Ambrose half-turned in the driving seat. “How did you do that?” he said over his shoulder.
“Do what?”
“You began to whistle a tune and then we got the same one on the radio.” Ambrose was obviously intrigued. “Do you have an ear set?”
“No. I just started to whistle.” Snook failed to see why the other man should be so interested in a trivial occurrence which, while not common in his own experience, was not exceptionally rare either.
“Have you thought of the odds against that happening?”
“They can’t be too high,” Snook said. “It happens to me every now and again.”
“The odds are pretty fantastic—I know some people in ESP research who would love to get their hands on you.” Ambrose began to sound excited. “Have you ever considered that you might be telepathic?”
“On radio frequencies?” Snook said sourly, wondering if he should revise his estimate of Ambrose’s standing in the scientific world. He had gleaned that the man had a doctorate in nuclear physics and was director of a planetarium -qualifications which, Snook belatedly realised, were strangely incompatible and no guarantee that he was not dealing with a plausible crank.
“Not on radio frequencies—that wouldn’t work,” Ambrose replied. “But if thousands of people all around you were listening to a tune on their radios, you might pick it up directly from their brains.”
“I usually live where there’s nobody around me.” Snook began to have doubts about Ambrose’s whole concept of an antineutrino universe. Back in the hotel, with the gin glowing in his stomach, and in the verbal high tide of Ambrose’s enthusiasm, it had all seemed perfectly logical and natural, but…
“Do you get any other indications?” Ambrose was unabashed. “Premonitions, for example. Do you ever get a feeling that something’s going to happen before it actually does?”
“I…” The question caused upheavals in Snook’s subconscious.
Prudence came in, unexpectedly. “I once read about a man who could hear radio broadcasts because he had metallic fillings in his teeth.”
Snook laughed gratefully. “Some of my back teeth are like steel bollards,” he lied.
“All kinds of effects can crop up if somebody is close to a powerful radio transmitter,” Ambrose persisted, “but that’s got nothing to do with…” He paused as the music on the radio was cut off by the strident chimes of a station announcement.
“We interrupt this programme,” an urgent male voice said, ‘because reports are coming in of a serious incident on the border between Barandi and Kenya, near the main road from Kisumu to Nakuru. It is reported that fighting has flared up between the Barandian Defence Forces and a unit of the Kenyan Army which had crossed into Barandian territory. A communique from the Presidential office states that the intruders have been repulsed with heavy casualties, and there is no danger to Barandian civilians. This is the National Radio Corporation of Barandi serving all its citizens, everywhere.” The chimes sounded again and the music returned.
“What does that mean, Gil?” Ambrose looked out through the side windows as though expecting to see bomb flashes. “Are we going to be mixed up in a war?”
“No. It sounds like another exercise by Freeborn’s Mounted Foot.” Snook went on to tell what he knew about Barandi’s military organisations, ending with a brief character sketch of Colonel Tommy Freeborn.
“Oh well, you know what they say,” Ambrose commented. “Inside every nut there’s a colonel trying to get out.”
“I like that.” Prudence laughed and moved even closer to Ambrose. “This trip is turning out to be more fun than I expected.”
Snook squirming in the rear seat, lit a cigarette and thought dismal thoughts about the difficulties of remaining in control of one’s own life. In this case, he could pinpoint the exact moment at which things had begun to slip from his grasp—it was when he had yielded to moral pressure from George Murphy and agreed to see the hysterical miner. Since then he had become more and more entangled. It was high time for the human neutrino to slip away, to regain his remoteness in a new phase of life in a distant place, but the bonds had grown strong. He had allowed himself to interact with other human particles, and it now seemed likely that he had strayed inside the radius of capture…
When they reached Snook’s bungalow the car lights showed three men sitting on the front steps. Remembering his visit from the soldiers in the morning, Snook got out of the car first. He was relieved to see that one of the men was George Murphy, although the other two were strangers. They were boyish-looking Caucasians, both with sandy moustaches. Murphy came forward, smiling and handsome in his silvercords, and waved a heavily bandaged hand.
“Gil,” he said happly. “I’ll never know how you did it.”
“Did what?”
“Got this scientific commission set up. Alain Carrier called me and said the mine was officially closed until an investigation had been completed. I’ve to cooperate with you and the team.”
“Oh, yes—the team.” Snook glanced at the car in which Ambrose and Prudence were busy gathering up possessions. “We haven’t exactly got a Manhattan Project going here.”
Murphy looked in the same direction. “Is that all there is?”
“That’s all, so far. As far as I can make out there was quite a bit of Press interest in our ghosts, but the way Helig’s story was handled mustn’t have impressed many scientific bodies. Who have you got here?”
“Two kids from the electronics plant—Benny and Des, they call themselves. They’re so keen to see the ghosts that they came out from town on a motorbike this afternoon. It was right after I spoke to Carrier so I told them to hang around until you got back. Do you think they’ll be able to help?”
“That’s something for Doctor Ambrose to decide,” Snook said sombrely, “but, if you ask me, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
As Snook would have predicted, Prudence Devonald avoided even setting foot in his kitchen, and so he spent the next few hours making coffee on an almost continuous basis. Between times, he watched carefully as Ambrose explained his theory to Murphy, Benny Culver and Des Quig. The young men, it turned out, were New Zealanders with good electronic engineering qualifications. They had been attracted to Barandi by the high salaries offered in the electronics plant which President Ogilvie had set up four years earlier in an attempt to broaden the country’s economy. Snook got the impression that they were clever individuals and he was interested to note that, after a period of free-wheeling discussion, both completely accepted Ambrose’s ideas and became feverishly enthusiastic.
George Murphy was no less convinced, and at Ambrose’s request went off to his office to fetch layout charts of the mine workings. When he returned, Ambrose taped the charts to a wall, questioned Murphy closely about the exact positions of the sightings, and drew two horizontal lines across the sectional view. He measured the distance between the lines, then drew others above them at equal spacings. The eighth line lay just above ground level.
“The bottom line is approximately the level the Avernians rose to on the morning fhe first one was seen by the miner, Harper,” Ambrose said. “The next one up shows roughly the level they reached on the following morning when Gil took his photographs, and the scale of the chart indicates there was an increase of just over five hundred metres. Assuming a constant rate of separation between Avernus and Earth, we can predict levels they will attain on successive days. Two days have passed since the last sighting, which means that around dawn this morning we can expect the Avernians to reach here.” Ambrose touched the fifth line from the bottom, one which ran through an area in which extensive tunnelling was indicated.