The Stardroppers (13 page)

The rigid control Dan had imposed on his mind held good. The matter-of-fact announcement was a tremendous shock, but he did not betray it by the movement of a single muscle. He only paused for a few seconds before he felt he could trust his voice to remain steady while he spoke again.

Rainshaw didn’t notice. He was clearly very much at home here. Having dropped his diving suit across a handy chair—under it, he wore the proper long-john-like cover-all—he walked into the bathroom and turned on the tub. Waiting for it to fill, he moved to the kitchen and helped himself to a plateful of salad from a dish in the refrigerator, and at once began to attack it as though he were starving.

The first thing to become clear was why he had accepted Dan’s presence so calmly. If he was a close friend of Watson—as seemed obvious—he would know about the alarms, and since it took a specialist with Agency training or a burglar of exceptional talent to evade a Protex system, he would take it for granted that Watson must have let him in or given him a key.

Or that Dan had come by the same route he himself had used. …

Either way, Dan must be party to the secret—the stunning secret that powers gained from the stardropper
had
been understood, controlled, and put to use.

Without meaning to stare, Dan gazed at him in wonderment. He was a rather ordinary-looking young man: fair-haired, fresh-faced, the sort of person one felt would smile easily and often. He did not look in the least like a man who could walk into a securely locked apartment without bothering to use the door.

But then—what
ought
such a man to look like?

Half the plate of food had disappeared when Dan said, weighing his words carefully. “I met your father recently, by the way.”

Rainshaw nodded. “How is he?”

“To be frank, he looked worried and overtired. And I think he’s losing weight.”

“The strain must be awful for him now,” Rainshaw said, frowning. “I wish he could make it too—but’ I doubt if he ever will, not unless we find some painless technique for overturning the preconceptions of a long lifetime. I even wish sometimes that I’d been hardhearted enough not to tell him I’d gone out, but I thought it would be even worse for him to think I was dead, or gone for good.”

So Dr. Rainshaw was keeping up a pose! In that case, Dan realized, his acting must have been first-rate. If he’d given away a hint of the truth, Redvers would doubtless have pounced on it, but he’d appeared to accept that young Robin had merely disappeared.

Merely! It was shaking Dan to the roots of his mind to demote that, which only yesterday he’d regarded as incredible, to a commonplace by contrast with what he now knew was possible.

“Where did you say you’d been?” he ventured, and wondered whether he should add “this time.” He decided against it, as Rainshaw showed no sign of finding the question oddly phrased.

“Hmm? Oh! Sixty-one again. Sixty-one Cygni.”

This time the shock was worse yet. Fortunately Rainshaw was still preoccupied with eating and failed to remark the reaction Dan now could not conceal. Because 61 Cygni was a
star
, and not just any old star, either, but one which had become famous because there astronomers had ascertained the existence of an extrasolar planetary system. Oh, it hung together! The red diving suit, with its own air supply presumably because the alien atmosphere was unbreathable, not needing to meet the specifications of a suit for actual spaceflight because it wouldn’t be exposed to vacuum or radiation and moreover was far cheaper and easier to obtain; the color slides of which Watson kept such a big collection, which showed scenes Dan hadn’t
recognized—small wonder, if they hadn’t been shot on Earth …

And the man could come home (in a flash?) as calmly as from a walk around the block.
That
was the most shocking part of all.

But no one could adjust to such a vast change in his perspective on the universe without a chance to digest the implications undistracted. Here, illegally in a stranger’s home, was no place to try and reason it all out. He would have to prompt, and probe, and discreetly ask innocent-seeming questions, for as long as he dared, and the task was made doubly difficult because he simply didn’t know how someone in the position Rainshaw automatically ascribed to him ought to react.

“How was it, this trip?” That should be innocent enough, surely.

“Interesting, but not very exciting—Christ! I left the tub running!”

“I’ll turn it off!” Dan said, and hastened to attend to that triviality. He was just in time; the water level had reached the overflow pipe. Returning, he added, “You were saying—?”

