The Fellowship of the Hand (15 page)

“No, but that’s easy. If they hold a government contract—and who doesn’t these days?—their floor plan must be on file in Washington. Call it up on the telecopier and get us a clear print. Nova Industries, Lexington, Kentucky.”

“Right, chief!”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry. You sounded just like him.”

Jazine grinned and went off to the supply room for the gear he would need. Twenty minutes later they were airborne over Manhattan, heading south through the night sky.

Jazine worked quickly on the proximity gate of the Nova plant, shorting out the wires so they could walk through undetected. Both of them were dressed in black bodysuits, and they kept to the shadows of the landscaped lawn. With the increased use of proximity devices for plant security, the old floodlit grounds had become a thing of the past, so there was little worry about being seen as they crossed the grounds. The guards inside would rely on electronic devices, and that was their weakness.

“Are you going in?” Judy whispered at his side.

Jazine nodded. “You stay here and watch the energy alarm. Call me on the beeper if the needle starts moving.”

The energy alarm was a particularly useful device in situations like this. Operating on an induction principle, it could pick up any sudden surge of power in the area. Thus a silent alarm or an electronic peeping device, or even sudden vision-phone activity, would cause the needle to jump. At this time of night such a power surge would mean his movements had been detected—or at least that security guards were suspicious. Since the energy alarm operated best outside of buildings, free from interference, Jazine needed someone to watch it while he went about his business inside.

“Be careful,” she said as he moved off.

“Don’t worry.”

The emergency door at the rear of the building yielded quickly to his pocket magno, and he found himself inside the Nova plant. The printout of the floor plan had already told him that the personnel office was down the corridor on the left. He entered it with ease, using the magno, and directed his wrist-light at the personnel computer.

After five minutes of work he’d plugged the computer into a portable power source he carried on his belt, and switched it on. He could not use the wall plug, because the power surge would affect the needle on Judy’s energy alarm and block out any energy from guard devices or vision-phones. He held his breath until the computer started delivering printouts, then directed it to give him the names of all employees who’d left the company during the past year.

The list was a short one, and he tore it off the roll to stuff into his pocket. Then, as he disconnected the computer from his portable power source and reconnected it to the wall outlet, the beeper vibrated against his body. Judy was warning him. Something was wrong.

Jazine sucked in his breath and sprinted for the emergency door. He found Judy on the other side, holding the energy alarm with its wildly fluctuating needle.

“They know we’re here!” she gasped.

“Damn!” He took the box from her, trying to steady the needle, but already they could hear the footfalls of running security guards along the paved driveway.

Jazine pulled her back into the shadows as an armed guard trotted by. “There’s someone on the grounds,” he shouted to a companion. “They set off a pressure alarm.”

Jazine cursed under his breath. A pressure alarm was like a landmine, and Judy had stepped on one while she waited for him.

“Do we take them alive?” one guard asked.

“Negative. Use your laser. Orders are to kill intruders on sight.”

Judy gripped him in panic. “My God, Earl—what’ll we do?”

“Try for the front gate, and hope it’s not guarded.”

But he knew it would be, and it was. A dozen laser-equipped guards were already fanning out from it, searching the grounds.

“Can we climb a tree?”

He glanced up. “The limbs are all too far from the ground.”

“Then what’s left? Just run for it?”

“They’d cut us down with their laser guns.” His eyes were on the circle of lights gradually closing in on them.

“Earl—they wouldn’t shoot a CIB agent, would they?”

“I’d never have a chance to show my badge, and even if I did they might kill us anyway. We’re trespassers, remember.”

“Over this way,” someone shouted, and the lights began turning in their direction. They had set off another pressure alarm.

“Earl, I’m scared.”

“You and me both.” He glanced behind him but there were lights in that direction too. Suddenly he told Judy, “Take off your clothes! Quickly!”

“What?”

“Off with the bodysuit, and panties too if you’re wearing any.”

“Are you crazy?”

But he was already shedding his own suit. She stared at him for an instant and saw that he was serious. Her fingers moved to the zip, and the black vinyl fell away from her creamy body.

