Prescription for Chaos (45 page)

"Clear now," said Mike.

"Right," she said. Sue turned on her stool, and looked down into the tank, then looked up in the direction from which Mike was now watching.

Aware of a split in his sense of location, Mike pulled his left hand back slowly. The hand control moved back against a noticeable resistance, then the resistance gave way completely, only to reappear as Mike continued to draw back.

Sue said, "First detent. Wing covers open—Second. Wings spread."

Once more the resistance built up and gave way. Mike felt a throb at his shoulders, from the rhythmic pulsation in an hydraulic tube.

"Wings moving. Slow beat," said Sue.

Mike drew back farther, moved his heels by reflex action, and the scene around him shifted, began to fall way, and stabilized. He moved forward, till he was looking at Sue from less than a yard away.

She smiled. "It's the strangest thing to see you moving in that tank, and this little bug obeying your slightest move."

"You could appreciate it better if you tried it," he said. "There's a sense of identification I don't think you can appreciate without experiencing it." He was hanging now about a foot in front of her nose, moving the controls automatically, without conscious awareness.

She shook her head. "No. I'm content to remain ignorant. Incidentally, this receptor looks a lot like a big June bug, and I hope you won't want to come any closer with it."

"Test for hearing," he said. "I'm not sure how I'm getting this."

She swung the microphone away from her lips. "Hear me now?" The sound came from directly in front of him.

"Yes," he said, and swung back to land neatly on the narrow stand near the tank. "O.K. Switch over to a receptor near Johnston's house."

"Right," she said.

A minute or so later, the large white, villa-type house, was in front of him, and he was using one of the receptors from the specially-equipped car parked up the road by a big, over-spreading tree.

The first part of the check of the house went normally, with Mike and other operators switching control back and forth as they flew the receptors to trees around the house, and left them clamped in place, to give a view that covered the house, and the four-car garage behind it, from every angle.

Martin's voice cut in to say, "Composite screens II and III on. We now have complete coverage of the outside of the house and grounds. Better plant one or two inside the garage, Aldo, and bring in a sleeper."

"I got one, Mart. In the willow tree just outside."

"Not good enough. If they close those garage doors, you could be shut out in no time, and then all we could do would be to look."

"O.K. I'll fly one in, and clamp it overhead."

"Good boy. Now how about the inside? Terry?"

"Right here, Mart. I've checked the house pretty carefully. It's completely screened in, doors and windows. The chimney looks good, but there's a steel plate blocking the flues to each fireplace, and the only other flue winds up inside an oil burner. It's not very promising, if you see what I mean."

"Have to cut then," said Martin.

"I've got a cutter clamped to an oak tree outside an upstairs window. The tree screens the window from outside, and the room seems to be vacant."

"The window open?"

"Halfway. From the bottom. Third window at the side from the right front corner of the house."

"Oh, I see. Yes, cut the screen there. We have to get in somehow. O.K., get at it." He hesitated, then said, "Mike?"

"Right here," said Mike, aware that Mart, who had the whole picture on the composite screens, had to run this.

"Better fly up some gp's, sleepers, and grips, so we'll be ready to go in."

"How about the finalists. Do we want any inside?"

"Not yet. They're a little too bulky, and I don't want to commit them yet. Watch out when you bring up the others that you vary your route and cover yourself as much as possible. We don't want any hornet's nest effect around that car."

Mike grinned. "Right, Mart. I'll watch it."

A few minutes later, Aldo's voice said, "Garage's all set, Mart. Want me to scout around the outside of the house?"

"Good idea. I haven't seen any sign of life in that place yet. Buzz along near the windows, and see if you can see or hear anything."

Several minutes passed, with Terry slowly cutting the strands of the screen, and Mike bringing fresh receptors from the car to the oak by varied routes. Aldo said, "I've got something, Mart. I'm back of the kitchen. I think this is the servant's quarters. There's some kind of argument going on here. I don't know what because they're talking too low. Seems to be a man and a woman."

"What are you using?"

"A cutter."

