The Transvection Machine (20 page)

“No problem,” Crader had assured Tromp. “We can hold Ganger till Monday without a hearing, and then leave it up to the president what to do with him. I’ll be down with Earl first thing in the morning.” Then he’d called Earl and told him to take a day off.

It had not been a Sunday of rest for Carl Crader, though. First there’d been the startling warning from Euler Frost, followed by a quick search by CIB bomb experts for the explosive device in his flightcase. By the time it had been deactivated and examined, morning had drifted into afternoon. He spent the rest of the day reading everything he could find on the transvection machine, viewing holograms of the original tests, preparing his report for the president.

Now, as the rocketcopter settled gently onto the south lawn of the New White House, Crader was ready for the meeting. He knew very well that McCurdy would not be happy. A good deal of the president’s prestige had stood behind the transvection machine, and especially behind Vander Defoe’s appointment to the cabinet. The video newsmagazines, never strong supporters of McCurdy, would have a field day with the news when it broke.

Maarten Tromp was awaiting them in his office, looking unhappy. “I haven’t told him the news yet. I thought I’d let you do that.”

“Thanks a lot,” Crader said glumly. “Do we go right in?”

Tromp nodded and led the way. President McCurdy was behind his desk, wearing old-fashioned eyeglasses as he scanned the morning video news printouts and intelligence reports. “Well,” he said, getting quickly to his feet to shake Crader’s hand, “Maarten said you had something important. I hope it’s good news. After Vander’s death and all my troubles with Congress I could use some good news.”

Crader shook his head sadly, taking a seat opposite the presidential desk. “I’m afraid it’s more bad news, sir. We’ve taken Hubert Ganger into custody and he’s admitted that the transvection machine is a fraud—a carefully planned fake from beginning to end.”

McCurdy frowned slightly, but otherwise his expression did not change. “A fraud in what way? I know it’s not operational yet …”

“It never will be, sir. I suppose the very name of the thing should have tipped us off. The idea of transvection—of people transported through space by the devil or otherwise—has always been something of a myth. When Ganger first named it he was telling us the machine was a myth too.”

“
A myth!
”

Crader nodded and plunged into his story, watching the president’s face grow steadily longer. He did not pause until he had finished it all, detailing the workings of the trick, the existence of the twin Chang sisters, and Vander Defoe’s part in it all.

“You mean,” the president asked finally, still not fully grasping the true extent of his folly, “that there’ll be no transvection of colonists to Venus?”

“There’ll be no transvection of anyone anywhere, sir. The thing doesn’t work.”

“My God!”

A light on his desk flashed, signaling a secretary requesting entry with an important message. McCurdy pressed the release and the door slid silently open. A gray-haired middle-aged woman entered without looking left or right and handed the president a video news printout. “It just came over,” she said. “They thought you’d want to see it.”

McCurdy read the printout with pursed lips and then passed it to Crader:
T-L VDNWS
0945—
THE TRANSVECTION MACHINE, DEVELOPED BY VANDER DEFOE, LATE SECRETARY OF EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL DEFENSE, WAS BRANDED A FRAUD TODAY BY PROFESSOR MICHAEL ZINLEY OF YALE UNIVERSITY. PROFESSOR ZINLEY WAS ASKED TO EXAMINE THE MACHINE IN THE COMPANY OF PROFESSOR HYMAN VAN DYKE OF THE GOVERNMENT RESEARCH CENTER AND NEWSMEN FROM THIS NETWORK FOLLOWING AN ANONYMOUS TIP THAT THE MACHINE, DESCRIBED BY SOME AS THE GREATEST INVENTION OF THE MID-TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, WAS REALLY A CAREFULLY CONCEIVED SWINDLE.

“How did the video news get this already?” President McCurdy demanded.

“I have no idea, sir.” Crader stopped reading the dispatch, trying to puzzle out its origins in his own mind.

“Is there any chance this Ganger talked to the press?”

“We’ve had him isolated, sir.”

McCurdy’s face had gradually clouded with fury. “Damn it, Carl, when something like this happens it’s bad enough, without the video news getting the story before I do!”

“We’ll investigate it right away, sir. I suppose it must have been the HAND people who told them. No one else would have known about it.”

Maarten Tromp’s pocket pager gave off a deep-throated beep and he rose from his chair. “I have a call, sir, if you’ll excuse me. It may be about this matter.”

