What's out there? Angress wondered, dazedly. "At one fifty-second of a light-year," he murmured, making a quick mark on the deep-space map which he had been recharting. "Nothing. That's just empty dust-clouds." He could not understand what the signal implied; was it being bounced back to Luna from some nearby transmitter? Was this, in other words, merely an echo?
Or was he reading his computation incorrectly?
Surely this couldn't be correct. Some individual ruminating at a transmitter out beyond the solar system… a man not in a hurry, thinking aloud in a kind of half-slumbering attitude, as if free-associating… it made no sense.
I'd better report this to Wycoff at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he said to himself. Wycoff was his current supervisor; next month it would be Jamison of MIT. Maybe it's a long-haul ship that -
The voice filtered in clearly once again. "…that Gam is a fool; did wrong to select him. Know better now but too late. Hello?" The thoughts became sharp, the words more distinct. "Am I coming back? – for god's sake, it's about time. Hey! Johnny! Is that you?"
Angress picked up the telephone and dialed the code for the line to the Soviet Union.
"Speak up, Johnny!" the voice from the speaker demanded plaintively. "Come on, son; I've got so damn much on my mind. So much to do. Convention's started yet, has it? Got no sense of time stuck in here, can't see or hear; wait'll you get here and you'll find out…" Again the voice faded.
This is exactly what Wycoff likes to call a "phenomenon," Angress realized.
And I can understand why.
II
On the evening television news, Claude St. Cyr heard the announcer babbling about a discovery made by the radio telescope on Luna, but he paid little attention: he was busy mixing martinis for his guests.
"Yes," he said to Gertrude Harvey, "ironic as it is, I drew up the will myself, including the clause that automatically dismissed me, canceled my services out of existence the moment he died. And I'll tell you why Louis did that; he had paranoid suspicions of me, so he figured that with such a clause he'd insure himself against being -" He paused as he measured out the iota of dry wine which accompanied the gin. "Being prematurely dispatched." He grinned, and Gertrude, arranged decoratively on the couch beside her husband, smiled back.
"A lot of good it did him," Phil Harvey said.
"Hell," St. Cyr protested. "I had nothing to do with his death; it was an embolus, a great fat clot stuck like a cork in a bottleneck." He laughed at the image. "Nature's own remedy."
Gertrude said, "Listen. The TV; it's saying something strange." She rose, walked over to it and bent down, her «ar close to the speaker.
"It's probably that oaf Kent Margrave," St. Cyr said. "Making another political speech." Margrave had been their President now for four years; a Liberal, he had managed to defeat Alfonse Gam, who had been Louis Sarapis' hand-picked choice for the office. Actually Margrave, for all his faults, was quite a politician; he had managed to convince large blocs of voters that having a puppet of Sarapis' for their President was not such a good idea.
"No," Gertrude said, carefully arranging her skirt over her bare knees. "This is – the space agency, I think. Science."
"Science!" St. Cyr laughed. "Well, then let's listen; I admire science. Turn it up." I suppose they've found another planet in the Orionus System, he said to himself. Something more for us to make the goal of our collective existence.
"A voice," the TV announcer was saying, "emanating from outer space, tonight has scientists both in the United States and the Soviet Union completely baffled."
"Oh no," St. Cyr choked. "A voice from outer space – please, no more." Doubled up with laughter, he moved off, away from the TV set; he could not bear to listen any more. "That's what we need," he said to Phil. "A voice that turns out to be – you know Who it is."
"Who?" Phil asked.
"God, of course. The radio telescope at Kennedy Slough has picked up the voice of God and now we're going to receive another set of divine commandments or at least a few scrolls." Removing his glasses he wiped his eyes with his Irish linen handkerchief.
Dourly, Phil Harvey said, "Personally I agree with my wife; I find it fascinating."
"Listen, my friend," St. Cyr said, "you know it'll turn out to be a transistor radio that some Jap student lost on a trip between Earth and Callisto. And the radio just drifted on out of the solar system entirely and now the telescope has picked it up and it's a huge mystery to all the scientists." He became more sober. "Shut it off, Gert; we've got serious things to consider."
Obediently but reluctantly she did so. "Is it true, Claude," she asked, rising to her feet, "that the mortuary wasn't able to revive old Louis? That he's not in half-life as he's supposed to be by now?"
"Nobody tells me anything from the organization, now," St. Cyr answered. "But I did hear a rumor to that effect." He knew, in fact, that it was so; he had many friends within Wilhelmina, but he did not like to talk about these surviving links. "Yes, I suppose that's so," he said.
Gertrude shivered. "Imagine not coming back. How dreadful."
"But that was the old natural condition," her husband pointed out as he drank his martini. "Nobody had half-life before the turn of the century."
"But we're used to it," she said stubbornly.
To Phil Harvey, St. Cyr said, "Let's continue our discussion."
Shrugging, Harvey said, "All right. If you really feel there's something to discuss." He eyed St. Cyr critically. "I could put you on my legal staff, yes. If that's what you're sure you want. But I can't give you the kind of business that Louis could. It wouldn't be fair to the legal men I have in there now."
"Oh, I recognize that," St. Cyr said. After all, Harvey's drayage firm was small in comparison with the Sarapis outfits; Harvey was in fact a minor figure in the 3-4 shipping business.
But that was precisely what St. Cyr wanted. Because he believed that within a year with the experience and contacts he had gained working for Louis Sarapis he could depose Harvey and take over Elektra Enterprises.
Harvey's first wife had been named Elektra. St. Cyr had known her, and after she and Harvey had split up St. Cyr had continued to see her, now in a more personal – and more spirited – way. It had always seemed to him that Elektra Harvey had obtained a rather bad deal; Harvey had employed legal talent of sufficient caliber to outwit Elektra's attorney… who had been, as a matter of fact, St. Cyr's junior law partner, Harold Faine. Ever since her defeat in the courts, St. Cyr had blamed himself; why hadn't he taken the case personally? But he had been so tied up with Sarapis business… it had simply not been possible.
Now, with Sarapis gone and his job with Atlas, Wilhelmina and Archimedean over, he could take some time to rectify the imbalance; he could come to the aid of the woman (he admitted it) whom he loved.
But that was a long step from this situation; first he had to get into Harvey's legal staff – at any cost. Evidently, he was succeeding.
"Shall we shake on it, then?" he asked Harvey, holding out his hand.
"Okay," Harvey said, not very much stirred by the event. He held out his hand, however, and they shook. "By the way," he said, then, "I have some knowledge – fragmentary but evidently accurate – as to why Sarapis cut you off in his will. And it isn't what you said at all."
"Oh?" St. Cyr said, trying to sound casual.
"My understanding is that he suspected someone, possibly you, of desiring to prevent him from returning to half-life. That you were going to select a particular mortuary which certain contacts of yours operate… and they'd somehow fail to revive the old man." He eyed St. Cyr. "And oddly, that seems to be exactly what has happened."