The Cadillac skimmed smoothly over the road, heading west with the afternoon sun. The car was bullet-proof, crashproof, and almost bomb-proof, and its driver was AXEman Johnny Thunder. Nick was armed and so was Julia, his very favorite spy. Maybe Valentina was armed, too (she had been a little coy about that and he had not pressed the point). But they were surrounded with as much security as Valentina would permit. There was a plain dark car a little way ahead of them and a plain light car a little way behind, both of which carried AXEmen. And the plant itself was well policed by its own security guards.
Yet, Nick was uneasy. They had talked for one solid day — he and Hawk and Valentina — about the implications of the attempt on her life and the Chinese disappearances from Moscow. She had listened with great interest when they had told her about Hakim’s letter, but it had puzzled her.
“Of course! Of course! They must be the same men!” she had said excitedly. And then her brow had clouded. “But — I had begun to be so sure that the attempt to kill me could mean but one thing only: that there is something at West Valley that I must not be permitted to see. Because of course the Chinese scientists — and therefore their government and their intelligence people — know very well that I am here to see the plant. But it cannot be the plant itself that they want to keep me from. It cannot be a thing. It must be a somebody. But why should they be afraid of recognition if they have all changed themselves?” Her brow had clouded even more darkly. Then it must be a thing. But what thing?”
“I can’t imagine what sort of thing it could be that hasn’t been seen by hundreds of people already,” Hawk had said dryly. “But one thing is increasingly clear to me — you must postpone your visit to West Valley and make a secret trip some day.”
“Postpone! Some day!” Her enormous bulk had seemed to expand like an overinflated balloon. “I am here now, now I go.”
So now she was going. She had been adamant.
Which was why Nick was worried, because he too believed that there was something at West Valley that was dangerous to her.
Another thing that worried him was that he had not heard again from Hakim or D5. Hawk himself had heard nothing from D5 since Eiger had reported his arrival in Cairo.
“Enough,” said Valentina. “Enough now. You make this sweet day sour. I promise you I shall take the utmost care. Also, I am wearing my bullet-proof corsets. Does that make you feel better?” Her body shook as she chortled, and her hand came down on Nick’s knee in a bone-crushing grip.
“Oh, infinitely,” said Nick. “I always enjoy a broken leg.” Then he laughed. She was a target as eye-catching as a tank, but at least she was armored like one. He did feel better. “You might have told me that before,” he said. “Julia wears hers all the time.” He ignored Julia’s snort and jabbed a tanned finger to his left. “See those stacks?” he said. “Beyond the fields? That’s it. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Valentina looked. “Why, it’s like a little oil refinery!” she exclaimed. “Or something on a farm, like a group of grain elevators. Siloes, do you not call them? But all the land around it is farm country I This is not at all what I expected.”
“Well, I hope that’s the last of your surprises,” Carter said.
Their arrival at the plant passed off with a slickness that did credit both to AXE and West Valley’s own security force. The guards were courteous and alert. The occupants of the plain dark car and the plain light car flashed their ID cards and were permitted to station themselves at key points in the plant. Johnny Thunder hovered in the background, a concrete hunk of man.
Even the introductions were admirably neat and brief.
“Honored, Madam Sichikova,” said the president of the company. “My plant manager, James Weston; vice president, Barrett Pauling; chief of security, J. Baldwin Parry. I trust you will join me later in my office for refreshments. But in the meantime, shall we go?”
They went, first through the modern front offices and then into the throbbing heart of the plant. Within its depths there were no windows to the outer world but the pleasant glow of simulated daylight filled its every recess. It was streamlined, spotlessly clean and for the most part spacious; the passageways between the installations were wide and free of clutter and only the inevitable ladderways and catwalks were the usual space-saving size.
“We have tried to make working conditions as pleasant as possible,” said Weston, leading the way. Security Chief Parry walked with him, eyes alert, methodically checking the positions of his guards and the various personnel at their customary posts. Soft music played a background accompaniment to the low pulsating of the machinery. “The place was especially designed to avoid giving that boxed-in feeling that comes from working in enclosed quarters. You will notice the wide passageways leading off at various points. Each one goes directly to what we call a relaxation area — large, airy rooms with easy chairs and television sets and growing green plants and the like. The lower-level… ah… ladies’ rest-room facilities are also down here, through Passageway B. We have, as you know, a number of women on our staff, largely on the administrative side.”
“Good, good,” said Valentina, wallowing along behind him between Nick and the company president. “But none in overalls, I see.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Weston said regretfully. “The men would appreciate it, I know. But the women — nothing will induce them to get out of their short skirts and into overalls. I’m afraid Russia is well ahead of us in that respect.”
Valentina guffawed loudly. “I am not sure it is such an advance, my friend,” she said. “It may be heretical of me, but I still think women should be women. Tell me, what is the relationship between these two devices here? I am familiar with the one, but…”
Weston paused beside the installation and launched into a technical explanation. Security Chief Parry and the company president added punctuation points. Nick listened with only half an ear. Most of his attention was on the surrounding setup, and on the whole he was satisfied with the security arrangements. Vice President Pauling and Julia Baron stood beside him behind Valentina and the others, and he noticed that Pauling’s eyes, too, were sweeping the area between covert glances at Julia’s svelte figure. AXEman Thunder brought up the rear, but kept his eyes glued on Valentina’s bulk. Everything seemed in order.
“Shall we move on?” said Weston at last. Valentina nodded, still gazing at the miracle of machinery that had caught her attention, and the group straggled forward in a shifting pattern. The change was slight, inconsequential, but now Nick was half a pace behind and Pauling walked next to Valentina.
She beamed at him. “So you are vice president,” she said appraisingly. “You are a young man for so much responsibility. That is good. I like to see youth in the forefront.” Pauling cleared his throat. “Uh… ah —” he began. Valentina’s voice drowned out whatever he had planned to say.
“Now that is an interesting structure,” she bellowed, pointing ahead. “What is the purpose of it?”
A tall gantry reached from floor to ceiling, a height of some four stories, with its tower apparently embedded in the roof. Narrow platforms encircled it at various levels, and on each of them a man walked slowly, looking down. Within the frame of the gantry a cage moved up and down, like an elevator within an open shaft. The cage slowed as Nick watched and it came to a stop about fifteen feet from the floor on a level with one of the platforms.
“A security device,” he heard Pauling say. “More in Parry’s department than mine.”