V
For the next few days Talbot was feverishly busy. Just what inner drives had dominated Soleri and how would he have reacted to any given situation? What had been his precise relationships with the people Talbot would be meeting daily? Fortunately there was an accumulation of recorded calls and messages. He played and re-played them. He subscribed to a clipping service and pieced together a fairly complete account of Soleri’s social activities.
There were other rewarding sources. He scanned minutes of TRANSPORTATION meetings. He examined financial statements to give himself another sidelight on the life he had usurped. Pictures, letters—even the apartment—added to his growing knowledge.
Handwriting presented no difficulty. He found Soleri’s signature, and duplicated it on second trial. Soon he didn’t even have to try—it became second nature to him to forge Soleri’s name on letters and documents. Mannerisms came easily too. Ways of walking, the quick thoughtful smile that appeared at intervals, the clothes he wore and how he wore them—-all these distinguishing characteristics he copied with little conscious effort. He was as much Soleri as another person could be.
He rested and regained his strength, painstakingly sharpening himself until he was ready. Randy appeared frequently on the call plate, keeping him informed of what went on at the plant. But she didn’t return to the apartment. He would have rejoiced in her presence but he didn’t ask her. It would have meant taking a dangerous, unnecessary risk.
Finally he went back to work, nodding cheerfully to the receptionist in the outer office as he turned left at the stairs. There was no trace of damage in his private office. It had been rebuilt and refurnished and was now exactly as he remembered it.
Randy came in at once, cool and beautiful. “I told Frescura you’d like to see him,” she said. “He’ll be in his lab until noon.”
Frescura, the famous heat and rocket scientist! He’d have to handle that interview with care. He had no way of knowing how much technical information the man had imparted to Soleri.
“I’ll see him but I hadn’t planned on it until later,” he said. It was a false statement, but there was no need to take her completely into his confidence.
“I’m sorry,” she said with feigned meekness. “I was trying to anticipate.”
He knew that she was actively hating him for Eleanor. He’d have to find some way to ease the tension. But at the moment other problems loomed more urgently. He became expediently stern.
“Forget the secretarial pose,” he growled. “You’re a psychologist. Your job is to find out who is resorting to deliberate sabotage in the plant. What does plant protection say about the thermal bomb?”
She met his gaze candidly. “Nothing. Anyone at all might have had access to the hall.”
“Then we’ll have to work at it from the other end,” he said.
She laid a sheaf of papers on his desk. He knew they were documents of no great importance. “Shall I tell Frescura you won’t be out?” she asked.
“I’ll see him,” he said.
She looked at him oddly, and turned to go.
“Randy.”
“Yes?”
He didn’t know exactly what to say, so he tried it out for sound. “I still want to find out why we’re not getting the motor. But it’s more than simple sabotage now. A man was killed—a man I regarded as a friend, even though I didn’t know him well. We’ve got to find out who is responsible. That comes first. Do you understand?”
Her wonderful brown eyes regarded him steadily. She turned away. “I understand,” she said.
“Keep it in mind,” he said. He got up and went to see Frescura.
Fred Frescura was a big man with more hair on his face than on his head. He was nearly bald but his eyebrows and mustache were thick and black. He had an air of concentration and childlike enjoyment of his work. Neither impression, decided Talbot, was strictly accurate.
He crumpled a sheet of calculations as Talbot came in, and moved out from behind the desk. “I’m glad to see you,” he said gruffly. “For a while we weren’t sure whether you’d been cremated in the holocaust.”
“It was more like an inferno,” said Talbot. “I survived.”
“So I see,” said Frescura. “I tried to get to the hospital but Randy wouldn’t let me in. For three days she camped in the corridor.”
“She takes excellent care of me,” acknowledged Talbot. He glanced at the desk and suddenly turned pale.
Frescura laughed reassuringly. “Don’t worry. These capsules are harmless or I wouldn’t be here.” He picked up a few of the tiny black cylinders and juggled them casually. “I was just attempting a reconstruction. What size was the thermal capsule which you saw?”
Talbot touched the spheres gingerly. They were jet-black and fathomlessly unreflective. “This, I think,” he said. “Or possibly this.”
Frescura laid five of the capsules down, rolling the other two in his hand. “I’m afraid that doesn’t help much,” he said at last. “It depends, you see, on how thick the covering was, and we can only guess at that. Let’s say the temperature was over a hundred thousand degrees.”
The temperature didn’t interest Talbot. He didn’t care by how much he’d nearly been vaporized. “Why don’t we use capsule material like this?” he said. “It ought to make a good tube liner.”
Frescura’s brows seemed to thicken and grow larger. “Are you seriously suggesting that I start my experiments from the beginning? Four years ago I told you we couldn’t use it. Now you act as if it’s something new.”
