be, because of this - you’ll bring me in at cabinet rank.’ He was silent, then.

  ‘Good god,’ Jim said mildly. ‘Is that all you want?’

  ‘I’m entitled to it,’ Cravelli said. ‘For getting this information to you. I came across it because I have someone working for me in …’ He broke off abruptly. ‘I want the post of Attorney General; I think I can handle the job … I think I’ll be a good Attorney General. If I’m not, you can fire me. But you have to let me in for a chance at it.’

  ‘Tell me what your information is. I can’t make that promise until I hear it.’

  Cravelli hesitated. ‘Once I tell you - but you’re honest, Briskin. Everyone knows that. There’s a way you can get rid of the bibs. You can bring them back to activity, full activity.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not here,’ Cravelli said. ‘Obviously. Not on Earth. The man I have working for me who picked this up is an employee of Terran Development. What does that suggest to you?’

  After a pause Jim Briskin said, ‘They’ve made a break-through.’

  ‘A little firm has. A retailer in Kansas City, repairing a defective Jiffi-scuttler. They did it - or rather found it. Discovered it. The ‘scuttler’s at TD, now, being gone over by factory engineers. It was moved east two hours ago; they acted immediately, as soon as the retailer contacted them. They knew what it meant.’ He added, ‘Just as you and I do, and my man working for them.’

  ‘Where’s the break-through to? What time period?’

  ‘No time period, evidently. The conversion seems to have taken place in spacial terms, as near as they can determine. A planet with about the same mass as Earth, similar atmosphere, well-developed fauna and flora, but not Earth - they managed to snap a sky-chart, get a stellar reading. Within another few hours they’ll probably have plotted it exactly, know which star-system it lies in. Apparently it’s a long, long way from here. Too far for direct deeps-ace ships to probe - at least for some time to come. This break-through, this direct shorted-out route, will have to be utlized for at least the next few decades.’

  The waitress, came for Jim’s order.

  ‘Perkin’s Syn-Cof,’ he murmured absently.

  The waitress departed.

  ‘Cally Cale’s there,’ Tito Cravelli said.

  ‘What!’

  ‘Doctor put her across. That’s why my man got in touch with me; as you may know, I’ve been retained to search for Cally, trying to produce her on demand for the trial. It’s a mess; she lasered an employee of this Kansas City retailer, its one and only tried and true ‘scuttler repairman. He had gone across, exploring. Too bad for him. But in the great scheme of all things …’

  ‘Yes,’ Jim Briskin agreed. Cravelli was right; it was small cost indeed. With so many millions of lives - and, potentially, billions - involved.

  ‘Naturally TD has declared this top-secret. They’ve thrown up an enormous security screen; I was lucky to get hold of the poop at all. If I hadn’t already had a man in there …’ Cravelli gestured.

  ‘I’ll name you to the cabinet,’ Jim Briskin said. ‘As Attorney General. The arrangement doesn’t please me, but I think it’s in order.’ It’s worth it, he said to himself. A hundred times over. To me and to everyone else on Earth, bibs and non-bibs alike. To all of us.

  Sagging with relief and exultation, Tito Cravelli burbled, ‘Wow. I can’t believe it; this is great!’ He he
ld out his hand, but Jim ignored it; he had too much else on his mind at the moment to want to congratulate Tito Cravelli.

  Jim thought, Sal Heim got out a little too soon. He should have stuck around. So much for Sal’s political intuition; at the crucial moment it had failed to materialize for him.

  Seated in her office, abort-consultant Myra Sands once more leafed through Tito’s brief report. But already, outside her window, a news machine for one of the major homeopapes was screeching out the news that Cally Vale had been found; it had been made public by the police.

  I didn’t think you could do it, Tito, Myra said to herself. Well, I was wrong. You were worth your fee, large as it is.

  It will be quite a trial, she said to herself with relish.

  From a nearby office, probably the brokerage firm next door, the amplified sound of a man’s voice rose up and then was turned down to a more reasonable level. Someone had tuned in the TV, was watching the Republican-Liberal presidential candidate giving his latest speech. Perhaps I should listen, too, she decided, and reached to turn on the TV set at her desk.

  The set warmed, and there, on the screen, appeared the dark, intense features of Jim Briskin. She swiveled her chair toward the set and momentarily put aside Tito’s report. After all, anything James Briskin said had become important; he might easily be their next president.

  ‘… an initial action on my part,’ Briskin was saying, ‘and one which many may disapprove of, but one dear to my heart, will be to initiate legal action against the so-called Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. I’ve thought about this topic for some time; this is not a snap decision on my part. But, much more vital than that, I think we will see the Golden Door satellite become thoroughly obsolete. That would be best of all. The role of sexuality in our society could return to its biological norm: as a means to childbirth rather than an end in itself.’

  Oh, really? Myra thought archly. Exactly how?

  ‘I am about to give you a piece of news which none of you have heard,’ Briskin continued. ‘It will make a vast difference in all our lives … so great, in fact, that no one could possibly foresee its full extent at this time, A new possibility for emigration is about to open up at last. At Terran Development…’