Earth Cult (16 page)

He was dazed and insensible to his surroundings, his faculties all adrift, lost in a swirling mist that fogged his eyes and ears. His head roared.

Time fled away and he wondered if he was unconscious. He couldn't be dead (it was unlikely) because his stomach was hurting where Leach had first hit him. He was probably unconscious, he decided, which under the circumstances wasn't a bad condition to be in; better than being beaten to a pulp by a demented dwarf with the hands of an ape grafted on to the ends of his arms.

He was quietly contemplating who might have performed the operation when a voice, clear and distinct and close to his ear, said:

‘Next time we'll find a phone-booth and you can change into your cape and boots.'

Frank said hazily, ‘What happened, did you hit him with something?'

‘Not me,' Helen said. ‘I'm the type of girl who stands idly by during a fight and bites her knuckles.'

Frank opened his eyes and the world was still there, much as he'd left it, except that Lee Merriam and two other men were holding Dr Leach, pinning his arms behind his back. Lee Merriam saw that Frank was conscious and bent over him, asking how he felt.

‘Sick,' Frank replied truthfully.

‘My hero,' Helen said, and with Lee Merriam's help got him to his feet.

Leach had quietened down, though his eyes were intensely dark and brooding in his broad pale face. There was a gleam of spittle on his chin.

‘What happened?' asked Lee Merriam.

‘I think you ought to put that question to him,' Frank said. ‘I wanted to see Professor Friedmann and when I insisted he became what you might call violent.'

‘Without putting too fine a point on it,' Helen said.

‘Professor Friedmann isn't here.'

‘I'm slowly beginning to accept that fact. Where is he, do you know?'

‘We're not sure. He could be underground.'

‘He
could
be? Don't you know?'

‘We're trying to locate him. He was seen early this morning but we're not sure if he went down to the detection chamber or not. Everyone who goes underground is supposed to make an entry in the log; either the Professor didn't make an entry or he's gone off somewhere without telling anyone.'

‘It's important that I speak to him as soon as possible,' Frank said. He massaged his stomach muscles and winced.

‘Do you feel all right?'

‘No,' Frank said. ‘But with sympathetic care and understanding I should pull through.'

Lee Merriam turned to the two men. ‘Take Dr Leach to the sick-bay. Tell Smitty what happened and ask him to give the Doctor a shot to calm him down. And stay with him,' he added. He turned back and said in a low voice, ‘Come into the office, I want to talk to you.'

They stepped inside the hut and went into Professor Friedmann's office.

Lee Merriam said, ‘Shut the door.' He went to a filing cabinet and took out a blue folder, opened it and gave Frank a typewritten sheet to read. He said, ‘I'm breaking all the rules, but to be honest with you I don't know what to do next. We can't locate the Professor and Dr Leach has been behaving strangely.'

‘We noticed,' Helen said dryly.

‘I need to discuss this with somebody,' Lee Merriam went on, ‘and you seem the only guy around who might have a clue as to what's happening.'

Frank tried to laugh but quickly decided against it when his stomach seized up with cramp. He glanced at the piece of paper, his expression of curiosity slowly changing to one of puzzled consternation.

‘What is it?' Helen said.

‘Autopsy report.'

Lee Merriam nodded grimly. ‘On the four men who were killed underground.' He waited a moment and said, ‘What do you make of it?'

Frank shook his head. ‘I don't know.' He looked at Lee Merriam. ‘All four died of
brain
tumours?'

‘I thought they drowned,' Helen said, frowning and glancing from one to the other.

‘That was the story we put out,' Lee Merriam said. ‘Read the rest of it,' he told Frank. ‘It gives the probable cause of the tumours consistent with the pattern of growth and taking into account the medical histories of the four men. I think with “probable cause” he's hedging his bets. It's just that he doesn't want to come straight out and say it.'

‘Say what?' Helen asked, becoming impatient.

