“How the hell should I know that?”
“Why not? As far as they’re concerned, you invented the little suckers, and now you can call them off.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Of course it is, but that has nothing to do with public behavior.”
For the first time, Corey lost some of his composure. “All I did was write the story.”
“I know that, Corey.” The publisher seemed to shrink even smaller in the high-backed chair. “You’re a professional newspaperman. Overambitious, maybe, but still a pro. I was wrong in trying to pull you off the story. I didn’t know then what we were up against. You see, there was pressure being put on me, too.”
“Pressure from where?” Corey said.
Eichorn looked up at him sharply. “This has to be off the record.”
Corey nodded.
The publisher grinned without mirth. “I never thought I’d have to say that to one of my own employees. The pressure came from Washington. Maybe you know that the Justice Department has been building an antitrust case against me for about eighteen months.”
“I’ve heard,” Corey said.
“Well, the people back there let me know that the whole thing would be dropped if the Herald would back away from this story. The story you wouldn’t let go of.”
“What were they hoping to accomplish?” Corey asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I’ve worked long and hard to build up what I have, and I’d have done almost anything to keep it from being taken away.” He slumped even deeper into the heavily padded swivel chair. “Now I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Porter Uhlander cleared his throat. “How do you want it handled from here on, Mr. Eichorn?”
The little publisher threw up his hands. “What choice do we have? Pandora’s box is open. The story’s out. Keep on it. Maybe the brain eaters will get us all and it won’t make any difference.”
While the Herald was besieged by people clamoring for more information about the brain eaters, the Biotron plant outside Appleton was having its own problems. The announcement was made on Friday morning that all labs and offices would be closed at the end of the shift and would remain closed until further notice. No explanation was offered.
There was no organized protest by the nonunionized employees of Biotron, just a sort of stunned confusion. They were assured that the plant would reopen as soon as possible; they should hold themselves in readiness to return to work.
After she read Corey’s by-lined story in the Thursday Herald, Dena Falkner tried without success to reach Dr. Kitzmiller. When she heard the announcement of the plant closure, she tried again. However, there was still no response on his private extension, and when she went in person to his office, she found it locked and a company security guard outside.
“Is Dr. Kitzmiller inside?” she asked the guard.
“Sorry, miss, I have no information.”
“It’s vital that I talk to him.”
“If you want to leave a message — ”
Dena did not wait for the rest of the brush-off. She walked through the building to the office of Jimmy Lohnes. The usually genial PR man was hunched behind his desk when she arrived, seemingly fighting off an angry pair of telephones that were ringing without letup. As Dena hesitated in the doorway, Lohnes swept an arm across the desk, knocking the instruments flying. They hit the carpeted floor with a muffled clang and were silent at last.
“Nice backhand,” Dena said.
Lohnes gave her a pained half grin. “Oh, hi, Dena. Excuse the outburst, but those damn things were giving me a world-class headache. Everybody seems to think I’m the man who can explain why the plant is closing. Hell, I just got the news the same time as everybody else. I haven’t a clue as to what’s going on. What can I do for you?”
Dena looked at him sideways. “As a matter of fact, I thought you might explain why the plant is closing.”
“That figures,” Lohnes said, massaging his temples. “What does the grapevine say?”
“That it has something to do with the brain eaters.”
“That’s not bad, as rumors go. Still, I haven’t seen anything about us in the news.”
“I have a feeling you will.”
“Do you know something I don’t, Dena?”
“Nothing important.”
Lohnes’s secretary entered looking distraught. “Excuse me, Mr. Lohnes, but there seems to be something wrong with the tele — Oh!”
“They fell on the floor,” he explained.
Dena left the public-relations chief picking up his telephones and returned to her own office. There she found Carol Denker searching through desk drawers.
“Lose something?” Dena asked.
“I was sure I had aspirin in here somewhere. You haven’t got any, have you?”
“Sorry.”
“Damn. My head feels like there’s a spear through it. If they hadn’t closed up the plant, I’d probably have had to go home anyhow.”
“Migraine?”
“If it is, it’s a first. I’ve never had one like it before.”
Headache. Dena thought of Corey’s description of the bartender in Milwaukee who complained of a two-day headache just before trashing his own tavern. She thought of the carefully worded story in the Herald about the tiny parasites that ate into your brain. Suddenly, she could no longer look at Carol Denker. She was seized by a sudden violent shudder.
Carol looked up from her search of the desk. “Something wrong?”
Dena shook her head. “I guess somebody walked over my grave.” Twenty minutes later she was driving grimly toward Milwaukee.
Eddie Gault did not go to work Thursday, so he did not get the message and witness the confusion that resulted. Eddie Gault had the flu. So he thought.
He lay in bed shivering under the blankets while Roanne Tesla brought him soup and felt his forehead and fed him a mixture of honey and wheat germ. When she had the television set on in the living room, she kept the volume turned way down. In his present condition, it would not do Eddie any good to hear about the brain eaters. She did not much like to think about them herself. Probably, she reasoned, it was just another instance of national paranoia.
Two thousand miles away, in San Francisco, the four-man delegation claiming to represent Soviet agriculture was glowering at a hapless assistant to the manager of the airport. The assistant, an earnest young man named Henderson, was sweating profusely as, in the absence of his chief, he passed along the orders he had been given to these dangerous-looking Russians.
“This is outrageous!” Viktor Raslov stormed. “We are emissaries of the Soviet Union, traveling on diplomatic passports.”
“I’m very sorry, sir, but there has been a delay in your flight.”
“Delay? What kind of delay?”
“Uh, well, mechanical, I believe.” Henderson was not a good liar. As he well knew, the delay in the Russians’ flight was prompted by a call from the San Francisco office of the FBI. Henderson wished fervently that the local agents would arrive as promised and take him off the hook.
“I want to speak to the Soviet consul,” said Raslov.
“Yes, sir,” Henderson said, relieved to be taking action, any action. “If you will come with me, you can use the telephone in my office.”
The public concern over the brain-eater scare had brought crowds far above normal to the airport — people looking to get out of the city or coming to meet friends who were fleeing from some other locale. By the time Henderson had steered his group through the crowd and upstairs to his office, it was discovered that the foursome had become a threesome. Anton Kuryakin was no longer with them.