"chap-10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Biggle Lloyd Jr. - All The Colours Of Darkness)

10

Saturday morning Jean Morris and Ed Rucks came knocking triumphantly at Arnold’s office. Perrin, who had been glumly describing the utter failure of an investigation of his own, retired to the sofa, and Rucks eagerly dealt a long row of photographs onto Arnold’s desk.

"This is Miss X, leaving New York for Brussels early Thursday morning," he said. "Forty-seven minutes later she disappeared while supposedly transmitting from Brussels to Rome. Here she is an hour after that, leaving New York for Brussels in a different disguise. On that trip we spotted her in Brussels. Here’s Madam Z, in two disguises, leaving New York for Brussels. On Wednesday—"

"Just a moment," Arnold said. "This Miss X disappeared from Brussels, and an hour later she was leaving New York again?"

"Right. Ditto for Madam Z, an hour and twenty minutes later.

"Why would they come back to New York?"

"To change their disguises," Rucks said. "Madam Z doesn’t change as fast as Miss X. Wednesday’s photos are just as interesting. For the two days we have eight disappearances that were either observed or photographed, and five of those disappearances didn’t take on the first attempt. On one of them it didn’t even take on the second attempt."

"Meaning what?" Arnold asked, watching Jean Morris.

"Meaning that Darzek was right. Their technique isn’t one hundred per cent efficient. It isn’t even fifty per cent efficient."

"Let me see if I understand this. Five times these women transmitted normally, came back to New York—"

"To New York or Brussels."

"—came back to their starting point, bought tickets to the same destination, and disappeared on the second trip?"

"In one case there were two dry runs. She came back twice, and disappeared on the third trip. That makes six failures for eight successes."

"Actually, it makes eight successes out of fourteen attempts, which is better than fifty per cent efficiency. But that’s only if we assume that the normal trips were attempts to disappear. We can’t do that—"

"Who says we can’t?" Rucks demanded hotly.

"—except as a working hypothesis, which may or may not be helpful."

"Do you have any better explanation?"

Arnold shook his head. "Darzek said it could be important. Right now I don’t see how, but I’ll think about it. You’ve done an excellent piece of work, and I hope we’ll be able to make something of it. Do you have anything else?"

"Nothing much," Rucks said. "I called off the investigation of the directors. You can have the file if you want it, but I can tell you there’s nothing in it worth reading. Directors lead awfully dull lives. There isn’t even anything about Grossman that would suggest he’s been selling you out. Do you want these photos?"

"You keep them. I’d like to have a written report, with the photos and all the pertinent information. When it’s ready take it up to Watkins’s office and hand it to him personally, to be locked in his safe. Don’t make any carbons, and don’t keep any notes. Do you have a typewriter down there? Take mine. I never use it anyway."

"Sure. What do we do when we’ve finished? Sit around waiting for another disappearance to investigate?"

"No," Arnold said. "When you’ve finished you start looking for Darzek."

"Are you kidding? If I had any idea where to start I’d have gone looking for him long ago."

I’ve already discussed this with Watkins. He agrees with me that we’ll never find a final solution to this problem until we know what’s happened to Darzek. He’ll see that you get money or anything else you need. Ask him when you take the report, and then get to work."

"That’s generous of both of you," Jean Morris said bitterly. "You aren’t especially worried about Jan, but you’re going to look for him because you won’t know what’s been bugging Universal Trans until he’s found."

"What makes you think we’re not worried?"

"You seem cheerful enough about it."

"I do most of my crying in private," Arnold said. "Please don’t look at me as though I were something you’re about to swat. I didn’t do away with Darzek."

She smiled. "No. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s his. Brussels would be the best place to start looking, wouldn’t it? Who would have a map of Brussels on short notice?"

"I can think of something more useful," Ed Rucks said, picking up Arnold’s typewriter.

"What’s that?"

"A globe. Let’s go write our report."

Jean hurried to open the door for Rucks, flashed another smile, and was gone. Perrin said from the sofa, "Lovely young lady."

"Where were we?" Arnold asked.

"How should I know? You can’t parade visions of loveliness in front of me and expect me to go on working. I’ve just been thinking that I’ve made I don’t know how many thousand trips by transmitter, before and after we started operations, and I didn’t disappear once. Try applying logic to that, and tell me what you come up with."

"It’s an idea," Arnold said.

"What’s an idea?"