"See if you can get through the screen, and up against the crack where the upper and lower halves of the window join."

"I'm in view through the trees from the next house. Is that all right?"

"It's about eighty feet away, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"It's worth the risk. We've got to find out what's going on in there."

Gradually, the afternoon wore on. Mike brought up more receptors, and Terry began flying them in.

"Unoccupied room, all right," said Terry. "Empty closet, no shoes under the bed, nothing on the dresser but a white cloth, a comb, and a hairbrush."

"Good start," said Martin, then asked, "You getting through, Aldo?"

"Gradually. It's slow work."

"They still talking?"

"Yeah. The man sounds as if he's trying to convince the woman of something. Better hook into the recorder."

"It's in. There's nothing much coming through with that cutter on."

"Can't get through without the cutter. Can't do too well with it, for that matter. We're going to have to step up the power of these things."

Martin growled, "What do you think we can fit in a bee-size receptor? If you guys had your way, they'd be giant condors and we'd be out of business."

"Then we need something small enough to slip through."

"We've got prototypes, but for now, you're just going to have to sweat it out with what you've got."

"You can believe it or not," said Aldo, "but I feel like I
am
sweating it out. How do you get tired using a receptor's energy?"

"Nerve strain. And you unconsciously tense your muscles."

Terry's voice cut in. "Something funny here. There's a corridor with—to the right—an empty room, a bath, another empty room and a staircase to the floor below. But to the left, there's a room with the door shut, and a key turned in the lock."

"That's to the left of the room you went into first?"

"Correct."

"On the composite, it looks like that's a corner room with three windows. All the windows are shut, and all the shades are drawn. Mike?"

"Right here."

"Better go in with a grab, and see if you can wrestle that key out of the lock."

Mike dropped in through the cut screen, went through the first room, and approached the door. As he came close, it loomed before him like the side of a thirty-story building. The key looked like an iron bar a third of a foot thick. Mike hovered to one side of the key, and maneuvered up and down to see how it was turned in the lock. He flew up to slide a light-alloy rod, actually thinner than a knitting needle, but that seemed to him the size of an overgrown crowbar, through the metal ring at the end of the key. Then he pulled with all the strength of the receptor's powerful wings. The key resisted, then turned with a scrape in the lock. Mike dropped to the floor, let go the bar, flew up, took hold of the key, drew it carefully out of the lock, and lowered it heavily to the floor.

There was a whir above him. "There's a guy on the bed here, Mart. I can see his chest, and his head. He's gagged, wrapped up in a strait jacket, and strapped by the neck to the bedpost. He's got his eyes open, but he's not moving."

"How old is he?"

"Early or middle twenties, I'd say."

"Mike, maybe you could take a look."

Mike hovered, and looked in. He studied the brow and eyes of the man on the bed. "I'd guess that was Johnston's son. There's a strong family resemblance."

"That knocks the old man's theory to pieces. Aldo, are you through yet?"

"Just. If I can bend this back. There."

"Get next to the crack. If we're lucky, we can get a line on this thing. Terry and Mike, get that key back, then start moving in. Sleepers first. This is getting tough faster than we expected."

Mike said, "You want finalists?"

"After you've got everything else in first. Right now we want power on tap. We want a receptor behind every drape and picture frame, and crouched on every molding in the house."

The next twenty minutes went by as they brought in one receptor after another. The only spoken comments from the three operators came from Aldo. "You getting all this?"

"Yeah," said Martin. "But it's a little sketchy. They seem to have settled everything that counts before we got there."

Another quarter hour went past. Mike said, "We've got enough stuff in here to knock out a platoon. Except for the cellar. You've got all this on the composites. Do you see any way down there?"

"There's a dumb-waiter shaft, but all the upstairs dumb-waiter doors are shut. You'll have to get in at the top from the attic."

"Is it worth it?"

"The way this is breaking, I don't think we can overlook it. It'll take a trip up and down through half the house, and the door of the shaft may be shut at the bottom. But we'll have to try it."

