Operation Interstellar, George O. Smith [best mobile ebook reader .txt] 📗

stay on Proxima I, he felt seedy. While still pondering the problem, Paul shucked his clothing and showered. Water, both hot and then chilled, did not help his memory any. Nor was it the memory of Nora Phillips that made him lather his face and shave. Not entirely. For the three-day beard made his face uncomfortable and it was personal comfort rather than White Man's Burden that prompted Paul to reap his beard. Like most men, shaving was not a pleasant occupation, and when no matter of personal appearance insisted upon a smooth face, shaving was postponed and indulged in only when the factors of discomfort balanced one another equally and in diametrically opposite directions.

Paul grinned at his clean face in the mirror. "Y'know," he said to himself in the glass, "You're vaguely familiar, too."

The idea hit him hard, then.

One of the reasons why a picture of one's self does not resemble one's familiar appearance in a mirror is due to the lack of facial symmetry. The left side of a mirror image is the right side of the face on a photograph and the two seldom match.

Paul gulped and dressed quickly. Then he went to the freeze-locker and hauled out the dead man.

It would take a third observer to tell. But so far as Paul Grayson could tell, this man from Proxima I was his double!

"And that," he said in address to the corpse, "makes two of you!"

CHAPTER 7

Ten days later when Paul's ship dropped out of the realm of invisibility, he was no nearer to the problem's solution. He did have a course of action formulated, however. So his first telephone call was not to Nora Phillips. It was to John Stacey, the detective.

"I'm back."

"Glad to hear it. Wha' hoppen?"

"I've got a corpse on my ship."

"Friend of yours?"

"Nope."

"Look," came the cheerful reply, "if you want to murder someone, go ahead. But there's no sense in putting yourself in jeopardy by carrying the mortal remains around with you. Why didn't you dump the thing out in space?"

"I want it identified."

"Now, for the first time in years, you make sense."

"Thanks."

"But look," said Stacey suddenly, "just what kind of mess have you gotten yourself into?"

"I don't know. I hope to find out."

"Well, it's thick."

Paul blinked. "I know it. But why?"

"You answer that one, it's your question."

"What's new?"

"Nora Phillips is missing."

"Missing?" exploded Paul. "Where did she go?"

"I haven't been able to find out yet."

"What do you know?" demanded Paul.

"Damned little. She left you on your departure day and started to drive back to town. Instead of returning to her office or going home, she turned off on Bridge Street and stopped at a mansion, Number 7111, to be exact. Drove her car into the garage as though she were expected. Hasn't come out since."

"You haven't kept a man watching the place for all this time?"

"No, but I've had a gent prowl the joint at least once a day for the last two weeks, and the car is still in the garage. You can see it through the windows of the door."

"Didn't she come out?"

"Garage is connected to the house. She could have gone into the house without breathing fresh air."

"That's 7111 Bridge Street?"

"Check."

"How about her job?"

"By careful enquiry, we've learned that she resigned. By letter."

"How did you get that?"

"Well, law outfits seldom take kindly to characters asking leading questions. But an advertisement appeared for a librarian and I had Milly fill it. She pored through the personnel files and found a typed letter of resignation. Terse; disappointingly uninformative."

"Her apartment?"

"She ran a three-room job alone. A man appeared, armed with a letter from her. He packed up her stuff and it was removed from the premises by the Howdaille Moving and Storage Company. It is currently there in storage with the bill paid in advance for six months."

"Any more?"

"I had Morton enquire about a rental at that address and he was told that Miss Phillips had to return home because of illness of her father. That's all we could get. Morton got that information from the landlord after expressing first a desire to live there and second asking why the previous tenant moved out. Put it so that the landlord had to show him her letter to prevent a possible tenant from thinking that there was something odious about the premises."

"Then what?"

"That's all. Morton considered the place—apparently—for several days after putting down a twenty-buck deposit. Gave it up and forfeited the deposit on the grounds that his wife wanted a four room place."

"Um. Gone without a trace?"

"Seems so. Excepting that she went into 7111 Bridge, and we've not seen her since."

"How long did you watch?"

"Constantly for ten days. Not a sign or a trace of her there."

"But—"

"Yeah," replied Stacey's unhappy voice, "we cased that joint too. I've had at least seven operatives hit that front door, on every sort of pretext from stolen nylon hosiery to roofing salesmen, and from governmental surveys on this and that to gents who insist that they look at the electric wiring, the plumbing, and the foundation. The joint is owned and tenanted by an elderly gentleman who has retired. His wife lives there too. One servant, a doddering old fogy who must have been the owner's father's gentleman's gentleman."

"What's his name?"

"Hoagland."

"How about the car in the garage?"

Paul could almost hear Stacey shrug. "So far, there is nothing suspicious about it from a legal standpoint," he said. "You'd have one hell of a time proving anything. So a woman—none too well acquainted with you—resigns from her position on a perfectly logical grounds, moves from her apartment on similar grounds, and deposits her car in a strange place and disappears."

"But that last is the important thing. She disappeared."

"Yeah? Where does her father live? Maybe she did go there?"

"You're the detective," said Paul. "Chase it down."

"This will cost like hell," warned Stacey.

Paul laughed. "What I've got will pay for plenty from now on," he said.

"I'll re-open the case, then."

"You shouldn't have closed it."

Stacey groaned. "How did I know you were that anxious?"

"I was."

"Okay. But I wanted your approval before I broke this thing wide open."

"Will it?"

