ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY. 1953 by Robert “A.” Heinlein. A Puke (TM) Audiobook

ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY.
1953 by Robert “A.” Heinlein.
Renewed 1981 by Robert “A.” Heinlein.
Contents:
1. Gulf.
2. Elsewhen.
3. Lost Legacy.
4. Jerry Was a Man.
GULF.
THE FIRST-QUARTER ROCKET from Moonbase put him down at Pied-a-Terre. The name he was traveling under began-by foresight-with the letter “A”; he was through port inspection and into the shuttle tube to the city ahead of the throng. Once in the tube car he went to the men’s washroom and locked himself in.
Quickly he buckled on the safety belt he found there, snapped its hooks to the wall fixtures, and leaned over awkwardly to remove a razor from his bag. The surge caught him in that position; despite the safety belt he bumped his head-and swore. He straightened up and plugged in the razor. His moustache vanished; he shortened his sideburns, trimmed the corners of his eyebrows, and brushed them up.
He towelled his hair vigorously to remove the oil that had sleeked it down, combed it loosely into a wavy mane. The car was now riding in a smooth, unaccelerated 300 miles per hour; he let himself out of the safety belt without unhooking it from the walls and, working very rapidly, peeled off his moonsuit, took from his bag and put on a tweedy casual outfit suited to outdoors on Earth and quite unsuited to Moon Colony’s air-conditioned corridors.
His slippers he replaced with walking shoes from the bag; he stood up. Joel Abner, commercial traveler, had disappeared; in his place was Captain Joseph Gilead, explorer, lecturer, and writer. Of both names he was the sole user; neither was his birth name.
He slashed the moonsuit to ribbons and flushed it down the water closet, added “Joel Abner’s” identification card; then peeled a plastic skin off his travel bag and let the bits follow the rest. The bag was now pearl grey and rough, instead of dark brown and smooth. The slippers bothered him; he was afraid they might stop up the car’s plumbing. He contented himself with burying them in the waste receptacle.
The acceleration warning sounded as he was doing this; he barely had time to get back into the belt. But, as the car plunged into the solenoid field and surged to a stop, nothing remained of Joel Abner but some unmarked underclothing, very ordinary toilet articles, and nearly two dozen spools of microfilm equally appropriate, until examined, to a commercial traveler or a lecturer-writer. He planned not to let them be examined as long as he was alive.
He waited in the washroom until he was sure of being last man out of the car, then went forward in to the next car, left by its exit, and headed for the lift to the ground level.
“New Age Hotel, sir,” a voice pleaded near his ear. He felt a hand fumbling at the grip of his travel bag.
He repressed a reflex to defend the bag and looked the speaker over. At first glance he seemed an under-sized adolescent in a smart uniform and a pillbox cap. Further inspection showed premature wrinkles and the features of a man at least forty. The eyes were glazed. A pituitary case, he thought to himself, and on the hop as well. “New Age Hotel,” the runner repeated. “Best mechanos in town, chief. There’s a discount if you’re just down from the moon.”
Captain Gilead, when in town as Captain Gilead, always stayed at the old Savoy. But the notion of going to the New Age appealed to him; in that in credibly huge, busy, and ultramodern hostelry he might remain unnoticed until he had had time to do what had to be done.
He disliked mightily the idea of letting go his bag. Nevertheless it would be out of character not to let the runner carry the bag; it would call attention to himself, and the bag. He decided that this unhealthy runt could not outrun him even if he himself were on crutches; it would suffice to keep an eye on the bag.
“Lead on, comrade,” he answered heartily, surrendering the bag. There had been no hesitation at all; he had let go the bag even as the hotel runner reached for it.
“Okay, chief.” The runner was first man into an empty lift; he went to the back of the car and set the bag down beside him. Gilead placed himself so that his foot rested firmly against his bag and faced forward as other travelers crowded in. The car started.
The lift was jammed; Gilead was subjected to body pressures on every side-but he noticed an additional, unusual, and uncalled-for pressure behind him.
His right hand moved suddenly and clamped down on a skinny wrist and a hand clutching something. Gilead made no further movement, nor did the owner of the hand attempt to draw away or make any objection. They remained so until the car reached the surface. When the passengers had spilled out he reached behind him with his left hand, recovered his bag and dragged the wrist and its owner out of the car.
It was, of course, the runner; the object in his fist was Gilead’s wallet. “You durn near lost that. Chief,” the runner announced with no show of embarrassment. “It was falling out of your pocket.”
Gilead liberated the wallet and stuffed it into an inner pocket. “Fell right through the zipper,” he answered cheerfully. “Well, let’s find a cop.”
The runt tried to pull away, “You got nothing on me!”
Gilead considered the defense. In truth, he had nothing. His wallet was already out of sight. As to witnesses, the other lift passengers were already gone-nor had they seen anything. The lift itself was automatic. He was simply a man in the odd position of detaining another citizen by the wrist. And Gilead himself did not want to talk to the police.
He let go that wrist. “On your way, comrade. We’ll call it quits.”
The runner did not move. “How about my tip?”
Gilead was beginning to like this rascal. Locating a loose half credit in his change pocket he flipped it at the runner, who grabbed it out of the air but still didn’t leave. “I’ll take your bag now. Gimme.”
“No, thanks, chum. I can find your delightful inn without further help. One side, please.”
“Oh, yeah? How about my commission? I gotta carry your bag, else how they gonna know I brung you in? Gimme.”
Gilead was delighted with the creature’s unabashed insistence. He found a two-credit piece and passed it over. “There’s your cumshaw. Now beat it, before I kick your tail up around your shoulders.”
“You and who else?”
Gilead chuckled and moved away down the concourse toward the station entrance to the New Age Hotel. His subconscious sentries informed him immediately that the runner had not gone back toward the lift as expected, but was keeping abreast him in the crowd. He considered this. The runner might very well be what he appeared to be, common city riffraff who combined casual thievery with his overt occupation. On the other hand.
He decided to unload. He stepped suddenly off the sidewalk into the entrance of a drugstore and stopped Just inside the door to buy a newspaper. While his copy was being printed, he scooped up, apparently as an afterthought, three standard pneumo mailing tubes. As he paid for them he palmed a pad of gummed address labels.
A glance at the mirrored wall showed him that his shadow had hesitated outside but was still watching him. Gilead went on back to the shop’s soda fountain and slipped into an unoccupied booth. Although the floor show was going on-a remarkably shapely ecdysiast was working down toward her last string of beads-he drew the booth’s curtain.
Shortly the call light over the booth flashed discreetly; he called, “Come in!” A pretty and very young waitress came inside the curtain. Her plastic costume covered without concealing.
She glanced around. “Lonely?”
“No, thanks, I’m tired.”
“How about a redhead, then? Real cute.”
“I really am tired. Bring me two bottles of beer, unopened, and some pretzels.”
“Suit yourself, sport.” She left.