McCurdy nodded. “You can take it on my vision-phone.”

Tromp walked around to the back desk and snapped on the switch. He asked the operator for his call, but no picture lit the screen. “Hello?” he urged. “Hello?”

Then there was a voice in his earpiece, and the blood seemed to drain from his face. He covered the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Gretel Defoe. She sounds sick or something.”

“Switch on the speaker,” Crader told him.

Tromp flipped another switch and her rasping voice filled the room. “… Federal Medical Center. They’re going to bomb it.”

“Who, Gretel? Who?”

“HAND. Graham Axman. Federal …”

“When?”

“What day is this? Am I still alive?”

“Gretel! For God’s sake! …”

“Monday. Is it Monday morning?”

“Gretel!”

But the phone was dead. She’d broken the connection. Tromp turned, white-faced. “My God! Do you think we can believe her?”

“We’ve got to,” Crader decided. “Mr. President, if you can have someone warn the Federal Medical Center, I’d suggest that Earl and I get right over there.”

“I’m going too,” Maarten Tromp decided. “And we’ll get some police to Gretel Defoe’s apartment as well.”

“Good,” Crader agreed. “Come on, then. We can take the rocketcopter.”

The Federal Medical Center was only three minutes away by rocketcopter, and when they settled to a landing on the artificial grass of the rolling front lawn it all still seemed peaceful. The place had always reminded Crader of an old-style college campus, before the days of teaching machines and electronic learning courses. Jazine had told him once it looked like an insurance office, and perhaps that was an apt description too. As in insurance offices, where the computer’s gray transistorized circuits could determine premiums and cancel policies on little more than a preprogrammed whim, so here too lives were saved or doomed depending upon the computer’s reading of a blood count or its skill at long-distance surgery.

Every hospital in the country was tied in to the Federal Medical Center, and the banks of computers churned day and night, sending out answers and diagnoses to those who waited. The machines, once programmed, needed amazingly little care, and Professor Ainsworth operated with a small staff of skilled technicians in their ubiquitous white coats.

It was Ainsworth who met them at the service entrance, obviously alarmed. “What is all this? The president says …”

“That’s all we know,” Crader told him. “There may be nothing to it, but we can’t take the chance. What sort of security force do you have here?”

“Next to nothing. We keep one armed guard in each wing of the building, but that’s all. We have no reason for more.”

“You might today,” Crader said. “I know for a fact that some HAND agents are back in this country, including a man named Frost. Show me a floor plan of your place.”

“Very well.” With Ainsworth leading the way they hurried along a spotless corridor to his office. He gestured toward the plan on the wall, which showed the Federal Medical Center as a small circle with two long, protruding wings. “We’re now in the center area of executive offices. The North Wing is blood tests and computerized surgery. The South Wing is general diagnostic work and medical records. I think we can …

The first explosion sounded very far away, muffled perhaps by the banks of insulating computers and the long stretches of sterile, soundproofed corridors. Crader stopped speaking, uncertain that he’d even heard it, but Earl Jazine was already drawing his laser pistol. “It’s started,” he said. “From back that way.”

“My God!” Professor Ainsworth had gone white as the walls. “What can we do? Is help on the way?”

“Contact the president, Earl. Tell him we’re under attack. Professor, signal your two security men.” He turned to Maarten Tromp. “Can you handle a weapon?”

“If I have to.”

“You have to.” Crader glanced once more at the floor plan as the muffled sound of a second explosion reached them, closer this time. Then, “Earl, take Professor Ainsworth and head out to the North Wing, toward the explosions. Tromp and I will try to cover the South Wing, until help arrives.”

“
My machines!
” Ainsworth screamed suddenly, as a searing blast of laser light reflected down the corridor. “Do something! For God’s sake, do something!” At last he seemed to have realized what was happening, and what it meant to his work.

“Come on,” Crader commanded, passing his own laser pistol to Maarten Tromp. “This way.” He watched as Jazine sprinted down the north corridor, with Ainsworth reluctantly following, and then headed at a somewhat slower pace into the South Wing. He’d picked up a stunner pistol in the rocketcopter, and he held it ready.

“All the action seems to be in the other direction,” Tromp observed as the sounds of stunner concussions and laser crackle reached them.

