The reluctant sigh of the hammer or the mallet plowing sluggishly through a fluid filled the room, and Chaney wanted to cover his ears. Again the unseen hammer smashed into compressed air, the rubber band struck his eardrums, and there was a final, anticlimactic pop.
“There you are,” the younger man said. “The same old sixty-one.” He glanced at Chaney and added what appeared to be an explanation. “Sixty-one seconds, mister.
“Is that good?”
“That’s the best we’ll ever have.”
“Bully. What’s going on?”
“Testing. Testing, testing, testing, over and over again. Even the monkeys are getting tired of it.” He shot a quick glance at Kathryn van Hise, as if to ask: Does he know?
The other card player studied Chaney with some reserve, wanting to fit him into some convenient slot. He was an older man. “Your name is Chaney,” he repeated dourly. “And you’ve been — what?”
“Drafted,” Chaney replied, and saw the man wince.
The young woman said quickly: “Mr. Chaney?”
He turned and found her standing. “Miss van Hise.”
“We expected you earlier, Mr. Chaney.”
“You expected too much. I had to wait for a few days for sleeper reservations, and I laid over in Chicago to visit old friends. I wasn’t eager to leave the beach, Miss van Hise.”
“Sleeper?” the older man demanded. “The railroad? Why didn’t you fly in?”
Chaney felt embarrassed. “I’m afraid of planes.”
The sandy-haired man exploded in howling laughter and pointed an explanatory finger at his dour companion. “Air Force,” he said to Chaney. “Born in the air and flies by the seat of his pants.” He slapped the table and the cards jumped, but no one shared his high humor. “You’re off to a fine start, mister!”
“Must I hold a candle to my shame?” Chaney asked.
The woman said again: “Mr. Chaney, please.”
He gave her his attention, and she introduced him to the card players.
Major William Theodore Moresby was the disapproving Air Force career man, now in his middle forties, whose receding hairline accented his rather large and penetrating gray-green eyes. The ridge of his nose was sharp, bony, and had once been broken. There was the suspicion of a double chin, and another suspicion of a building paunch beneath the summer shirt he wore outside his trousers. Major Moresby had no humor, and he shook hands with the tardy newcomer with the air of a man shaking hands with a draft dodger newly returned from Canada.
The younger man with the bronzed muscular frame and the prominent dental work was Lieutenant Commander Arthur Saltus. He congratulated Chaney on having the good sense of being reluctant to leave the sea, and said he’d been Navy since he was fifteen years old. Lied about his age, and furnished forged papers to underscore the lie. Even in the windowless room his eyes were set against the bright sunlight on the water. He was likable.
“A civilian?” Major Moresby asked gravely.
“Someone has to stay home and pay the taxes,” Chaney responded in the same tone.
The young woman broke in quickly, diplomatically. “Official policy, Major. Our directive was to establish a balanced team.” She glanced apologetically at Chaney. “Some people in the Senate were unhappy with the early NASA policy of selecting only military personnel for the orbital missions, and so we were directed to recruit a more balanced crew to — to avert a possible future inquiry. The Bureau is mindful of Congressional judgments.”
Saltus: “Translation: we’ve got to keep those funds rolling in.”
Moresby: “Damn it! Is politics into this thing?”
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid so. The Senate subcommittee overseeing our project has posted an agent here to maintain liaison. it is to be regretted, sir, but some few of them profess to see a parallel to the old Manhattan project, and so they insisted on continuous liaison.”
“You mean surveillance,” Moresby groused.
“Oh, cheer up, William.” Arthur Saltus had picked up the scattered cards and was noisily shuffling the deck. “This one civilian won’t hurt us; we outnumber him two to one, and look at the rank he hasn’t got. Tailend of the team, last man in the bucket, and we’ll make him do the writing.” He turned back to the civilian. “What do you do, Chaney? Astronomer? Cartographer? Something?”
“Something,” Chaney answered easily. “Researcher, translator, statistician, a little of this and that.”
Kathryn van Hise said: “Mr. Chaney authored the Indic report.”
“Ah,” Saltus nodded. “That Chaney.”
“Mr. Chaney authored a book on the Qumran scrolls.”
Major Moresby reacted. “That Chaney?”
Brian Chaney said: “Mr. Chaney will walk out of here in high pique and blow up the building. He objects to being the bug under the microscope.”
Arthur Saltus stared at him with round eyes. “I’ve heard about you, mister! William has your book. They want to hang you up by your thumbs.”
Chaney said amiably: “That happens every now and then. St. Jerome upset the Church with his radical translation in the fifth century, and they were intent on stretching more than his thumbs before somebody quieted them down. He produced a new Latin translation of the Old Testament, but his critics didn’t exactly cheer him. No matter — his work outlived them. Their names are forgotten.”
“Good for him. Was it successful?”
“It was. You may know the Vulgate.”
Saltus seemed vaguely familiar with the name, but the Major was reddened and fuming.
“Chaney! You aren’t comparing this poppycock of yours to the Vulgate?”
“No, sir,” Chaney said softly to placate the man. He now knew the Major’s religion, and knew the man had read his book with loose attention. “I’m pointing out that after fifteen centuries the radical is accepted as the norm. My translation of the Revelations only seems radical now. I may have the same luck, but I don’t expect to be canonized.”
Kathryn van Hise said insistently: “Gentlemen.”
Three heads turned to look at her.
“Please sit down, gentlemen. We really should get started on this work.”
“Now?” Saltus asked. “Today?”
“We have already lost too much time. Sit down.”
When they were seated, the irrepressible Arthur Saltus turned in his chair. “She’s a hard taskmaster, mister. A martinet, a despot — but she’s trim for all of that. A really shipshape civilian, not an ordinary government girl. We call her Katrina — she’s Dutch, you know.”
“Agreed,” Chaney said. He remembered the transparent blouse and the delta pants, and nodded to her in a manner that might be the beginning of a bow. “I treasure a daily beauty in my life.” The young woman colored.
“To the point!” Saltus declared. “I’m beginning to have ideas about you, civilian researcher. I thought I recognized that first one you pulled, that candle thing.”
“Bartlett is a good man to know.”
“Look, now, about your book, about those scrolls you translated. How did you ever get them declassified?”
“They were never classified.”
Saltus showed his disbelief. “Oh, they had to be! The government over there wouldn’t want them out.”