She presented him with the message.
Opening it, Leon Turpin saw at a glance that it consisted of a request for him to permit the young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hadley, to make use of Pethels 'scuttler in order to emigrate to alter-Earth.
Time was of the essence, for reasons Pethel did not choose to state.
'All right,' Turpin said to the girl, 'I have no objection and we have to cater to this Pethel person to some extent.' As he laid the message on his desk, he once more noticed the application from the other young couple, Art and Rachael Chaffy. That's right, he remembered. Don was supposed to call them, but I guess he forgot in all the excitement. Well, he can do it later. He's got their letter with him.
The Chaffys and the Hadleys can compete, Turpin reflected, as to who becomes the first
American family to emigrate to alter-Earth. I suppose there should be some publicity attached to this. Homeopape reporters, TV newsmen and the like. President Schwarz cutting a big blue ribbon hung across the entrance hoop of the 'scuttler. Or perhaps a bottle of champagne swung against the side of the 'scuttler and an heroic name given it.
To the secretary he said, 'Ask the Hadleys to come up here to my office.'
Several minutes later she returned and with her came a blond, genial-looking young man and a fabulously-attractive red-headed girl who seemed sheepish and ill-at-ease.
'Sit down,' Leon Turpin said in a friendly voice.
'Mr. Bethel's my boss,' Hadley said. 'Rather, my ex-boss. I had to quit in order to emigrate.' He and 'Mrs. Hadley' seated themselves. 'This is the greatest moment in our entire lives. We're going to start a new life.' Hadley squeezed his 'wife's' hand. 'Right ?'
'Yes,' she murmured almost inaudibly, nodding. She did not look at Turpin directly, and he wondered why.
I've seen this girl somewhere before, Turpin realized. But where ?
'Are you fully equipped ?' he asked the Hadleys.
Briskly, Hadley gave him a long list of items they were taking; it sounded complete, if not ornate. Turpin wondered idly how they expected to lug it all across. Nobody on floor one would be offering them a hand; that was certain.
'Children,' Leon Turpin said, 'Terran Development is glad to contribute to a new awakening, both metaphorically and quite literally, of the young people of America...' And then, abruptly, he remembered where he met full-breasted, young Mrs. Hadley before. He had gotten her at the
Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. After all, he visited it twice a week, had done so ever since it had been built.
This is really terribly appropriate, Turpin said to himself, hiding his glee. The first couple to emigrate to the new world consists of a customer of the Golden Door satellite escaping with one of Thisbe Olt's girls. Too bad this could not be made public. It was delightful.
'I wish you two luck,' Leon Turpin said, and giggled.
12
Within one week the initial collection of bibs passed through the Jiffi-scuttler and into another world entirely, to virtually everyone's satisfaction. On TV the country watched it and in person
Leon Turpin, President Schwarz, the Republican-Liberal candidate James Briskin, and Darius
Pethel - who owned the 'scuttler - and other pertinent notables looked on with a galaxy of emotions, most of them concealed.
The darn fools, Dar Pethel thought as he watched the steady line of men and women trudge past the entrance hoop. It made him sick to his stomach, and he turned and walked to the far end of
TD's lab, to light a cigarette. Don't they know what's going to happen to them on the other side ?
Don't they care ? Doesn't anyone care ?
I ought to close it down, Pethel said to himself. It's my 'scuttler. And I've decided I don't want it used for this, not now, not after my trip over there, that 'hopper ride back across the Atlantic with
Bill Smith.
He wondered where Bill Smith, the Peking man, was now. Perhaps at Yale Psychiatric Institute or some such august place, being put through aptitude and profile tests, one after another. And of course being subjected to relentless questioning regarding the ingredients of his culture.
Some of Bill Smith's testimony had leaked to the homeopapes. The Pekes had not, for instance, discovered glass. Rubber, too, was unknown to them, as were electricity, gunpowder, and, of course, atomic energy. But, more mysteriously, both clocks and the steam engine had never been stumbled onto or developed by the Pekes, and Dar Pethel could make no sense out of that. In fact, their entire society was an enigma to him.
However, one thing was certain: there had been no Thomas Edison on alter-Earth. Phonographs, light bulbs, and, for that matter, the telephone and even the ancient telegraph, were absent. What inventions they did have - for example the technique of laying crushed rock roads - had been developed over enormously long periods, microscopically elaborated by each generation mosaicstyle.
Except for the odd, complex compressor and turbine system, nothing seemed to have come to the Pekes in a single creative leap.
The device by which the QB satellite had been knocked off remained a mystery; Bill Smith knew nothing about it, according to the homeopapes, and knew nothing even of the satellite. The linguistics machine appeared to be unable to clarify the situation.
Jim Briskin, as he also watched, found himself dwelling on the gloomier aspects of the situation.
Where we made our mistake, he decided, was in not coming to some kind of rapprochement with the Pithecanthropi. It should have been done before a single emigrant crossed over ... now, of course, it's too late. But of course President Schwarz had to proceed swiftly if this was to become a way of stealing Jim Briskin's thunder. Both men knew this. In his situation, Jim mulled, I
probably would have done the same.
But that doesn't make it any less lethal.
Standing beside him, Sal Heim murmured, 'When do you think they'll be streaming back ? Or will they be able to get back ?'
'Cally Vale stood it. Alone. Possibly they can adapt; it's certainly more viable an environment than Mars.' In fact, there was no comparison. Mars was utterly impossible and everyone knew it.
'It all depends on the reaction of the Peking people.' And, he reflected, since the Schwarz administration couldn't wait to find that out, we'll have to learn it the hard way. In terms of the loss of human life.
'What I'm trying to figure out,' Sal murmured, 'is whether the public still identifies you with this or whether Schwarz has succeeded in....'
'Even if you knew that,' Jim said, 'you wouldn't know anything. Because we don't know yet what the upshot of this mass migration is going to be, and I have a feeling that when we find out it won't matter who gets the credit for it; well all be in the pot together.'
Sal said, 'I heard an interesting rumor on my way here. You're aware that George Walt have been missing since they shut down the Golden Door. According to this rumor ...' Sal chuckled. 'They emigrated.'
Feeling a pervasive, shocked chill, Jim said, "They what ? To alter-Earth, you mean ?'
'Right through this 'scuttler, here, that we're looking at.'
'But that ought to be easy to check on. If George Walt had passed through, TD's engineers would certainly remember; they could hardly mistake George Walt for anybody else.' He was now deeply disturbed. 'I'll see what Leon Turpin has to say about it.'
'Don't be so sure George Walt would be noticed,' Sal said. 'He, the actual living brother, may have carried his synthetic twin over in dissembled form, identified as maintenance and colonizing equipment; everyone who goes across carries something, some of them a couple tons.'
'Why would George Walt emigrate ?' In fact, why had they shut the satellite down ? Nobody had been able to explain that to his satisfaction, although a number of theories had been floating around, the central one being that George Walt anticipated Jim's election and realized that their day had virtually arrived.