Forever Begins Tomorrow (15 page)

She had not asked the next question: “What would happen if everyone refused?” She knew he wasn't ready to answer it.

And he had not told her the bottom line on his reason for staying. It was quite simple, really: He had to keep an eye on that bomb. He wasn't sure, but he sometimes had a fantasy that if it ever came down to it, he could somehow keep the bomb from being released. He knew it would mean his death, if there was anyone left alive to put him on trial. He had accepted that.

But now even that fantasy had been taken from him. Someone else had seized control of the satellite.

He pushed himself away from the scanner and ran for the men's room. Crouching in one of the stalls, he continued to shake and quiver long after his stomach had emptied itself.

The gang pivoted as one. Sergeant Brody was standing behind them. Behind Brody were a dozen security guards.

“What's the charge?” asked Roger coolly, his panic in the presence of the robot vanished now that he had a human foe to face.

“Consorting with a national enemy,” said Brody, stepping forward. “It's a good thing we got here in time…”

He stopped. His mouth went slack as he saw the open door of the cell. Stepping inside, he took a quick look around, then turned to face the kids. “You can change that charge to aiding and abetting the escape of a menace to national security.” A contented grin spread across his face. “And in case you big brains couldn't figure it out, that translates into high treason.”

The beefy sergeant chuckled. “You twerps really put your feet in it this time. Heh. I knew you were up to no good all along.” He shook his head. “This sure is bad timing for you, though. What with everything that's going on, the whole country is in a hanging mood. They're just waiting for someone they can blame things on. If they can pin this one on you, they'll probably throw away the key.”

Hap turned to Trip, who was standing next to him. “Throw away the key, nothing,” he whispered dismally. “We could be facing the big one for this blunder.”

Trip raised a questioning eyebrow. “The big one?”

“This is not jaywalking Brody is talking about,” said Hap. “It's high treason. And it carries the death sentence!”

 

In the Slammer

Wendy grabbed the bars of her cell door and tried to shake them as she had seen people do in movies. Unfortunately, the bars were so solidly constructed she couldn't even get a rattle out of them. Frustrated, she picked up her cup and began to run it back and forth across the bars.

“Guard!” she yelled. “Guard! I wanna see the warden. I wanna get outta this dump!” She paused, then added, “You'll never hold me! I'm too tough for you!”

“Nobody can hear you, you know,” said Rachel, when Wendy paused to take a breath.

“I know. But I always wanted to do that. Besides, I'm so mad at that meathead Brody, I have to let off steam one way or another. If we don't get out of here soon, we'll be spending Christmas Eve in the slammer!”

“What do you care?” asked Rachel crossly. “You don't believe in celebrating it anyway.”

“Would you two stop bickering?” asked Trip. His voice came from the next cell, where he was locked in with the other three boys. “Why don't you put your brainpower to work on something useful—like how to get out of this mess.”

Getting out was a major priority with the gang, since they had already spent nearly fifteen hours locked in the cells.

“I can't understand it,” Rachel had said, just before they began to drift into a troubled sleep the previous night. “Why haven't our parents been here yet? They should have been notified right away. Even if they weren't, once they figured out we were missing, they would have raised a fuss. After the fuss, they would have found out where we were. Then they should have been here to spring us. I want to know what's going on!”

Now she found herself repeating almost the same speech.

“Calm down,” said Roger, when she had finished. “It's not like we're in real danger. They'll never get a conviction out of this.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Hap.

“Well, they just can't. It's too bizarre, and…” Roger's voice trailed off as he realized something. “Unless this was a setup!”

“I don't follow you,” said Ray.

“What if Bridget
isn't
really Black Glove? What if the real B.G. is still on the loose and engineered all this to shift the attention to us?”

“Then what happened to Bridget?” asked Wendy.

Roger shook his head. “I don't know. But there's a whole lot here that doesn't add up. And another thing I keep thinking about—”

He was interrupted by the sound of his father's voice. Dr. Phillips, accompanied by one of Brody's men, was coming down the corridor that led to their cells.

“Dad!” cried Rachel. “Thank God you're here. Are you going to get us out now?”

He didn't need to answer. One look at his weary face and Rachel knew the horrible truth. Without intending to, she made a moan of despair.

Her father reacted to the sound as if he had been slapped.

“I'm sorry, kids,” he said, standing between the two cells so that he could see both his children. “There's nothing I can do. When the supply plane came in today, it brought word that the global political situation has gotten totally out of hand. The President has declared a state of emergency, so all government properties are under strict martial law.”

An uneasy murmur rippled through the gang.

“What does that mean, sir?” asked Hap.

Dr. Phillips closed his eyes. He was silent for a moment. “It means,” he said at last, “there's some question about who's in charge here now—Dr. Hwa or Sergeant Brody. It means a real crackdown on all fronts. At the bottom level it means your basic constitutional rights just went out the window.”

Roger shivered. “What did you mean about the world political situation, Dad? What's going on?”

A shadow seemed to pass over Dr. Phillips's face. “It's not good. Something's got the major powers all stirred up. No one seems to know what the real story is, but it looks as if the day we've all been trying to pretend could never happen is almost here.”

Roger turned pale. “All out?” he whispered.

Dr. Phillips turned away. When he turned back, his face was so calm Roger got the impression he had pushed whatever emotion he had been feeling so far back in his mind it might never surface again. His voice barely rose above a whisper. “All out,” he agreed. “If something doesn't change very soon, it looks as though some idiot is going to start the war that will put an end to the story forever.”

