Chapter IV

Base Directory Service gave Stone both Reva’s addresses--her prefab, and the building assigned her for her project.

Hanging up the phone, he pushed his way out of the crowded drugstore, then stood hesitating on the curb of the broad, bright-lighted parkway that ran round the parking center.

Home, or office? Which should it be?

He frowned.

The base alarm system blasted in the same instant.

The noisy crowd fell suddenly silent. People paused, fell back a step. Eyes shifted, searched.

The siren’s shrill scream died away.

Ripples of apprehension rose on its echo. Little groups drew close together, milling aimlessly.

A tiny chill ran through Stone. He had no choice now. Distance was the vital factor, and the office address was the closest.

With an effort, he held his steps even and unhurried. Crossing the parkway, he headed south on the nearest street.

All about him, men and women were emptying from the prefabs--peering this way and that talking excitedly. Off to the right, out by the Project Building motor pool, a jeep’s lights flashed on. A gunned motor roared. The lights swerved north as the vehicle raced away.

Seconds later, another followed. Then another, and another.

Elsewhere, in all directions, other motors droned as the base security system came to life.

The chase was on.

Stone veered between the buildings, out of sight, then broke into a dogtrot.

A cross-street. Pausing in the shadows, he strained his eyes against the night, searching both ways for signs of the blockade the jeeps were setting up, according to plan.

It was a good plan, too; he’d helped devise it. Once the vehicles reached their stations, a rabbit couldn’t move across the base undetected.

After that, there’d be a block-check, certain capture.

But until then--He strode across the street, not too fast till again he reached the welcoming shadows. There, once in the darkness, he broke into a pelting run.

More cross-streets; more speed. Then the last line of prefabs.

Beyond them spread the dim expanse of the Related Projects Area, with its high wire fence and guarded gates.

Stone halted, breathing hard, and smoothed his shirt and combed his hair. Then, boldly, he strode towards the nearest point of entry.

The guard on the gate watched through the mesh, cold-eyed and silent, as he approached. Stone said, “Message for Doctor Coughlin, Materials Research. Here’s my pass.”

He extended his wallet as he spoke. Cradling his rifle, the guard unlatched the gate and reached out to take it.

Stone smashed the free-swinging gate violently against him.

The guard lurched back; tried to jerk up his rifle.

Side-stepping, Stone lunged in close. Savagely, he hammered an uppercut to the other’s jaw.

The guard dropped.

Ripping the man’s shirt into strips, Stone bound and gagged him in seconds. Then, snatching up the rifle, he ran for the shadows.

The small, one-story brick building that housed Reva’s project stood apart from its fellows, far back in an isolated corner of the Related Projects Area. A steel framework like a miniature radio tower rose close beside it, perhaps fifty feet tall.

Smashing open the locked door with the rifle-butt, Stone snapped on the lights and surveyed the place.

* * * * *

The room in which he stood was a typical office. Filing cases banked one wall. A desk flanked by bookshelves stood against a second. There was a long table littered with papers and, incongruously, a small bowl of flowers. Three chairs, a water cooler, and a coatrack completed the furnishings.

Hurriedly, Stone crossed to the nearest of the two inside doors.

The first led to a washroom.

The second was locked.

Stone hesitated, a vague uneasiness upon him. It was as if the tension that rode him had been suddenly, sharply heightened. His muscles ached; his fingers showed a tendency to tremble.

The humming impinged on him, then.

It was as vague as his uneasiness--a sound that was not a sound, almost.

Stone turned slowly--straining his ears; trying to trace the murmur to its source.

Finally he placed it: It centered on the door beside which he stood.

He swung the rifle-butt. Once--twice--three times.

Lock and door stood fast. Once again Stone hesitated. Then, reversing the rifle and standing aside to avoid a ricochet, he triggered a shot at the lock.

Metal jangled through the echo. Another blow with the butt, and the door creaked open.

The windowless room beyond, from its cramped size, had probably been planned primarily for storage.