"Apply logic. Forget your scientific theory and your engineering, and reason the thing out. We’ve been talking about people disappearing, but we know darned well that they didn’t disappear. They just didn’t go where we expected them to go. First question: Where did they go?"

"That’s your idea of reasoning the thing out?"

"If we had an ounce of brains between us, we’d have done this the first time it happened. I’ll rephrase the question. They went into a transmitter. Where did they come out?"

Perrin stared at him dumbly.

"Where did they jolly well have to come out?" Arnold demanded.

"Out of a receiving transmitter. But look here—"

"One step at a time. We know they didn’t come out of one of our receivers. Now where does your logic take you?"

"Right where I was when you started all this reasoning. They had to come out, but they didn’t."

Arnold slapped his desk disgustedly. "That’s the bind we’ve been in since the beginning. Our minds wouldn’t take the next logical step. Look. They went into a transmitter. They had to come out of a receiving transmitter. They didn’t come out of one of our receivers. Go on—what’s the next step?"

"You mean—they came out of someone else’s receiver?"

"Right. It sounds incredible, but any other explanation is flatly impossible."

"But no one else has any transmitters!"

"Go on."

"I don’t get you."

"Follow that up," Arnold said, "and see where your logic takes you. No one else has any transmitters. Therefore, the missing passengers didn’t come out of anyone else’s transmitters. Therefore—since we know they didn’t come out of ours—there were no missing passengers. I prefer it my way. The disappearing passengers had to come out of someone else’s receiving transmitter. Therefore someone else must have one."

"Who?" Perrin demanded.

"Right now I’m less interested in that than in where they got it. It would take a far better engineer than I am to build a transmitter from our patents. The only other explanation—"

"One of the boys sold us out," Perrin said. "But I don’t believe it."

"Neither do I. You heard about Grossman, didn’t you?"

"Sure. It’s in all the papers this morning. Stole a quarter of a million bucks, it said."

"I’m wondering if he stole anything else, or maybe borrowed a set of plans long enough to photograph them. A lot of well-heeled business interests would love to put us out of business. A set of plans, shrewdly handled, could have been worth another quarter of a million to him."

"Then you reason that someone bought the plans, built a transmitter, and rigged all those disappearances, maybe hoping to panic us into stopping our operations. Then Darzek dropped in on them and put their transmitter out of commission."

"I suppose.

"That’s your next logical step. Why else would the disappearances stop so suddenly? Darzek busted the transmitter, and got his head busted for his trouble."

Arnold scowled. "I’ve always considered Darzek to be indestructible."

"I hope you’re right. I hope he’s hanging around to smash their next transmitter, because if he isn’t, our disappearances will start up again as soon as they can build another one."

"I’d like to run an experiment," Arnold said. "I want to tune a transmitter to two receivers, and see what happens."

Perrin stared. "Two receivers?"

"It’s the next logical step," Arnold said dryly. "That has to be how they worked it. They tuned their clandestine receiver to one of our commercial transmitters. The odds would be precisely fifty-fifty that the passenger would come out of their receiver rather than ours. That would account for those dry runs Rucks has been tracking down. Get a couple of the boys to help you, and run a thousand tests. I’m going to ask the Boss to put some extra pressure on Grossman. Maybe we can find out who he sold the plans to."

The executive offices were deserted that Saturday morning, except for Miss Shue, who was loyally watching over Watkins’s door. "There was a man looking for you," she told Arnold. "Did he find you?"

"I don’t think so. What sort of man?"

"A newspaperman. A Mr. Walker. I think he was trying some maneuver to get to the Old Man by asking for you. I sent him down to your office."

"Splendid. Perrin will send him back up here, and with any luck at all he’ll never find me. Is the Boss available?"

"To you—usually. Go on in.

Three minutes later Arnold was sole spectator to a rare and entirely unexpected event: Thomas J. Watkins III lost his temper. He seized the dictaphone on his desk and hurled it to the floor. Then he stomped on it twice and kicked it.

Immediately contrite, he sat down again and buried his face in his hands. "Sorry," he said. "I shouldn’t have done that. The theft of money I can understand. Theoretically every man has a breaking point where, under certain conditions, he may be, tempted to steal, but peddling his firm’s trade secrets to a competitor is dishonesty on an entirely different level. Are you positive it was Grossman?"

"All I’m positive about is that it was done. It could have been any of several hundred people. I suspect Grossman because a director had a better opportunity than most, and because as far as I know he’s the only crook among them."

