“What’s that stuff up there?” The same voice.
“We don’t know exactly what they are for. We think a signal device that probably was lighted from within when the person took his place in the cold sleep storage unit. They are markers of some sort.”
“You said two hundred and forty-seven. Why’re there two hundred and forty-eight of them?”
“There are two hundred and forty-seven, the exact number of aliens we found….”
“There’s two hundred and forty-eight. Twelve in a box, twenty filled up boxes and one box with eight things….”
“There are seven in the last….”
“Eight!”
“In the next room we will see the dining quarters, a large room, with rather conventional tables and stools….”
“Why not look if you don’t believe—”
“This way, please. Please don’t lean over the ropes…. Son, don’t crawl under… ”
“Harry, if you don’t behave, we’ll leave right now. I’m sick and tired of having to haul you out of corners and drag you….”
Blake darted from the small storage room where he had been hiding and tried the disk again. It was perceptibly cooler, but still wouldn’t budge. If the guide had paid any attention to the kid and came back, or reported the addition… he hurried back to his little room when the next tour came through.
Three tours later the disk was cool again and it slid out into his hand as if it never had resisted at all. Blake hurried back to the hideaway and examined it carefully, but as far as he could see there was nothing different about it. He rubbed it, feeling foolish, like Aladdin, tried to push it in, tried to turn the two halves from each other. It was still a black disk, shiny on one side, dull on the other, with no powers to do anything that he could detect.
Between the tours he left that area and made his way higher in the ship well away from the various tours that crawled through endlessly, like a procession of worms through an apple. He passed the wardroom where clothing was issued, apparently, and went on to the general stores room. There was little left in it. Most of the portable goods had been taken from the ship long ago, to be studied in laboratories around the world where they were cut apart, analyzed, X-rayed, subjected to electron microscopic examination, irradiated….
Mostly he wanted a place where no one would come for a while so he could think. The disk puzzled him more than anything else had so far. The woman had owned it; she had taken it with her when she left the ship; then when she realized that she was dying she had given it to Matt. His reasoning had been right, probably. She had meant it for her child. But why? For what reason. Where had the power come from that heated it, and why heat it? Blake turned it over and over and was as blank after he thought through it as he had been before. There was something missing still. He recalled Matt’s words: “…and when she took off the tunic the disc fell to the floor. I picked it up and she motioned for me to keep it.” Not in her hand then, but in the tunic. He went back to the wardroom and examined a tunic. There were no pockets, no place for the disk to have been. He narrowed his eyes recalling every detail of the dressed dummies that had been positioned in the first room of the guided tour. The aliens had worn hip-length tunics over pants that were loose and comfortable. The tunics were without pockets, but were belted and things hung from the belts. Instruments of various sorts, they differed from one figure to the next, according to occupation, so said the cards that described the outfits. But there was something in common. Each belt had a loop that dangled odds and ends. Curious odds and ends, and some of them with nothing. Just loops. Blake hunted until he had found a belt and he looked closely at the fittings on it. This one would hold six different objects, each one fitted into a slot and held securely. The belt was wide and heavy, plastic, or hide of some sort. It was held together by self-fastening studs that clung tightly, and couldn’t be pulled apart no matter how hard he pulled, but slid apart easily when he tried to raise one side and lower the other. He put the belt on, too big. He tried another, then another until he found one that fastened securely on his waist and was a comfortable fit. He fitted the disk into the loop, and he knew that it belonged there. That solved one problem, where they carried them, but not the other, why? He started to slide the two halves of the belt apart, and he shot upward. He straightened the belt hurriedly, and hovered with his head touching the ceiling. Very cautiously he touched the belt again, nothing. He tried to lean over enough to see it, but he couldn’t get a close enough look to see any details that way. He ran his fingers over the front of the belt, near the fasteners, and he could feel depressions in it then. He touched the bottom one very lightly and started to settle. When his feet were again on the floor he touched the center hollow, and he felt reasonably steady again. He remembered a high-ceilinged room that had no discernible purpose for being and he headed toward it. He needed practice.
Chapter Twenty-four
HE’S in there, and I want him out. Take a dozen of your men and get inside that ship and don’t come out until you find him.”
Merton watched his lieutenant walk out stiffly, and he knew that Blake had eluded them again. No one could have stayed inside the ship for two weeks without being found, or running out of food, or making his presence known somehow. His spies among the UNEF reported nothing untoward had occurred aboard. He went to find Obie.
“It was your job to keep him,” Obie said. “And it’s your job to find him now and put him in a cage. Get that, Merton. If you don’t get the job done this week, I’ll find someone who will.”
“Oh, shut up,” Merton said.
Obie started from the deep chair that was massaging his back. There were fatty deposits over Obie’s hips, around his rib cage. No jiggling chair would take them away. Hard work, less food might, but even that was doubtful. Obie was destined to put on weight. Merton scowled at him and motioned for him to sit down again. He draped a leg over Obie’s desk and said, “Let’s get this out in the open, Obie. You aren’t going to fire me now, or ever. If I get tired, I’ll leave. Period. I have enough on you, on Dee Dee, on Wanda, Billy, everyone you ever hired for any little nose-picking job you wanted done to put all of you away for the rest of your lives. So forget it.”
Obie turned very red. Where his hair was thinning on top, his scalp showed through, cherry bright. “You think I don’t have the same kind of stuff on you?”
“I know what you got. So we’d all go together. Forget it, Obie. We’ve got things to decide.” Obie glared at him, but he sat back again and the chair shook him gently. “First, you go ahead with the Son of God routine that you started. I’m putting everyone I have on this. We’ll find him, and by the end of next year we’ll be ready for the resurrection, just like we planned. Tell your writers to bear down on that.”
“No,” Obie said firmly. “Not unless we have him in our hands. Too risky.”
“Listen, you fool,” Merton said. “We need him now. I got a ringer for him. With the gas, and the buildup, they’ll accept it. For the climax, we’ll have him. Leave it to me.”
“Let me see the ringer first.”
Merton had the boy brought in. He did look like Blake. Fair, with intense eyes, good build. But he was incredibly stupid. Which probably was a good thing. He would follow any orders that he could remember. Obie grunted and the boy was led away.
“He’s an idiot!”
“So what? You want him to sit on the stage and look at them. That’s all. You do the rest anyway.”
The buildup started. Blake would appear henceforth along with Obie; the God-given healing powers had been restored in full. Bring forth the halt and the lame, bring the blind and the dumb, bring you small ones whose bodies are twisted, your old One whose legs stumble and falter. Bring them all. Let Obie and His Son heal. them, with the power and the strength and the might of God that abides in them.