With speed he opened the travel bag, selected nine spools of microfilm, and loaded them into the three mailing tubes, the tubes being of the common three-spool size. Gilead then took the filched pad of address labels, addressed the top one to “Raymond Calhoun, P. 0. Box 1060, Chicago” and commenced to draw with great care in the rectangle reserved for electric eye sorter. The address he shaped in arbitrary symbols was intended not to be read, but to be scanned automatically. The hand-written address was merely a precaution, in case a robot sorter should reject his hand-drawn symbols as being imperfect and thereby turn the tube over to a human postal clerk for readdressing.
He worked fast, but with the care of an engraver. The waitress returned before he had finished. The call light warned him; he covered the label with his elbow and kept it covered.
She glanced at the mailing tubes as she put down the beer and a bowl of pretzels. “Want me to mail those?”
He had another instant of split-second indecision. When he had stepped out of the tube car he had been reasonably sure, first, that the persona of Joel Abner, commercial traveler, had not been penetrated, and, second, that the transition from Abner to Gilead had been accomplished without arousing suspicion. The pocket-picking episode had not alarmed him, but had caused him to reclassify those two propositions from calculated certainties to unproved variables. He had proceeded to test them at once; they were now calculated certainties again-of the opposite sort. Ever since he had spotted his erstwhile porter, the New Age runner, as standing outside this same drugstore his subconscious had been clanging like a burglar alarm. It was clear not only that he had been spotted but that they were organized with a completeness and shrewdness he had not believed possible.
But it was mathematically probable to the point of certainty that they were not operating through this girl. They had no way of knowing that he would choose to turn aside into this particular drugstore. That she could be used by them he was sure, and she had been out of sight since his first contact with her. But she was clearly not bright enough, despite her alley cat sophistication, to be approached, subverted, instructed and indoctrinated to the point where she could seize an unexpected opportunity, all in a space of time merely adequate to fetch two bottles of beer. No, this girl was simply after a tip. Therefore she was safe.
But her costume offered no possibility of concealing three mailing tubes, nor would she be safe crossing the concourse to the post office. He had no wish that she be found tomorrow morning dead in a ditch.
“No,” he answered immediately. “I have to pass the post office anyway. But it was a kind thought. Here.” He gave her a half credit.
“Thanks.” She waited and stared meaningfully at the beer. He fumbled again in his change pocket, found only a few bits, reached for his wallet and took out a five-pluton note.
‘Take it out of this.”
She handed him back three singles and some change. He pushed the change toward her, then waited, frozen, while she picked it up and left. Only then did he hold the wallet closer to his eyes.
It was not his wallet.
He should have noticed it before, he told himself. Even though there had been only a second from the time he had taken it from?’ the runner’s clutched fingers until he had concealed it in a front pocket, he should have known it-known it and forced the runner to disgorge, even if he had had to skin him alive.
But why was he sure that it was not his wallet? It was the proper size and shape, the proper weight and feel-real ostrich skin in these days of synthetics. There was the weathered ink stain which had resulted from carrying a leaky stylus in the same pocket. There was a V-shaped scratch on the front which had happened so long ago he did not recall the circumstances.
Yet it was not his wallet.
He opened it again. There was the proper amount of money, there were what seemed to be his Explorers’ Club card and his other identity cards, there was a dog-eared flat-photo of a mare he had once owned. Yet the more the evidence showed that it was his, the more certain he became that it was not his. These things were forgeries; they did not feel right.
There was one way to find out. He flipped a switch provided by a thoughtful management; the booth; became dark. He took out his penknife and carefully slit a seam back of the billfold pocket. He dipped a finger into a secret pocket thus disclosed and felt around; the space was empty-nor in this case had the duplication of his own wallet been quite perfect; the space should have been lined, but his fingers encountered rough leather.
He switched the light back on, put the wallet away, and resumed his interrupted drawing. The loss of the card which should have been in the concealed pocket was annoying, certainly awkward, and conceivably disastrous, but he did not judge that the information on it was jeopardized by the loss of the wallet. The card was quite featureless unless examined by black light; if exposed to visible light-by someone taking the real wallet apart, for example-it had the disconcerting quality of bursting explosively into flame.
He continued to work, his mind busy with the wider problem of why they had taken so much trouble to try to keep him from knowing that his wallet was being stolen, and the still wider and more disconcerting question of why they had bothered with his wallet. Finished, he stuffed the remainder of the pad of address labels into a crack between cushions in the booth, palmed the label he had prepared, picked up the bag and the three mailing tubes. One tube he kept separate from the others by a finger.
No attack would take place, he judged, in the drug store. The crowded concourse between himself and the post office he would ordinarily have considered equally safe-but not today. A large crowd of people, he knew, are equal to so many trees as witnesses if the dice were loaded with any sort of a diversion.
He slanted across the bordering slidewalk and headed directly across the middle toward the post office, keeping as far from other people as he could manage. He had become aware of two men converging on him when the expected diversion took place.
It was a blinding light and a loud explosion, followed by screams and startled shouts. The source of the explosion he could imagine; the screams and shouts were doubtless furnished free by the public. Being braced, not for this, but for anything, he refrained even from turning his head.
The two men closed rapidly, as on cue.
Most creatures and almost all humans fight only when pushed. This can lose them decisive advantage. The two men made no aggressive move of any sort, other than to come close to Gilead-nor did they ever attack.
Gilead kicked the first of them in the knee cap, using the side of his foot, a much more certain stroke than with the toe. He swung with his travel bag against the other at the same time, not hurting him but bothering him, spoiling his timing. Gilead followed it with a heavy kick to the man’s stomach.
The man whose knee cap he had ruined was on the pavement, but still active-reaching for something, a gun or a knife. Gilead kicked him in the head and stepped over him, continued toward the post office.
Slow march-slow march all the way! He must not give the appearance of running away; he must be the perfect respectable citizen, going about his lawful occasions.
The post office came close, and still no tap on the shoulder, no denouncing shout, no hurrying footsteps. He reached the post office, was inside. The opposition’s diversion had worked, perfectly, but for Gilead, not for them, there was a short queue at the addressing machine. Gilead joined it, took out his stylus and wrote addresses on the tubes while standing. A man joined the queue almost at once.
Gilead made no effort to keep him from seeing what address he was writing; it was “Captain Joseph Gilead, the Explorers’ Club, New York.” When it came his turn to use the symbol printing machine he still made no effort to conceal what keys he was punching, and the symbol address matched the address he had written on each tube.
He worked somewhat awkwardly as the previously prepared gummed label was still concealed in his left palm.
He went from the addressing machine to the mailing receivers; the man who had been behind him in line followed him without pretending to address anything.
Thwonk! And the first tube was away with a muted implosion of compressed air. Thwonk! again and the second was gone, and at the same time Gilead grasped the last one in his left hand, sticking the gummed label down firmly over the address he had just printed on it. Without looking at it he made sure by touch that it was in place, all corners sealed, then, thwonk! It joined its mates.