"He still denies knowing anything about Darzek. He offered to take a lie detector test. Supposing I ask the D.A. to give him the test, and slip in a few questions about—this other—"

"I’d be in favor of that," Arnold said. "It couldn’t do any harm."

"This test you’re going to do. Will it help us?"

"Only to confirm what we already know. But I think I can come up with a gimmick that would prevent this kind of outside interference."

"I hope you can, Ted, but it won’t solve the problem. Not really. The people responsible will still be free to devise some other form of harassment. The problem won’t be solved until we find out who is behind this, and take appropriate action to stop them."

"Grossman might know," Arnold said.

"I’ll certainly see that he’s asked," Watkins said grimly.

Ron Walker was waiting in the outer office, familiarly perched on a corner of Miss Shue’s desk. "Here’s my Own Favorite Scientist," he said, extending a hand. "Put her there, Own Favorite Scientist."

Arnold pushed the hand aside. "If it’s a loan you’re after, I recommend the Rainy Day Pawn Shop. It’s just down the street from Darzek’s office."

"Speaking of Darzek—"

"Which we weren’t. What do you want?"

"Authoritative information. An interview. In familiar parlance, a story."

"I haven’t got any."

"Of course you have."

"About what?"

Walker smote his brow, and turned imploringly to Miss Shue. "I spend years cultivating my Own Favorite Scientist. Now comes the one time I can use him, and he pulls the three-monkey gag on me. ‘What about?’ he asks me. The world is clamoring for information on that Moon explosion, and all the scientists are crawling into their holes and pulling the holes in after them."

"I don’t know anything about the Moon. Go find yourself an astronomer."

"The astronomers have passed a union agreement not to mention the Moon."

"Good idea," Arnold said. "Now if you reporters would only do the same thing—"

"It’s news, man! We have a solemn obligation to keep the public informed. Just answer a few simple questions—that’s all I ask."

"If that’ll get rid of you, go ahead and ask."

"What caused the explosion?"

"This is your idea of a simple question? How the devil would I know? I haven’t even read a newspaper story, let alone a scientific report." Arnold wheeled disgustedly, and started for the door.

Walker caught up with him and grabbed his arm. "Aw, have a heart. Just tell me this—can there be a volcano on the Moon?"

"I don’t know. If the Moon wants to have volcanos, that’s perfectly all right with me. Why, is that what the explosion was?"

"Well, at first everyone assumed that it was an atomic explosion. But the Russian Government said it wasn’t, and then ours said it wasn’t, and finally the astronomers agreed. Before they got around to saying what they did think it was, some jerk in Egypt who happened to have an amateur telescope pointed in the right direction claimed it looked like a volcano erupting. The astronomers immediately clammed up. The only official word is that—how did he put it?—‘an apparently previously unknown substance’ exploded."

"I can’t help you," Arnold said. "I don’t know any apparently previously unknown substances. Why don’t the Moon stations send someone over to have a look?"

"It’s too far. Our New Frontier City is the closest, but that’s still some seven hundred miles away as the crow flies, with lots of rough country in between, and on the Moon the crow doesn’t fly and neither does anyone else. They aren’t equipped for that much overland traveling, and it might take them months even if they were."

"Here’s a suggestion," Arnold said. "Why don’t you interview Miss Shue? A lovely young thing like her knows all about the Moon."

He got through the door in time to dodge Miss Shue’s accurately thrown paper weight.

Perrin had the test under way when he got back to his office. "It’s working out roughly fifty-fifty," he said. "To be exact, eighty-seven to a hundred and four. A hundred and five," he corrected, as a bored engineer stepped from a receiver and recorded the result in the appropriate column on a blackboard. "The interloper ran ahead at first, but now it’s slipping back. We’re cutting it in on every trial, which is what they must have done. Otherwise they’d have picked up unsuspecting passengers instead of their own people."

"Good idea," Arnold said.

"It brings up an interesting question. They must have had an effective means of communication if they were able to cut in just when their own people were stepping through and cut out immediately afterwards. They couldn’t have worked it on timing alone, because no one could predict just when a particular passenger would reach the turnstile. Could a small portable radio get through from inside the terminal?"

"I don’t see why not. Let’s say a very small radio, since no one noticed one."

"Which means that it couldn’t have had much range. If I were looking for Darzek, I’d check the area around the Brussels Terminal."

"I’ll suggest it to Ed Rucks, though I think he has something like that in mind anyway."

"It should have been done Thursday," Perrin said. "By now—"

"I know. By now he could be anywhere."

