Thin Air (22 page)

Hammond parked his borrowed Air Force staff car and stepped out. He was struck by the intensity of the fresh air—and the chill. He zipped up his flight jacket. Clutching Slater's Uher tape deck under his arm and with cassette tapes stuffed in his pockets, Hammond jogged over to the house and banged on the door.

A long moment later, the old wooden door creaked open and warm air rushed out. He stared at the suspicious old man glaring at him from inside.

"Mr. Rinehart, I'm Hammond." He stuck out his free hand. Immediately, a ball of fur between the old man's legs scooted back out of the way. Another cat strolled up and sniffed the threshold, trying not to seem too interested in the stranger. Rinehart regarded Hammond warily, then opened the door and motioned him in.

Hammond stepped into a long, low room cluttered with old books and periodicals. Bookshelves covered every available space on the walls. There were no pictures; everything seemed to overflow into piles on the floor and against the walls, even behind the few sagging pieces of furniture....

Cats and dogs were everywhere, roosting in beds of magazines, moving quietly or ranged about the room in sleep. The place reeked of dog and old newsprint.

Hammond managed a wan smile at Rinehart, who still hadn't said a word, but stood at the closed door, studying him.

"Tea?" the old man finally croaked, and had to clear his throat with loud rasping hacks. Obviously, he did very little talking up here in his hideaway. But it was the first sign of civility and Hammond made delighted sounds.

"Beautiful country up here, Mr. Rinehart. Never seen anything like it." Hammond followed him out to the kitchen. Filthy, cracked dishes were all over the counter. Rinehart shuffled to the tap, filled his kettle and put it on the fire. He held up a box or crackers, which Hammond declined. He didn't know how he was going to drink that tea.

He strolled back into the living room followed by a dozen pairs of eyes. The cats and dogs quickly grew accustomed to him, except for one skinny Siamese who bolted every time Hammond moved. He watched Rinehart shuffling around in the kitchen—a thin, stooped old man with a patch of wispy white fur on his head, his skin parchment yellow and drawn tight over a skull face. His broad expression could be as easily mistaken for displeasure as a smile.

He returned with a pot of herb tea and poured it into chipped mugs. Hammond noticed his hands shook slightly. A couple of fingers were missing and a couple were stubbed. Rinehart sat down in a fluffy old chair and sipped his tea, quietly regarding his collection of garbage. Hammond also sat down and placed his tape recorder on a stool.

"Know anything about UFOs?" croaked Rinehart.

"A little."
      

"A little, huh? Won't do you much good. Makes you one of the great uninformed. Gotta know a lot. It's important."

"I'm sure it is, sir."

Rinehart grunted, agreeing with himself. Then his eye fell sharply on Hammond. "Never seen one myself. But I know they're around. How's that for faith, son?"

"Commendable."

"That's what it takes to accept things: faith. Knowledge through faith—the certainty that something
can
exist—against all odds." Rinehart spoke with a hurried tone and a chuckle at the end of every sage comment He smiled—at least Hammond took it for a smile. "Sounds like religious hooey, don't it, son?"

"Remarkably." Hammond grinned back.

"Hah!" Rinehart hooted, then cackled to himself and regarded Hammond with less suspicion. "Time to time, maybe you'll get up and poke them logs, would you?" he asked.

Hammond glanced at the fire, then nodded. "You know why I'm here, Mr. Rinehart. It has nothing to do with UFOs."

"Oh, yes it does. Everything has to do with UFOs."

"Excuse me, sir, but according to your book, you were drummed out of government service because you believed that," Hammond said. "I would have thought..." He stopped.

"That my tune had changed? Hah! They booted me out all right—called me an embarrassment. And it was because of my theories on UFOs. At least, that was the excuse they used."

"There was another reason?"

Rinehart sipped his tea and looked at Hammond with shrouded eyes again. Hammond was still for a moment, then put down his tea and made a show of loading the Uher. "If you don't mind, sir, this conversation will be useless if I don't record it."

"It'll be useless either way, son, because you're not equipped to believe any of it."

"We'll see, sir."

Rinehart sniffed in contempt but added nothing. Hammond set up the mike and switched it on. "The fire, son," mumbled Rinehart. Hammond rose and poked the fire. He heard the question snapped at him from behind: "Why do you want to know about Thin Air?"

Hammond propped the poker against the wall. "I was brought into it by someone who claimed to have been involved," he said, "and who has since died under peculiar circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"He was murdered."

There was a flicker of concern. "What was his name?"

"Harold Fletcher. He was one of the crewmen aboard the
Sturman
in 1953."

Rinehart shook his head. "Doesn't ring a bell." But he put down his tea and sank deeper into the chair, his parchment brow furrowed in worry. "Who murdered him?" he asked.

"His psychiatrist, a man who had been brainwashing him since 1955 to forget his involvement with Thin Air." Rinehart stared at him, expressionless. "And I have a second former crewman under wraps who tells the same story. Quite a coincidence. Same psychiatrist, too."

Rinehart's eyes lowered to a point across the room. When he spoke again, his Gabby Hayes accent was gone. "Brainwashing is not uncommon where security is concerned, Hammond. You should know that."

"Brainwashing, okay. But murder?"

"Perhaps as a...last resort..."

"Not in this country, Mr. Rinehart!" Hammond snapped.

"No...you're right..." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His head shook in sorrow or regret, Hammond wasn't sure which. "It's still going on," he mumbled

"What is?"

He jumped up suddenly and bellowed an obscenity. "It was a stopgap measure," he growled. "Psychologically vital!"

"Are you talking about the brainwashing or the murder?"

"They're both
ugly terms,
Commander!"

"No, sir. Ugly acts."