Gilead turned suddenly and trod heavily on the feet of the man crowded close behind him. “Wups! Pardon me,” he said happily and turned away. He was feeling very cheerful; not only had he turned his dangerous charge over into the care of a mindless, utterly reliable, automatic machine which could not be coerced, bribed, drugged, nor subverted by any other means and in whose complexities the tube would be perfectly hidden until it reached a destination known only to Gilead, but also he had just stepped on the corns of one of the opposition.
On the steps of the post office he paused beside a policeman who was picking his teeth and staring out at a cluster of people and an ambulance in the middle of the concourse. “What’s up?” Gilead demanded.
The cop shifted his toothpick. “First some damn fool sets off fireworks,” he answered, “then two guys get in a fight and blame near ruin each other.”
“My goodness!” Gilead commented and set off diagonally toward the New Age Hotel.
He looked around for his pick-pocket friend in the lobby, did not see him. Gilead strongly doubted if the runt were on the hotel’s staff. He signed in as Captain Gilead, ordered a suite appropriate to the persona he was wearing, and let himself be conducted to the lift.
Gilead encountered the runner coming down just as he and his bellman were about to go up. “Hi, Shorty!” he called out while deciding not to eat anything in this hotel. “How’s business?”
The runt looked startled, then passed him without answering, his eyes blank. It was not likely, Gilead considered, that the runt would be used after being detected; therefore some sort of drop box, call station, or headquarters of the opposition was actually inside the hotel. Very well, that would save everybody a lot of useless commuting, and there would be fun for all!
In the meantime he wanted a bath.

In his suite he tipped the bellman who continued to linger.
“Want some company?”
“No, thanks, I’m a hermit.”
“Try this then.” The bellman inserted Gilead’s room key in the stereo panel, fiddled with the controls, the entire wall lighted up and faded away. A svelte blonde creature, backed by a chorus line, seemed about to leap into Gilead’s lap. “That’s not a tape,” the bellman went on, “that’s a live transmission direct from the Tivoli. We got the best equipment in town.”
“So you have,” Gilead agreed, and pulled out his key. The picture blanked; the music stopped. “But I want a bath, so get out-now that you’ve spent four credits of my money.”
The bellman shrugged and left. Gilead threw off his clothes and stepped into the ‘fresher. Twenty minutes later, shaved from ear to toe, scrubbed, soaked, sprayed, pummeled, rubbed, scented, powdered, and feeling ten years younger, he stepped out. His clothes were gone.
His bag was still there; he looked it over. It seemed okay, itself and contents. There were the proper number of microfilm spools-not that it mattered. Only three of the spools mattered and they were already in the mail. The rest were just shrubbery, copies of his own public lectures. Nevertheless he examined one of them, unspooling a few frames.
It was one of his own lectures all right-but not one he had had with him. It was one of his published transcriptions, available in any large book store. “Pixies everywhere,” he remarked and put it back. Such attention to detail was admirable.
“Room service!”
The service panel lighted up. “Yes, sir?”
“My clothes are missing. Chase ‘em up for me.”
“The valet has them, sir.”
“I didn’t order valet service. Get ‘em back.”
The girl’s voice and face were replaced, after a slight delay, by those of a man. “It is not necessary to order valet service here, sir. ‘A New Age guest receives the best.’ “
“Okay, get ‘em back-chop, chop! I’ve got a date with the Queen of Sheba.”
“Very good, sir.” The image faded.
With wry humor he reviewed his situation. He had already made the possibly fatal error of underestimating his opponent through, he now knew, visualizing that opponent in the unimpressive person of “the runt.” Thus he had allowed himself to be diverted; he should have gone anywhere rather than to the New Age, even to the old Savoy, although that hotel, being a known stamping ground of Captain Gilead, was probably as thoroughly booby-trapped by now as this palatial dive.
He must not assume that he had more than a few more minutes to live. Therefore he must use those few minutes to tell his boss the destination of the three important spools of microfilm. Thereafter, if he still were alive, he must replenish his cash to give him facilities for action-the amount of money in “his” wallet, even if it were returned, was useless for any major action. Thirdly, he must report in, close the present assignment, and be assigned to his present antagonists as a case in themselves, quite aside from the matter of the microfilm.
Not that he intended to drop Runt and Company even if not assigned to them. True artists were scarce-nailing him down by such a simple device as stealing his pants! He loved them for it and wanted to see more of them, as violently as possible.
Even as the image on the room service panel faded he was punching the scrambled keys on the room’s communicator desk. It was possible-certain, that the scramble code he used would be repeated elsewhere in the hotel and the supposed privacy attained by scrambling thereby breached at once. This did not matter; he would have his boss disconnect and call back with a different scramble from the other end. To be sure, the call code of the station to which he was reporting would thereby be breached, but it was more than worthwhile to expend and discard one relay station to get this message through.
Scramble pattern set up, he coded-not New Washington, but the relay station he had selected. A girl’s face showed on the screen. “New Age service, sir, Were you scrambling?”
“Yes.”
“I am veree sorree, sir. The scrambling circuits are being repaired, I can scramble for you from the main board.”
“No, thanks, I’ll call in clear.”
“I yam ve-ree sor-ree, sir.”
There was one clear-code he could use-to be used only for crash priority. This was crash priority. Very well-
He punched the keys again without scrambling and waited. The same girl’s face appeared presently. “I am verree soiree, sir; that code does not reply. May I help you?”
“You might send up a carrier pigeon.” He cleared the board.
The cold breath on the back of his neck was stronger now; he decided to do what he could to make it awkward to kill him just yet. He reached back into his mind and coded in clear the Star-Times.
No answer.
He tried the Clarion-again no answer.
No point in beating his head against it; they did not intend to let him talk outside to anyone. He rang for a bellman, sat down in an easy chair, switched it to “shallow massage,” and luxuriated happily in the chair’s tender embrace. No doubt about it; the New Age did have the best mechanos in town-his bath had been wonderful; this chair was superb. Both the recent austerities of Moon Colony and the probability that this would be his last massage added to his pleasure.
The door dilated and a bellman came in-about his own size, Gilead noted. The man’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch on seeing Gilead’s oyster-naked condition. “You want company?”
Gilead stood up and moved toward him. “No, dearie,” he said grinning, “I want you”, at which he sank three stiffened fingers in the man’s solar plexus.
As the man grunted and went down Gilead chopped him in the side of the neck with the edge of his hand.
The shoulders of the jacket were too narrow and the shoes too large; nevertheless two minutes later “Captain Gilead” had followed “Joel Abner” to oblivion and Joe, temporary and free-lance bellman, let himself out of the room. He regretted not being able to leave a tip with his predecessor.