“Thanks. Yes, interesting, naturally, but …” Rainshaw shrugged, pushing away his empty plate. “The Earth-type planet of the system matches our gravity very closely, of course, or it wouldn’t be such a convenient trip. But we’re going to have to look a lot farther afield for our friends who originate the signals. I think they’re most likely on planets belonging to far older stars than ours—Population II, perhaps. There may well be no one except ourselves in this entire area of the galaxy who’s made the big breakthrough.”

Inspiration followed the words in Dan’s mind. Grasping at half-remembered scraps of information—from
Starnews
, from casual conversations—he suggested, “You mean we’re sort of prematurely arrived on the scene?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it. If my old man hadn’t chanced across the stardropper, it might have taken us another million years of evolution. Still, there’s nothing to be ashamed of in taking a technical shortcut. That’s always been our particular gift—gadgetry.”

“So there’s definitely nobody home at—uh—Sixty-one?”

“Not so far as we can determine. Of course, we haven’t had the facilities to mount an exhaustive search, but on the face of things it’s unlikely. The general level of evolution suggests Earth as it was half a million years ago, and it may not even be on the same course as ours took, because we’re known to be allergic to one of the basic protein complexes of the local vegetation. I found that out the hard way, as you may have heard.”

In mid-word he was overtaken by a burp, and looked dismayed, but interpolated an apology and an engaging grin. “Got a cigarette?” he added.

Dan fished in his pocket for his current pack. Seeing that it was an American brand, Rainshaw said as he bent his head to accept a light, “You are American, aren’t you? Thought you must be. How are things your side?”

Dan covered the moment’s hesitation he needed to frame a safe reply by lighting a cigarette for himself. He said finally, “Well, it’s anyone’s guess what the impact of today’s news is likely to be. Panic, possibly. But until this thing happened it was very quiet compared to here. I got into this through being slightly acquainted with Berghaus”—no harm in dropping that particular name; it might improve his precarious standing with Rainshaw—“but I’m a real novice, I must admit, compared with you. It just so happened that … well, I was sitting right next to the man I told you about, who went out at the club in the full view of about fifty people.”

Rainshaw sighed. “Yes, I wish we could have kept that from happening for at least a little while longer, but it was a calculated risk. … Was it a good one or a bad one? And was it anyone I know?”

A good one or a bad one? Dan failed to see the right answer for a second; then of course he realized. “A bad one, I’m afraid. Unmistakable. And it was a man called Leon Patrick!”

“The hell it was!” Rainshaw stared at him. “Poor bastard! I’d never have expected him to make it anyway—I mean, he’s about my father’s age, maybe older—but it’s a dreadful shame he had to be a bad one. Are you certain? Oh, that’s absurd: you must be, if you were sitting next to him. I don’t imagine that was very comfortable, was it?”

“You’re damned right it wasn’t. I got pitched clear off my seat by the—what d’you call it? Implosion?”

“Hmm!” Rainshaw tipped the ash from his cigarette. “In that case there’s
absolutely
no doubt! Poor devil.” He shook his head. “How did the other people react?”

“To be honest”—Dan felt he had to tiptoe his way here—“I was rather shocked. This man Jock Neill from Scotland was giving a very interesting demonstration—”

He broke off. Rainshaw’s expression had changed completely. It had hardened into a look of intense suspicion, and his voice was correspondingly brusque.

“Who are you?” he snapped. “And what are you doing here?”

Stunned, Dan tried to rehear what he had said and decide what might have given him away. He was still struggling to figure it out when Rainshaw made to rise, and in the act of rising disappeared.

Dan swung around on his chair. There he was, at the door, inspecting the locks and the alarm. He would notice no signs of tampering from this side, so that was halfway all right. But his mind might leap to the bedroom window overlooking the fire escape. …

Rainshaw was gone again, flick-flick. And yes, there he was visible through the bedroom door; he’d thought of the window and was examining it. And now he was back, confronting Dan from just beyond arm’s reach, his eyes like chips of stone.

“Well?” he rasped.

“Well—what?” Dan countered. He had to play the innocent for all he was worth, and it wasn’t easy. He was terrified, and not ashamed of the fact. How could anyone not be, suddenly faced with a man who could go
instantly
from one place to another and even, on his own admission, to the stars?