"I'm well aware of that!" he shouted. "We called it
fear control
. It was a form of hypnosis. Without it, they would have gone insane and probably died or committed suicide! As some of them did. It was a necessary expedient!"

"Strange, isn't it?" Hammond pointed out, goading him on, "how after all these years expediency has degenerated into murder."

Rinehart stopped moving and turned an agonized gaze on Hammond. He rubbed a hand over his face and then flopped- back into his chair. "You really know nothing about it, Commander...or you wouldn't say those things..." he mumbled.

"Then you better start filling me in," Hammond said quietly.

Rinehart closed his eyes again. A moment later, they flew open and he said, "Do you know what Thin Air was?"

"No. That's what I came to find out."

Rinehart snorted, then said, "It was the development of invisibility...as a weapon."

Hammond nodded carefully without reacting.

"It came about in 1941 as a secret project under wartime emergency. It was initiated by a man named Emil Kurtnauer, whose roots in it extend back to 1933." He paused a moment, scratching his eyebrows. "Do you know anything about him?"

"Just what was in the ONR file."

"Oh, that." Rinehart laughed. "What a joke." Rinehart settled himself into his chair and tapped his fingers on the arm, organizing his thoughts. "Emil Kurtnauer was an Austrian physicist much influenced by Albert Einstein's theories of relativity. He was studying in Düsseldorf in October of 1933 when Einstein and Niels Bohr met in conference at Brussels. Kurtnauer went there and pestered them until Einstein agreed to sit down with him. For two whole days they discussed an application of Einstein's Unified Field Theory that Kurtnauer wanted to work on. Einstein took great pains trying to talk him out of it, insisting that the theory, which he'd put forth in 1929, was desperately flawed and any applications of it could only compound the error. Kurtnauer insisted to the contrary: there was something to it and he intended to devote himself to his project. Einstein, sensing determination, encouraged him to send over his findings and he in turn would keep Kurtnauer advised of his own progress. So Kurtnauer happily went home.
      

"But 1933 was also the year Hitler rose to power. Kurtnauer, a Jew, fled Germany in 1935, emigrating to America. He got in touch with Einstein, who helped him secure a teaching post at the University of Chicago. Eventually, he was taken under the great man's wing as a part-time assistant. Einstein put him to work on the Unified Field Theory, giving him calculations to work out and problems to toy with."

Rinehart leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and gently moving his hands as he spoke. His guarded manner had vanished.

"You see, there was a marked difference in the way these two men approached science. Einstein was the great
reducer.
He believed certain physical phenomena had more than passing similarity to one another. Electrons moving around the atomic nucleus, planets revolving around the sun—Einstein concluded that space and the atom were different aspects of the same thing, and ought to be considered in relation to each other. His ideas about unification were aimed at distilling everything down to a few simple basics.

"Kurtnauer, on the other hand, was a great
applicator.
He wanted to put those simplified theories to work even before they were proved. It's as if the two men were clinging to the same tree, Einstein trying to find the roots and Kurtnauer climbing out on a limb."

He stopped. Hammond was mixing a smile with a distinctly puzzled look. "Am I going too fast for you, son?" asked Rinehart.

"A little."

"Well, let me see if I can clarify. You have any idea what relativity is all about?"

Hammond swallowed. "Vaguely," he said.

"Hah! Good answer." Rinehart's blue eyes twinkled. "First of all, let's take a few basic quantities." He ticked them off on his stub fingers. "Energy, matter, time, space, and gravitation all have something in common: they're effects we find operating inside both space
and
the atom. They're unifying forces, but in scientific observation we separate them into two groups, the two elemental forces in the universe: electromagnetism and gravitation.

"Electromagnetism comprises the basic units of matter and energy—concepts falling under what we call quantum theory—while all our ideas on space, time, and gravitation are described by relativity.

"The attempt to unify the two began with Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which says that for all systems moving in a uniform manner relative to each other, the natural laws governing them are the same.

"The sun sets up a gravitational field in space and the planets spin around it. Within the atom, the nucleus sets up an electromagnetic field which keeps charged particles spinning around it. But the sun also has an electromagnetic field, which we recognize as its poles...and the atom also possesses gravitation. So they're equivalent Interchangeable concepts.

"Einstein wanted to show how gravitational attraction was interchangeable with electromagnetic field—to build a bridge between microcosm and macrocosm. That's the 1929 theory that Dr. Kurtnauer fell in love with. But Einstein always felt his own work on it was inadequate. He spent the rest of his life trying to revise it."

Rinehart studied Hammond, trying to gauge his comprehension. Hammond stared back like a first-year physics student who knew he would never make it to the second year.

Rinehart sighed and spoke very slowly. "In Special Relativity, Einstein's equation, E=mc
²
, says that energy is equivalent to the mass of a body multiplied by the square of the speed of light." He held up the stubby forefinger of each hand and brought them together until they were side by side. "Matter converts into energy and back again depending on what you do with the velocity at which it moves.

"In General Relativity, gravitation is a field exerting a geometrical force on the bodies within its influence. When light, an electromagnetic force, enters a gravitational field, it
bends
..." Rinehart curved a hand in Hammond's face. "The angle at which it bends is relative to the mass and velocity of the gravitating body."

Hammond managed a look of intense interest, but Rinehart knew that only half of what he was saying was getting through.

"In simple language," he continued patiently, "what Kurtnauer saw in unifying these forces was the opportunity of altering the state of a single body by playing with the way we perceive it. If he could set up a gravitational field oscillating on an electromagnetic frequency, it should
contain
everything within that field, yet-permit him to alter its state of being."

"Alter it in what way?" asked Hammond.

"Make it invisible."