The tinny voice said:
"We just developed a thing to refine metals in situ.... An induction furnace that sets up the heating field at almost any distance from the elements that handle the power. It will fit in perfectly! Of course! Certainly! This is magnificent, Soames!"
"If you can get it working and in production before hell breaks loose," said Soames, "you may deserve well of the republic."
"Where are you, Soames? We need you on several matters—"
Soames hung up. His call, of course, could be traced. He'd travelled two hundred miles so that tracing it would do no good. He returned to where Fran dangled his legs from the back saddle of the motorbike, and they headed back to Calumet Lake for a few more days of peace and quiet.
CHAPTER 10
Soames made his long-distance call on a Monday, when war seemed likely to come perhaps within hours. All day Monday the tension continued. Traffic jams became the normal thing outside the larger cities, which would be logical targets for long-range missiles. Every means of travel away from the great population centers was loaded far beyond capacity.
On Tuesday afternoon national guard troops had been called out in ten states to keep traffic moving.
At Calumet Lake, however, there was no notable change. Soames and Fran still went fishing. In the boat Fran sometimes shut his eyes and pressed the end of one of the tiny sensory-perception communicators he had made. He turned it on for no longer than a second at a time. If he made contact with one of the other children he was prepared to speak swiftly—so they could hear his voice as he did—to assure them that he was safe and to ask for news of Zani and Mal and Hod, and Gail. He could do it very quickly indeed. Soames had insisted on only instants of communicator-use.
"Maybe those gadgets can be directionally spotted," he said. "Security wants you, Fran. If there's a way to get a directional fix on you, they'll find it! So, make it short!"
On Thursday morning all broadcasts broke off to report that the DEW line of radars across Canada had reported objects in the air moving across the North Pole toward the United States. America clenched its fists and waited for missiles to strike or be blasted by counter-missiles, as fate or chance might determine. Twenty minutes later a correction came. The radar-detected objects had not been missiles, but aircraft flying in formation. They'd changed course and returned to their bases. They were probably foreign fighter-planes patrolling far beyond their usual range.
Soames had held his breath with the rest of the country. He was just beginning to breathe freely again when Fran came running from the week-end-shack. His eyes shone.
"I got—" he swallowed—"Zani. I said"—he swallowed again, "we will come." He added: "Our language."
Soames looked at him sharply.
"Maybe you do read minds. Was anybody listening in? Anybody else beside Zani?"
"Two men," said Fran. "Two. They talked. Fast. English."
"One man would be a monitor," said Soames grimly. "Two means a directional fix. Let's go!"
By that night they were hundreds of miles from Calumet Lake.
The highways were crowded with the people who'd evacuated the cities. The high population of remote places was a protection for Soames and Fran. He worried, though, about Gail, her situation, and that of the three other children, was far from enviable. In the present increasing confusion and tension they were hardly likely to have any improvement in their state.
"I think," Soames told Fran reflectively, "that at night, and with the kind of disorganization that seems to be increasing, you can get away with talking to the kids again. Nobody'll try a parachute drop in these mountains in the darkness." They were then a hundred miles south of Denver. "They couldn't get organized before daybreak, and I doubt that they could block the highways. See if you can make contact, eh? And find out how they're getting along?"
Fran nodded. He moved so that the heat of their fire would not fall on him, to tell that he camped out-of-doors. He found a place to lie down in comfort, so that there would be no distracting sensation. He closed his eyes. Soames saw him press the end of his tiny communicator and release it quickly. After an instant's pause he pressed it again. He held the communicator on for several seconds, half a minute. He released it and sat up.
"You try," he said in a puzzled fashion. "You try!"
Soames closed his eyes. He pressed the little pin-head button at the end of the instrument which was hardly larger than a match-stick. He felt the sensations of another body. That other body opened its eyes. Soames saw who it was, Gail's face was reflected in a mirror. She was pale. Her expression was drawn and harried. But she smiled at her reflection, because she knew Soames would see what she saw.
He spoke, so she'd hear his voice as he did.
"Gail!"
He felt a hand—which was her hand—spill something on a levelled surface before her. It smoothed the spilled stuff. It was face-powder, spread on a dressing-table top. A finger wrote. She looked down at what was written there.
"Help Fran," he read. "You Must!"
He felt her hand swiftly smoothing the message away. Rage swept over him. Instantly he knew what had happened. Fran's escape from Calumet Lake had proved that he knew that his communications were intercepted and directionally analyzed. Therefore the other children were no longer a means by which he might be trapped. So their communicators had been taken away from them for the second time, and now they were watched with an unceasing closeness. Every glance, every word, every gesture was noted.
"This has to be quick," said Soames coldly, for her to hear. "I would help him, but he'd want to get in touch with his people."
Gail opened her eyes again. Her image in the mirror nodded.
"And if he did," said Soames as coldly as before, "they'd come here and conquer us. And I'd rather that we killed each other off than that the most kindly-disposed of conquerors enslaved us."
He felt her hand again smoothing the spilled face-powder. She wrote in it. He knew what she had written before she dropped her eyes to it. He couldn't believe it. She'd written three words, no, two words and a numeral. Soames felt an almost physical shock. He was incredulous. If this was true ...
Then he felt a hand closed firmly on Gail's shoulder. Captain Moggs spoke, authoritative and stern and reproachfuclass="underline"
"Gail! How could you! You have one of those horrible telepathic things too! This is a very grave matter, Gail!"
Then the contact was broken. Captain Moggs had snatched away Gail's communicator.
Raging, Soames took Fran and left that spot which was undoubtedly pin-pointed by now. As they sped away he tried to consider the meaning of the two words and the numeral which was completely unbelievable at first thought.
Shortly after sunrise he bought a two-day-old newspaper. It was the latest he could find for sale. He rode a certain distance and stopped where the highway made an especially dramatic turn and there was a turn-out for tourists to park in while they admired the view. He stopped there and deliberately read the news affecting war and peace and the children and therefore Gail. At the end he folded the newspaper painstakingly and with careful self-control tore it to bits. Then he said angrily:
"Fran, a question it never occurred to me to ask you before."
He posed the question. Fran could have answered it with two English words and a numeral, and the same words and numeral that Gail had used. But he didn't have the words. Especially, he did not have the number. Fran's way of writing numbers was as complex as the system used in ancient Rome, and Soames had no key. It took a long time to grasp the quantity Fran had in mind. Then Soames had to make sure he had it right.