"O.K."

They found the door open, and moved into the cellar.

Finally, Terry said, "Now what? We're loaded for bear on all floors of the house."

Martin said, "Aldo's left his receptor clamped to the window, and he's getting the finalists in place. Let me just play back a strip of recording so you'll get the full picture. Listen:"

There was a faint hiss, then a woman's voice said tensely, "I don't
like
it, that's all. We didn't plan it this way."

A man's low voice said angrily, "It doesn't
matter
. Nobody will
believe
him. We set it up last night, and the old man fell for it. He's gone out to a private detective outfit outside the city. We
know
, because I followed him. He'll have told them everything. That will back us up when we hang it on the kid. But we've got to do it tonight, before they move in."

"One thing's already gone wrong. If Roger should find out—"

"He can't. The kid's laid out and can't tell him. The rest doesn't matter. When the neighbors hear the fight, rush in, see the old man lying there, and the kid, still on his feet, it will be open and shut. He won't have a chance."

The woman murmured, "Everybody
does
know how they fight."

The man said in a low voice, "It's now or never. All or nothing."

Martin said, as he cut off the recording. "That's the way it's been going. There are all variations on that."

Terry said, "Do we know who the guy tied up upstairs is?
Is
that Johnston's son?"

"Yes," said Martin. "That's the 'kid' they're talking about."

Aldo said, "How did he wind up strapped to the bed? I don't get that."

Mart said, "I've only heard it half a dozen times. Listen:"

The woman's low voice said venomously, "Yes, you've got it all figured out! How come it's gone sour already?"

The man's voice said tightly, "The kid came home early. So what? Is that going to do him any good?"

"He knows."

"He knows what we're going to do. But not
how
. That's all that counts."

Martin said, "The son apparently walked in unexpectedly, overheard them, and got laid out for his pains."

Aldo said, "Could you figure out for me who this man and woman are?"

"That's easy enough," said Martin. "She's Johnston's charming new wife. She speaks of him as 'Roger'. And you notice the man has to get her to go along with him or it's all off. Here and there, there are some sloppy scenes where he tells her how crazy he is about her. Naturally, when she's going to inherit all of Johnston's money."

"What about his son?"

"How's he going to get it? That's why they're hanging the murder on him. The law won't let a criminal profit by his crime. Johnston's
wife
will inherit the money, and his son will go to the deathhouse. That ties it all up neatly."

Mike said impatiently, "But
how
, Mart? How do they plan to do it?"

"I can't say. They're going to do it tonight. But
how
I don't know. They've apparently got the mechanics of the thing rehearsed so well they just take that for granted."

"Well, we better figure it out, or they're likely to get away with it right under our noses."

Aldo said, "Mart, what about this in the basement under the cellar window at the side of the house?"

"I see it," said Martin, "but it just looks like a cot with a portable phonograph on it to me."

"What's it doing there?"

Martin hesitated. "Well, why not? You know how people dump stuff in the cellar and the attic."

Mike switched his viewpoint to a receptor in the basement. The cot was like that he'd seen in army camps, with a steel head and foot, flat springs, and a bare mattress. What looked roughly like a portable phonograph sat at the center of the mattress, directly under the cellar window, with a coiled extension cord beside it. Several pillows were piled at the head of the cot, and at the foot. On the ceiling of the cellar, about ten feet from the windows, Mike noticed a bare electric bulb in a socket.

Mike swung the receptor over to look out the cellar window. Directly outside was a large evergreen with low spreading branches, and just beyond that was the graveled driveway, curving to the garage past more trees and shrubs. About thirty feet back from this window, and around a corner, was the rear door of the house, with a flight of steps leading down to the cellar.

Terry said, "This looks like some kind of a setup, to me."

"Yeah," said Aldo. "But what?"

Martin said, "We'll find out before long. The woman's let herself be persuaded. You guys better practice switching back and forth from one receptor to another. Get the finalist in the trees along the drive, and a get a couple in the garage. Something tells me we're only going to have one chance to do this right."