Now, though, it overflowed with electronic equipment, from floor to ceiling a buzzing maze of tubes and condensers and coils and complicated circuits such as Stone had never seen before.

Could this machine be responsible for his uneasiness and the strange behavior on the base?

There was one sure way to find out.

Narrow-eyed, nerves atingle, he pivoted, searching for the master switch ... located it at last, set at the far end of the narrow space between a transformer and the wall.

He reached out; gripped the shiny black handle.

Then, before he could throw it, a harsh voice from the office behind him snarled, “Move an inch and you’re dead!”

Stone went rigid.

“Now come out! On the double!”

Stone’s spine tingled. He let go the switch and slowly turned.

Colt in hand, hard-eyed and lethal, Sergeant Bjornberg stood hunched in a gunman’s crouch on the far side of the office.

Glines flanked him.

Stone’s lips felt stiff. Of a sudden he could feel death’s hand on his shoulder.

Bjornberg moved a quick step forward. “Come out, I said!”

The smirk on Glines’ fat face would have fitted a cat better. A well-fed cat, toying with a mouse.

Stone sucked in air.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Stone?” It was Glines talking now--sneering, mocking. “You took a gun away from me last night. Why don’t you take the sergeant’s?”

“Shut up!” rasped Bjornberg. And then, to Stone: “I said come out! Away from that equipment!”

‘_Away from that equipment_....’

Ever so slowly, Stone let out the deep breath he’d been holding. “No, thanks, Sergeant.”

“What--!” Bjornberg’s finger went white on the trigger.

* * * * *

Stone smiled stiffly. “I said no, Joe. I’d rather let you shoot--because whether you hit me or not, that forty-five’s going to tear up a lot of transistors.”

Bjornberg’s mouth worked. “Damn you, Stone!” And Glines came in high and shrill. “You should have hit him with the barrel from behind, Sergeant! You shouldn’t have warned him!”

Ever so casually, Stone leaned back against the framework of the machine.

“I’ll still take him!” Bjornberg snarled. “Here, cover me!”

He passed the Colt to Glines and started forward, hands raised in a judo fighter’s guard.

Stone lunged for the switch.

This time, there was no turning back, no hesitation. He slammed the black handle down even as Bjornberg crashed against him.

The humming died in a click of circuit breakers. The tubes began to dim.

Twisting, too cramped to strike a blow, Stone grappled with Bjornberg. Together, they rocked back to the far side of the doorway, fighting with knees and teeth and elbows.

Then the sergeant broke free; leaped back, out into the office.

Instead of trying to follow, Stone spun about and smashed his foot through a device that looked like an off-beat magnetron. Clutching whole handfuls of wiring, he tore one of the upper racks of equipment out bodily.

Then Bjornberg was upon him again. The man’s weight hammered him down. He caught a wicked blow in the back of the neck that sent him sagging to his knees on the floor.

Now a fist jarred his head back. Desperately, he caught one of Bjornberg’s ankles and wrenched it up and around, twisting with savage force.

It was the sergeant’s turn to crash to the floor. Rolling clear of him, Stone scrambled to his feet.

His adversary did likewise.

Then, as they started to circle, each searching for an opening, a voice cut through: “Carl! Sergeant! Stop it!” It was Glines, almost shouting. “Stop it, I tell you! Stop it!” Wary, still gasping for breath, Stone drew back.

It was only then that it came to him, dazedly, that the strange tension he’d felt for the past twenty-four hours had left him. In spite of Bjornberg’s blows, his head seemed clearer than it had been since the night before. His muscles no longer ached with strain. His hands had lost their tendency to tremble.

Instead of all such, now, an intense, overwhelming weariness hung upon him; nothing more.

Across from him, Bjornberg shook his head jerkily, as if to clear his brain. The hard lines had vanished from his face. Suspicion clouded his eyes no longer. They were open now, wide open, frank and friendly the way Stone had always known them.

Over by the desk, Glines shifted awkwardly, the Colt forgotten on the floor beside him. His mouth hung loose, and he looked stunned, incredulous--a fat, good-natured little man with just a bit of the old maid in him. “Carl,” he mumbled, swabbing perspiration from his forehead, “Carl, what have I been doing?”

