The Crack in Space (1966) Read online

  This incident with Lurton Sands was a vile harbinger.

  ‘Well,’ Phil Danville said, and sighed, ‘I guess we have to go on. What do you want to drink?’

  ‘A Black Russian,’ Jim decided, after a pause. ‘Vodka and …’

  ‘I know,’ Phil interrupted. His face still ragged with fear and gloom, he made his way unsteadily over to the bar to order.

  To Dotty, Jim said, ‘Even if they get me, I’ve done my job. I keep telling myself that over and over again, anyhow. I broke the news about TD’s break-through and that’s enough.’

  ‘Do you actually mean that?’ she demanded. ‘You’re that fatalistic about it, about your chances?’ She stared unwinkingly up into his face.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, finally. And well he might be.

  I have a feeling, he thought to himself, that this is not the time a Negro is going to make it to the presidency.

  His contact within CLEAN came via an individual named Dave DeWinter. DeWinter had joined the movement at its inception and had reported to Tito Cravelli throughout. Now, hurriedly, DeWinter told his employer the most recent - and urgent - news.

  ‘They’ll try it late tonight. The man actually doing it is not a member. His name is Herb Lackmore or Luckmore, and with the equipment they’re providing him he doesn’t need to be an accurate shot.’ DeWinter added, ‘The equipment, what they call a boulder, was paid for by George Walt, those two mutants who own the Golden Door.’

  Tito Cravelli said, ‘I see.’ There goes my post as Attorney General, he said to himself. ‘Where can I find this Lackmore right now?’

  ‘In his conapt in Oakland, California. Probably eating dinner; it’s about six, there.’

  From the locked closet of his office, Tito Cravelli got a collapsible high-powered scope-sight laser rifle, he folded it up and stuffed it into his pocket, out of sight. Such a rifle was strictly illegal, but that hardly mattered right now; what Cravelli intended to do was against the law with any kind of weapon.

  But it was already too late to get Lackmore or Luckmore or whatever his name was. By the time he reached the West Coast Lackmore would certainly be gone, on his way east to intercept Jim Briskin; their flights would cross, his and Lackmore’s. Better to locate Briskin and stick close to him, get Lackmore when he showed up. But Herb Lackmore would not have to show up, in the strict sense, not with the variety of weapon which the mutant brothers had provided him. He could be as far away as ten miles - and still reach Briskin.

  George Walt will have to call him off, Cravelli decided. It’s the only sure way - and even that is merely relatively sure.

  I’ll have to go to the satellite, he said to himself. Now, if I expect to accomplish anything at all. The mutants George Walt would not be expecting him; they had no knowledge of his ties with Jim Briskin - or so he hoped. And also, he had three individuals working for him on the satellite, three of the girls. That gave him three separate places to stay - or hide - while he was up there. Afterwards, after he took care of George Walt, it might well mean the difference in saving his life.

  That, of course, would be if George Walt wouldn’t do business with him, if they chose to fight it out. In a fight, they would lose; Tito Cravelli was a crack shot. And in addition the initiative would be with him.

  Where was the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite right now? Getting the evening homeopape, he turned to the entertainment page. If it was, say, over India, he had no chance; he would not be able to reach the brothers in time.

  The Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, according to the time-schedule shown in the pape, was right now over Utah. By jet’ab he could reach it within three quarters of an hour.

  That was soon enough.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said to Dave DeWinter, who stood awkwardly in the middle of the office, wearing his splendid green and silver CLEAN uniform. ‘You trot on back to Engel I’ll keep in touch with you.’ He left the office on a dead run, then, racing down the stairs to the ground floor.

  Presently, he was on his way to the satellite.

  When the jet’ab had landed at the field, Cravelli hurried down the ramp, purchased a ticket from the nude, golden-haired attendant, and then rushed through gate five, searching for Francy’s door. 705, it was - or so he recalled, but under so much tension he felt rattled. With five thousand doors spread out in corridor after corridor - and all around him, on every side, the animated pics of the girls twisted and chirped, trying to snare his attention and entice him to the joys inside.