Frank read the concluding paragraph of the report out loud:

‘ “In my opinion the probable cause of such severe damage to the cerebrum and cerebral cortex would seem to be as a result of high-intensity radiation over a relatively short period of time – hours or at the most days, rather than weeks or months. It isn't possible to specify the type of radiation, nor its source, though no doubt this could be deduced from further analysis of damaged brain tissue in a suitably-equipped research laboratory.”'

‘They died of radiation sickness?' Helen said.

‘They died of brain tumour caused by a high dose of radiation, as yet unspecified,' Frank corrected her. He handed the sheet back to Lee Merriam. ‘We know of one possible source – the chlorine-37 in the tanks decays into argon-37 when a neutrino interacts with it. And argon-37 is radioactive.'

‘That's true,' Lee Merriam said. ‘But as I understand it the level is so low that they have trouble detecting it at all. They have to let it build up in the tanks and flush it out with helium. Even then there's hardly much more than that given out by a luminous watch.'

‘So it doesn't seem as though the detection tanks were the source.'

Lee Merriam shook his head. He closed the blue folder and returned it to the filing cabinet. The mine is as clean as a whistle. We received this report yesterday morning and I went down with a counter and checked it out personally. There's not a whisper. How can four men be subjected to a fatal dose of radiation when they're shielded by over a mile of solid rock? You could detonate a hydrogen bomb on the mountain and providing the shaft was sealed good and tight the fall-out wouldn't affect them. How in hell—'

He swept his arms wide in a gesture of bewildered defeat.

‘What did Professor Friedmann make of the report?'

‘I'll tell you the truth, Frank, it isn't only Karl Leach who's flipped his lid round here. Lately both he and the Professor have been acting weird. It's as if they know
something – some kind of secret – and they're doing everything they can to keep it from the rest of us. When I asked Professor Friedmann about the report he just ignored me, didn't even bother to reply. I said shouldn't we notify the Institute of Astrophysics and he told me to mind my own business. He said I wasn't a member of the scientific staff and it was none of my concern how he chose to run the station. In the past he's always been a pretty accommodating sort of a guy but in the last few weeks things have certainly changed. I don't know what to make of it all or what I should do about it.'

He folded his arms and stared through the small window at the bright orange latticework of girders supporting the winding gear. His eyes had the absent fretful look of a deeply worried man.

‘I think the first thing we should do is find Professor Friedmann,' Frank said. ‘Are you in communication with the detection chamber?'

Lee Merriam nodded. ‘But there's no one answering, which doesn't tell us very much.'

‘Then you'd better send somebody down.'

‘I already have.' He looked at his watch. ‘The electric track hasn't been repaired on the lower level, so it's going to take them some time to reach the detection chamber. I should know something within an hour.'

‘And if he isn't there?'

Lee Merriam pursed his lips while he considered this. ‘I guess there's no option. I'll have to call the Institute and report on the situation and ask them to send a team out here. With the Project leader missing and his assistant in no fit condition, that's about all I can do.'

Helen caught Frank's eye. She said quietly, ‘Yesterday the babies at the hospital, today the four men who were killed in the mine. Is that the link you've been searching for?'

‘You mean the radiation?' Frank said. ‘It's a link, all right, but you tell me what it means. These men died from it and yet the babies seem to thrive on it almost as though it were a form of nutrition. There's a connection sure enough,
it's just that we don't know where the radiation is coming from and what's causing it.'

‘Are those the kids that have been born over the past two years?' Lee Merriam asked. ‘The ones in Radium?'

‘That's right. We went to look at them yesterday. You've heard about them?'

Lee Merriam went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a fat file of newspaper clippings, which he dumped on the desk. ‘Every report on those kids since the day the first one was born. Professor Friedmann had his secretary comb every newspaper within a fifty mile radius of here for items on them. There's also a complete list of their parents' names and addresses, the date each kid was born, and how they're progressing. Every last detail is right here.'

‘Did he say why he was so interested in them?' Frank asked.

‘Guilt complex,' Helen said, her eyes flat and cold.

‘No, he didn't give a reason, and it never occurred to me to ask him,' Lee Merriam admitted. ‘You know what scientists are like, they live in a closed world and tend to do things that non-scientists find inexplicable, even a little weird sometimes.'

