Solo began to inch away from the grate, stunned by the impact of Su Yan’s boast. It had occurred to him that rooms of the inmates might be scanned through the big-brother device of closed-circuit television, but the very fact that the barred suite was far underground, and had apparently never been used as a patient’s room, had faked him off.
As he tried to move away, he remembered the almost incredibly easy way he had been permitted to escape to the field—like a mouse being tormented. What pleasure it must have given the watchers to see him build this sound-detector, to sort the parts dismantled by them.
They were laughing, but suddenly Solo was not. His arms refused to function; his legs no longer responded. He tried to move and he could not. He breathed deeply, conscious of the sweet scent of a gas, undoubtedly a nerve gas.
He lay there, conscious but paralyzed.
PART FOUR
Incident the Morning after Doomsday
I
IT WAS STILL early morning in the incredible ranges of the mountains where Broadmoor Rest crouched like an aerie of evil high upon its own promontory.
The hum of the fan-jet was picked up first. The battery of field lights flared to life, washing out the last gray wisps of night within the confines of the fieldstone walls.
The plane glided in with a grace and ease that communicated its perfection to the guards and the workers permitted in the area at this hour, and on this unusual day. A work of art always is a labor of love, and the most hardened armed man on the field could not deny the slight prickling of excitement he felt in seeing the way that plane was touched down without a bump, jerk, or indecision.
The huge silver plane taxied up to the driveway nearest the main building of the sanitarium, was turned smoothly and headed into the wind. The engines died, the hatch was swung open, a ladder mechanically unfolded itself, and three men padded down the steps to the guards waiting to receive them on the runway.
The navigator was first, a slender man in his twenties, an air force navigation veteran. The co-pilot was French, a man who had more trouble with English syntax than with any plane that would lift its nose off the ground for him.
The pilot was the last man off the plane, and once he stepped out into the light, no one looked at anyone except him.
He paused on the top step a moment, glancing around, not as if he owned this plane—which he did not—or the sanitarium, but the world itself.
The man was well over six feet tall. He wore a flying jacket, freshly pressed slacks and highly polished black shoes. His shirt was a blue-tinted imported linen. He was no longer young—he was somewhere in his forties, probably nine years older than he admitted even to himself. He had a record of flying on both sides in several wars on the African continent, of delivering arms to opposing camps on the same day, sometimes even the same flight. If one had money, one could buy him—until someone came along with more money.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” he said to the head security officer. “Where are the big wheels?” He grinned. “The men with my orders—and my money.”
The security officer smiled with him because his smiling was infectious. It even made one overlook the padded bags under his dark, intense eyes, the only sign that he had been drinking heedlessly until an hour before flight time this morning. His breath was still liquor-tart, but he was completely cold and in command of himself.
“I was told to inform you, Mr. Baker,” the security officer said. “There may be a slight delay.”
Baker stopped smiling. “The hell with that, Charley. Take me to your leader. There’s no delay on this boat. We get off on the minute or we don’t go.”
“I’m just telling what I was ordered to tell you—”
“And I’m just countermanding your orders, Ace,” Baker said. “Let’s go give the words to the wheels.”
“They may not like being interrupted—”
Baker lost his temper instantly. His voice rasped, and the security guard, larger and heavier, paled slightly and retreated. He didn’t like looking at what he saw in those dark eyes, so full of laughter an instant before.
“To hell with what they like, Ace,” Baker said. “They can’t delay this. It’s on, it’s on schedule. Or it’s off. It takes a fan-jet a certain number of hours to go X number of miles. They know as well as I do, the timing has to be perfect. Come on. Take me to them, and I’ll lay the word on them.”
II
SOLO’S MIND remained entirely clear, but his body was numbed, incapable of movement.
He lay there exploring the simplicity of this plan: death from the most unexpected source. From lovely ginger flowers formed into a brilliant, scented lei. And from the clear noon sky during a civilian defense test alert. The more one heard the scream of those accustomed sirens, the less one was impressed—hadn’t they wailed last week at the same hour, and every week for the past ten years?
In his fevered mind, Solo saw that atomic device, painstakingly assembled by the finest minds Thrush’s money and threats and blackmail could buy, waiting down there to be hoisted on that open lift to the plane at ground-level.
He twisted frantically, but all the writhing was inside his skin, in his mind.
All this whirled through Solo’s thoughts as he heard Su Yan order the grating removed from the fireplace of the command room.
When the grate was removed, Solo stared for a moment at the faces of the guards bending down to drag him out. Then, beyond them, he saw the cabinets along the walls, the filing cases, realizing that this room was the heart of the Thrush operations at this base.
“One never knows what sort of animal one will find in one’s walls, eh?” Su Yan said. His voice mocked at Solo. “Pull it out, and we’ll exterminate it.”
The guards caught Solo by the shirt collar and by the hair, pulling him into the room.
They dropped him less than carefully upon the tiled flooring. Solo lay sprawled where he struck, helpless even to straighten his twisted ann. For all intents and purposes, his body was dead; only his mind persisted alive.
He heard Su Yan chuckle. “Dirty beast, isn’t he? Covered with soot and grime. I’m afraid he’s not exactly the sort of Santa Claus from a chimney I’ve always imagined.”
From where he had been dropped Solo could see only a small portion of the room. His mind was tormented with the seeds of madness: he knew of the awesome plan to destroy civilization, and he could not even move a muscle of his hands or feet. And time ticked away.
Time stood still then for a moment when there was a sharp rapping on the door.
Su Yan strode across the room and opened it. Solo heard anger and outrage in his voice as he demanded, “What are you doing in here?”
A hesitant voice said, “It’s Colonel Baker, sir. He says he either talks to you people, or he flies out—I thought you’d want to know.”
“What’s the hush-hush?” Baker strode into the room, pushing the door out of Su Yan’s grasp. “You people don’t intimidate me. Put a bullet in me, pay me off, or keep to schedule. It’s all the same to me.”
“What’s eating you, Baker?” The head of the operations spoke now, and Solo fought to lift his head enough to see him.
Baker laughed. “I’ll tell you what’s eating me, Wheel. You people hired me on a trick that sounded good because it offered a challenge to me. You know? Pinpointed. Precisely timed. Well, I’m here and there’s talk of delay. My plane can travel only so fast—there’s so much distance to cover, and precise timing won’t wait. Either follow through with the plans—and that means keeping to an exact schedule—or pay me off. Real simple. No sweat. Nothing to get excited about.”