He saw a flicker of puzzlement break through Rainshaw’s suspicion. Logic: a stranger and an outsider ought to have had hysterics at that demonstration of teleporting. Dan’s acting was proof against that, at least.

Seizing his chance, Dan said, “What’s wrong? I was going to say I was shocked to find that some of the people at the club were more concerned about going on with the demonstration than worrying about poor Leon Patrick!
That woman Mrs. Towler in particular almost went out of her skull with fury when Wally Watson called off the rest of the meeting.”

“Why?”

“Well, I guess she”—
watch it!
—“thought she was getting somewhere for the first time, and didn’t feel like letting such a petty thing as a death stand in her way.”

And success. The suspicion was going out of Rainshaw’s eyes. Dan instructed himself to exploit his opening as quickly as possible. He put on an injured expression.

“What made you fly off the handle like that? Did you think I was—well, a burglar or something? Hell, you saw for yourself that door is locked and what’s more it’s got alarms on it. And can you honestly imagine anyone walking up that outside escape in broad daylight?”

“I’m sorry,” Rainshaw said reluctantly. He resumed his chair and again tapped his cigarette on the edge of his plate. “It was what you said about Jock Neill’s demonstration that took me aback for a moment.”

“How do you mean?” What was the actual phrase he’d used? “Calling it interesting, you mean?”

“Yes.” Rainshaw’s hostility had faded, but it was still latent in his voice. He kept on staring at Dan. “There can’t have been any more to it that there ever is to a club demonstration. And least of all at Club Cosmica. The means don’t matter, do they? Only the signals count.”

Dan, his mind racing, took another gamble. He said, “Well, the Mrs. Towlers of this world aren’t to know that, are they?”

His head was threatening to spin with the illusion that he was playing some childish game of forfeits, instead of fencing in a deadly serious duel of words. His quick improvisation seemed to have saved him so far. Rainshaw began to relax.

“Yes, I see what you mean,” he conceded.
“She’s
never going to go out—not even as a bad one. More likely she’ll wind up in a mental home.”

His tone was once again pleasantly conversational, though tinged with what seemed like genuine pity for Mrs. Towler and the likes of her. Dan felt a wave of relief wash through his mind.

Too soon. But there was nothing on—or off—Earth that he could do to help that.

For there was Watson standing behind Rainshaw’s chair, more suddenly than a conjuring trick.

A long second ticked away, while Dan thought of the way Watson had dismissed Patrick’s disappearance—denying that he was a callous man, and yet using such a harsh phrase as an epitaph for the vanished man that it had seemed brutal: “I simply have to face the fact that he wasn’t
better
.’’

Well, now he was trapped. And you couldn’t run away from a man who could interpose himself instantly between you and your way of escape.

But he desperately wanted to try.

As he—what would one call it?—materialized?—good enough—materialized, then, Watson had been in the act of stretching and yawning, as though fresh from an extremely tiring task. The moment he recognized Dan, however, he snapped to a posture of alert tension, and his eyes narrowed with menace.

“How the hell did
you
get in here, Cross?” he barked. “Robin, did you—?”

Rainshaw jumped to his feet, nearly upsetting his chair. “What? Wally, you mean he’s not a friend of yours, not—not
one of us?
But I found him in here when I came back, and so I naturally assumed …”

“No, he’s definitely not one of us,” Watson declared. “He’s an American, posing as a novice stardropper fan, who turned up in London a couple of days ago.” (So short a time? It felt like an age.) “But I’m bloody certain he isn’t what he’s pretending to be. Well, Cross?”

Backing away, Robin Rainshaw looked almost comically crestfallen. He said, “I may have talked too freely, Wally. I thought he must be—”

“Can’t be helped.” Watson brushed the apology aside. He looked agitated, and his manner was brusque. Before he could speak again, the phone began to ring insistently; he shot a glance at it and Dan saw the hook switch move in twice, making and then breaking the connection.

Oh, God. He can move things at a distance, too
. …

“I warn you!” Watson said, his patience snapped by the interruption. “I want to know who you are—whether
you’re dangerous or just nosy. And I want to know this minute!”

Dan’s mind was a total blank. He was trained to resist interrogation by any conventional torturer, but faced with—well, with
superman
, there was nothing he could draw on for assurance.