‘Ain't that the living truth,' Helen said with heavy sarcasm.

Frank looked at the folder on the desk and then at Lee Merriam. ‘We'd better find Professor Friedmann,' he said. ‘Looks like he's got some explaining to do.'

They drove back to Gypsum and Frank dropped Helen off at the newspaper office. He made her promise that the
Bulletin
wouldn't run the story on what had caused the death of
the four scientists until they'd had the chance to talk to Professor Friedmann and find out what explanation he had to offer.

‘You bend over backwards to be fair, don't you, Frank?' Helen said in a tone that was more accusing than complimentary.

‘I don't want to be responsible for wholesale panic in this town. Imagine what the Telluric Faith would make of this if they got to hear about it. Let's at least give Friedmann the opportunity to put forward his side of the story.' He added meaningfully, ‘The press does have a responsibility not to alarm the populace unnecessarily.'

‘Which shouldn't outweigh its responsibility to publish the truth,' Helen retorted. She ducked back in the car and kissed him on the mouth.

‘Is that a bribe?' he asked her.

‘In lieu of services yet to be rendered.'

‘I'll add it to your account.'

‘It'll be paid in full,' she promised him, and skipped across the sidewalk into the office.

He drove along the main street and parked outside the Cascade Hotel. Again he was struck by the normality of everything: it didn't seem feasible that beneath the fabric of this quiet, orderly, ostensibly peaceful community there should lurk the paranoia of religious fanaticism. And yet, as Frank had to admit to himself, it was no less incredible than what had been happening at the Deep Hole Project – men who died of brain tumours caused by radiation, scientists who disappeared without warning or who were suddenly transformed into violent raving madmen. All of this had to fit together somehow; all these events formed a pattern that either he was too ignorant to understand or too dense to see.

As for black vibrating objects which had the power to transport human beings through 150 feet of solid rock… he preferred to suspend his rational faculties for the time being and postpone final judgment. There were quite a few things not dreamt of in his philosophy, Frank realized, and he wasn't going to compound ignorance with rank stupidity.

Part of the square was flooded from a burst main, the aftermath of the previous night's tremor, and a gang of workmen was hard at work in a trench, lowering new sections of pipe into position.

Frank went through into the lobby. Spencer Tutt was behind the desk, propped on his elbows in his usual posture of lackadaisical indifference, his lean chest and jutting shoulders as spare as a scarecrow's. With what seemed great and wearisome effort he raised himself upright and reached behind him into a pigeon-hole.

‘Cable arrived for you, Mr Kersh. ‘Bout half hour ago. Didn't know where you could be reached.'

Frank took it, nodding his thanks. He said, ‘Can I get something to eat around here?'

Spencer Tutt sucked on a tooth and shook his head. ‘Dining-room won't be open till tonight. There's a coffee shop along the street. Get a meal there or a sandwich. They stay open all day.'

Frank turned away and Spencer Tutt went on, ‘Are you plannin' to stay on here, Mr Kersh? I'm only askin', you understand, ‘cos Walt Stringer was wonderin'. He asked me to ask you.'

‘At twenty dollars a night I'd have thought he'd be glad of all the custom he can get.'

Spencer Tutt shrugged lazily. ‘I'm only doing what he told me.'

‘Tell Mr Stringer from me that when I'm ready to leave I'll let him know.' He smiled without using his eyes. ‘All right?'

‘Sure ‘nough, Mr Kersh. I'll tell him that.'

Frank went along the street to the coffee shop and sat in a corner booth, ordering Chicken Maryland with a side salad, fruit salad and cream, and black coffee. While he waited for it to be served he opened the cable, lit a cigarette, and concentrated on what Fred Lockyer had to tell him about the latest theoretic research data on neutrinos. When the meal arrived he had read it through once and was about to read it again; Fred Lockyer must have thought it important enough
not to economize on the telegram charge, nor to spare the smallest detail. It was all here, in terse technical shorthand that stretched Frank Kersh's knowledge of high-energy particle physics to the utmost. But he grasped the basic essentials, and those were precisely what he needed to know to complete the picture.