"Sure. The first time I go to 7111 Bridge and ask about that automobile in the garage, which is registered under the name of Nora Phillips, someone is either going to get nasty, call the police, or start asking me embarrassing questions that might lead to Paul Grayson."

"Stacey, the guy I found dead on Proxima I is another dead ringer for myself. That makes two characters killed off that resemble me. It looks like a plot, to me."

"How was the deceased rendered that way?"

"He was hit by a meteorite."

"Act of God, I calls that," muttered Stacey. "You wouldn't go so far as to suggest that God is on your side?"

"When a meteorite hits a man and a spacecraft in the same shower, both of which are prowling on a planet where they had no business and shouldn't have had any curiosity, it begins to look as though celestial mechanics, formerly run by the Act of God, might have been given a little aid and aim by the machiavellian hand of man or men unknown."

"How could you aim a—"

"Haul it to the right spot and drop it from a good height from a spacecraft. That's for the big one that wrecked the ship. Carry a boatload of little ones and drop 'em on the head of the character you desire to erase. Not one of them penetrated to the depths I'd have expected, now that it comes to mind."

"Okay, Paul. I'm on the trail again. I'll send a man to collect your corpse and we'll attempt to identify it. Maybe that will give us a lead."

"Check," said Paul, and he turned away from the telephone with a heavy heart.

He recalled the lissome warmth of her body pressed eagerly against him; could a woman offer herself falsely with that much ardor?

Paul's clenched fist came down upon the palm of his other hand in a loud, determined smack! By all that was holy, Paul intended to find out. He answered his question honestly: Yes. There are women who could play any act, do literally anything humanly possible to obtain their wants. On the other hand, Nora might have run afoul of whatever interest it was that apparently stood in his way towards linking Sol and Neosol by Z-wave.

Had he been uninterested in her as a person, he could have shrugged it off with but a minimum of hurt and wonder. But Paul made up his mind to find out about her, to take either one of two courses as far as Nora Phillips went. If Nora were in league with those who stood against him, he wanted the dubious pleasure of showing her that she could have been better off by following a more naturally honest plan.

And if Nora Phillips were in trouble because she was seen in Paul's company, he wanted the extreme pleasure of belting the living hell out of her abductors personally, while she watched wide-eyed, and then escorting her gallantly to some place where pain and strife could be relegated to the background.

To do either, Paul must not stop working towards his goal. With determined step, Paul headed for the offices of the Terran Physical Society with his personal recorder, upon which the semi-conversation from the Z-wave was impressed.

This time it would be Grayson's Theory. And it would be presented to the T.P.S. without the possibility of Haedaecker's interference or scorn.

Charles Thorndyke was a man well worthy of the scientific honors he owned. Unlike Haedaecker, he did not flaunt them at every hand. He used them only when it was necessary.

And unlike Chadwick Haedaecker, Thorndyke was the kind of man who would have rejected his own pet theory instantly upon the first glimmer of proof that he was in error.

He listened to Paul's tale with growing interest and then he listened to the recording.

"This is a big thing," he told Paul after Grayson was finished.

"It is my greatest hope realized."

"We have a lengthy paper on extra-solar gravitational phenomena to be presented next Tuesday. I am going to cancel that for your presentation." Thorndyke looked at the ceiling. "The chance of voice communication with Neosol is as great an advancement as the discovery of the telegraph," he said. "It must not be delayed one moment!"

"I've always believed that," said Paul.

"Why didn't you speak up before?"

"Doctor Haedaecker has always vetoed any such suggestion."

"Why, for the Love of Heaven?"

"He said that everything had been tried."

"Balderdash!" exploded Thorndyke. "Negative evidence is never conclusive!"

"I could not argue with him."

Thorndyke smiled. He nodded. Being armed with a hope and a firm belief is poor weapon against a man as deeply entrenched as Haedaecker, whose minor pronouncements made news and whose hand could write an appropriation for a million dollars to pursue some experiment.

"Once this is presented, you will no longer be a small voice crying out in a veritable wilderness. You will probably end up with a job to do as big as Haedaecker's. I can't understand him."

"Nor can I."

"You're certain that you presented your idea correctly?"

"So far as I know. I've been talking about this thing for years, ever since I got the idea."

Thorndyke laughed. "I know what happened," he said. "Your initial idea was but half formed and therefore incorrect. But as you improved upon it, your own arguments became trite to yourself and even less convincing to Haedaecker, who was convinced against your idea. He'll have to change his tune next Tuesday."

Paul left in a fine state of mind. He was ahead of the game for the first time in his life and he enjoyed the feeling.

The question of who or what wanted to stop him was something that he could never find out until the other side made another move. As for Nora Phillips, following her trail was a job for an experienced man like Stacey. The third item was Haedaecker.

Paul did not agree with Thorndyke. Haedaecker was not merely misled in this thing. Haedaecker had good reasons why he wanted the Z-wave experiment hushed up. Haedaecker's Theory had been the making of the man himself. Once that theory was broken down and shown incorrect, Haedaecker would no longer be the great mind that he had been. Haedaecker liked power and adulation and naturally was disinclined to let it go lightly.

Paul expected trouble with the physicist.

And Paul would have preferred to circumvent trouble, to go around it, to avoid it. But Paul was experienced enough to know that the act of avoiding trouble more often made the trouble pile up until it reached terrifying proportions.

So instead of staying strictly away from Haedaecker's office, Paul strode boldly in. Forewarning the enemy of your intentions is said to be bad. But now