10

Saturday morning Jean Morris and Ed Rucks came knocking triumphantly at Arnold’s office. Perrin, who had been glumly describing the utter failure of an investigation of his own, retired to the sofa, and Rucks eagerly dealt a long row of photographs onto Arnold’s desk.

"This is Miss X, leaving New York for Brussels early Thursday morning," he said. "Forty-seven minutes later she disappeared while supposedly transmitting from Brussels to Rome. Here she is an hour after that, leaving New York for Brussels in a different disguise. On that trip we spotted her in Brussels. Here’s Madam Z, in two disguises, leaving New York for Brussels. On Wednesday—"

"Just a moment," Arnold said. "This Miss X disappeared from Brussels, and an hour later she was leaving New York again?"

"Right. Ditto for Madam Z, an hour and twenty minutes later.

"Why would they come back to New York?"

"To change their disguises," Rucks said. "Madam Z doesn’t change as fast as Miss X. Wednesday’s photos are just as interesting. For the two days we have eight disappearances that were either observed or photographed, and five of those disappearances didn’t take on the first attempt. On one of them it didn’t even take on the second attempt."

"Meaning what?" Arnold asked, watching Jean Morris.

"Meaning that Darzek was right. Their technique isn’t one hundred per cent efficient. It isn’t even fifty per cent efficient."

"Let me see if I understand this. Five times these women transmitted normally, came back to New York—"

"To New York or Brussels."

"—came back to their starting point, bought tickets to the same destination, and disappeared on the second trip?"

"In one case there were two dry runs. She came back twice, and disappeared on the third trip. That makes six failures for eight successes."

"Actually, it makes eight successes out of fourteen attempts, which is better than fifty per cent efficiency. But that’s only if we assume that the normal trips were attempts to disappear. We can’t do that—"

"Who says we can’t?" Rucks demanded hotly.

"—except as a working hypothesis, which may or may not be helpful."

"Do you have any better explanation?"

Arnold shook his head. "Darzek said it could be important. Right now I don’t see how, but I’ll think about it. You’ve done an excellent piece of work, and I hope we’ll be able to make something of it. Do you have anything else?"

"Nothing much," Rucks said. "I called off the investigation of the directors. You can have the file if you want it, but I can tell you there’s nothing in it worth reading. Directors lead awfully dull lives. There isn’t even anything about Grossman that would suggest he’s been selling you out. Do you want these photos?"

"You keep them. I’d like to have a written report, with the photos and all the pertinent information. When it’s ready take it up to Watkins’s office and hand it to him personally, to be locked in his safe. Don’t make any carbons, and don’t keep any notes. Do you have a typewriter down there? Take mine. I never use it anyway."

"Sure. What do we do when we’ve finished? Sit around waiting for another disappearance to investigate?"

"No," Arnold said. "When you’ve finished you start looking for Darzek."

"Are you kidding? If I had any idea where to start I’d have gone looking for him long ago."

I’ve already discussed this with Watkins. He agrees with me that we’ll never find a final solution to this problem until we know what’s happened to Darzek. He’ll see that you get money or anything else you need. Ask him when you take the report, and then get to work."

"That’s generous of both of you," Jean Morris said bitterly. "You aren’t especially worried about Jan, but you’re going to look for him because you won’t know what’s been bugging Universal Trans until he’s found."

"What makes you think we’re not worried?"

"You seem cheerful enough about it."

"I do most of my crying in private," Arnold said. "Please don’t look at me as though I were something you’re about to swat. I didn’t do away with Darzek."

She smiled. "No. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s his. Brussels would be the best place to start looking, wouldn’t it? Who would have a map of Brussels on short notice?"

"I can think of something more useful," Ed Rucks said, picking up Arnold’s typewriter.

"What’s that?"

"A globe. Let’s go write our report."

Jean hurried to open the door for Rucks, flashed another smile, and was gone. Perrin said from the sofa, "Lovely young lady."

"Where were we?" Arnold asked.

"How should I know? You can’t parade visions of loveliness in front of me and expect me to go on working. I’ve just been thinking that I’ve made I don’t know how many thousand trips by transmitter, before and after we started operations, and I didn’t disappear once. Try applying logic to that, and tell me what you come up with."

"It’s an idea," Arnold said.

"What’s an idea?"

"Apply logic. Forget your scientific theory and your engineering, and reason the thing out. We’ve been talking about people disappearing, but we know darned well that they didn’t disappear. They just didn’t go where we expected them to go. First question: Where did they go?"