  I’ll have to consult the satellite’s directory, he decided. That would waste precious time, but what alternative did he have? Feverishly, he loped down the corridor until he arrived at the immensely extensive, cross-indexed, illuminated directory board, with all its names winking on and off as rooms emptied and refilled, as customers hurried in and out.

  It was 507, and it was empty of customers.

  When he opened the door Francy said, ‘Hello!’ and sat up, then, blinking in surprise to see him. ‘Mr Cravelli,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Is everything all right?’ She slid from the bed, wearing a pale smock of some cheap thin material, and came hesitantly up to him, her body bare and smooth. ‘What can I do for you? Are you here for …’

  ‘Not for pleasure,’ Tito Cravelli informed her. ‘Button up your damn smock and listen to me. Is there any way you can get George Walt up here?’

  Fancy pondered. ‘They never visit a crib, normally. I…’

  ‘Suppose there was trouble. A customer refusing to pay.’

  ‘No. A bouncer would show up then. But George Walt would come here if they thought the FBI or some other police agency had moved in here and was officially arresting us girls.’ She pointed to an obscure button on the wall. ‘For such an emergency. They have a regular neurosis about the police; they think it’s bound to come, sooner or later - they must have a guilty conscience about it. The button connects to that great big office of theirs.’

  ‘Ring the button,’ Cravelli said, and got out his laser rifle seating himself on Francy’s bed, he began to assemble it.

  Minutes passed.

  Standing uneasily at the door, listening, Francy said ‘What’s going to happen in here Mr Cravelli? I hope there’s no …’

  ‘Be quiet,’ he said sharply.

  The door of the room opened.

  The mutants George Walt stood in the entrance, one hand on the knob, the other three gripping short lengths of metal piping.

  Tito Cravelli leveled the laser rifle and said, ‘My intention is not to kill both of you but merely one of you. That’ll leave the other with half a dead brain, one dead eye, and a deteriorating body attached to him. I don’t think you’d appreciate that. Can you threaten me with anything equally dreadful? I seriously doubt it.’

  After a pause one of them - he did not know which - said, ‘What - do you want?’ The face was twisting and livid, the two eyes, not in unison, staring, one of them at Tito, the other at his laser rifle.

  ‘Come in and close the door,’ Tito Cravelli said.

  ‘Why?’ George Walt demanded. ‘What’s this all about, anyhow?’

  ‘Just come on in,’ Tito said, and waited.

  The mutants entered. The door shut after them and they stood facing him, still gripping the three lengths of metal piping. ‘This is George,’ the head said presently. ‘Who are you? Let’s be reasonable; if you’re dissatisfied with the service you’ve received from this woman - no, can’t you see this is a strong-arm robbery?’ the head interrupted itself as the other brother took control of the vocal apparatus. ‘He’s here to rob us; he brought that weapon with him, didn’t he?’

  ‘You’re going to get in touch with Verne Engel,’ Tito said. ‘And he’s going to get in touch with his gunsel, Herbert Lackmore. Together you’re going to call this Lackmore back in. We’ll do it from your office; obviously we can’t call from this woman’s crib.’ To Francy he said, ‘You go ahead of them, lead the way. Start now, please. There’s no excess of time.’ W
ithin him his pyloric valve began to writhe in spasms; he gritted his teeth and for an instant shut his eyes.

  A length of piping whistled past his head.

  Tito Cravelli fired the laser rifle at George Walt. One of the two bodies sagged, hit in the shoulder; it was wounded but not dead. ‘You see?’ Cravelli said. ‘It would be terrible for the one of you that survived.’

  ‘Yes,’ the head said, bobbing up and down in a grotesque pumpkin-like fit of nodding. ‘We’ll work with you, whoever you are. We’ll call Engel; we can get this all straightened out. Please.’ Both eyes, each fixed on a different spot, bulged in glazed fear. The right one, on the same side as the laser-wound, had become opaque with pain.

  ‘Good enough,’ Tito Cravelli said. He thought, I may be Attorney General yet. Herding them with his laser rifle, he moved George Walt toward the door.

