The Stardroppers (3 page)

“Well, for my part I’m very glad to see you,” Redvers went on. “And any help I can give, I certainly will. To begin with, perhaps you’d like to meet Rainshaw?”

“I wouldn’t object.”

“Fine, I’ll arrange that as soon as possible. And I’ll keep in touch during your stay, make sure you don’t run into any difficulties. Maybe you’ll come up with a practical way of cooling the situation. Lord knows we need some bright ideas!”

He stubbed his cigar, rose, and offered his hand. “Well, it’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance, Mr. Cross. Do contact me at the Yard, won’t you, if there’s anything else I can do?”

Feeling slightly numb, Dan shook hands with him and watched him stride toward the exit.

I was never so politely told I was incompetent
.

Gradually he began to relax. The superintendent struck him as the kind of man one could respect for being clever without suspecting him of being cunning. That trap at the airport, for instance, had been as brilliant a stratagem as Dan had ever seen. He hadn’t given a thought to how closely Grey could study his face, hear his voice, and even feel his clothes while howling his nonsense.

And he did know all the answers. It was precisely those rumors that stardropper enthusiasts were vanishing which had brought Dan across the Atlantic. Now Redvers had told him of twenty well-documented cases, hard though that was to accept. Which implied that even if they had opted out of the arms race, these people—by turning stardroppers loose on the world—had lit the fuse on a sizable bomb of a brand-new kind.

Shaking his head, Dan turned to the table beside him and picked up the gaudy-covered magazine on which his stardropper was lying. He had spent the flight from New York reading a stack of these magazines; the stardropper craze had probably set some sort of record for the speed with which it had produced clubs of enthusiasts, hobby magazines, and do-it-yourself kits.

This was the glossiest he had found. It was called
Starnews
and it was published in California. On the cover, a line of puff claimed it was “The FIRST and still the BEST magazine for starpdroppers.” But, considering it ran to 112 large slick pages, it was remarkably uninformative. At the beginning, twenty pages of advertisements were interspersed with chatty social news and correspondence between people asking advice, recounting their experience with various makes of instruments, and singing the praises of their own favorite settings on the dials.

Then the meat of the issue: articles, reviews of equipment, and progress reports by serious researchers including one or two working for big-name companies, all illustrated in color. The tone of the articles was either technical or semi-mystical. One contribution aimed at proving that the truths of astrology had foreshadowed the stardropper, with a passing reference to Nostradamus, but the editor had put in a box on the second page a notice that contributors’ opinions didn’t reflect those of the magazine.

The most notable impressions Dan had gleaned from this and similar publications were, first, the overtone of respect in most of the articles, such as is heard in the voice of a man discussing a religion he admires without belonging to, and second, the total absence of what he
regarded as the two most crucial points about the entire subject.

No one so much as questioned the corrections of Berghaus’s theories. It was taken for granted that stardropper signals were really a way of overhearing alien minds at work.

And there was no mention of anyone having disappeared.

Granted, as he had told Redvers, the grip the craze now had in the States was nothing compared to the situation here—but there were plenty of items of British news, and advertisements from British companies. Surely, if there were any solid foundation for these wild stories of people vanishing, you’d expect to find at least one reference to it.

Sighing, he leafed through the advertisement section at the end until he found what he was after: a full-page insertion by an Oxford Street, London, store. If it advertised on this scale in a magazine from Los Angeles it might be a good place to start asking questions.

Behind curved nonreflecting glass a six-foot star turned slowly, hung apparently on nothing. Beneath it a dozen recent-model stardroppers were displayed on red velvet; the display was as restrained as that of an expensive jewelry store. In place of a door there was an air-curtain. Dan stepped through.

Her feet hushing on deep-piled carpet, a pretty milky-chocolate girl came up to him. She wore a fashionable high-collared yellow shirt and full black culotte pants to mid-calf, but to identify her to the customers a miniature duplicate of the star in the window was pinned on her bosom.

“Good afternoon, sir!” she said cheerfully. “Can we help you?”

Dan lifted his stardropper. “I think my vacuum’s gone soft,” he lied straight-faced. “Do you keep trade-in tanks for this model?”

The girl took the instrument from him and looked it over. “Oh yes. If you’d like to come to the back counter I’ll get you one.”

“Thank you.”

