Eric was surprised by the height of the man, well over six feet. “When?”
“Soon.” Brown extended a hand. “Very soon. Good hunting, Doctor Price, and be alert about protecting yourself. I’ll get back to you.”
Eric shook Brown’s gloved hand, and the grip was firm.
Brown turned and exited the room through a back door Eric hadn’t noticed before. Alan Nutt was waiting right by the hallway door.
“Hear anything?” asked Eric, and smiled.
“No sir, but I can’t say I didn’t try,” said Alan, and smiled back.
“Now take me to your leader, Sergeant Nutt.”
“Yes sir.” And Nutt led him down the hallway to Davis’ office.
Davis looked startled. He came around his desk, sat on the edge of it, and motioned for Eric to sit down. “That didn’t take long.”
Eric sat. “I think he was mainly looking me over. He had my entire file, and wanted me to know he had it. Any ideas about who gave it to him?”
“Not from me. What did he want from you?”
“He wants me to kill someone,” said Eric, and nearly laughed at Davis’ reaction: the darting of his eyes, the Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.
“Who?”
“The guy responsible for the sabotage on the base, probably the same guy behind Johnson’s murder. He thinks it’s one of his own people.”
“Figured that,” said Davis. “I’ve only seen three of them, including Brown. Shifty-eyed, never speak English when I’m around, heavy accents when they talk to me. Don’t trust any of them. Did he identify a target for you?”
“No. We have to draw the guy out into the open to get at him. Brown says he comes and goes, but didn’t explain how. Are there ways to get in and out of the base I don’t know about?”
Davis’ reaction was uncontrolled. His face flushed, and he looked over his shoulder as if to see if someone were watching him from behind. “There are two hundred miles of tunnels on this base, and lots of places to hide. If whoever you’re looking for is right here, it’ll be like trying to find him in Phoenix.”
“Brown said he’d help me. Seemed to think he knew how to find the guy. Any ideas?” Eric was watching Davis closely, now, looking for any reaction.
But Davis was calm again. “Might have. Let me think about it. Is that all you and Brown talked about?”
Nice recovery, thought Eric. “No. He was impressed by my luck getting inside Sparrow. There’s supposed to be more info in the manual that we got. He’s going to check on that, and correct it.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“He said he’d get back to me soon.”
“You let me know when that happens, Price. I mean it.”
“Sure, and I mean it, too. If you withhold any information I need to nail your saboteur, my complaint will go directly to the Pentagon, and you can expect an early retirement.”
Davis snarled. “I’d expect that from you. I knew you were a killer from day one. Thought I might be your target. Still think it.”
“I never lied to you about my credentials, Colonel. I just left out a few things. And killing you has never been part of my assignment. I really do want this project to succeed.”
“So do I, Price, or I wouldn’t still be here. This is my last assignment; I know that. There’s no glory, the public will never know about it, I’m just trying to end a career successfully.”
And maybe put a lot of private money aside, thought Eric. “I understand, Colonel,” he said.
“So where do we go from here?” asked Davis.
“Nothing changes, except cooperation between you and me. I’ll work on Sparrow as before, but I want more time on the base to get around for any leads on our bad guy. If I find him, he’s dead, witness or not. From this day on I’ll be carrying, on and off the base. You need to authorize that with security. Without it, I’m out of here.”
“Done,” said Davis. “I’ll get back to you on expanding your base access. I have to talk to Brown first.”
“Checking up on what I just told you?”
“That, too. There are things you should know that Brown and his people will have to approve first. It has to do with how Sparrow was brought in, and how we get parts for it.”
Eric stood up. “Okay, talk to him. I want to know something today, and I’ll be in the test bay with Sparrow until evening.”
“I’ll call Sergeant Nutt when I have something.”
“Only in the test bay. I don’t want him shadowing me everywhere I go on the base. It draws attention to me.”
“I’ll talk to Brown, like I said. Right now, you stick to the test bay.”
Eric sighed. “You have one day to get me what I want. Otherwise I call my boss, and leave you to handle the mess by yourself.”
Davis nodded. “Fair enough.”
Nutt was waiting right by the door again when Eric exited the room. He grinned. “Listened for gunshots, but didn’t hear any.”
“My faithful companion,” said Eric. “You can now spend the day with me in the test bay, but be ready for a call from Davis. I’m sure you can find other things to do besides following me around and recording my profound thoughts.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. Interesting enough duty.”
Eric slapped him on the shoulder.
They took the elevator down to bay level. The light was low, and Sparrow was a dark shape in the center of the vast floor. A helicopter was near one wall, probably brought in through the massive, rolling door in the ceiling. A bright light beneath its belly looked like someone working with an arc welder there.
The little lamp was lit on the table next to Sparrow. The instruction manual was there, closed, a piece of paper protruding from it like a bookmark. Steward had left a one-page report for him on the field measurements. No electric or magnetic fields had been observed, all measurements made mechanically and crudely by looking at forces between closely spaced panes of cardboard. Steward’s estimated uniform energy density of three joules per cubic meter in the opened belly of Sparrow was large compared to quantum levels, but ridiculously low for powering a spacecraft.
Eric opened the manual where the piece of paper protruded. It had marked the section referring back to an apparently missing piece of the document. When he’d placed the paper there it had been blank. He was surprised to see writing on it, printed in a small, neat hand. He unfolded the paper, and read it.
‘If you have questions, ask the golden man, and the answers will be revealed to you.’
Oh, my, thought Eric.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE GOLDEN MAN
They ate Mexican uptown and went back to Nataly’s shop. Marie was working the counter when they entered, and smiled at what she thought was secret knowledge.
They went in the back and Nataly made green tea. Eric put her loaned book down on a table.
“Have you finished it already?”
“I’ve put myself to sleep with it the past three nights.”
“Oh, it bored you.”
“Not at all. Well written, and easy to read. Very interesting.”
“But you don’t believe any of it.”
“Sorry. I guess I have a bookkeeper’s mind. The distances between stars are just too huge. I doubt we’ll ever get together with other intelligent societies, even though I think it’s likely they exist. And if they were here, I don’t see why they’d pick on places like Sedona, or some guy’s front yard in Switzerland. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t see why distance is important,” said Nataly, and poured tea. They sat down at a round, glass-topped table with a plate of cookies on it. “I mean, alien societies could be far advanced and have ships that travel much faster than ours.”