  SEVEN

  The weapon which Herb Lackmore had been provided with contained a costly replica of the encephalic wave-pattern of James Briskin. He needed merely to place it within a few miles of Briskin, screw in the handle and then, with a switch, detonate it.

  It was a mechanism, he decided, which supplied little, if any, personal satisfaction. However, at least it would do the job and that, in the long run, was all that counted. And certainly it insured his personal escape, or at least greatly aided it.

  At this moment, nine o’clock at night, Jim Briskin sat upstairs in a room at the Galton Plaza Hotel, in Chicago, conferring with aides and idea-men; pickets of CLEAN, parading before the notably first class hotel, had seen him enter and had conveyed the word to Lackmore.

  I’ll do it at exactly nine-fifteen, Lackmore decided. He sat in the back of a rented wheel, the mechanism assembled beside him; it was no larger than a football but rather heavy. It hummed faintly, off-key.

  I wonder where the funds for this apparatus appeared from, he wondered. Because these items cost a hell of a lot, or so I’ve read.

  He was, a few minutes later, just making the final preparatory adjustments when two dark, massive, upright shapes materialized along the nocturnal sidewalk close beside the wheel. The shapes appeared to be wearing green and silver uniforms which sparkled faintly, like moonlight.

  Cautiously, with a near-Psionic sense of suspicions, Lackmore rolled down the wheel window. ‘What do you want?’ he asked the two Clean members.

  ‘Get out,’ one of them said brusquely.

  ‘Why?’ Lackmore froze, did not budge. Could not.

  ‘There’s been an alteration of plans. Engel just now buzzed us on the portable seek-com. You’re to give that boulder back to us.’

  ‘No,’ Lackmore said. Obviously, the CLEAN movement had at the last moment sold out; he did not know exactly why, but there it was. The assassination would not take place as planned - that was all he knew, all he cared about. Rapidly, he began to screw the handle in.

  ‘Engel says to forget it!’ the other CLEAN man shouted. ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Lackmore said, and groped for the detonating switch.

  The door of his wheel popped open. One of the CLEAN men grabbed him by the collar, yanked him from the back seat and dragged him kicking and thrashing from the wheel and out onto the sidewalk. The other snatched up the boulder, the expensive weapon, from him and swiftly, expertly, unscrewed the detonating handle.

  Lackmore bit and fought. He did not give up.

  It did him no good. The CLEAN man with the boulder had already disappeared into the night darkness; along with the weapon he had vanished - the boulder, and all of Lackmore’s tireless, busy, brooding plans, had gone.

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Lackmore panted futilely, struggling with the fat, powerful CLEAN man who had hold of him.

  ‘You’ll kill nobody, fella,’ the CLEAN man answered, and increased his pressure on Lackmore’s throat.

  It was not an even fight; Herb Lackmore had no chance. He had sat at a government desk, stood idly behind a counter too many years.

  Calmly, with clear enjoyment, the CLEAN man made mincemeat out of him.

  For someone supposedly devoted to the cult of non-violence, it was amazing how good he was at it.

  From the two mutants’ plush, Titan elk-beetle fuzz carpeted office, Tito Cravelli vidphoned Jim Briskin at the Galton Plaza Hotel in Chicago. ‘Are you all right?’ he inquired. One of the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite’s nurses was engaged in attempting futilely to bind up the injured brother with a dermofax pack; she worked silently, as Cravelli held the laser rifle and Francy stood by the office door with a pistol which Tito had located in the brothers’ desk.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Briskin said, puzzled. He evidently could see around Tito, past him to George Walt.

  Tito said, ‘I’ve got a snake by the tail here, and I can’t let go. You have any suggestions? I’ve prevented your assassination, but how the heck am I going to get out of here?’ He was beginning to become really worried.

  After meditating, Briskin said, ‘I could ask the Chicago police …’ ,

  ‘Niddy,’ Cravelli said, in derision. ‘They wouldn’t come.’ He knew that for a certainty. ‘They have no jurisdiction up here; that’s been tested countless times - this isn’t part of the United States, even, let alone Chicago.’

