Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (2 page)

"How's that?" the
OD asked.

"I
said the gyros are running now, sir," the sergeant covered up hastily. It
would be somebody's neck if they found out that the patrol squads had to wait
for gyros to get revved up. But what could they expect after eighteen years of
nothing happening in a godforsaken boiler factory like this? "Did you
notify the major?"

The
sergeant rubbed his chin. "I thought you'd better do that, sir. He's not
going to like it, sir."

With
a groan the OD spun the telephone dial, listened to it buzz as the clock hand
hit midnight. The sergeant was dead right about that one—the major was
not
going to like it.

North
of the plant, the leading ground truck churned slowly up the single 18-inch
asphalt wheel strip, its headlights picking out the trees and tangled brush
edging the road. Rain beat down unmercifully out of the blackness. Somewhere
a-head was the automatic alarm station that had sounded the Geiger alert, a
buried monitor triggered to pick up any hard radiation that passed within
thirty yards of it.

"Light
up ahead," the driver said suddenly, slamming the brake. The ground truck
skidded to a halt, almost jumping the strip. Stabilizing gyros jerked against
the buffer springs to keep the two-wheeled truck from tipping.

"Put
the beam on them," the corporal said, cranking his burp gun and letting
the safety lid snap open. "It may be what we're after." He stuck his
head out of the cab, shouting back at the trucks behind,
"
Squooshers
.
. . Ready!"

"Hold it," the driver said.
"They're signaling back. It's a DIA field unit."

The
corporal blinked.
"DIA?
What in hell are
they
doing out here?" He stuck his head out again.
"Hold it . . . Hold it . . . DIA
Unit."

As the buzzing of the
squooshers
subsided, the corporal stumbled out of the truck, shielded himself against the
rain, and started ahead toward the light. "What's a DIA unit doing
here?" somebody mumbled behind him. "Those guys hit faster than
strychnine. It's only been ten minutes since the alarm went off."

"Fifteen,"
said the corporal, feeling
a tightness
in his throat
as he approached the two men holding hand flashes on them.

"Army?" a voice
asked.

"That's
right. 923rd Security Police, Wildwood Power Plant, Corporal
Bams
." He held his badge forward in the flashlight
beam.

"All
right, Barns. Put those burp guns back on safety," the voice said. Barns
knew better than to argue with DIA men, or even to ask for
counter-identification. He didn't want any damned investigation made on him. He
didn't want anything to do with the DIA.

From the third truck back a lieutenant came
stamping up in the mud.
"Barns, why are we stopped?
I didn't give any orders to stop here."

"All right,
Lieutenant, knock it off," the DIA man said.

"Who in the hell are
you?"

"Carmine,
DIA." The man pulled a badge out of his civilian raincoat pocket, flashed
it briefly.

"Oh," the
lieutenant said, much quieter. Barns grinned.

Someone
came out of the darkness, a big man in a belted black raincoat and
plasticovered
hat. He had enormous shoulders and a heavy,
powerful body, yet he had come down the road without a sound, like a tiger
coming down to a watering place.
"That Security?"

"That's
right, Mr. Bahr," Carmine answered. The man called Bahr moved forward
between the two DIA men and squinted at the lieutenant.

"You're
Axtell, attached to the Wildwood Plant, right?" It was not a question, but
a direct statement of fact, as if he were challenging Axtell to dare to be
anyone else. "All right, I'm Julian Bahr . . . DIA. We picked up an alarm
on our atomic net and got a field unit in here. Was that signal inbound or
outbound?"

It caught Axtell unprepared. "I . . .
don't know, sir."

"Then
well assume it was outbound. U-metal theft," Bahr said. "Whoever it
was can't have gotten far yet in this brush, and we know he's not on the road.
I want you to deploy your men in a large circle around the strike point. Send
your trucks out in a pincers and drop a man off every quarter mile with an
eye-beam. Stick to open country, grass and roads, and use the eye-beams for a
fence. I don't want anything larger than a chipmunk to get out of the strike
area. Now
movel
"

Lieutenant
Axtell saluted, rather uselessly, since Bahr was a civilian and did not return
it, then hurried back down the road to the trucks and began shouting. Tires
squealed, men pushed and cursed, gyros screamed as the trucks broke away from
the road strip and started rolling in both directions out across the soggy,
rain-swept fields.

Down
the road a siren whined, and the trucks stopped moving. A winking red turret
light was dodging swiftly up the road between the half-evacuated trucks. Then
the car, a sleek, mud-spattered Volta 400 one-wheeler, ground screaming to a
halt a few yards from Bahr and the other DIA men. A short, lean,
raincoated
officer with major's leaves on his shoulders was
the only one in the car. He jumped out into the mud.

"Axtell!"
he screamed.

Axtell
bellowed from down the road, started running through the mud. The major turned
on the DIA men, a flashlight sweeping across their faces, picking up their
civilian clothes. "What are you doing here?"

Axtell
stumbled to a halt, saluted.
"Lieutenant Axtell reporting,
sir."

The major swung around to him. "What's
the matter with the road? Is there a tree down?"
"No,
sir."

"Then
why are you pulling the trucks off into the mud? You're not at strike point
yet. Have you spotted something out there?"

"Sir . . . these DIA
men told me
. .

