Eye in the Sky (1957)

EYE IN THE SKY

by

PHILIP K. DICK

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents
are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to events
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 1957 by A. A. Wyn, Inc.
First published by Ace Books

All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or
mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Collier Books

Macmillan Publishing Company

866 Third Avenue
, New York, NY 10022

Collier Macmillan Canada, Inc.

Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dick, Philip K.

Eye in the sky/Philip K. Dick.—1st Collier Books ed.

p.
cm.

ISBN 0-02-031590-2

I.
Title.

PS3554.I3E9 1989

813’.54—dc20 89-9949
CIP

First
Collier Books Edition 1989

10
98765432

Printed in the United States of America

I

THE PROTON BEAM DEFLECTOR
of the Belmont Bevatron
betrayed its
inventors at four o’clock in the afternoon of
October
2, 1959. What happened next happened instant
ly. No longer adequately
deflected—and therefore no longer under control—the six billion volt beam
radiated
upward toward the roof the
chamber, incinerating,
along its way, an observation platform
overlooking the
doughnut-shaped magnet.

There were eight people
standing on the platform at
the time: a group of
sight-seers and their
guide. Deprived of their
platform,
the eight persons fell
to the
floor
of the
Bevatron chamber and
lay
in a state of injury
and
shock until
the
magnetic field had
been drained and the hard radiation partially neutralized.

Of the eight, four required
hospitalization. Two, less severely burned, remained for indefinite
observation. The
remaining
two were
examined, treated, and then
released.
Local
newspapers
in San
Francisco
and Oakland reported the
event.
Lawyers
for the victims drew up the beginnings of lawsuits. Several officials connected
with the
Bevatron
landed
on
the scrap heap, along with the
Wilcox-Jones Deflection System and its enthusiastic inventors.
Workmen appeared and began repairing the
physical
damage.

The incident
had taken only a few moments. At 4:00 the faulty deflection had begun, and at
4:02 eight people had plunged sixty feet through the fantastically charged
proton beam as it radiated from the circular internal chamber of the magnet.
The guide, a young Negro, fell first and was the first to strike the floor of
the chamber. The last to fall was a young technician from the nearby guided
missile plant. As the group had been led out onto the platform he had broken
away from his companions, turned back toward the hallway and fumbled in his
pocket for his cigarettes.

Probably
if he hadn’t leaped forward to grab for his wife, he wouldn’t have gone with
the rest. That was the last clear memory: dropping his cigarettes and groping
futilely to catch hold of Marsha’s fluttering, drifting coat sleeve… .

* * * * *

All
morning Hamilton sat in the missile research labs, doing nothing but sharpening
pencils and sweating worry. Around him his staff continued their work; the
corporation went on. At noon Marsha showed up, radiant and lovely, as sleekly
dressed as one of the tame ducks in Golden Gate Park. Momentarily, he was
roused from his brooding lethargy by the sweet-smelling and very expensive
little creature he had managed to snare, a possession even more appreciated
than his hi-fi rig and his collection of good whiskey.

“What’s
the matter?” Marsha asked, perching briefly on the end of his gray metal
desk, gloved fingers pressed together, slim legs restlessly twinkling.
“Let’s hurry and eat so we can get over there. This is the first day they
have that deflector working, that part you wanted to see. Had you forgotten?
Are you ready?”

“I’m
ready for the gas chamber,” Hamilton told her bluntly. “And it’s
about ready for me.”

Marsha’s
brown eyes grew large; her animation took
on
a
dramatic, serious tone. “What is it? More secret
stuff
you can’t talk about? Darling, you didn’t tell me
something important was happening today. At breakfast
you
were kidding and frisking around like a puppy.”

“I
didn’t
know at breakfast.” Examining his wrist watch, Hamilton got gloomily to
his feet. “Let’s make it
a
good meal;
it may be my last.” He added, “And this
may
be the last sightseeing trip I’ll ever take.”

But
he
didn’t reach the exit ramp of the California
Maintenance
Labs, let alone the restaurant down the
road
beyond the patrolled area of buildings and installations.
A uniformed messenger stopped him, a tab of
white
paper folded neatly and extended. “Mr. Hamilton,
this is for you. Colonel T. E. Edwards asked me to give
it
to you.”

Shakily,
Hamilton unraveled it. “Well,” he said mildly
to
his wife, “this is it. Go sit in the lounge. If I’m
not
out
in an hour or so, go on home and
open a can of pork
and
beans.”

“But—” She gestured helplessly. “You
sound so—so
dire.
Do you know what it
is?”

He
knew
what it was. Leaning forward,
he
kissed
her
briefly
on her red, moist, and rather
frightened
lips. Then,
striding rapidly down the corridor
after
the
messenger, he headed for Colonel
Edwards’ suite of offices,
the
high-level
conference rooms where
the
big
brass
of the
corporation were sitting in solemn session.

