The thought of alcohol reminded Snook of his solitary excesses of the previous night. He left the bungalow’s small kitchen, went into the living room and retrieved two empty gin bottles and a glass. The sight of the second bottle brought a momentary pang of dismay—he was fairly certain both had not been full on the day before, but the fact that there was a lingering doubt was proof enough that he was drinking far too much. It was coming near the time for him to move on to another part of the world, regardless of passport or other difficulties.
Snook went out to the back and was ceremoniously smashing the green bottles into the other glittering fragments in his rubbish bin when he realised he could still hear the lone voice in the distance, and for the first time he sensed the fear in it. Once again he felt the familiar yet ever-strange stirrings of prescience. There was the sound of footsteps at the side of the house and George Murphy, a superintendent at the mine, came hurrying into view. Murphy was a black man, a former Kenyan, but the new Barandian nationalism scorned the use of Swahili names as a relic of the past, on a level with performing tribal dances and carving wooden souvenirs for tourists, and every citizen had an Anglican name for official and general use.
“Good morning, Gil.” Murphy’s greeting seemed relaxed, but the heaving of his chest beneath the silvercord shirt showed he had been running. His breath smelled of mint chewing gum.
“Jambo, George. What’s the problem?” Snook replaced the lid of the bin, covering his trove of artificial emeralds.
“It’s Harold Harper.”
“Is he the one who’s making all the fuss?”
“Yes.”
“What is it? A touch of the horrors?”
Murphy looked uneasy. “I’m not sure, Gil.”
“What do you mean?”
“Harper doesn’t drink much—but he says he saw a ghost.” Murphy was a mature, intelligent man and it was clear that he was embarrassed by what he was saying, yet was determined to see it through.
“A ghost!” Snook gave a short laugh. “It’s amazing what you can see through the bottom of a glass.”
“I don’t think he was drinking. The shift foreman would have noticed.”
Snook’s interest quickened. “You mean he was in the mine when it happened?”
“Yes. Coming off night shift on the bottom level.”
“What did this…ghost look like?”
“Well, it’s hard to get much sense out of Harper the way he is at the moment…”
“You must have some idea. Are we talking about a lady in a long white dress? Something like that?”
Murphy shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets, hunched his shoulders and rocked on the balls of his feet. “Harper says a head came up out of the rock floor then sank back into it again.”
“That’s a new one on me.” Snook was unable to resist being callous. “I knew a guy once who used to see long-necked geese walking out from under his bed.”
“I told you Harper wasn’t drinking.”
“You don’t have to be swigging right up to the minute the DTs start.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” Murphy was beginning to lose his patience. “Will you come and talk to him? He’s badly shaken up and the doctor’s away at Number Four.”
“What good would I do? I’m not a medic.”
“For some reason Harper looks up to you. For some reason he thinks you’re his friend.”
Snook could see the superintendent was growing angry, but his own reluctance to become involved was just as strong as ever. Harper was a member of several of his classes and on a few occasions had stayed behind to discuss points of special interest to him. He was a willing student, but many of the miners were hungry for knowledge and Snook failed to see that he should therefore be put on stand-by, ready to go running each time one of them bloodied his nose.
“Harper and I get on all right,” Snook said, digging in. “I just don’t think I can help him in a case like this.”
“I don’t think so, either.” Murphy’s voice, as he turned to leave, showed his disgust at Snook’s attitude. “Perhaps Harper is just a crazy man. Or maybe there’s something wrong with his Amplites.”
Snook suddenly felt cold. “Wait a minute. Was Harper wearing Amplites when he saw this…thing?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I don’t know—it seems odd, that’s all. How can anything go wrong with magniluct glasses?”
Murphy hesitated. He obviously realised he had caught Snook’s interest and was taking revenge by being meagre with his information. “I don’t know what can go wrong with them. Flaws in the material, maybe. Funny reflections.”
“George, what are you talking about?”
“This isn’t the first incident we’ve had this week. On Tuesday morning a couple of men coming off the night shift said they saw some kind of a bird flying around on the bottom level. If you ask me, they had been on the bottle.” Murphy began to move away. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”
Snook thought about the unmanning dread he had felt during the one moment, almost three years earlier, when he had looked on the blotched, glowering face of Thornton’s Planet at its closest to Earth. An instinct prompted him to wonder if Harold Harper, similarly unready, had made contact with the unknown.
“If you wait till I get my boots on,” he said to Murphy, “I’ll go down to the mine with you.”
Barandi National Mine No. 3 was one of the most modern in the world, and had few of the trappings associated with traditional-style diggings. The main shaft was perfectly circular in cross-section, having been sunk by a track-mounted parasonic projector which converted the clay and rock within its beam to monomolecular dust. Apart from the various hoist mechanisms, the dominant feature of the mine head was the snaking cluster of vacuum tubes which drew away the dust created by hand-held projectors on the working levels. It was then piped off to a nearby processing plant where, as a by-product, it formed the basis of high-quality cement.
One thing the mine had in common with all others yielding the same precious material was a very strict security system. His work as a teacher allowed Snook to move freely in the outer circle of administrative buildings and stores, but he had never before been through the single gate in the fence which surrounded the mine head itself. He looked about him with interest as the armed guards examined his identification. A military jeep bearing the star-and-sword emblem of the Barandian government was parked at the miner check-out shed.
Snook pointed the vehicle out to Murphy. “Royal visit?”
“Colonel Freeborn is here. He visits us about once a month to check the security procedures in person.” Murphy slapped his own jaw lightly in annoyance. “We could have done without this trouble today of all days.”
“Is he a big man with a dent in the side of his skull?”
“That’s right.” Murphy looked curiously at Snook. “Have you met him?”
“Just once—quite a while ago.”
Snook had been interviewed by several army officers during his one day of interrogation after arriving in Barandi, but he remembered Colonel Freeborn most clearly. Freeborn had questioned him in detail about his reasons for refusing to work on Barandian aircraft, and had nodded thoughtfully each time Snook had given a deliberately obtuse answer. In the end Freeborn had said, with perfect candour, “I’m an important man in this country, a friend of the President, and I have no time to waste on white foreigners, least of all you. If you don’t start giving plain answers to my questions, you’ll