The major looked from the lieutenant to the
DIA men and back. His face was gray and heavily lined, but his eyes were bright
with anger.
"DIA?
What's the Department of
Internal Affairs doing on a military security problem?"

"We
picked up the alarm on our atomic net," Bahr said, moving forward.
"We've been waiting here for over ten minutes," he added pointedly.
"I directed your man here to circle the strike area and fence it in."

"On
whose authority?"
Alexander asked.

"Atomic
Security Act of 2005," Bahr said. "That was an outgoing signal from
your road monitor. That means a theft of U-metal from your plant until proven
otherwise."

"You
haven't been called in on the problem," the major said.

Bahr snorted. "You were a little too
late to call us in. We've already got road blocks mounted. We had a 'copter unit
in the air at the time of the alarm. We stationed it immediately." He
hunched his shoulders forward, with a glance at Carmine. "You can take it
from me that there's no vehicle between here and the road block. Whoever broke
U-metal out of that plant has taken to the woods by now."

"Then I'll send a unit
in after them," the major snapped.

"In this downpour?"
Bahr said. "You're fifteen minutes late
lor
that. The only chance now is a circling
move."
Bahr
slarted
to move
off down the road.

"Let's
just get something straight here," the major said. "I'm Major
Alexander, 923rd Security. These are my troops, my territory, and my problem. I
don't want a lot of Washing-Ion Intelligence men nosing around this power
plant."

Bahr
suddenly looked at him very hard. "My name is H.ihr," he said.
"Assistant Director, DIA." He flashed his badge,
then
moved forward a step to look at Alexander coldly. "And I'd like to know
what sort of a security system you're running that lets hot-stuff get five
miles outside your compound before it's picked up by monitors. I'm also curious
lo
know why you're trying so hard to delay an
organized
search."

Alexander
felt a sudden knotting in his stomach. DIA meant investigation, and nowadays
investigation could mean
a
full
scale DEPCO psych-probe, months of interrogation, •
lability
downgrading. . . .
ruin
. And DIA could play the
sluggish arrival of his security troops into anything they wanted. . . .

"I'm not trying to delay anything,"
he insisted. "I am trying to carry out a security plan.
Unless
you want to make this a straight DIA project."

"I'm
making it a joint maneuver," Bahr said shortly.
"My
organization and your personnel.
Ill
have more
DIA units here in fifteen minutes. In the meantime I don't want anybody or
anything to get out of that strike area."

"All
right," Alexander said, "then we'll combine efforts." He turned
to Axtell. "Lieutenant, deploy your troops on Mr. Bahr's orders."

Axtell
saluted, ran down the road, and began shouting. The squeal of tires and treads
began once again.

Bahr
turned on his heel and slogged across the road strip into the clearing where
his 'copter had landed, Carmine at his side. Angrily, Major Alexander followed
through the mud. A man was standing by the 'copter radio. "Have we got
anything?" Bahr asked the radioman.

"Unit B just reported
in, Mr. Bahr.
Seven 'copters."

"Good. Give them the strike point
co-ordinates. Tell them to use an expanding square and drop their
Geigers
through the trees on cables at thirty-yard
intervals." He turned to Alexander. "What we need to know now is how
much U-metal was stolen. Do you know how much is missing from the plant?"

"No U-metal is missing from the
plant," Alexander said tightly. "I checked on the way out. There are
exit monitors at all the gates and none of them have recorded
radioactives
going out."

Bahr
stared at him. "Are you trying to tell me that a road alarm goes off five
miles from your plant indicating hot-stuff being moved
away
from the pile, and yet nothing has disappeared out of the plant?"

"I
don't know
what
tripped the road
Geiger," Alexander snapped. "All I know is that nothing could have
been smuggled from the plant. Our security system is quite thorough."

"Your
security system stinks," said Bahr. "Your guards are probably asleep,
or in town drunk. You couldn't even get a truck full of troops up here for
fifteen minutes. By God, Carmine, make a note of that. We'll have a look at
that security system before we're through here." He turned back to
Alexander. "Do you by any chance keep an inventory of the U-metal at the
plant?"

"Certainly,"
Alexander
said,
his face very red.

"Well,
take another one right now. Shut down the whole lousy boiler factory if you
have to, but I want every slug of U-metal and every cubic inch of slush
accounted for."

"You're
out of your mind," Alexander said. "All of greater St. Louis is using
our heat and power. You can't just turn off a power plant the way you cut a
station off the air."

"Look,
Major," Bahr grated.
"There's been a U-metal theft.
It's slipped past your security system. I
want to know how much metal has been taken. Now are you going to order the
inventory, or am I?"

"You
have no authority inside that compound," Alexander insisted.

Bahr
looked at him. Then he turned and walked to the 'copter. He grabbed up the
radio mouthpiece. "Get me Unit C," he said.

The radioman spun the dial rapidly.
"Listen," Alexander burst out. "I warn you . . ."

"This
is Bahr," the big man said into the mouthpiece.
"Bahr
talking.
There is a change of plan for Unit C. I want all personnel to
land inside the compound at the Wildwood Plant. I said
inside.
I want a complete inventory on the U-metal in
that plant. I want to know how much has been stolen, and I don't care how you
find out."