“What better place for concealment? And why do you assume that the aliens in the ship would immediately take off across the countryside? Seems to me they’d need information first—about the country, routes, places of concealment—from somebody acquainted with the area. Like Russel, for instance.”
Bahr scratched his jaw. “They’ve been picking up men all over the country . . . we’re sure of it.” He turned to Carmine. “How fast could you get Van Golfer up here? With a complete outfit?”
Carmine calculated rapidly. “Maybe three hours.”
“Get him,” Bahr said. “This time there won’t be any Wildwood tricks. If that ship is in there I’ll get it out if I have to dam and drain the lake to do it.”
Several hundred feet of birdlife flickered by on the screen, good, bad, occasionally out of focus. Then suddenly there was a switch to a sky shot, without a filter, and nearly into the sun. Bahr squinted at the brightness, and slapped mosquitos in the little field-projection tent.
“Must have seen the ship,” Bahr said. MacKenzie grunted as die next sequence came on. It was much darker, taken across the lake . . . something slanting down toward the water, a splash as a flat, discus-like object scaled like a rock, hit a second time and sank. The camera followed the bounce, then showed a long stretch of film as the lake settled and the waves damped down.
“Too far from the camera to see much,” Bahr said. “We’ll have some blown-up stills.”
“The lighting was very bad,” MacKenzie said.
Something small and indistinct popped out of the lake like a cork, fell back and floated. The camera followed it, a barely visible dot, as it approached from the middle of the lake. The dot left a small wake, approached within a few yards of shore, directly under the camera, then began to rise out of the water.
It was quite clear, in spite of the slight tremor of the camera. A bulbous, gleaming helmet two feet in diameter, and below the helmet a dripping pressure suit, a bisymmetrical body, completely humanoid except for grotesquely long thin legs. It slogged out of die water, easily ten feet tall, and moved toward the camera.
Abruptly, the film stopped.
MacKenzie scowled at the screen as the lights came on. “That’s part of your answer,” he said. “It landed in the lake.”
“Get those lung men down there,” Bahr said. “I want two ’copters overhead with cables down, ready to pull them out fast. And, Carmine!”
“Yes, Chief?”
“I want a report on the slop back of the tent and the stuff from Bernstein’s chest.”
“I’ll check,” Carmine said. “And they’re holding an urgent for you at the radio.”
Bahr found the radio ’copter and took the yellow message sheet. It was signed by the New York DEPEX chief.
BAHR DIRECTOR DIA STOP REFERENCE PROJECT FRISCO STOP JAMES CULLEN AND ARNOLD BECK REPORTED MISSING SUNDAY PM FROM UNIV MICH FOUND WANDERING IN DAZED CONDITION CENTRAL LOS ANGELES BY POLICE 2200 HOURS STOP TOTAL FORTY THREE OTHERS MISSING SIMILAR CONDITIONS STOP BELIEVE IMPORTANT STOP PLEASE ADVISE
Bahr suddenly grinned at Carmine and handed him the slip. “Some of our missing people are turning up. Frank, I want you to take over here. Don’t miss a thing. Keep MacKenzie with you if he insists, but have those men find that ship if it’s the last thing you do. I want to know why they’re here, and what they’ve done to this man Russel.” He paused. “I’m going to see what they’ve done to Cullen and Beck . . . .”
The radioman looked up from the headset. “Another urgent, Chief. Personal from Abrams in Chicago.”
The message was just three words long, and Bahr swore when he saw it.
“What is it?” Carmine asked.
“Alexander,” Bahr said hoarsely. “Our nice, innocent, bumbling Major Alexander. He’s broken out of the Kelley.”
Carmine blinked at him. “Chief, if he gets through to DEPCO . .
“He won’t.” Bahr scribbled a quick message with Project Frisco priority and handed it to the radioman. “Abrams knows his stuff. Or he’d better.”
MacKenzie came up the path with a smocked, balding DIA technician. “We were right about Bernstein. It was a proteolytic enzyme of some sort.” The technician pointed to a small ulcerous area on the back of his hand. “Still active as hell.”
“And the slop?”
“Nothing there. The food wasn’t chewed at all, just decomposed by acids and spewed out.”
Bahr nodded. “All right, keep at it. And call down a ’copter. I have to go to Chicago. Carmine! Nail that ship.”
He was actually looking right at the lake when the blast came—a sudden burst of light and a column of water shooting into the air, followed immediately by the shock wave which hit them as a muffled crash. The light went out, and the trees rocked and squeaked as the sudden wind passed through them. Bahr stared, then broke at a dead run for the water’s edge, MacKenzie at his side.
“Those poor bastards,” somebody said.
“Poor devils didn’t have a chance,” MacKenzie muttered. Still Bahr said nothing. For a long moment his stubborn, determined face had sagged, drained of color, the heavy jaw hanging slack as if he could not breath. Then he turned away, his head still shaking.
“It’s too late to do anything now,” MacKenzie said.
“Again,” Bahr said slowly. “They did it again!” With an effort, he caught control again, and his jaw shut and clenched. His eyes met MacKenzie’s, and the two men looked at each other, the hostility strangely absent from Bahr’s eyes. For an instant MacKenzie had the fleeting feeling that if he could say exactly the right thing, things between him and Bahr would be permanently different, but no idea came, and then the moment had passed. Bahr’s face was hard and remote as he turned back to Frank Carmine.
“Get some medical up here. Do what you can, and then join me in Chicago. Be ready to bring MacKenzie down when he wants to go.”
Carmine nodded and went about organizing the DIA activities while Bahr, still sobered to an almost passive point, climbed into the ’copter and sat brooding and silent while die rotor whined up to speed and lifted off the ground.
The last thing he saw in the glare of the floodlights was Paul MacKenzie, standing back out of the way and watching him, and he wondered, vaguely, at the look of puzzlement and concern on the BRINT man’s troubled face.
Chapter Seven
“You can’t question these poor devils now,” Dr. Petri said. “They’re exhausted. They’re just recovering from shock. The only reason they’re not under heavy sedation right now is because your men told me . . . .”
“I know, I know,” Bahr said impatiently. “It’s too bad, but they’ve got to be questioned.”
“You’ll get much farther with them if you’ll let them sleep for eight hours.” The doctor flicked a 3-V switch. “Look at them.”
Bahr glanced at the 3-V image of the Critical Ward. The men were there, not two, but seven—including the eminent James Cullen of the University of Michigan, one of the leading socio-economists in the country, and, it was said, one of the ten men in the world who fully understood the social, economic, and psychological implications of the Vanner-Elling equations. They were sprawled in R-chairs, glassy-eyed and haggard, trying to relax and sleep in the face of the sustaining drugs they had been given. They did not look like the leading scientists of a nation. They looked like living dead men.
“We can’t wait,” Bahr said. “If we let them sleep, they won’t come out of it for days, and we’ve got to know what happened to them.”
“Mr. Bahr, you don’t understand the strain . . . .”
Bahr pulled himself to his feet. “You take care of the bodies, Doctor. I’ll make the decisions about what we do with them. I’ll want each of them in a separate room, and I’ll want somebody with me who can keep them awake. Is that clear? I mean wide awake.”