“HAND won’t neglect this end,” Crader said. “Keep that laser as a last resort. Damn things do more harm than good. I’ll use my stunner if we come on any of them.”

Ahead, as if on cue, a black-clad figure crossed the corridor, carrying a laser gun and a plastic bomb. “Stop!” Crader shouted. The man turned and raised his laser, and Crader fired the stunner at his chest. He toppled backward, hitting the wall, and slid unconscious to the floor.

“Good shooting,” Tromp muttered as they ran forward. “Know him?”

Crader studied the youthful Oriental face. “No. Never saw him before.”

They entered one of the main computer rooms, walking quickly between the long banks of machines with their flashing lights and spinning reels of magnetic tape. Near the front of the room, by a shattered window, a white-coated technician was crumpled on the floor. Crader knelt by him and felt his pulse. “Only stunned,” he decided. “See any more of them?”

Tromp lifted his laser gun and peered around the bank of machines to the next aisle. “All clear here.”

“Be careful, Maarten. That one didn’t come alone.”

There was another explosion from the opposite wing, and Crader peered out the broken window, searching the skies for signs of police or army rocket-copters. They should be on their way.

“There’s one!” Tromp shouted, raising his gun.

“
Don’t shoot!
” Crader ordered, and fired a blast from his stunner. The concussion chipped the plastic finish on the opposite wall, but the black man he’d fired at had dodged in time. Almost at once a fiery explosion shot up from the middle row of machines.

“The bastard’s throwing hydrobombs,” Tromp panted.

“Keep low. I’ll get another shot at him when he breaks from cover.”

The room was rapidly filling with smoke from the burning circuits. Sparks of electricity leaped and showered in the air. “Isn’t there even a sprinkler system here?” Tromp gasped.

“Water’s no good against an electrical fire. But there are other safeguards.” Almost as he spoke steel doors slid shut across the room’s two entrances, and fire alarm bells began to clang. “The windows are the only way out now, Maarten. It keeps the fire from spreading outside this room.”

“This smoke’ll kill us. We’d better get out of here.”

The black man who’d thrown the grenades had apparently decided the same thing. Suddenly he broke from cover, dashing toward the hole in the shattered window. Crader half turned and fired his stunner. The man went down hard, skidding along the polished floor.

“All right,” Crader said. “I guess it’s time to go.” He looked out the window again, and this time he could see a trio of rocketcopters circling for a landing. Help had arrived at last.

“There’s one more!” Tromp yelled. “Over there!”

Crader started to turn, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. A glancing blast from a stunner ripped his own weapon from his hand. “Don’t move!” the black-clad man commanded, covering them both with his gun.

Carl Crader managed a rueful smile. “Well, Mr. Frost, so we meet again.”

Euler Frost glanced over his shoulder at the approaching rocketcopters and then back at Crader and Tromp. “Don’t move,” he repeated. “Either of you.”

“Just what do you plan doing with us?”

“You’re going to get me out of here.”

Crader looked at Tromp and saw that the laser gun had slipped from his fingers. “I don’t know about that,” he said quietly.

“Frost—you said Frost! Is this Euler Frost, the Venusian?” Tromp stepped forward, facing the gun. “The man you said tried to kill Vander Defoe?” He was squinting at Frost’s face, perhaps trying to remember the hologram in his files.

“This is the man,” Crader confirmed. “And I suppose Axman is part of this operation too?”

Euler Frost nodded, holding the gun steady. “He’s taking the other wing.”

“You haven’t a chance, you know. The police and army are landing right now.”

Frost motioned toward the burning computer, where the smoky fire gave evidence of spreading to other machines. “We’ve done our work,” he said.

“The same way you killed Vander Defoe?” Tromp growled. “You and your band of murderers don’t care about a better world! You’re only intent on destroying what we have now!”

It seemed for a moment that Frost’s own anger might explode in return. Still covering them with the stunner, he pulled a second gun—a laser pistol—from his belt. Crader saw it happening through stinging, smoke-filled eyes, and stepped quickly between them. “No more killing, Frost. You’re in enough trouble now.”

“Trouble? Look out there—your men are the ones in trouble!”

It was true. Axman and the others had been prepared for the police arrival. Great rolling clouds of smoke were billowing up across the artificial lawn, obscuring the rocketcopters and the agents of HAND. From the other wing, closer now, the explosions still came.