The tour guide had completed her description of collecting soil samples from foreign bodies when Chris raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I am curious about agricultural experiments closer to Earth. Are any conducted here at the plant?”
The tour guide looked puzzled. “We do have a very standard agricultural section but it’s located in the smallest building and contains little of interest. Now, if you’ll all follow me …”
That was it! Locke had his answer, at least a place to start. When the tour group swung around the next corner he slipped away and made his way back to the entrance. The security guard quizzed him and he complained of nausea, saying he needed some fresh air. The uniformed man wished him well, took back his guest pass, and held the door open for him.
Glancing back only briefly, Locke left the building and swung to the right and then quickly to the left. The smaller agricultural wing ran parallel to the mother building, and he moved toward it as quickly as he could, hoping not to attract any attention.
The entrance contained a sign warning AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and two guards were poised inside to enforce it. That ruled the entrance out. Locke kept walking.
Around the other side of the building, two huge garage bays had been opened and men were unloading hundred-pound bags of something into a large warehouse. Locke remembered the clothes the clerk had provided him with were those of a workman, not a tourist, and he wasted no time. He joined the line of workers lifting bags from the truck and piling them inside the warehouse.
No one seemed to notice him. The Sanii workers probably thought he was part of the trucking crew and the trucking crew must have thought the reverse. Just in case this changed, Locke kept the bags he hoisted up in front of his face and avoided the eyes of those around him. Once the pile of bags inside was high enough, Locke slipped behind it and moved through the rear of the warehouse without hesitation, opening the first door he saw and stepping inside the building.
He was in a long, white, brightly lit corridor.
A moving person may attract attention but a person standing still attracts even more.
Locke heeded another memory from his training and started walking before he had any idea of his bearings. The corridor was deserted, fortunate but probably only temporary. He reached a junction in the corridors and studied what was up ahead in both directions. A locker room was to the right and he steered toward it, hoping to find something inside that might help his charade.
The locker room was typical in design, banks of lockers fronted by benches with the sound of showers and the smell of steam not far off. Two men passed him as he entered without giving him a second look, and Chris found himself thankful for the multitudes of people Sanii employed. There had probably been close to 750 cars in the parking lot. He had gotten another break in that midday was fast approaching, which meant time off for lunch. The locker room was crowded. Locke moved quickly into the bathroom, bolting a stall behind him.
He sat down on the toilet and fought to steady his breathing. Nerves would give him away faster than anything. A calm exterior was the best disguise of all.
Disguise! That was it!
The two men Locke passed in the doorway had been wearing simple white lab coats. If he were walking the corridors in one of those, no one would accost him. Locke’s memory sharpened. The coats had badges pinned to their lapels, picture badges. He would have to take his chances that no one would look closely. He flushed the toilet and moved out of the stall, stopping between two men shaving before the row of sinks, and washed his hands. Moving routinely back among the lockers, he grabbed the first white lab coat from the first open locker he saw. Tossing his arms through the sleeves, he started back toward the corridor.
The coat was a poor fit — much too short in the arms — and the picture on the ID looked nothing like him. Same color hair, though, and that might prove enough to get him through. Locke kept walking and a minute later found himself about to enter a giant greenhouse. Men in similar white coats were everywhere, checking gauges and readouts and making notes concerning plants of virtually all varieties. He was in a section apparently devoted to insuring that no plant species became extinct. He walked through it and on until he came to a pair of double doors, just wide enough to accommodate their warning labeclass="underline" CLOSED SECURITY SECTION, NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT BY RED BADGE.
Locke glanced down. Miraculously, his badge was red. He started moving through the heavy doors but they wouldn’t budge. Then he noticed the steel slot on the wall to his right. A special ID card was required for entry. He started to search his pockets on the wild chance the coat contained one.
“Problems?”
The voice came from behind him. Locke swung to see a mustachioed man about his own age.
“I’ll say. Damn slot won’t accept my card. It must have bent in my wallet.”
“I was going in anyway,” the man said in excellent English, apparently the official language of the corporation. The machine swallowed his card, then spit it back out. There was a buzz and Chris heard the door snap mechanically open. “See.” The mustachioed man smiled, holding the door open for him. “Nothing to it.”
“Thank you,” Chris responded, moving to the right as the man veered to the left.
He had surprised himself with the way he’d handled the situation. Nothing had been planned. It just came to him like an actor’s lines and he didn’t question his actions further.
Locke passed a plate-glass window looking into a room twenty feet square lit up with fluorescents strung over strange-looking green shrubs. An iron clipboard was hanging on the wall, attached to the plaster on a light chain. Chris pretended to be studying it briefly to make sure no one was approaching, then ripped it free, holding it in his right hand as he started walking again. Where, though, was he going? He had made it into the high-security section but there were still dozens of hallways, hundreds of rooms.
Other technicians were moving past him regularly now, none giving him a second look. The labs came one after another, all with different announcements printed on their doors.
Then he saw the door up ahead with no markings at all, just a security guard watching intently. Something fluttered in Chris’s stomach. He had to get inside that room. He bent over a water fountain and took in as much water as he could hold. When he stepped back he saw a group of scientists advancing steadily down the corridor. They drew closer and Locke noticed all wore red badges with black crosses drawn through them. His own lacked a cross, but he joined the group.
“Good morning, Professor,” the security guard said to the bearded man at their lead.
“Good morning.”
The guard held the door, allowing the entire team to pass through, and nodding at each one. Locke turned his shoulders around to hide his badge and held his breath as he passed, but the guard made no move to stop him.
The door closed with an echo. Chris drifted away from the group. He was in a giant terrarium lined with four rows of different crops. He made a quick inventory and found they were labeled corn, oats, wheat and barley. But their sizes! Some looked ready for field harvest. Others were barely sprouting from their soil boxes.
Locke started up one of the rows, studying the white cards placed at floor level. He skimmed their contents, afraid to stay in one place too long with so many people in the room. He knew there was something in the white cards he was gazing at, some pattern, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to pin it down. He had reached the end of the row and was standing before the highest stalks of wheat when it struck him. He reread the notation on the white card six times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.