He sauntered past the passengers lifts, firmly misdirected a guest who had stopped him, and found the service elevator. By it was a door to the “quick drop.” He opened it, reached out and grasped a waiting pulley belt, and, without stopping to belt himself into it, contenting himself with hanging on, he stepped off the edge. In less time than it would have taken him to parachute the drop he was picking himself up off the cushions in the hotel basement and reflecting that lunar gravitation surely played hob with a man’s leg muscles.
He left the drop room and started out in an arbitrary direction, but walking as if he were on business and belonged where he was-any exit would do and he would find one eventually.
He wandered in and out of the enormous pantry, then found the freight door through which the pantry was supplied.
When he was thirty feet from it, it closed and an alarm sounded. He turned back.
He encountered two policemen in one of the many corridors under the giant hotel and attempted to brush on past them. One of them stared at him, then caught his arm. “Captain Gilead.”
Gilead tried to squirm away, but without showing any skill in the attempt. “What’s the idea?”
“You are Captain Gilead.”
“And you’re my Aunt Sadie. Let go of my arm, copper.”
The policeman fumbled in his pocket with his other hand, pulled out a notebook, Gilead noted that the other officer had moved a safe ten feet away and had a Markheim gun trained on him.
“You, Captain Gilead,” the first officer droned, “are charged on a sworn complaint with offering a counterfeit five-pluton note at or about thirteen hours this date at the Grand Concourse drugstore in this city. You are cautioned to come peacefully and are advised that you need not speak at this time. Come along.”
The charge might or might not have something to it, thought Gilead; he had not examined closely the money in the substituted wallet. He did not mind being booked, now that the microfilm was out of his possession; to be in an ordinary police station with nothing more sinister to cope with than crooked cops and dumb desk sergeants would be easy street compared with Runt and Company searching for him.
On the other hand the situation was too pat, unless the police had arrived close on his heels and found the stripped bellman, gotten his story and started searching.
The second policeman kept his distance and did not lower the Markheim gun. That made other consideration academic. “Okay, I’ll go,” he protested. “You don’t have to twist my arm that way.
They went up to the weather level and out to the street, and not once did the second cop drop his guard. Gilead relaxed and waited. A police car was balanced at the curb. Gilead stopped.
“I’ll walk,” he said. “The nearest station is just around the corner. I want to be booked in my own precinct.”
He felt a teeth-chattering chill as the blast from the Markheim hit him; he pitched forward on his face.
He was coming to, but still could not coordinate, as they lifted him out of the car. By the time he found himself being half-carried, half-marched down a long corridor he was almost himself again, but with a gap in his memory. He was shoved through a door which clanged behind him. He steadied himself and looked around.
“Greetings, friend,” a resonant voice called out. “Drag up a chair by the fire.”
Gilead blinked, deliberately slowed himself down, and breathed deeply. His healthy body was fighting off the effects of the Markheim bolt; he was almost himself.
The room was a cell, old-fashioned, almost primitive. The front of the cell and the door were steel bars; the walls were concrete. Its only furniture, a long wooden bench, was occupied by the man who had spoken. He was fiftyish, of ponderous frame, heavy features set in a shrewd, good-natured expression. He was lying back on the bench, head pillowed on his hands, in animal ease. Gilead had seen him before.
“Hello, Doctor Baldwin.”
The man sat up with a flowing economy of motion that moved his bulk as little as possible. “I’m not Doctor Baldwin-I’m not Doctor anything, though my name is Baldwin.” He stared at Gilead.
“But I know you. Seen some of your lectures,”
Gilead cocked an eyebrow. “A man would seem naked around the Association of Theoretical Physicists without a doctor’s degree, and you were at their last meeting.”
Baldwin chuckled boomingly. “That accounts for it-that has to be my cousin on my father’s side, Hartley M.-stuffy citizen Hartley. I’ll have to try to take the curse off the family name, now that I’ve met you. Captain.” He stuck out a huge hand. “Gregory Baldwin, ‘Kettle Belly’ to my friends. New and used helicopters is as close as I come to theoretical physics. ‘Kettle Belly Baldwin, King of the Kopters’-you must have seen my advertising.”
“Now that you mention it, I have.”
Baldwin pulled out a card. “Here. If you ever need one, I’ll give you a ten percent off for knowing old Hartley, Matter of fact, I can do right well by you in a year-old Curtiss, a family car without a mark on it.”
Gilead accepted the card and sat down. “Not at the moment, thanks. You seem to have an odd sort of office, Mister Baldwin.”
Baldwin chuckled again. “In the course of a long life these things happen. Captain. I won’t ask you why you are here or what you are doing in that monkey suit. Call me Kettle Belly.”
“Okay.” Gilead got up and went to the door. Opposite the cell was a blank wall; there was no one in sight. He whistled and shouted-no answer.
“What’s itching you, Captain?” Baldwin asked gently.
Gilead turned. His cellmate had dealt a solitaire hand on the bench and was calmly playing.
“I’ve got to raise the turnkey and send for a lawyer.”
“Don’t fret about it. Let’s play some cards.” He reached in a pocket. “I’ve got a second deck; how about some Russian bank?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to get out of here.” He shouted again-still no answer.
“Don’t waste your lung power. Captain,” Baldwin advised him. “They’ll come when it suits them and not a second before. I know. Come play with me; it passes the time.” Baldwin appeared to be shuffling the two decks; Gilead could see that he was actually stacking the cards. The deception amused him; he decided to play-since the truth of Baldwin’s advice was so evident.
“If you don’t like Russian bank,” Kettle Belly went on, “here is a game I learned as a kid.” He paused and stared into Gilead’s eyes. “It’s instructive as well as entertaining, yet it’s simple, once you catch on to it.” He started dealing out the cards. “It makes a better game with two decks, because the black cards don’t mean anything. Just the twenty-six red cards in each deck count-with the heart suit coming first. Each card scores according to its position in that sequence, the ace of hearts is one and the king of hearts counts thirteen; the ace of diamonds is next at fourteen and so on. Savvy?”
“Yes”
“And the blacks don’t count. They’re blanks, spaces. Ready to play?”
“What are the rules?”
“We’ll deal out one hand for free; you’ll learn faster as you see it. Then, when you’ve caught on, I’ll play you for a half interest in the atomics trust-or ten bits in cash.” He resumed dealing, laying the cards out rapidly in columns, five to a row. He paused, finished. “It’s my deal, so it’s your count. See what you get.”
It was evident that Baldwin’s stacking had brought the red cards into groups, yet there was no evident advantage to it, nor was the count especially high, nor low. Gilead stared at it, trying to figure out the man’s game. The cheating, as cheating seemed too bold to be probable.
Suddenly the cards jumped at him, arranged themselves in a meaningful array. He read:
“X”THEY CAN “X-X” “X, X, X” SEE HEAR “X” US “X, X” The fact that there were only two fives-of-hearts available had affected the spelling but the meaning was clear. Gilead reached for the cards. “I’ll try one. I can beat that score.” He dipped into the tips belonging to the suit’s owner. “Ten bits it is.”