He followed her slowly, looking around. There was no doubt this must be a profitable business. The layout was
too subdued to be called lush, but everything had a rich look. Even the stock-display shelves down either side were covered in the same red velvet he had seen in the window. Four other customers were present. A middle-aged man and woman sat side by side in the corner farthest from the door, listening jointly to a type of stardropper Dan hadn’t run across before: it was fitted with two pairs of double earpieces, like twin stethoscopes, connected to the same unit. His mouth quirked at this example of togetherness.

Neither of them moved the entire time he was in the store.

And at the counter two young Chinese were leafing through a catalog and asking technical questions of a youthful clerk. During his brief walk from the hotel he had noticed how many Chinese tourists there were around, but according to his briefing stardropping was considered an antisocial time-wasting habit in all the Maoist countries, so it was surprising to find them here.

The girl came back with the fresh tank of vacuum. “Shall I fit it for you?” she inquired.

“Well—thanks very much.”

She attended to the job deftly. “We haven’t seen you before, have we?” she said conversationally. “Are you an American?”

“That’s right. I saw your spread in
Starnews
and found out your place was handy to my hotel. Say—uh—something else you might be able to do for me. I’m new to this, but I’m very interested, and I’d kind of like to get in touch with a club while I’m in London. Meet some people doing serious work in the field.”

“We can certainly help you there,” the girl said, and shut the case with a click. “That’s one pound fifty pence, please. We run a club for our regular customers, with weekly meetings. Our manager, Mr. Watson, is the chairman. Would you like me to ask if he could have a word with you?”

“That’d be very kind of you,” Dan said, laying down three of the curious seven-sided coins he kept wanting to call half-pounds.

“I’ll just make sure he’s in his office. Perhaps you’d like to glance through our catalog while you’re waiting?”

She placed a fat looseleaf binder before him containing at least a hundred pages of thick shiny paper, and he hefted it in surprise. He said, “How many different models do you stock, for heaven’s sake?”

The girl gave a faint smile. “Around sixty. But there are nearly two hundred in production. Have a seat, why don’t you? That’s too heavy to read standing up.”

She waved him to a cluster of imitation Louis Quinze chairs in what looked like real gilt, and he headed for them, glancing at the various instruments on the shelves that he passed and wondering whether they were as different internally as they were externally. Just about every known kind of finish had been applied to the cases, from plain plastic through engine-turned stainless steel to the ultra-luxurious models in fine-quality leather, like his own He particularly liked one molded in imitation ivory, a copy of a medieval Indian spice box.

Sitting down, he opened the catalog and found a blurb on the first page, which he read thoughtfully. It ran:

We live in a strange era. Until recently, death was our closest neighbor; we walked with him, day in, day out. He has not gone from us, but since the discovery of the stardropper we have learned that life is as close as death and no more distant than the turn of a dial
.

Some people seek in the sounds of a stardropper new knowledge of the universe. These are the serious students whose work becomes their life. Others ask no more than the comfort of experiencing for themselves the signals which, scientists tell us, indicate that other beings in the cosmos live, and think, and maybe love
.

Whichever category you fall into, we are at your service
.

COSMICA LIMITED

Well, that was one way of looking at it.…

Behind him a voice said, “Well, well! One of Harry Binton’s hand-built jobs! And very nice too.”

Dan glanced around. The speaker was a man of forty-odd, smart in maroon and black, and he was holding out
his hand. Rising, Dan said, “You must be Mr. Watson.”

“That’s right. Sit down, sit down. That is one of Harry’s instruments, isn’t it, Mr.—?”

“Cross. Dan Cross. Yes, this is a Binton. You know him?”

“We’re his agents in this country. Very fine work he does. Though—oh, I’m probably parochial, but in general I prefer British designs. No doubt about the efficiency of his products, of course; there’s no more powerful model you can hang on a strap. Have you tried many other instruments?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Dan admitted. “I got hooked by a friend just recently, and I picked out a Binton because I saw a good notice for this instrument in
Starnews.”

Watson cocked his head on one side. “A little too powerful for a novice, possibly. People can get disheartened if they start with too advanced an instrument. Let me show you a Gale and Welchman—there’s a setting on those that can be a revelation. It’s only a dry-cell model, and one of the cheapest we recommend, but astonishing value for the price.”

He reached to a high shelf and took down a large plain instrument in a white case. Setting it on his knee, he passed Dan the earpiece.

“Tell me when I get the setting right,” he said. “It’s usually between fifteen and sixteen on this scale, but of course it varies from one to another. Getting anything?”

This earpiece was bigger and less comfortable than his own; Dan held it in place with one finger and obediently closed his eyes, the very picture of an eager new stardropping fan.