As he seated himself, the thick,
opaque presence of middle-aged businessmen billowed up around him: a compound
of cigar smoke, deodorant, and black shoe polish. A constant mutter drifted
around the long steel
conference table. At
one end sat old T. E. himself, forti
fied by a mighty heap of forms and
reports. To some
degree, each official had
his mound of protective papers,
opened briefcase, ashtray, glass of
tepid water. Across from Colonel Edwards sat the squat, uniformed figure of
Charley McFeyffe, captain of the security cops who prowled around the missile
plant, screening out Russian
agents.

“There you are,” Colonel
T. E. Edwards murmured, glancing sternly over his glasses at Hamilton. This
won’t take long, Jack. There’s just this one item on the conference agenda;
you won’t have to sit through anything
else.”

Hamilton
said nothing. Tautly, with a strained expres
sion,
he sat waiting.

This is about your wife,”
Edwards began, licking his fat thumb and leafing through a report. “Now, I
understand that since Sutherland resigned, you’ve been in full charge of our
research labs. Right?”

Hamilton nodded. On the table, his
hands had visibly faded to a stark, bloodless white. As if he were already
dead, he thought wryly. As if he were already hanging by the neck, squeezed out
from all life and sunshine. Hanging, like one of Hormel’s hams, in the dark
sanctity of the abattoir.

“Your wife,” Edwards
rumbled ponderously on, his
liver-spotted
wrists rising and falling as he flipped pages,
“has been classified
as a plant security risk. I have the report here.” He nodded toward the
silent captain of the plant police. “McFeyffe brought it to me. I should
add,
reluctantly.”

“Reluctantly as hell,”
McFeyffe put in, directly to Hamilton. His gray, hard eyes begged to apologize.
Stonily, Hamilton ignored him.

“You, of course,” Edwards
rambled on, “are familiar with the security setup here. We’re a private
concern, but our customer is the government. Nobody buys missiles but Uncle
Sam. So we have to watch ourselves. I’m bringing this to your attention so you
can handle it in your own way. Primarily, it’s your concern. It’s only
important to us in that you head our research labs. That makes it our
business.” He eyed Hamilton as if he had never set eyes on him before—in
spite of the fact that he had originally hired him in 1949, ten solid years
ago, when Hamilton was a young, bright, eager electronics engineer, just
bursting out of MIT.

“Does this mean,” Hamilton asked huskily, watching his two hands clench and unclench convulsively,
“that Marsha is barred from the plant?”

“No,” Edwards answered,
“it means
you
will be denied access to classified material until
the situation
alters.”

“But that means …” Hamilton heard his voice fade off into astonished silence. “That means all the
material I work with.”

Nobody answered. The roomful of
company officials sat fortified by their briefcases and mounds of forms. Off in
a corner, the air conditioner struggled tinnily.

“I’ll be goddammed,” Hamilton said suddenly, in a very loud, clear voice. A few forms rattled in surprise.
Edwards regarded him sideways, with curiosity. Charley McFeyffe lit a cigar and
nervously ran a heavy hand through his thinning hair. He looked, in his plain
brown uniform, like a pot-bellied highway patrolman.

“Give him the charges,”
McFeyffe said. “Give him a chance to fight back, T. E. He’s got
some
rights.”

For an interval Colonel Edwards
fought it out with the massed data of the security report. Then, his face
darkening with exasperation, he shoved the whole affair across the table to
McFeyffe. “Your department drew it up,” he muttered, washing his
hands
of
the matter. “You tell him.”

“You mean you’re going to read
it here?” Hamilton protested. “In front of thirty people? In
the
presence of every official of the company?”

“They’ve all seen the
report,” Edwards said, not unkindly. “It was drawn up a month or so
ago and it’s been
circulating
since then.
After all, my boy, you’re an important man here. We wouldn’t take up this
matter
lightly.”

“First,”
McFeyffe
said, obviously embarrassed, “we
have
this
business
from
the FBI. It
was forwarded to us.”

“You requested it?”
Hamilton inquired acidly.
“Or
did it just
happen to be circulating
back
and
forth
across
the
country?”

McFeyffe colored. “Well, we
sort of asked for it. As a routine inquiry. My God,
Jack,
there’s a file on
me—
there’s even a
file
on President Nixon.”

“You don’t have
to
read all that junk,” Hamilton said, his
voice shaking. “Marsha joined the Progressive Party
back in ‘48 when she was a freshman in college.
She con
tributed money to the Spanish Refugee
Appeals
Committee. She subscribed to
In Fact.
I’ve heard all that stuff
before.”

“Read the current
material,” Edwards instructed.

Picking his way carefully through
the report, McFeyffe found the current material. “Mrs. Hamilton left the
Progressive Party in 1950.
In
Fact
is
no
longer published.
In 1952 she attended
meetings
of
the
California
Arts, Sciences, and Professions, a
front
organization with
pro-Communist leanings. She signed the Stockholm
Peace
Proposal. She joined the Civil Liberties Union, described by some as
pro-left.”

“What,” Hamilton demanded,
“does
pro-left
mean?”