That was all. I had never heard of Mr. Sanford Kralick, but of course Presidential aides come and go. This was perhaps the fourth time the White House had called me in the past eight years, since I had inadvertently become part of the available supply of learned pundits. A profile of me in one of the weekly journals for the feeble-minded had labeled me as a man to be watched, an adventurer on the frontiers of thought, a dominant force in American physics, and since then I had been manipulated to the status of a star scientist. I was occasionally asked to lend my name to this or that official statement on the National Purpose or on the Ethical Structure of Humanity; I was called to Washington to guide beefy Congressmen through the intricacics of particle theory when appropriations for new accelerators were under discussion; I was dragooned as part of the backdrop when some bold explorer of space was being awarded the Goddard Prize. The foolishness even spread to my own profession. which should have known better; occasionally I keynoted an annual meeting of the A.A.A.S., or tried to explain to a delegation of oceanographers or archaeologists what was taking place out on my particular frontier of thought. I admit hesitantly that I came to welcome this nonsense, not for the notoriety it provided, but simply because it supplied me with a virtuous-sounding excuse for escaping from my own increasingly less rewarding work. Remember Garfield’s Law: star scientists usually are men in a private creative bind. Having ceased to produce meaningful results, they go on the public-appearance circuit and solace themselves with the reverence of the ignorant.
Never once, though, had one of these Washington summonses been couched in such urgent terms. “Vital to national security,” Kralick had said. Really? Or was he one of those Washingtonians for whom hyperbole is the native tongue?
My curiosity was piqued. It was dinnertime in the capital just now. Call at any hour, Kralick had said. I hoped I would interrupt him just as he sat down to supreme de volaille at some absurd restaurant overlooking the Potomac. Hastily I punched out the White House number. The Presidential seal appeared on my screen and a ghostly computerized voice asked me my business.
“I’d like to talk to Sanford Kralick,” I said.
“One moment, please.”
It took more than one moment. It took about three minutes while the computer hunted up a relay number for Kralick, who was out of his office, called it, and had him brought to the phone. In time my screen showed me a somber-looking young man, surprisingly ugly, with a tapering wedge of a face and bulging orbital ridges that would have been the pride of some Neanderthal. I was relieved; I had expected one of those collapsible plastic yes-men so numerous in Washington. Whatever else Kralick might be, he at least had not been stamped from the usual mold. His ugliness was in his favor.
“Dr. Garfield,” he said at once. “I’ve been hoping you’d call! Did you have a good vacation?”
“Excellent.”
“Your secretary deserves a medal for loyalty, professor. I practically threatened to call out the National Guard if she wouldn’t put me through to you. She refused anyway.”
“I’ve warned my staff that I’ll vivisect anyone who lets my privacy be broken, Mr. Kralick. What can I do for you?”
“Can you come to Washington tomorrow? All expenses paid.”
“What is it this time? A conference on our chances of surviving into the twenty-first century?”
Kralick grinned curtly. “Not a conference, Dr. Garfield. We need your services in a very special way. We’d like to co-opt a few months of your time and put you to work on a job that no one else in the world can handle.”
“A few months? I don’t think I can—”
“It’s essential, sir. I’m not just making governmental noises now. This is big.”
“May I have a detail or two?”
“Not over the phone, I’m afraid.”
“You want me to fly to Washington on no day’s notice to talk about something you can’t tell me about?”
“Yes. If you prefer, I’ll come to California to discuss it. But that would mean even more delay, and we’ve already forfeited so much time that—”
My hand hovered over the cutoff knob, and I made sure Kralick knew it. “Unless I get at least a clue, Mr. Kralick, I’m afraid I’ll have to terminate this discussion.”
He didn’t look intimidated. “One clue, then.”
“Yes?”
“You’re aware of the so-called man from the future who arrived a few weeks ago?”
“More or less.”
“What we have in mind involves him. We need you to question him on certain topics. I—”
For the second time in three days I felt that sensation of dropping through a trapdoor. I thought of Jack begging me to talk to Vornan-19; and now here was the government commanding me to do the same. The world had gone mad.
I cut Kralick off by blurting, “All right. I’ll come to Washington tomorrow.”
FIVE
The telephone screen deceives. Kralick in the screen had looked engagingly lithe and agile; Kralick in the flesh turned out to be six feet seven or so, and that look of intellectuality that made his ugly face interesting was wholly engulfed by the impression of massiveness he projected. He met me at the airport; it was one in the afternoon, Washington time, when I arrived, after having taken a dawn flight out of Los Angeles International. The day was cold and clear, the sky hard, gray, unfriendly.
As we sped along the autotrack to the White House, he insistently stressed the importance of my mission and his gratitude for my cooperation. He offered no details of what he wanted from me. We took the downtown shunt of the track and rolled smoothly through the White House’s private bypass gate. Somewhere in the bowels of the earth I was duly scanned and declared acceptable, and we ascended into the venerable building. I wondered if the President himself would do the briefing. As it turned out, I never caught sight of the man. I was shown into the Situation Room, which bristled preposterously with communications gear. In a crystal capsule on the main table was a Venusian zoological specimen, a purplish plasmoid that tirelessly sent forth its amoebalike projections in a passable imitation of life. An inscription on the base of the capsule said that it had been found on the second expedition. I was surprised: I had not thought we had discovered so many that we could afford to leave them lying around like paperweights in the dens of the bureaucracy.
A brisk little man with cropped gray hair and a flamboyant suit entered the room, almost at a trot. His shoulders were padded like a fullback’s and a row of glittering chromed spines jutted from his jacket like vertebrae gone berserk. Obviously this was a man who believed very much in being up to date.
“Marcus Kettridge,” he said. “Special Assistant to the President. Glad you’re with us, Dr. Garfield.”
Kralick said, “What about the visitor?”
“He’s been in Copenhagen. The relay came in half an hour ago. Would you like to see it before the briefing?”
“It might be an idea.”
Kettridge opened his hand; a tape capsule lay on his palm, and he inserted it. A screen I had not noticed before came to life. I saw Vornan-19 strolling through the baroque fancifulness of the Tivoli Gardens, domed against the weather and showing not a trace of the Danish winter. Patterns of flashing lights stained the sky. He moved like a dancer, controlling every muscle for maximum impetus. By his side walked a blonde giantess, perhaps nineteen years old, with a corona of dazzling hair and a dreamy look on her face. She wore crotch-high shorts and a skimpy bandeau across immense breasts; she might as well have been naked. Yards of flesh showed. Vornan put his arm around her and idly touched the tip of a finger to each of the deep dimples above her monumental buttocks.