“I think that’s it,” Watson murmured.

Dan listened hard. Somewhere at the back of his mind a drum was beating. A slow rhythm built up from it, quickened, grew louder. A melodic instrument joined in—or was it a voice singing? No, it was more like a joyful shout. The drumbeat was changing to a tramp of feet (changing, or had he mistaken it at the start?), yet it wasn’t marching feet at all. It was the pumping of a huge heart, and signified life, awareness, vigor. Even violence! For it was the rumble of an earthquake at work on the building of mountains, and the shouting was the scream of
rocks being ground upward past their ancient bedfellows out of the once-level plain—

It stopped, and he opened his eyes. He was shaking all over. Watson was smiling like a Cheshire cat; his hand rested on the adjusting knob, which he had turned from its setting.

“Well?” he said.

“You’re right, it’s amazing.” Dan wiped his perspiring forehead with a tissue, reflecting that if any of his friends had shown him that one, he might be a real enthusiast by now.

“That’s
what stardropping is all about, you realize.” Watson patted the instrument he held, like a pet animal “This model had an excellent repertoire. I’ve known people who’ve gone on to build big fixed installations and haven’t brought themselves to trade in their original Gale and Welchmans because they like the repertoire so much.”

A reference encountered in
Starnews
crossed Dan’s memory. He said, “You can’t get that on any other instrument, then?”

“Oh no. Why, even Gale and Welchman turn out the occasional failure without the setting I just demonstrated. But I wouldn’t sell one here, of course. It would be unfair to the customers.”

He pointed to Dan’s copy of
Starnews
, visible in the side pocket of his jacket. “You’ll find a lot of correspondence in there between people who are trying to pair up signals received on different instruments. At present the system of calibration is arbitrary—not to say chaotic—and even one repeatable signal would serve as a valuable standard. Our club does a certain amount of research into this kind of thing, incidentally, and I gather you were asking about it.”

“That’s right. Obviously there’s a lot for me to learn, and I don’t want to waste my time in London.”

“Here, then.” Watson produced a small card from his pocket and wrote his name on the back before handing it to Dan. “We meet every Wednesday, as you see. Please join us tomorrow if you like. There’s a small entrance fee to cover the cost of renting the room, and if you want to come regularly you pay a subscription of ten pounds. But you’ll be welcome as a guest tomorrow night.”

The card said
CLUB COSMICA
and gave the address of a pub called the Hunting Horn in the same postal zone as this store. From the other side Dan saw that Watson’s given name was Walter. He put it in his wallet.

“Thanks very much. What time should I arrive?”

“About eight. We have a demonstration this week, so it’ll pay to be prompt if you want to be sure of a good seat.”

Outside the store, Dan almost fell over a girl sitting on the ground. She had the earpiece of a stardropper in, and with eyes closed and mouth open she was chalking a series of spiral lines on the pavement. Half a dozen passersby paused to inspect what she was doing, but by now the spirals covered one another so heavily it was impossible to make out the order in which they had been drawn. Presumably she was hoping someone would recognize the pattern and speak to her. No one did.

In a drugstore window, as he approached Marble Arch, he saw single earplugs on sale, labeled
TO AID CONCENTRATION WHILE STARDROPPING.

Waiting to cross at a stoplight, he heard a boy in his late teens hailing a friend: “Dropped any good stars lately?”

Then a man of about sixty, smartly dressed in dark blue, went by pushing a handcart, which Dan guessed might be an old hawker’s barrow. On its cracked, dirty boards was a huge stardropper in a shiny cabinet, a heavy home-model type. From its speaker oozed a sound like something flat and clumsy being moved about in thick mud, sucking and plopping. The man had his head cocked on one side, frowning fiercely. Behind him followed five or six youths and girls, also neatly dressed, though they were keeping to the sidewalk. Every time a driver hooted a complaint at being balked by the slow pushcart, they waved their fists at him threateningly.

One of the girls had a look on her face like a saint in ecstasy, and the boy with her was having to lead her by the hand. Next to her was another girl, who was clearly getting nothing from the sound and kept shooting envious looks at her luckier companion. She had short-cut black hair and a peaked gamine face with a sullen mouth, and
she wore the leisure clothes currently popular with both sexes—a high-collared shirt and checked pants.

What it was that made Dan single her out from the group as it approached, he didn’t know. But what attracted her attention to him was obvious. It was his stardropper.