"That’s your idea of reasoning the thing out?"

"If we had an ounce of brains between us, we’d have done this the first time it happened. I’ll rephrase the question. They went into a transmitter. Where did they come out?"

Perrin stared at him dumbly.

"Where did they jolly well have to come out?" Arnold demanded.

"Out of a receiving transmitter. But look here—"

"One step at a time. We know they didn’t come out of one of our receivers. Now where does your logic take you?"

"Right where I was when you started all this reasoning. They had to come out, but they didn’t."

Arnold slapped his desk disgustedly. "That’s the bind we’ve been in since the beginning. Our minds wouldn’t take the next logical step. Look. They went into a transmitter. They had to come out of a receiving transmitter. They didn’t come out of one of our receivers. Go on—what’s the next step?"

"You mean—they came out of someone else’s receiver?"

"Right. It sounds incredible, but any other explanation is flatly impossible."

"But no one else has any transmitters!"

"Go on."

"I don’t get you."

"Follow that up," Arnold said, "and see where your logic takes you. No one else has any transmitters. Therefore, the missing passengers didn’t come out of anyone else’s transmitters. Therefore—since we know they didn’t come out of ours—there were no missing passengers. I prefer it my way. The disappearing passengers had to come out of someone else’s receiving transmitter. Therefore someone else must have one."

"Who?" Perrin demanded.

"Right now I’m less interested in that than in where they got it. It would take a far better engineer than I am to build a transmitter from our patents. The only other explanation—"

"One of the boys sold us out," Perrin said. "But I don’t believe it."

"Neither do I. You heard about Grossman, didn’t you?"

"Sure. It’s in all the papers this morning. Stole a quarter of a million bucks, it said."

"I’m wondering if he stole anything else, or maybe borrowed a set of plans long enough to photograph them. A lot of well-heeled business interests would love to put us out of business. A set of plans, shrewdly handled, could have been worth another quarter of a million to him."

"Then you reason that someone bought the plans, built a transmitter, and rigged all those disappearances, maybe hoping to panic us into stopping our operations. Then Darzek dropped in on them and put their transmitter out of commission."

"I suppose.

"That’s your next logical step. Why else would the disappearances stop so suddenly? Darzek busted the transmitter, and got his head busted for his trouble."

Arnold scowled. "I’ve always considered Darzek to be indestructible."

"I hope you’re right. I hope he’s hanging around to smash their next transmitter, because if he isn’t, our disappearances will start up again as soon as they can build another one."

"I’d like to run an experiment," Arnold said. "I want to tune a transmitter to two receivers, and see what happens."

Perrin stared. "Two receivers?"

"It’s the next logical step," Arnold said dryly. "That has to be how they worked it. They tuned their clandestine receiver to one of our commercial transmitters. The odds would be precisely fifty-fifty that the passenger would come out of their receiver rather than ours. That would account for those dry runs Rucks has been tracking down. Get a couple of the boys to help you, and run a thousand tests. I’m going to ask the Boss to put some extra pressure on Grossman. Maybe we can find out who he sold the plans to."

The executive offices were deserted that Saturday morning, except for Miss Shue, who was loyally watching over Watkins’s door. "There was a man looking for you," she told Arnold. "Did he find you?"

"I don’t think so. What sort of man?"

"A newspaperman. A Mr. Walker. I think he was trying some maneuver to get to the Old Man by asking for you. I sent him down to your office."

"Splendid. Perrin will send him back up here, and with any luck at all he’ll never find me. Is the Boss available?"

"To you—usually. Go on in.

Three minutes later Arnold was sole spectator to a rare and entirely unexpected event: Thomas J. Watkins III lost his temper. He seized the dictaphone on his desk and hurled it to the floor. Then he stomped on it twice and kicked it.

Immediately contrite, he sat down again and buried his face in his hands. "Sorry," he said. "I shouldn’t have done that. The theft of money I can understand. Theoretically every man has a breaking point where, under certain conditions, he may be, tempted to steal, but peddling his firm’s trade secrets to a competitor is dishonesty on an entirely different level. Are you positive it was Grossman?"

"All I’m positive about is that it was done. It could have been any of several hundred people. I suspect Grossman because a director had a better opportunity than most, and because as far as I know he’s the only crook among them."