He paused, then seemed to change, as if he had shoved the dreadful vision of nuclear devastation to one side. “I'm sorry I couldn't get to you sooner. We've been up half the night arguing with Brody. He's gone a little power mad. He finally agreed to let
one
of us see you, and since I am father to thirty-three percent of what's behind bars here, I got to come. Your mother tried to send cookies, Ray, but Brody destroyed them, looking for hacksaw blades, gas pills, and God knows what else. I think he's hoping to get a promotion out of all this. He's not quite aware of the connections some of us have. He'll be wearing private's stripes in a day or two.”

“Then you know he won't be able to make a case out of this,” said Roger, trying to draw some more information out of his father.

He wished he hadn't asked. The expression on Dr. Phillips's face answered him more eloquently than mere words.

They were in big trouble.

The next twelve hours were the longest of their lives. The tension, the fear, and the anger at Brody, McGrory, and/or Black Glove left everyone sharp and snappish. Rachel, acting in her usual role of peacemaker, was exhausted halfway through the day and began sniping herself.

Their meals, adequate but not much else, were brought by a guard who started the day smirking at their predicament, but ended it looking as nervous and worried as Dr. Phillips had earlier in the morning.

Brody came once and tried to conduct an “interrogation.” Roger tied him in knots without really trying, and the sergeant beat a hasty retreat, muttering about the captain who was coming to take charge of the island tomorrow and how he would deal with their insolence.

Trip drove the boys crazy by pacing endlessly back and forth in their cell. (Given the length of his legs, it was not a long walk.) Wendy drove
everyone
crazy making wish lists of various combinations of food that might be served to her on a hamburger bun.

Finally they agreed that everyone should turn in and try to go to sleep. This decision was reinforced when the lights went out, indicating that it was nighttime—something they could not tell in their windowless cells.

With his enviable ability to disconnect himself from a situation on which he could have no effect, Hap drifted off immediately. The others were not so lucky. They lay staring at the ceiling, or the bunk above them, wrapped in their private thoughts.

Roger was feeling angry and betrayed. After they had worked so hard to prove there even
was
a spy, to be treated as if
they
were security risks was unutterably galling.

It looks as though Black Glove won after all
, he thought bitterly.

The thought returned him to his speculations about the black leather glove Dr. Hwa had dismissed so loftily as being of no significance.

It
was
significant, he was sure of it.

If only he could figure out why.

He had examined it so many times he could see it now as clearly as if he was actually holding it.

I just can't put a finger on it
, he thought again, rubbing his own thumb and forefinger together as he did whenever he was thinking intensely.

Suddenly Roger sat bolt upright. Put a finger on it! The image of the glove formed in his mind again. He saw it in minute detail—every crease, every bulge. He caught his breath.

It couldn't be! Not—

Before he could pursue the thought, a clattering at the front of the cell caught his attention.

Something had rolled through the bars.

Jumping out of his bunk, Roger fumbled in the darkness until he found the source of the noise.

“What is it?” asked Trip, looming over his shoulder.

“I don't know,” said Roger, trying to unwrap the package. “You got a match?”

“I do,” said Ray. They heard the sounds that usually accompanied him making a search of his prodigious pockets. “Got it!” he said at last. This was followed by a scratching—oddly loud in the dark—then a quick snap.

A flare of light appeared at Roger's elbow.

The paper that had wrapped the package turned out to be a note. He scanned it, then cried, “Holy mackerel, Ray. Blow out that match before you kill us all!”

Black Glove paced back and forth across the secret room beneath the Brain Cell, practicing the speech that would soon be broadcast throughout the world.

The spy paused to make a minor adjustment. It was important that the world's first message from its new leader be powerful, forceful…intimidating.

Taking out a last word that added nothing to the frank statement of power, Black Glove folded the stack of papers and tucked them into a pocket. A couple of last-minute details to attend to upstairs, then it would be time to record the speech. Transmitted to Euterpe, the recording would then be forwarded to several communications satellites. They, in turn, would beam it back to earth so that every radio and television in the world could pick it up.

The message wouldn't cut into
all
channels, of course; just most of them. And anyone who wasn't tuned in at the time would be alerted soon enough.

Black Glove smiled. A hundred years ago it might have taken months for word of this coup to reach the farthest corners of the globe. Tonight, with the exception of a few people living in caves and isolated cottages, it would take less than half an hour to tell everyone in the world the name of its new ruler.

Modern communications were wonderful.

Even while the person who intended to rule the world was preparing to announce the new structure of power, the world's current leaders were desperately scrambling to find out what had happened to their space weapons.

They were also calling up their armies. Across the globe military ships were changing course to head for strategic locations. Pilots were scrambling, some taking to the air for spy flights, others to be aloft with vital weapons should the bombs begin to fall on the airfields where they were usually housed.

Like their weapons, the chief executives of the major countries were also being moved. Some fled to caverns where they would be protected by miles of mountain above them. Others were traveling far above the earth's surface, in flying fortresses from which they hoped they could govern from the air as the land was torn to pieces. There was even, in one extreme case, an undersea dome, where a small community had been established only a year earlier for just such an emergency. Now it looked as if this precaution wasn't so extreme after all.

Ordinary people had no special protection, of course. But then, they weren't even supposed to know that anything was wrong. Each government had treated the breach of security in the heavenly arsenal as a top-secret situation.

Yet everyone knew. Not exactly
what
was happening. But the word was out that things were bad, and getting worse.

As if connected by some great, subconscious net, the people knew the world was tottering on the edge of enormous change.

The response was as varied as the human race itself. There were crazed mobs in the streets and weeping throngs in the churches. Some people reacted to what they thought was the end of the world by praying; some by stealing television sets.

Yet under every response, no matter how bizarre, lay a single desperate thought—a terrible cry from the heart that, however warped by rage or fear, meant only one thing:
Please
—
don't let it be true!