Talbot got out of the dilemma hastily. He regretted that he had not spent more time on the technical aspects. He’d tried to be thorough, but failures were never recorded as thoroughly as triumphs.
“It’s a thought,” he said, hoping the remark would pass for executive stubbornness. “Maybe we overlooked something.”
“Maybe we didn’t,” growled Frescura. “The thinnest skin we can make will hold a piece of matter at a hundred thousand degrees for ten minutes. If we make it two inches thick it will last twenty-nine minutes and fourteen seconds. Constructed out of this a liner that would do us any good would be a quarter mile in diameter at its widest section. Is that practical?”
“You might look into it again. You may have some new ideas,” said Talbot. He had avoided stumbling badly—and he’d learned something, although he should have known it in advance. The thermal bomb had been made in the plant. He looked up quickly. “Just when did the technicians arrive that morning? How many were in early?”
“I went over that,” said Frescura. “So did plant protection. At least fifty men were asked in ahead of their shift. Several came in without being asked. But none of them were near your office.”
It was puzzling and significant. Soleri had been in charge for years with no attempt on his life until he, Talbot, had been brought in.
Talbot filed the fact away for future reference. Someone had known Talbot was going to come in that morning. Soleri had made it plain that Randy knew. But who else?
Whom besides Randy had Soleri talked to? He couldn’t ask, but it was of vital importance. Whoever it was he had carefully manufactured the bomb in the laboratory, calculating the time by the thickness of the skin. That somebody had stuffed the capsule in his pocket and gone to Soleri’s office. When only a few seconds remained, he had rolled it through the door, giving himself just enough time to escape. But who was he? Talbot had no idea.
He discussed the thermal bomb for a moment or two and then switched to the progress on the motor. He listened to Frescura, who was more than willing to talk. Soon, unless he could slide out of the invitation, he was going to have to answer some far more pointed questions from Taft.
Still discussing high, very high, and stellar temperature chemistry, they went into the main experimental shop. This gave Talbot the opportunity of meeting the men he was supposed to have worked with for several years. There was a great difference between a picture and a page of statistics—even psychologically loaded statistics—and the man himself. He did a creditable job of imitating Soleri as he spoke to them. He had gone a long way toward merging with the dead man’s personality. But there was always an incalculable risk involved in anything he might say or do.
Frescura stopped expectantly beside a large construction site enclosure. “This is the latest,” he said in a hushed voice.
Talbot looked at the work in progress critically. He was still at sea as to its more technical aspects. “Is this the project we were working on before the accident?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” Frescura replied. “I’ve mentioned the theory before. But the application is new.”
Talbot was relieved. He wouldn’t be expected to know much about it. “Go over it for my benefit,” he urged. “Quite a bit has happened in the interval.”
Frescura glanced at him queerly, and he regretted having made the request. “You ought to remember this,” said the scientist. “Well, it’s off the mainline of our experiments, but I thought we might get some constructive results. We make the tube of dissimilar metals, one jacketing the other. When it is heated we get a thermocouple effect. An electric charge is generated. The charge on the inside of the tube repels the exhaust molecules so that they don’t actually come in contact with the inside surface. This reduces both heating and erosion.”
Talbot rubbed his head. “I remember. Is it ready to go?”
“It is,” said Frescura grimly. “But don’t stand there unless you want another accident.”
Talbot got out of the way hastily. He was blundering in practically every statement he made. There was far more to a person than personality, or his outward appearance. In Talbot’s particular case knowledge was lacking—not textbook information, but intimate details that could be acquired only by working closely with the man he was impersonating. So far it hadn’t been serious. But he’d have to watch himself.
Frescura moved a switch, and there was a rumble within the enclosure. A tiny, barely visible flame shot out a foot from where Talbot had been standing. The rumble rose to a shriek, and quickly passed beyond the range of hearing. The flame disappeared, but Talbot could still feel the heat.
Frescura picked up a wrench and tossed it into the path of the exhaust. The instrument vanished and the huge curved backstop a hundred feet away was suddenly coated with a thin film of molten metal. Frescura grinned at him.
“You’ve got to watch these things,” he said. He peered into an eyepiece on the enclosure, making several adjustments before he seemed satisfied. “Take a look,” he said to Talbot.
Talbot looked, his eyes gradually growing accustomed to the intense light that passed through the dense filters. He could see the inside of the rocket tube, and the fierce incandescence shooting by. Actually none of the exhaust gasses touched the walls of the tube, for there was a static area an inch in thickness next to the wall where nothing seemed to penetrate.
As he tried to see more clearly exactly what was happening the enclosure began to vibrate again, shaking the foundation. But the metal held. The shriek declined to a rumble and then the sound died away completely.