  Briskin said, ‘All right. I can send some party volunteers up to help you. They’ll go where I say. We have a few who’ve clashed on the streets with Engel’s organization; they might know exactly what to do.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Cravelli said, relieved. But his stomach was still killing him; he could scarcely stand the pain and he wondered if there were any way he could obtain a glass of milk. ‘The tension’s getting me down, he said. ‘And I haven’t had my dinner. They’ll have to get up here pretty soon, or frankly I’m going to fold up. I thought of taking George Walt off the satellite entirely, but I’m afraid I’d never get them to the launch field. We’d have to pass too many Golden Door employees on the way.’

  ‘You’re directly over N’York now,’ Jim Briskin said. ‘So it won’t take too long to get a few people there. How many do you want?’

  ‘Certainly at least a hopper-load. Actually, all you can spare. You don’t want to lose your future Attorney General, do you?’

  ‘Not especially.’ Briskin seemed calm, but his dark eyes were bright. He plucked at his great handlebar mustache, then, pondering. ‘Maybe I’ll come along,’ he decided.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make sure you get away.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Cravelli said. ‘But I don’t recommend it. Things are somewhat hot, up here. Do you know any girls at the satellite who could lead you through to George Walt’s office?’

  ‘No,’ Jim Briskin said. And then a peculiar expression appeared on his face. ‘Wait. I know one. She was down here in Chicago today but perhaps she’s gone back up again.’

  ‘Probably has,’ Cravelli said. ‘They flit back and forth like lightning bugs. Take a chance on it, anyhow. I’ll see you. And watch your step.’ He rang off at that point.

  As he started to board the big jet-bus, which was filled with R-L volunteers, Jim Briskin found himself facing two familiar figures.

  ‘You can’t go to the satellite,’ Sal Heim said, stopping him. Beside him Patricia stood somberly in her long coat, shivering in the evening wind that drew in off the lakes. ‘It’s too dangerous … I know George Walt better than you do - remember ? After all, I had you figured for a business deal with them; that was to be my contribution.’

  Pat said, ‘If you go there, Jim, you’ll never come back. I know it. Stay here with me.’ She caught hold of his arm, but he tugged loose.

  ‘I have to go,’ he told her. ‘My gunsel is there and I have to get him away; he’s done too much for me just to leave him there.’

  ‘I’ll go instead of you,’ Sal Heim said.

  ‘Thanks.’ It was a good offer, well meant. But - he had to repay Tito Cravelli for what he’d done; obviously he had to see that Tito g
ot safely away from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. It was as simple as that. ‘The best I can offer you,’ he said, ‘is the opportunity to ride along.’ He meant it ironically.

  ‘All right,’ Sal said, nodding. ‘I’ll come with you.’ To Pat he said, ‘but you stay down below here. If we get back, we should be showing up right away - or not at all. Come on, Jim.’ He climbed the steps into the jet-bus, joining the others already there.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ Pat said to Jim Briskin.

  ‘What did you think of my speech?’ he asked her.

  ‘I was in the tub; I only heard part of it. But I think it was the best you ever made. Sal said so, too, and he heard it all. Now he knows he made a terrific mistake; he should have stuck with you.’

  ‘Too bad he didn’t,’ Jim said.

  ‘You wouldn’t say something along the lines of “better late than …”’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Better late than never.’ Turning, he followed Sal Heim onto the jet-bus. He had said it, but it was not true. Too much had happened; too late was too late. He and Sal had split forever. And both of them knew it … or rather, feared it. And sought instinctively for a new rapprochement without having any idea how it could be done.

  As the jet-bus whirled upward in brisk ascent, Sal leaned over and said, ‘You’ve accomplished a lot since I saw you last, Jim. I want to congratulate you. And I’m not being ironic. Hardly that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Jim Briskin said, briefly.

  ‘But you’ll never forgive me for handing you my resignation when I did, will you? Well, I can’t really blame you.’ Sal was silent, then.