Bjornberg broke in: “Did I really say you killed that woman, Carl? My God, I must have been crazy!”

Of a sudden Stone’s legs were weak as water. He stumbled to the nearest chair; slumped in it.

“This whole base has been crazy,” he grunted.

Glines’ pudgy hands moved nervously. He groped: “But how--I mean, what happened--?”

“It was driven crazy, that’s what happened,” Stone said tightly. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That machine in there did it.”

“The machine--?” This from Bjornberg. His broad brow wrinkled. “I thought it was a project--”

“And you thought it was important too, didn’t you? Important enough to kill me for?”

The sergeant’s face grew red. He shifted from one foot to the other. “I guess I did, Carl. Only now--well--damn it, I’m all mixed up!”

“Who isn’t?” Stone turned to Glines. “How’d you feel--last night, when you heard about me, I mean?”

* * * * *

The fat man squirmed. “It’s--Carl, I don’t know how to tell you....” He chewed his puffy lower lip. “As well as I can remember, I’d been feeling tight and jittery for a long time--a week or more. Then, when the sergeant woke me up and told me about you--and that dead woman--and your story about the monster--well, it was strange. All at once I was angry. I hated you, and I was afraid of you, somehow. I kept remembering all kinds of little things, and by the time I got to the office I--I knew you were a Communist. I _knew_ it.” Nervously, again he swabbed his forehead, scarlet now as Bjornberg’s. “I hope you understand, Carl; I just can’t explain it.”

“I understand, all right,” Stone said grimly. “The trouble is, I can’t explain it either. Not all of it. Not the important parts.”

“But the machine, you said--”

“Sure, the machine did it. But why?” Stone leaned forward. “Look: First of all, somebody had to design it. Then somebody else had to approve it, order it built. Why?”

Glines shook his head helplessly. Bjornberg stared at the floor.

Stone pressed on: “Second, it didn’t seem to cause any trouble--outside of making everybody jittery--till I came along. But when I did, everybody went haywire. Except me. Or maybe I did, too. Maybe I didn’t really fight a monster.

“But I think I did, and I’ve got some scars to prove it. So that brings up a third point: Why didn’t it throw me, like it did the rest of you? How is it I could figure out that something was wrong on the base, and that this project was responsible, when nobody else could?”

“It’s crazy, just crazy, that’s all,” muttered Bjornberg.

“Maybe. But I doubt it.” Stone rose stiffly. “There’s somebody I want to ask some questions--” He stopped short. “Tell me this: How’d you happen to come here looking for me?”

Glines frowned. “That was my idea, Carl. Mr. MacDougal sent for me after he and Doctor Adams finally got out of that room at the hospital and sounded the alarm for you. He asked me if I had any idea where you might go--after all, I’d worked with you for a long time. At first I said I didn’t know. Only then Doctor Adams made some remark about your--your condition, and said she hoped you wouldn’t twist your delusions of persecution around to where you’d try to do something to her, like you’d done to that dead woman. Mr. MacDougal said she didn’t need to worry about it, that he’d see that she got home all right, and they left. But the more I thought about what she’d said, the more sense it made, and I began to wonder if you might not try to sneak out here and booby-trap the building. Finally, the thought of it got to worrying me so much that I called Sergeant Bjornberg and came out here with him.” Glines paused, laughed self-consciously. “It sounds silly now, doesn’t it? But at the time nothing in the world seemed so important as to make sure nothing happened to Doctor Adams or her project.”

Reva. Always, it came back to Reva.

“Good enough,” Stone said. Tight-lipped, he started for the door.

“Where you going?” Bjornberg demanded.

Stone held his voice flat and level. “To see Doctor Adams.”

“That figures,” the sergeant nodded. “We even got a jeep back by the next building to take you to her.”

“Besides,” Glines chimed in, opening the door, “you’ll need us to pass you through the blockade.”

He started down the outside steps.

The next instant, his wild scream of terror split the night.