Talbot blinked and straightened up. Frescura was jotting down readings from the instruments on the enclosure. He made a few quick calculations. “The test corresponds to a rocket speed of thirty thousand miles a second,” he said.
It was a long way from what they wanted, but it was about fifteen times better than anything that had been attained before. “Not bad,” Talbot said, cautiously. “Maybe we should settle for this. One sixth the speed of light. Twenty-five years to the nearest star.”
Frescura scowled at him. “Make it thirty,” he said. “They’ve got to get up speed and slow down. Thirty to the star and thirty back. Sixty years for the round trip, not counting exploration time.”
“I understand,” Talbot said. “But with a young crew—boys not over twenty-two or three—it’s possible to send a ship to the nearest star and reasonably expect it to return.”
“They’ll be eighty when they come back,” said Frescura. “Their friends will all be dead.”
“There are some lads who will volunteer—if the rewards are high enough.”
“No doubt,” said Frescura. “But there’s one detail which prevents it—building a rocket motor which will last for more than a few seconds.”
“You’ve already accomplished a great deal,” said Talbot.
“This?” Frescura laughed. “No good at all. You saw what just happened.”
“I did. You shut off the motor.”
Frescura looked at Talbot with sour amusement. “It was the automatics that cut off the flow of fuel. Didn’t you see it? The inner charge repelled matter, but it couldn’t stop radiation. Radiation heated the tube. As it grew hot beyond a certain temperature the thermocouple charge diminished, intensifying the heat transfer to the tube. When it went, it fell apart in a hurry.”
Talbot frowned. “There’s no way around it?”
“None I know of. I’ll keep trying of course. With another hundred million dollars we might make this work even though it’s far from what we’re after.”
Talbot shook his head in admiration. Frescura tossed huge sums about with utmost ease. “Keep with it,” he said. “We’ve got to lick this or it will finish us.”
“We’ll come out on top,” said Frescura optimistically.
Unfortunately Talbot didn’t have the same confidence. “Economize where you can,” he cautioned.
“There is no such thing as economy in research,” Frescura affirmed.
“There had better be. We’re running low. Accounting is beginning to ask questions. We’ll have to go to the board of directors before long.”
“I guess so. The accident cost plenty.” Frescura leaned against the enclosure, rubbing it with unconscious affection. “If you need help, let me know. I’ll add my weight to yours.”
“I’ll let you know,” said Talbot as he walked away.
The trouble with Frescura was that he was a theoretical scientist, completely indifferent to cost. As he went through the plant he saw countless examples of waste. There was endless duplication, and the place seemed overstaffed. But, though he could undoubtedly reduce costs with efficient administration, that was not the most vital problem.
He had to locate and unmask a man who did not shrink from cold-blooded murder. It couldn’t have been Soleri. A successful saboteur would not have sought out Talbot to help him. Neither would he have killed himself. And it could not have been Randy. The trouble had begun long before she had been hired. It wasn’t Frescura, for he had not only initiated the project. He had pushed it through with all the influence at his command.
Taft was still unaccounted for. But he was the president of the company and it was inconceivable that he would launch a criminal conspiracy against his own interests.
Nevertheless Talbot made up his own mind. His extreme sensitivity was his most valuable weapon. He intended to find out just how far it would take him. He completed the tour of the plant and went back to the office.
He called Randy, and immediately took up the problem of Taft. “I still haven’t answered his invitation,” he told her.
Her eyes clouded. “I know,” she said. “I’ll notify the department heads that you won’t be in the plant for a few days—beginning Wednesday.”
“I’ll be here,” he said. “I want you to dream up an excuse why I can’t go. Make it good. I trust your social sense.”
“You can’t do that,” she protested. “Have you seen the latest statement from accounting?”
“I have. We’ll need funds before long.”
“You don’t turn down an invitation from the president when you may need his help.”
“You do when there are graver issues at stake. I’ve got to begin somewhere. The top is a good place.”
“A dangerous place,” she said.
“I’m not thinking about that.”
“You’d better,” she said. “Unless—have you got a cushion?”
“In a way,” he said. “Somebody wants this project to fail, badly enough kill anyone who stands in his way. Good, we’ll let it come close to failure. We’ll see if there is any attempt made to interfere—”
“You’re the boss,” she shrugged.
“I hope it works.”
“It will.”
He flung himself into his work for the remainder of the afternoon. Facts and figures went into his head and what came out was a reasonable duplication of what Soleri had known.
He finished late. Most of the office force had gone home. A few technicians were working in the shop. Tired and numb he took an aircab. Twenty moments later he was letting himself into his apartment. He wasn’t imagining it. There was someone in the apartment. Still, Soleri would inevitably have visitors now and then. It was nothing to be afraid of. He went in.
Randy smiled at him. “Hello, darling,” she said.