Baldwin covered it. Gilead shuffled, making even less attempt to cover up than had Baldwin. He dealt:
WHATS Five X YOUR GAME “X” Five X. Baldwin shoved the money toward him and anted again. “Okay, my turn for revenge.” He laid out:
“X, X” I’M “X, X” ON “X, X” YOUR “X” Five X SIDE. “I win again,” Gilead announced gleefully. “Ante up.” He grabbed the cards and manipulated them:
YEAH X, Five X PROVE “X, X” IT, X Five X Baldwin counted and said, “You’re too smart for me. Gimme the cards.” He produced another ten-bit piece and dealt again:
“X, X” I’L X HELP X YOU X, GET, X OUT, X, X. “I should have cut the cards,” Gilead complained, pushing the money over. “Let’s double the bets.” Baldwin grunted and Gilead dealt again:
“X” NUTS IM Triple X SAFER “X, X” IN “X, X” GAOL. “I broke your luck,” Baldwin gloated. “We’ll double it again?”
X U X R, “X, X” NUTS. THIS X NO Triple X, JAIL. The deal shifted:
KEEP X, X TALKING Six X, BUD, X. Baldwin answered:
THIS Six X, X, NEW AGE “X, X, X” HOTEL. As he stacked the cards again Gilead considered these new factors. He was prepared to believe that he was hidden somewhere in the New Age Hotel; in fact the counterproposition that his opponents had permitted two ordinary cops to take him away to a normal city jail was most unlikely-unless they had the jail as fully under control as they quite evidently had the hotel.
Nevertheless the point was not proven. As for Baldwin, he might be on Gilead’s side; more probably he was planted as an agent provocateur-or he might be working for himself.
The permutations added up to six situations, only one of which made it desirable to accept Baldwin’s offer for help in a Jail break-said situation being the least likely of the six.
Nevertheless, though he considered Baldwin a liar, net, he tentatively decided to accept. A static situation brought him no advantage; a dynamic situation-any dynamic situation-he might turn to his advantage. But more data were needed. “These cards are sticky as candy,” he complained. “You letting your money ride?” “Suits.” Gilead dealt again:
Five X, WHY “X, X” AM Six X, I X HERE. “You have the damnedest luck,” Baldwin commented:
FILMS ESCAP BFORE “X” U, triple X, KRACK Gilead swept up the cards, was about to “shuffle,” when Baldwin said, “Oh-oh, school’s out.” Footsteps could be heard in the passage. “Good luck, boy,” Baldwin added.

Baldwin knew about the films, but had not used any of the dozen ways to identify himself as part of Gilead’s own organization. Therefore he was planted by the opposition, or he was a third factor.
More important, the fact that Baldwin knew about the films proved his assertion that this was not a jail. It followed with bitter certainty that he, Gilead. stood no computable chance of getting out alive. The footsteps approaching the cell could be ticking off the last seconds of his life.
He knew now that he should have found means to report the destination of the films before going to the New Age. But Humpty Dumpty was off the wall, entropy always increases-but the films must be delivered.
The footsteps were quite close.
Baldwin might get out alive.
But who was Baldwin?
All the while he was “shuffling” the cards. The action was not final; he had only to give them one true shuffle to destroy the message being set up in them. A spider settled from the ceiling, landed on the other man’s hand. Baldwin, instead of knocking it off and crushing it, most carefully reached his arm out toward the wall and encouraged it to lower itself to the floor.
“Better stay out of the way, shorty,” he said gently, “or one of the big boys is likely to step on you.”
The incident, small as it was, determined Gilead’s decision, and with it, the fate of a planet. He stood up and handed the stacked deck to Baldwin. “I owe you exactly ten-sixty,” he said carefully. “Be sure to remember it-I’ll see who our visitors are.”
The footsteps had stopped outside the cell door.
There were two of then, dressed neither as police nor as guards; the masquerade was over. One stood well back, covering the maneuver with a Markheim, the other unlocked the door.
“Back against the wall, Fatso,” he ordered. “Gilead, out you come. And take it easy, or after we freeze you, I’ll knock out your teeth just for fun.”
Baldwin shuffled back against the wall; Gilead came out slowly. He watched for any opening but the leader backed away from him without once getting between him and the man with the Markheim. “Ahead of us and take it slow,” he was ordered. He complied, helpless under the precautions, unable to run, unable to fight.
Baldwin went back to the bench when they had gone. He dealt out the cards as if playing solitaire, swept them up again, and continued to deal himself solitaire hands. Presently he “shuffled” the cards back to the exact order Gilead had left them in and pocketed them.
The message had read;
X TELL X FBS X PO BOX DEBT XXX CHI.
His two guards marched Gilead into a room and locked the door behind him, leaving themselves outside. He found himself in a large window overlooking the city and a reach of the river; balancing it on the left hung a solid portraying a lunar landscape in convincing color and depth. In front of him was a rich but not ostentatious executive desk.
The lower part of his mind took in these details; his attention could be centered only on the person who sat at that desk. She was old but not senile, frail but not helpless. Her eyes were very much alive, her expression serene. Her translucent, well-groomed hands were busy with a frame of embroidery.
On the desk in front of her were two pneumo mailing tubes, a pair of slippers, and some tattered, soiled remnants of cloth and plastic.
She looked up. “How do you do. Captain Gilead?” she said in a thin, sweet soprano suitable for singing hymns.
Gilead bowed. “Well, thank you, and you, Missus Keithley?”
“You know me, I see.”
“Madame would be famous if only for her charities.”
“You are kind. Captain, I will not waste your time. I had hoped that we could release you without fuss, but.” She indicated the two tubes in front of her. “You can see for yourself that we must deal with you further.”
“So?”
“Come, now. Captain. You mailed three tubes. These two are only dummies, and the third did not reach its apparent destination. It is possible that it was badly addressed and has been rejected by the sorting machines. If so, we shall have it in due course. But it seems much more likely that you found some way to change its address-likely to the point of pragmatic certainty.”
“Or possibly I corrupted your servant.”
She shook her head slightly. “We examined him quite thoroughly before.”
“Before he died?”
“Please, Captain, let’s not change the subject. I must know where you sent that other tube. You cannot be hypnotized by ordinary means; you have an acquired immunity to hypnotic drugs. Your tolerance for pain extends beyond the threshold of unconsciousness. All of these things have already been proved, else you would not be in the job you are in;
I shall not put either of us to the inconvenience of proving them again. Yet I must have that tube. What is your price?”
“You assume that I have a price.”
She smiled. “If the old saw has any exceptions, history does not record them. Be reasonable, Captain. Despite your admitted immunity to ordinary forms of examination, there are ways of breaking down-of changing-a man’s character so that he becomes really quite pliant under examination, ways that we learned from the commissars. But those ways take time and a woman my age has no time to waste.”