“All right, down on your back and spread your legs. At least we’ll die happy!”

She started to speak but he came down on top of her, muffling her words. In another instant the beam from a wrist-light targeted them.

“What’s this?” a guard shouted. “They’re not spying—they’re only fucking!”

Jazine broke away from Judy, trying to cover himself. The security guards gathered around for a look. They still held their laser guns, but most of the weapons were pointed at the ground.

“I didn’t know …” Jazine mumbled.

“This here’s private property, fucker! You got ten seconds to move your ass outa here!” The man grinned and raised his laser.

Judy had scrambled to her feet and reached for her bodysuit. “Just let us get dressed. We’re terribly sorry …”

“Dressed, hell! Pick up your clothes and run! In five seconds we open up with our lasers!” The other guards chuckled, enjoying the sport.

Jazine and Judy grabbed up their suits and started running. Laughter followed them, and as they reached a gate a laser beam cut through a tree branch over their heads. There was more laughter, and then they were out.

They paused down the road to put on their suits. Catching her breath, Judy said, “Earl Jazine, that was the most terrible thing I’ve ever been through!”

“Don’t complain. I got us out alive, didn’t I?”

“But those men …”

“And luckily they didn’t search our suits. If they’d found this printout from their computer, we would have been in big trouble!”

They reached the rocketcopter without further incident, and soon they were on their way back to New York. Once, in the night sky over the east coast, Judy glanced at him and blushed prettily.

In the morning Jazine put through an immediate check on the list of Nova’s former employees. It took him only an hour, using tax returns, phone directories, and a few personal calls to establish that all were alive and well. The skeleton in the computer belonged to none of them.

He sat at his desk wondering about the next move, wondering especially how Carl Crader was managing his first meeting with Stanley Ambrose.

“I
T’S DECIDED, THEN?” EULER
asked, speaking across the table to Graham Axman. “We attack the Utah installation?”

“It’s decided.” Axman frowned in annoyance. “I told you that at breakfast the other day.”

“A great deal has happened since then,” Euler pointed out. “Milly’s murder, for one thing.”

“A real tragedy.”

Euler’s eyes narrowed a bit, trying to read something into Axman’s words. His first thought, on hearing of Milly’s death, was to check on Axman’s movements Monday night—but there was no proof that he’d left the farm. It was only a measure of Euler Frost’s mind these days that he’d even entertained such a suspicion.

“I say we move immediately against the underground city,” he told Axman. “Within the next twenty-four hours.”

“So fast?”

“Milly is dead, and she was killed for a reason. I think she was killed by either Jason Blunt or Stanley Ambrose. It may mean Nova isn’t going to wait for McCurdy’s reelection next month before they try to take over the government.”

Axman nodded. “I agree with that much, certainly. But we have fewer than twenty men. How do we go about attacking and destroying an underground computer center where hundreds of people live and work?”

In the days before his imprisonment, Graham Axman never would have asked such a question. Now, facing Euler across the table, he seemed to need some sort of reassurance from the younger man. The dream of the Fellowship of the HAND was still alive deep in his eyes, but it was a dream without a moving force.

“I have a plan,” Euler said, unrolling a rubberized topographic map on the table. “The underground computer complex is in a former government missile defense base beneath this dry lake in Utah.” He indicated a depression on the map’s bumpy surface. “Obviously there must be air intakes and exhausts hidden here in addition to the entrance itself.”

“But so well hidden that we’d never find them,” Axman argued.

“We don’t need to find them.” Euler paused for a dramatic impact. “Suppose this dry lake became a real lake again. The water would get into the air intakes and flood the place. In the panic that followed, our job would be easy.”

“But this is in the desert! How could you possibly fill it with water so quickly?”

“A cloudburst.”

“A cloudburst? In the desert?”

“Where’ve you been, Graham? Haven’t you ever heard of climate control and rain nights?”

“There’s no climate control out there!”

“But there could be! The equipment is available in Denver—rocketcopters and cloud-seeding gear and cosmic generators. We could pour six inches of rain onto that area by this time tomorrow!”

