he manipulated the sensor-stick, and arced up and away from the plane of the ecliptic. He brought it out of the lazy curve, centered the destination cross-hairs on the distant brilliance of Sol, and increased his speed. Relaxing again as the cruiser slid down the long gravity gradient to the sun, he tried to get back into the music but something had changed. A point of light adjusted its position slightly against the star fields in the aft screen, and he knew the other ship was following him. It must be a joy-rider! Stirling instinctively demanded full speed and, tense with annoyance, watched the disc of Sol flower in his screen while the other ship jockeyed for position behind him. He waited until the last possible second, then threw on maximum lateral acceleration. The flaming disc shifted to one side, almost too late; and for three nightmarish seconds he was skimming over boiling hell-scapes while the garish palm trees of solar flares reared up ahead. When the sun had reluctantly dropped away beneath, Stirling looked around and saw no sign of the other ship. It must have gone in. He began to laugh, and the sound was vastly unreal in his ears.
What am I doing? I’m supposed to be looking for Johnny.
With a surge of revulsion Stirling released the sensor-stick and immediately found himself sprawled in the padded chair of a cosmodrome. He was sweating under ‘the face mask and earphones. He snatched off the mask and released himself from its hallucinogenic breath. The dimness of the circular theater was alive with the moans and sighs of the occupants of the seriate chairs. Overhead, filling the auditorium, a huge model of the Solar System drifted in its anti-grav field, while bead-sized spaceships—one for each patron of the cosmodrome—flitted invisibly among the plowing orbs.
Stirling looked at his watch. He had spent nearly an hour in the dream continuum inhaling drugs, radio-guiding a plastic pellet among the shimmering spheres, seeing through the pin-point lenses of its eyes. Angry at the waste of time, he stood up and moved along the aisle towards an exit; he was uncomfortably aware that he had overestimated himself when he decided to pass a few minutes clinically observing the cosmodrome techniques. He had gotten sucked in and it had been so real that his knees still felt weak. An indication of how much muscle tone he had lost during the trip.
At the exit he paused in front of a bored-looking attendant, who was monitoring the sensor-stick outputs at a low console.
“You still have ten minutes,” the attendant said, looking up.
“I know. I decided to skip it.” Hearing the surprise in the man’s voice, Stirling felt a little better. It must have been unusual for anyone to emerge before the monitoring system threw the switches on him.
“Well, was anything wrong with the trip? Your signals were coming through on both …”
“Nothing wrong,” Stirling interrupted. “I’m looking for somebody. Has Lou Grossmann come on duty yet?”
“Yeah. I think he came in a while ago. He works in the ops level—right at the top of the house.”
“Thanks.” Stirling went up the stairs on rubbery legs and passed through double doors onto a wide gallery which encircled the auditorium. The spheres of the model planetary system slowly gyrated below the level of the handrail; and here and there groups of technicians worked at equipment banks while others peered over the edge through long-range microscopes. At this level the central sun was unbearably brilliant; and Stirling realized much of its light was screened off from the lower reaches of the theater where the patrons gorged on twilight illusions. Several of the technicians glanced curiously at Stirling as he moved along the gallery; but years as a reporter had taught him how to project an air of disinterested confidence when invading private premises, and no one questioned his presence. He found Lou Grossmann leaning on the handrail and sipping coffee.
“Hello, Lou.”
Grossmann turned, pushed his sunglasses onto his freckled forehead, and looked up at Stirling without recognition for a few seconds.
“Victor Stirling,” he finally said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on the West Coast.”
“No. I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had much chance to visit the family.” Stirling hesitated, wondering if Grossmann knew about Johnny’s disappearance. “This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this.” He gestured towards the yawning blackness beyond the rail.
“I guess it must be quite a sight the first time,” Grossmann said tiredly, “but it’s just a job like any other. A joy-rider went right through the sun a few minutes ago. That’s the third this week. Disrupts the surface field for an instant and diffuses the gas; then we have to send in a servo-vac to gather it up—which means closing everything down for an hour in case the machine sucks up a couple of ships and scares hell out of the customers.” Grossmann smoothed his red hair and gazed at Stirling with frank curiosity.
“I’m trying to find Johnny,” Stirling said. “Have you any idea where he is?” “Sorry. I haven’t seen him in three months.”
“Oh! My mother said you and Johnny usually had a few beers on Saturdays, and I thought …” “We used to, but he stopped coming round. Like I said, about three months ago.”
Stirling nodded and turned away. This was the story he had been getting everywhere. Johnny Considine had never been a steady worker; but since his teens he had been as regular as clockwork in visiting his chosen playgrounds, which were the bars, multi-houses and thrill palaces of First Avenue. Until three months ago, that is, when a change seemed to have come over his life. Was it something to do with his disappearance? Stirling was walking back along the gallery when Grossman called his name and he turned.
“Johnny’s vanished, hasn’t he?” The little redhead sounded almost sympathetic.
“I guess so. Yes.”
“Mrs. Considine worried?”
“What do you think?”
Grossmann looked vaguely guilty. “He’s been seen going into that Receders meeting place near the longshoremen’s office.”
“The Receders!” Stirling’s voice was incredulous. “But Johnny’s never been to church in his life.”
Lou Grossmann shrugged and looked back into the pit, where shadow worlds rolled their slow courses and the minds of men flitted among them like gnats on the surface of a pond. It was obvious he was sorry he had said as much as he had, and suddenly Stirling realized he had just been given his first real lead in two weeks of searching. He muttered his thanks, went down to the street, and was slightly shocked to discover there was still daylight outside. The visit to the cosmodrome had taken only an hour, but it seemed much longer.
At the nearest corner he waited a few minutes for a taxi, but saw only two, each of which had a white-uniformed Food Tech hi the rear seat. Lighting a cigarette, he began walking east towards the harbor area, trying to convince himself he was glad of the exercise. The mid-evening traffic was relatively light, and the lowering sun was bathing the buildings hi a warm reddish glow which Stirling found unexpectedly pleasant even though he knew what was causing it. Since the death of the soil, dust storms constantly strode across the country west of the static screens which offered partial protection to the coastal conurbation. The splendid Wagnerian sunsets which resulted were a poor consolation for living on plankton steaks, sea porridge, and the other forms of nutriment wrested from the ocean by the Food Technology Authority. There was always the fresh vegetable food sent down from Heaven, but it had traditionally been rare; and it seemed to Stirling the supplies had been growing even more meager for several years. As he walked, he searched the segments of eastern sky which could be seen beyond the banked apartment buildings. And finally he found the rose-pale silhouette of Heaven, riding in its serene security high above the Atlantic. He thought he detected a glimmer of movement at one point on its upper edge, but at that distance it was impossible to be certain.