Gilead lied convincingly, “It’s not your age, ma’am; it is the fact that you know that you must obtain that tube at once or you will never get it.” He was hoping-more than that, he was wishing-that Baldwin would have sense enough to examine the cards for one last message, and act on it. If Baldwin failed and he, Gilead, died, the tube would eventually come to rest in a dead-letter office and would in time be destroyed.
“You are probably right. Nevertheless, Captain, I will go ahead with the Mindszenty technique if you insist upon it. What do you say to ten million plutonium credits?”
Gilead believed her first statement. He reviewed in his mind the means by which a man bound hand and foot, or worse, could kill himself unassisted. “Ten million plutons and a knife ‘in my back?” he answered. “Let’s be practical.”
“Convincing assurance would be given before you need talk.”
“Even so, it is not my price. After all, you are worth at least five hundred million plutons.”
She leaned forward. “I like you. Captain. You are a man of strength. I am an old woman, without heirs. Suppose you became my partner, and my successor?”
“Pie in the sky,”
“No, no! I mean it. My age and sex do not permit me actively to serve myself; I must rely on others. Captain, I am very tired of inefficient tools, of men who can let things be spirited away right from under their noses. Imagine!” She made a little gesture of exasperation, clutching her hand into a claw. “You and I could go far. Captain. I need you.”
“But I do not need you, madame. And I won’t have you.”
She made no answer, but touched a control on her desk. A door on the left dilated; two men and a girl came in. The girl Gilead recognized as the waitress from the Grand Concourse Drug Store. They had stripped her bare, which seemed to him an unnecessary indignity since her working uniform could not possibly have concealed a weapon.
The girl, once inside, promptly blew her top, protesting, screaming, using language unusual to her age and sex, an hysterical, thalamic outburst of volcanic proportions.
“Quiet, child!”
The girl stopped in midstream, looked with surprise at Missus Keithley, and shut up. Nor did she start again, but stood there, looking even younger than she was and somewhat aware of and put off stride by her nakedness. She was covered now with goose flesh, one tear cut a white line down her dust-smeared face, stopped at her lip. She licked at it and sniffled.
“You were out of observation once. Captain,” Missus Keithley went on, “during which time this person saw you twice. Therefore we will examine her.”
Gilead shook his head. “She knows no more than a goldfish. But go ahead-five minutes of hypno will convince you.’
“Oh, no. Captain! Hypno is sometimes fallible; if she is a member of your bureau, it is certain to be fallible.” She signalled to one of the men attending the girl; he went to a cupboard and opened it. “I am old-fashioned,” the old woman went on. “I trust simple mechanical means much more than I do the cleverest of clinical procedures.”
Gilead saw the implements that the man was removing from cupboard and started forward. “Stop that!” he commanded. “You can’t do that.”
He bumped his nose quite hard.
The man paid him no attention. Missus Keithley said, “Forgive me, Captain. I should have told you that this room is not one room, but two. The partition is merely glass, but very special glass-I use the room for difficult interviews. There is no need to hurt yourself by trying to reach us.”
“Just a moment!”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Your time is already running out. Let the girl and me go free now. You are aware that there are several hundred men searching this city for me even now, and that they will not stop until they have taken it apart panel by panel.”
“I think not. A man answering your description to the last factor caught the South Africa rocket twenty minutes after you registered at the New Age hotel. He was carrying your very own identifications. He will not reach South Africa, but the manner of his disappearance will point to desertion rather than accident or suicide.”
Gilead dropped the matter. “What do you plan to gain by abusing this child? You have all she knows; certainly you do not believe that we could afford to trust in such as she?”
Missus Keithley pursed her lips. “Frankly, I do not expect to learn anything from her. I may learn something from you.”
“I see.”
The leader of the two men looked questioningly at his mistress; she motioned him to go ahead. The girl stared blankly at him, plainly unaware of the uses of the equipment he had gotten out. He and his partner got busy.
Shortly the girl screamed, continued to scream for a few moments in a high ululation. Then it stopped as she fainted.
They roused her and stood her up again. She stood, swaying and staring stupidly at her poor hands, forever damaged even for the futile purposes to which she had been capable of putting them. Blood spread down her wrists and dripped on a plastic tarpaulin, placed there earlier by the second of the two men.
Gilead did nothing and said nothing. Knowing as he did that the tube he was protecting contained matters measured in millions of lives, the problem of the girl, as a problem, did not even arise. It disturbed a deep and very ancient part of his brain, but almost automatically he cut that part off and lived for the time in his forebrain.
Consciously he memorized the faces, skulls, and figures of the two men and filed the data under “personal.” Thereafter he unobtrusively gave his attention to the scene out the window.
He had been noting it all through the interview but he wanted to give it explicit thought. He recast what he saw in terms of what it would look like had be been able to look squarely out the window and decided that he was on the ninety-first floor of the New Age hotel and approximately one hundred and thirty meters from the north end. He filed this under “professional.”
When the girl died, Missus Keithley left the room without speaking to him. The men gathered up what was left in the tarpaulin and followed her. Presently the two guards returned and, using the same fool-proof methods, took him back to his cell.
As soon as the guards had gone and Kettle Belly was free to leave his position against the wall he came forward and pounded Gilead on the shoulders. “Hi, boy! I’m sure glad to see you-I was scared I would never lay eyes on you again. How was it? Pretty rough?”
“No, they didn’t hurt me; they just asked some questions.”
“You’re lucky. Some of those crazy damn cops play mean when they get you alone in a back room. Did they let you call your lawyer?”
“No.”
“Then they ain’t through with you. You want to watch it, kid.”
Gilead sat down on the bench. “The hell with them. Want to play some more cards?”
“Don’t mind if I do. I feel lucky.” Baldwin pulled out the double deck, riffled through it. Gilead took them and did the same. Good! They were in the order he had left them in. He ran his thumb across the edges again-yes, even the black nulls were unchanged in sequence; apparently Kettle Belly had simply stuck them in his pocket without examining them, without suspecting that a last message had been written in to them. He felt sure that Baldwin would not have left the message set up if he had read it. Since he found himself still alive, he was much relieved to think this.
He gave the cards one true shuffle, then started stacking them. His first lay-out read:
Five-X, ESCAP “X, X” AT Six X, ONCE. “Gotcha that time!” Baldwin crowed. “Ante up.”
DID “X, X, X” YOU Nine-XCRACK. “Let it ride,” announced Gilead and took the deal;
“X, X” NO, X BUT, Six X LETS “X, X” GO. X. “You’re too damned lucky to live,” complained Baldwin. “Look-we’ll leave the bets doubled and double the lay-out. I want a fair chance to get my money back.”
His next lay-out read:
XX-T-H-N-X, T-H-N-X, T-H-N-X NEED Five X, ALIVE Five X PLAY X, “X, X, X” UP. “Didn’t do you much good, did it?” Gilead commented, took the cards and started arranging them.
