As carefully and silently as he could, he mounted the gully’s sloping wall. Lying flat among the stones near the top, he peeked over the edge.
Several meters away a woman appeared to be photographing something on the ground in front of her. Though her back was turned to him, Ralph knew that he had never seen her before. She was dressed in jeans and a faded blue shirt, with her hair pulled back into a golden curve along her neck. The camera she held in her hands was some battered but functional-looking antique, the size of a small ham—it was no wonder that the ancient mechanism of its shutter made so much noise.
Her body blocked the view of whatever she was photographing. She moved a few steps and clicked off another shot from a different angle.
Ralph pushed himself a little higher above the gully’s edge, trying to see what was on the ground before her. His foot brushed a few small rocks and sent them clattering down the slope.
The woman quickly lowered the camera from her eye and half-turned her head at the noise. Ralph caught a glimpse of her precise-featured profile against the sky before he had slipped out of sight below the rim of the gully.
He waited several seconds, then cautiously raised his head. The girl with the camera was gone. He scrambled up and went to where she had been standing. A quick glance over the barren spot of desert showed nothing but rocks, scruffy brown brush and sand.
What was she taking pictures of? he wondered. Maybe I should have just gone up and asked her. That was the trouble with paranoia—complications multiplied until their source became perfectly insulated from the world. But then, he thought, she did take off when she heard me. How come?
The sun was now almost directly overhead. Ralph, a little dazed with heat, wiped the sweat from his neck and walked away from the spot.
Whatever he was looking for didn’t seem to be here. He wondered if he would ever see the girl again.
Several minutes later he came to the Thronsen Home security fence.
Well over ten feet tall, its intertwined wire diamonds shone in the sunlight like a radiant net stretching across the desert. The black cables of the alarm system snaked their way through the mesh.
Ralph walked slowly along the fence, until he could at last see a corner of one of the Thronsen Home buildings. Avoiding the thin, black cables, he stopped and examined the fence. The rigid metal wire was nearly as thick in diameter as his thumb. It would have taken some doing to have cut through very many of the links, in addition to not setting off the alarms.
So how did Stimmitz and Helga do it? thought Ralph.
As he puzzled over the newest additions to the questions circling in his head, he continued walking beside the fence. A few meters farther on the questions grew even more numerous.
A small, neat square was missing from near the bottom of the fence.
The hole was just large enough for a person to crawl through. When Ralph bent down to examine it, he saw that the ends of the severed links were smooth, as though they had been melted through by some kind of torch.
Attached to each segment of the alarm cables were small alligator clips with wires leading to a small metal box lying on the ground—a bypass device, he assumed.
He stood up and backed a few steps away from the fence. The whole set-up was more sophisticated than he could have anticipated. Maybe, he thought, there was more to Stimmitz, than he let on.
Nervously, he glanced around the area. No one was visible on either side of the fence. The coast is clear, he found himself thinking. He stepped up to the fence and touched the cut wires. As he hesitated, his eyes scanned the distant Thronsen House complex.
If he sneaked in, found nothing sinister, didn’t get caught-—then he’d be able to forget all this stuff and go back to his old life, for what it was worth. If he got caught, then he’d be canned. But that was preferable to straddling the two universes until he split up the middle.
Yeah, he told himself, but what if there is something going on in there and I do get caught? Then whatever happened to Stimmitz will happen to me, too. And it won’t be just getting fired, either. He shook his head, dislodging a few lines of sweat down into his collar, and started to turn away from the fence.
But what if I don’t find out what they’re doing in there? And it’s something— dangerous? The thought halted him for a few seconds. Then he went back to the fence and knelt down in front of the hole. I don’t see what good this is going to do anyway, he thought grudgingly as he crawled through.
Once on the other side, he crouched and ran, veering from one clump of dry brush to another. He suddenly felt ridiculous, as though he were fumbling through an antique grade B combat picture. If only Blenek could see me now.
He covered the last few meters to the nearest building in a burst of speed. Panting, he pressed his back to the gray concrete wall and listened.
He hadn’t seen or heard anyone yet. Cautiously, he sidled along the wall.
He came to the corner of the building, hesitated, then peeked around. A metal door was propped open with a folding chair. A large electric fan had been placed in the opening and was whirring softly to itself.
In a few more seconds he was alongside the open doorway. He peered into the dark interior, then stepped around the electric fan and inside the building.
The air smelled of ozone, just as the line shack did back at the base. To one side of the door was an unoccupied desk. Its lamp cast a small circle of light on the floor of the dark, cavernous space.
Ralph froze—he had heard someone breathing. The sound changed into a gurgling snore, and he relaxed. As silently as possible, he crossed over to the desk and looked around it. On the other side a man was sleeping on a low cot, his head resting on his arm. The same laxness in security from the unmended hole in the fence showed here as well. Maybe, thought Ralph, some of them weren’t really expecting anyone ever to try to get in here.
It must have been Stimmitz’s bad luck to have been seen by someone.
Still cautious, Ralph walked farther into the building. As the ozone smell grew stronger, a luminous blue rectangle seemed to be floating in the distance in front of him: a small window set into a door. He looked through the glass and noted a corridor lined with banks and panels of electronic equipment, illuminated by fluorescent lights overhead.
The door yielded to his touch and he stepped into a long corridor, lined with equipment panels. There was the same manufacturer’s insignia—PKD Laboratories—as on the electronics boards in the base’s line shack, but this assemblage was much bigger. The corridor went on for some distance, the banks of equipment towering over Ralph’s head as he walked past them.
Another door opened into a dark L-shaped passageway. He stepped into it, then heard footsteps approaching from the other direction.
Pressing himself into the corner of the L, he saw the corridor’s other door open, momentarily framing a man carrying a clipboard. In the darkness of the passageway the man didn’t see Ralph, but let the door close behind him and walked past, leaving by the other door. Ralph let out his breath.
The passageway’s other door opened onto a much larger space. A few rows of dim fluorescent lights dangling on cables from the ceiling produced a semi-twilight in the space. Ralph sensed that he was alone here, too, until he heard the sound.