"He still denies knowing anything about Darzek. He offered to take a lie detector test. Supposing I ask the D.A. to give him the test, and slip in a few questions about—this other—"

"I’d be in favor of that," Arnold said. "It couldn’t do any harm."

"This test you’re going to do. Will it help us?"

"Only to confirm what we already know. But I think I can come up with a gimmick that would prevent this kind of outside interference."

"I hope you can, Ted, but it won’t solve the problem. Not really. The people responsible will still be free to devise some other form of harassment. The problem won’t be solved until we find out who is behind this, and take appropriate action to stop them."

"Grossman might know," Arnold said.

"I’ll certainly see that he’s asked," Watkins said grimly.

Ron Walker was waiting in the outer office, familiarly perched on a corner of Miss Shue’s desk. "Here’s my Own Favorite Scientist," he said, extending a hand. "Put her there, Own Favorite Scientist."

Arnold pushed the hand aside. "If it’s a loan you’re after, I recommend the Rainy Day Pawn Shop. It’s just down the street from Darzek’s office."

"Speaking of Darzek—"

"Which we weren’t. What do you want?"

"Authoritative information. An interview. In familiar parlance, a story."

"I haven’t got any."

"Of course you have."

"About what?"

Walker smote his brow, and turned imploringly to Miss Shue. "I spend years cultivating my Own Favorite Scientist. Now comes the one time I can use him, and he pulls the three-monkey gag on me. ‘What about?’ he asks me. The world is clamoring for information on that Moon explosion, and all the scientists are crawling into their holes and pulling the holes in after them."

"I don’t know anything about the Moon. Go find yourself an astronomer."

"The astronomers have passed a union agreement not to mention the Moon."

"Good idea," Arnold said. "Now if you reporters would only do the same thing—"

"It’s news, man! We have a solemn obligation to keep the public informed. Just answer a few simple questions—that’s all I ask."

"If that’ll get rid of you, go ahead and ask."

"What caused the explosion?"

"This is your idea of a simple question? How the devil would I know? I haven’t even read a newspaper story, let alone a scientific report." Arnold wheeled disgustedly, and started for the door.

Walker caught up with him and grabbed his arm. "Aw, have a heart. Just tell me this—can there be a volcano on the Moon?"

"I don’t know. If the Moon wants to have volcanos, that’s perfectly all right with me. Why, is that what the explosion was?"

"Well, at first everyone assumed that it was an atomic explosion. But the Russian Government said it wasn’t, and then ours said it wasn’t, and finally the astronomers agreed. Before they got around to saying what they did think it was, some jerk in Egypt who happened to have an amateur telescope pointed in the right direction claimed it looked like a volcano erupting. The astronomers immediately clammed up. The only official word is that—how did he put it?—‘an apparently previously unknown substance’ exploded."

"I can’t help you," Arnold said. "I don’t know any apparently previously unknown substances. Why don’t the Moon stations send someone over to have a look?"

"It’s too far. Our New Frontier City is the closest, but that’s still some seven hundred miles away as the crow flies, with lots of rough country in between, and on the Moon the crow doesn’t fly and neither does anyone else. They aren’t equipped for that much overland traveling, and it might take them months even if they were."

"Here’s a suggestion," Arnold said. "Why don’t you interview Miss Shue? A lovely young thing like her knows all about the Moon."

He got through the door in time to dodge Miss Shue’s accurately thrown paper weight.

Perrin had the test under way when he got back to his office. "It’s working out roughly fifty-fifty," he said. "To be exact, eighty-seven to a hundred and four. A hundred and five," he corrected, as a bored engineer stepped from a receiver and recorded the result in the appropriate column on a blackboard. "The interloper ran ahead at first, but now it’s slipping back. We’re cutting it in on every trial, which is what they must have done. Otherwise they’d have picked up unsuspecting passengers instead of their own people."

"Good idea," Arnold said.

"It brings up an interesting question. They must have had an effective means of communication if they were able to cut in just when their own people were stepping through and cut out immediately afterwards. They couldn’t have worked it on timing alone, because no one could predict just when a particular passenger would reach the turnstile. Could a small portable radio get through from inside the terminal?"

"I don’t see why not. Let’s say a very small radio, since no one noticed one."

"Which means that it couldn’t have had much range. If I were looking for Darzek, I’d check the area around the Brussels Terminal."

"I’ll suggest it to Ed Rucks, though I think he has something like that in mind anyway."

"It should have been done Thursday," Perrin said. "By now—"

"I know. By now he could be anywhere."