got to go,” he told Wes. “Now we’ve got to go!”
Wes’ answer was simply to get into the car. “Take the side streets,” he said, “and don’t go through the campus.”
“I’ll go the country way,” Linc agreed, and sped down Colt Street, away from the thing that was drifting off behind them.
* * * *
The clustered buildings of the Space Research Lab sat alone on a poorly landscaped piece of property out beyond the campus. The biggest building housed the reactor and the artificial gravity research room. Smaller buildings beside it were offices and specialized labs. It looked innocuous sitting there behind its chain-link fence. There was nothing in its appearance to generate the suspicion the townspeople held toward the place. But they still held it.
The parking lot was full, but there was no activity around the buildings.
“Everybody’s probably in Iverson’s office,” Wes said.
Jan Iverson’s office was in the administration building, and their heels jarred loudly on the concrete floor as they entered. Linc respected Iverson. As the project’s head, he had a frustrating job. He was pure scientist—the artificial gravity project was his life, and all he wanted was to work on it, but he was saddled with the headaches of administration besides. He had to listen, to judge, to approve or disapprove the grumblings and snap ideas of fifty men. Wes was his human bulldozer, Linc his Maginot Linc against crisis. Whatever peace and chance to work he had came from them.
As they entered his office, Iverson rose, a relief on his face that was gratifying. He said, “I was sure you’d come.” Linc glanced over the assembly. There were only three others present: Bennet, Myers and Tony Collins. Collins he could do without. A wiry, hawk-faced man, Collins hated Linc’s guts and wanted Linc’s job. Everybody knew it. But “assistant” Collins stayed.
“Have you seen ‘them’ firsthand?” Iverson asked.
“We were at the game,” Linc explained.
“Then you had the best chance of any of us to observe. What conclusions have you reached?”
Wes laughed sourly. “We came out here to see if you had reached any conclusions.”
“Oh.” Iverson’s hope fell. “In other words, you two know just as much as we do—which is nothing.”
“Not even a guess?” Linc asked Iverson. “You must have been getting reports.”
“Reports we’ve got by the dozen,” Collins said. “The things are all over the place. They’ve even sailed over here a couple of times. Wherever people are gathered, the Eyes gather, too. They took an estimated seventy-five people out of the Zoo alone.”
“What about Washington?” Linc asked.
“I called them first thing, of course,” Iverson sighed. “This thing is local from all appearances. At least it’s local so far. They’re sending someone out—they wanted to know if we’re going to need the National Guard. I suppose we should expect trouble, but it’s up to the governor to declare martial law.”
There was a hopelessness in Iverson’s voice, and in the faces of the rest of them, that jarred Linc. To look at them, anyone would think a battle had already been lost, when, actually, no counter offensive had been started. “And everybody around here is just going to sit down and give up, is that it?” he snapped.
“I suppose you’ve got it figured out already,” Collins sneered.
“No.” Linc challenged Collins’ thrust with honesty. “But once I get my hands on enough facts, I will. Reports of where the Eyes are and what they are doing aren’t enough. Where did they come from? Where are they taking the people they capture?”
“We have some knowledge of that,” Iverson told him. “One of the boys went out in a helicopter and followed a Linc of people going north, out of town. They disappeared into the woods out there—on the game preserve—and from what he could see, there was something big and dark down among the trees. Something like a pit. He didn’t get a good look, and we had no chance to question him because he didn’t make it back. He was talking, reporting, and then he said an Eye had spotted him and was coming up fast, and—that was all. He must have gone down.”
Linc absorbed the information and it was somehow more menacing knowing that it had been not knowing. Something huge and black down inside the woods—something like a pit. It made his skin crawl. They should have discovered more, because with this fractional description the imagination was free to run wild and create atrocities and horrors that he prayed wouldn’t prove to be true. Lines of people—zombie-like people—following the naked, flying Eyes down the road, into the trees; and something big and black, and perhaps pitlike, waiting there for them. To do what?
“What’s being done?” he asked, steering himself back to the solid ground of action.
“This isn’t our worry,” Collins said. “It belongs to the local officials, to the government.”
“The Eyes are over our buildings, so it belongs to us,” Linc slammed back. “We can’t sit around and wait for the major to move. This is a government lab. We’ve got a high concentration of intelligence here, and we’re under a firm obligation to use it.”
“Linc’s right,” Wes backed him up. “We have the best chance of anybody, locally.”
The others rallied at Linc’s show of firmness. He had seen that reaction before. If he spoke calmly and surely, they all thought he had a plan and waited for him to explain it. But this time they were wrong. This time he had no plan and could only sit mute before them.
CHAPTER THREE
It grew dark, and Bennet and Myers left the office. Wes went into the empty cafeteria and spread some sandwiches for the remaining four of them. Linc paced the room, listened to Iverson’s end of phone calls, and ate sandwiches without tasting them. Collins watched him jealously. Linc could see the wiry man’s brain working, trying to come up with a plan before another was offered.
Outside, on the brightly lit grounds, there was only quiet. Linc felt cut off—away from the important events, away from the action, the experience of the people. Iverson was waiting for him to voice an idea, but he was too remote from the problem to touch on one; the telephone reports were half-truth only, the rest distorted by terror.
He came back from the window, decided. “I’ve got to go out. Maybe seeing for myself, I can get a clearer picture. I don’t like these hysterical reports. I need facts.”
“I should think you could apply your rule without ever seeing the real thing,” Collins said. “You’re always pushing down my suggestions with, ‘The simplest solution is the best solution.’ I shouldn’t think you’d need firsthand experience to come up with one.”
“Did I ever tell you that you should jump in feet first without facts?”
“Please, gentlemen,” Iverson interrupted them. “I won’t have dissension in my own house when we’re trying to save that house. I’d rather you didn’t go out, Linc, but if you feel you must, I won’t argue with you.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ll try to make it only an hour or two.”
“Do