“How? Steal the equipment? We don’t know the first thing about its operation.”

“But the government does, Graham. And the good old USAC is going to do our rain-making for us.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. A vision-phone call from the Secretary of Climate Control in Washington.”

“We kidnap him? Break into his office?”

“Nothing so crude. I have a video tape cassette of a speech he made to the International Conference on Climate Control last year. I’ve blocked out the audio and redubbed it with an electronic imitation of his voice. The face is the same, the mouth movements are the same—but now instead of calling upon the nations of the world to unite for worldwide weather control he’s calling upon Denver to get out and make some rain over the Utah desert.”

“It’ll never work,” Axman said, but there was interest in his eyes.

“It’ll work. The secretary has a reputation as a stern, decisive man who takes no back-talk. He’s been known to snap off his vision-phone during a conversation with congressmen. Out in Denver they’ll see his face and hear his words exactly syncronized to the mouth movements. And they’ll have no way of knowing they’re seeing a taped replay rather than the man himself.”

“What about background? You said it was at a convention.”

“The background is merely a gray wall. That’s why I chose this particular cassette. Come into the other room and I’ll run it for you.”

He dropped the cassette into the slot and sat back to watch Axman’s reaction. It was quite satisfactory. “That’s a work of genius,” the older man admitted. “The dubbing is perfect.”

“It has to be, if our scheme is to work.”

“The pause near the end. Is that rigged right? Will his answer fit their question?”

“I think so.”

“And if they’re suspicious?”

“It’ll be after office hours in Washington. They won’t be able to check. And why should they? What harm can a little rain in the desert do? I’m sure Denver knows nothing about the computers beneath that lake.”

“If there’s too much flooding, won’t that harm our men too?”

Euler shook his head. “The rain will stop about the time we launch our attack. I’ve figured it very carefully.”

Graham Axman sat back and smiled. “You’ve developed into a genius, Euler. What time do we call Denver?”

The call was placed at just after 6:00
P.M
. Washington time, using a relay station to tie into the official capital circuits. Euler Frost was at the vision-phone, carefully adjusting the lens to aim it at the video set a few feet away. Axman was there too, and the black man, Sam Venray.

The circuits clicked and Euler saw the face of the Denver weather manager appear on the screen of the vision-phone. He flipped the switch and started playing the cassette.

“This is Secretary Baker in Washington,” the image on the screen said.

“Yes, sir.”

“How are things going out there?”

“Fine, sir. We …”

“Good. Look, we want to run a rain-making test over the Utah desert tonight. Think your rocket-copters can handle it?”

“That’s sort of short notice, sir. If you could give us till …”

“Fine, fine! The area is bounded by map coordinates 78, 56, 79, 57. Latitude 38 degrees 50 minutes, longitude 113 degrees 10 minutes. Got that? 38-50, 113-10.”

“I’ve got it. But …”

“We’d like about six inches to fall, at a rate of about a half inch an hour. Think you can do it? Whatever happens, stop all climate control operations by ten tomorrow morning. Got that?”

“Yes,” the voice answered weakly.

“Any questions?”

“Could you tell me the reason for …?”

“Good! Carry on, Williams.”

“I’m not Williams. He’s …”

“Goodnight.”

The screen went blank, and the man in Denver sighed and switched off.

Frost and Axman sat there looking at each other, but it was Sam Venray who spoke first. “Hot damn! Think he fell for it?”

“He fell for it,” Euler answered enthusiastically. “Even that touch with the wrong name worked out well.”

Axman was rubbing his hands together. “It’s going to rain in Utah tonight!”

Euler Frost nodded and stood up. “Get the men together, Sam. We’ve got to be there in the morning.”

The HAND rocketcopters encountered turbulence in the upper atmosphere while still a hundred miles from their destination. Rain was indeed falling over the entire area, and Euler only hoped that enough of it was draining into that dry lake. They swept over the area just after dawn, and he sighed with relief. The lake bottom was filling, and though the rain itself was beginning to let up, he knew the drainage would continue for several hours. The Denver people had done their job well.