“There’s something mighty funny about a man that wins all the time,” Baldwin grumbled. He watched Gilead narrowly. Suddenly his hand shot out, grabbed Gilead’s wrist. “I thought so,” he yelled. “A goddam card sharp.”
Gilead shook his hand off. “Why, you obscene fat slug!”
“Caught you! Caught you?” Kettle Belly reclaimed his hold, grabbed the other wrist as well. They struggled and rolled to the floor.
Gilead discovered two things: this awkward, bulky man was an artist at every form of dirty fighting and he could simulate it convincingly without damaging his partner. His nerve holds were an inch off the nerve; his kneeings were to thigh muscle rather than to the crotch.
Baldwin tried for a chancery strangle; Gilead let him take it. The big man settled the flat of his forearm against the point of Gilead’s chin rather than against his Adam’s apple and proceeded to “strangle” him.
There were running footsteps in the corridor.
Gilead caught a glimpse of the guards as they reached the door. They stopped momentarily; the bell of the Markheim was too big to use through the steel grating, the charge would be screened and grounded. Apparently they did not have pacifier bombs with them, for they hesitated. Then the leader quickly unlocked the door, while the man with the Markheim dropped back to the cover position.
Baldwin ignored them, while continuing his stream of profanity and abuse at Gilead. He let the first man almost reach them before he suddenly said in Gilead’s ear, “Close your eyes!” At which he broke just as suddenly.
Gilead sensed an incredibly dazzling flash of light even through his eyelids. Almost on top of it he heard a muffled crack; he opened his eyes and saw that the first man was down, his head twisted at a grotesque angle.
The man with the Markheim was shaking his head; the muzzle of his weapon weaved around. Baldwin was charging him in a waddle, back and knees bent until he was hardly three feet tall. The blinded guard could hear him, let fly a charge in the direction of the noise; it passed over Baldwin.
Baldwin was on him; the two went down. There was another cracking noise of ruptured bone and another dead man. Baldwin stood up, grasping the Markheim, keeping it pointed down the corridor. “How are your eyes, kid?” he called out anxiously.
“They’re all right.”
“Then come take this chiller.” Gilead moved up, took the Markheim. Baldwin ran to the dead end of the corridor where a window looked out over the city. The window did not open; there was no “copter step” beyond it. It was merely a straight drop. He came running back.
Gilead was shuffling possibilities in his mind. Events had moved by Baldwin’s plan, not by his. As a result of his visit to Missus Keithley’s “interview room” he was oriented in space. The corridor ahead and a turn to the left should bring him to the quick-drop shaft. Once in the basement and armed with a Markheim, he felt sure that he could fight his way out-with Baldwin in trail if the man would follow. If not, well, there was too much at stake.
Baldwin was into the cell and out again almost at once. “Come along!” Gilead snapped. A head showed at the bend in the corridor; he let fly at it and the owner of the head passed out on the floor.

“Out of my way, kid!” Baldwin answered. He was carrying the heavy bench on which they had “played” cards. He started up the corridor with it, toward the sealed window, gaining speed remarkably as he went.
His makeshift battering ram struck the window heavily. The plastic bulged, ruptured, and snapped like a soap bubble. The bench went on through, disappeared from sight, while Baldwin teetered on hands and knees, a thousand feet of nothingness under his chin.
“Kid!” he yelled. “Close in! Fall back!”
Gilead backed towards him, firing twice more as he did so. He still did not see how Baldwin planned to get out but the big man had demonstrated that he had resourcefulness, and resources.
Baldwin was whistling through his fingers and waving. In violation of all city traffic rules a helicopter separated itself from the late afternoon throng, cut through a lane, and approached the window. It hovered just far enough away to keep from fouling its blades. The driver opened the door, a line snaked across and Kettle Belly caught it. With great speed he made it fast to the window’s polarizer knob, then grabbed the Markheim. “You first,” he snapped. “Hurry!”
Gilead dropped to his knees and grasped the line; the driver immediately increased his tip speed and tilted his rotor; the line tautened. Gilead let it take his weight, then swarmed across it. The driver gave him a hand up while controlling his craft like a high school horse with his other hand.
The ‘copter bucked; Gilead turned and saw Baldwin coming across, a fat spider on a web. As he himself helped the big man in, the driver reached down and cut the line. The ship bucked again and slid away. There were already men standing in the broken window. “Get lost, Steve!” Baldwin ordered. The driver gave his tip jets another notch and tilted the rotor still more; the ‘copter swooped away. He eased it into the traffic stream and inquired, “Where to?”
“Set her for home, and tell the other boys to go home, too. No-you’ve got your hands full; I’ll tell them!” Baldwin crowded up into the other pilot’s seat, slipped on phones and settled a quiet-mike over his mouth. The driver adjusted his car to the traffic, set up a combination on his pilot, then settled back and opened a picture magazine.
Shortly Baldwin took off the phones and came back to the passenger compartment. ‘Takes a lot of ‘copters to be sure you have one cruising by when you need it,” he said conversationally. “Fortunately, I’ve got a lot of ‘em. Oh, by the way, this is Steve Halliday. Steve, meet Joe-Joe, what is your last name?”
“Greene,” answered Gilead.
“Howdy,” said the driver and let his eyes go back to his magazine.
Gilead considered the situation. He was not sure that it had been improved. Kettle Belly, whatever he was, was more than a used ‘copter dealer, and he knew about the films. This boy Steve looked like a harmless young extrovert but, then. Kettle Belly himself looked like a lunk. He considered trying to overpower both of them, remembered Kettle Belly’s virtuosity in rough-and-tumble fighting, and decided against it. Perhaps Kettle Belly really was on his side, completely and utterly. He heard rumors that the Department used more than one echelon of operatives and he had no way of being sure that he himself was at the top level.
“Kettle Belly,” he went on, “could you set me down at the airport first? I’m in one hell of a hurry.”
Baldwin looked him over. “Sure, if you say so. But I thought you would want to swap those duds? You’re as conspicuous as a preacher at a stag party. And how are you fixed for cash?”
With his fingers Gilead counted the change that had come with the suit. A man without cash had one arm in a sling. “How long would it take?”
“Ten minutes extra, maybe.”
Gilead thought again about Kettle Belly’s fighting ability and decided that there was no way for a fish in water to get any wetter. “Okay.” He settled back and relaxed completely.
Presently he turned again to Baldwin. “By the way, how did you manage to sneak in that dazzle bomb?”
Kettle Belly chuckled. “I’m a large man, Joe; there’s an awful lot of me to search.” He laughed again. “You’d be amazed at where I had that hidden.”
Gilead changed the subject. “How did you happen to be there in the first place?”
Baldwin sobered. “That’s a long and complicated story. Come back some day when you’re not in such a rush and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’ll do that-soon.”
“Good. Maybe I can sell you that used Curtiss at the same time.”
The pilot alarm sounded; the driver put down his magazine and settled the craft on the roof of Baldwin’s establishment.
Baldwin was as good as his word. He took Gilead to his office, sent for clothes-which showed up with great speed, and handed Gilead a wad of bills suitable to stuff a pillow. “You can mail it back,” he said.
“I’ll bring it back in person,” promised Gilead.
“Good. Be careful out on the street. Some of our friends are sure to be around.”
“I’ll be careful.” He left, as casually as if he had called there on business, but feeling less sure of himself than usual. Baldwin himself remained a mystery and, in his business, Gilead could not afford mysteries.
There was a public phone booth in the lobby of Baldwin’s building. Gilead went in, scrambled, then coded a different relay station from the one he had attempted to use before. He gave his booth’s code and instructed the operator to scramble back. In a matter of minutes he was talking to his chief in New Washington.
“Joe! Where the hell have you been?”
“Later, boss-get this.” In departmental oral code as an added precaution, he told his chief that the films were in post office box 1060, Chicago, and insisted that they be picked up by a major force at once.
His chief turned away from the view plate, then returned, “Okay, it’s done. Now what happened to you?”
“Later, boss, later. I think I’ve got some friends outside who are anxious to rassle with me. Keep me here and I may get a hole in my head.”
“Okay-but head right back here. I want a full report; I’ll wait here for you.”
“Right.” He switched off.
He left the booth light-heartedly, with the feeling of satisfaction that comes from a hard job successfully finished. He rather hoped that some of his “friends’ would show up; he felt like kicking somebody who needed kicking.
But they disappointed him. He boarded the transcontinental rocket without alarms and slept all the way to New Washington.
He reached the Federal Bureau of Security by one of many concealed routes and went to his boss’s office. After scan and voice check he was let in. Bonn looked up and scowled.
Gilead ignored the expression; Bonn usually scowled.
“Agent Joseph Briggs, three-four-oh-nine-seven-two, reporting back from assignment, sir,” he said evenly.
Bonn switched a desk control to “recording” and another to “covert,” “You are, eh? Why, thumb fingered idiot! How do you dare to show your face around here?”
“Easy now, boss-what’s the trouble?”
Bonn famed incoherently for a time, then said, “Briggs, twelve star men covered that pickup, and the box was empty. Post office box ten-sixty, Chicago, indeed! Where are those films?
Was it a coverup? Have you got them with you?”
Gilead-Briggs restrained his surprise. “No. I mailed them at the Grand Concourse post office to the address you just named.” He added, “The machine may have kicked them out; I was forced to letter by hand the machine symbols.”
Bonn looked suddenly hopeful. He touched another control and said, “Carruthers, On that Briggs matter: Check the rejection stations for that routing.” He thought and then added, “Then try a rejection sequence on the assumption that the first symbol was acceptable to the machine but mistaken. Also for each of the other symbols; run them simultaneously, crash priority for all agents and staff. After that try combinations of symbols taken two at a time, then three at a time, and so on.” He switched off.
‘The total of that series you just set up is every postal address in the continent,” Briggs suggested mildly. “It can’t be done.”
“It’s got to be done! Man, have you any idea of the importance of those films you were guarding?”
“Yes. The director at Moon Base told me what I was carrying.”
“You don t act as if you did. You’ve lost the most valuable thing this or any other government can possess-the absolute weapon. Yet you stand there blinking at me as if you had mislaid a pack of cigarettes.”
“Weapon?” objected Briggs. “I wouldn’t call the nova effect that, unless you class suicide as a weapon. And I don’t concede that I’ve lost it. As an agent acting alone and charged primarily with keeping it out of die hands of others, I used the best means available in an emergency to protect it. That is well within the limits of my authority. I was spotted, by some means.”
“You shouldn’t have been spotted!”
“Granted. But I was. I was unsupported and my estimate of the situation did not include a probability of staying alive. Therefore I had to protect my charge by some means which did not depend on my staying alive.”
“But you did stay alive-you’re here.”
“Not my doing nor yours, I assure you. I should have been covered. It was your order, you will remember, that I act alone.”
Bonn looked sullen. “That was necessary.”
“So? In any case, I don’t see what all the shouting is about. Either the films show up, or they are lost and will be destroyed as unclaimed mail. So I go back to the Moon and get another set of prints.”
Bonn chewed his lip. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Bonn hesitated a long time. “There were just two sets. You had the originals, which were to be placed in a vault in the Archives, and the others were to be destroyed at once when the originals were known to be secure.”
“Yes? What’s the hitch?”
“You don’t see the importance of the procedure. Every working paper, every file, every record was destroyed when these films were made. Every technician, every assistant, received hypno. The intention was not only to protect the results of the research but to wipe out the very fact that the research had taken place. There aren’t a dozen people in the system who even know of the existence of the nova effect.”
Briggs had his own opinions on this point, based on recent experience, but he kept still about them. Bonn went on, “The Secretary has been after me steadily to let him know when the originals were secured. He has been quite insistent, quite critical. When you called in, I told him that the films were safe and that he would have them in a few minutes.”
“Well?”
“Don’t you see, you fool-he gave the order at once to destroy the other copies.”
Briggs whistled. “Jumped the gun, didn’t he?”
“That’s not the way he’ll figure it-mind you, the President was pressuring him. He’ll say that I jumped the gun.”
“And so you did.”
“No, you jumped the gun. You told me the films were in that box.”
“Hardly. I said I had sent them there.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Get out the tape and play it back.”
“There is no tape-by the President’s own order no records are kept on this operation.”
“So? Then why are you recording now?”
“Because,” Bonn answered sharply, “someone is going to pay for this and it is not going to be me.”
“Meaning,” Briggs said slowly, “that it is going to be me.”
“I didn’t say that. It might be the Secretary.”
“If his head rolls, so will yours. No, both of you are figuring on using me. Before you plan on that, hadn’t you better hear my report? It might affect your plans. I’ve got news for you, boss.”
Bonn drummed the desk. “Go ahead. It had better be good.”
In a passionless monotone Briggs recited all events as recorded by sharp memory from receipt of the films on the Moon to the present moment. Bonn listened impatiently.
Finished, Briggs waited. Bonn got up and strode around the room. Finally he stopped and said. “Briggs, I never heard such a fantastic pack of lies in my life. A fat man who plays cards! A wallet that wasn’t your wallet-your clothes stolen! And Missus Keithley-Missus Keithley! Don’t you know that she is one of the strongest supporters of the Administration?”
Briggs said nothing. Bonn went on, “Now I’ll tell you what actually did happen. Up to the time you grounded at Pied-a-Terre your report is correct, but.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you were covered, naturally. You don’t think I would trust this to one man, do you?”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have hollered for help and saved all this.”
Bonn brushed it aside. “You engaged a runner, dismissed him, went in that drugstore, came out and went to the post office. There was no fight in the concourse for the simple reason that n