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  NEW WORLDS SCIENCE FICTION

  Part One

  September, 1955

  Volume 13, No. 39

  Part One

  October, 1955

  Volume 14, No. 40

  Part One

  November, 1955

  Volume 14, No. 41

  Custom eBook created by

  Jerry eBooks

  May 2016

  Prologue

  He fell slowly through a black and colourless vacuum which still lacked sufficient substance to be called a sky, his encased body a diminutive mote pinwheeling in ridiculous fashion toward the planet somewhere below. A strange sun and stranger stars whirled around him in kaleidoscope effect.

  Not far away another body tumbled with him, a lifeless exploded body hanging part way through the slashed hole in the air-suit. That other body had not been so quick or so fortunate, had not escaped the demolished ship with its suit and its life intact; his slow revolving glimpses and the intermittent flashes of sunlight striking the corpse revealed that the body had exploded instantly upon contact with the vacuum. He did not recognize his dead companion—could not, really, but he supposed it had been some crew member. The two of them drifted leisurely downward. Were there others?

  The ship was long gone, after plummeting past like a spent but monstrous bullet, to burst into searing flame as it struck the atmosphere and cindered. There had been scant time to escape the doomed vessel. The rocketing thunder of the meteorite ripping into the hull and invading the power room had made the warning bells a mockery, faint by comparison and quite useless as a signal of alarm. He had automatically zipped his air-suit at the first invading crash—a reflex motion instilled in him by long conditioning—not feeling personal danger or consternation until a full second later when he spun toward his wife on the bunk. Between his first and second steps toward her the signal bells had cut loose, and he experienced a momentary anguish that she would not be able to close her suit in time. In the timeless interval between the second and third steps the big ship had exploded at the seams, tom apart from the sudden backlash of power unleashed in the stern. He was catapulted into space.

  He still did not know if his wife had saved herself. She had undressed and showered, preparing herself for bed, when the crisis came. His final glimpse of her had been of her body stretched out on the bunk, struggling to close the air-suit.

  The invading meteorite had continued its unseen way, but the shattered, hurtling ship had fallen like a black hulk until it struck the planet’s atmosphere far below. And since then he had lazily followed it down, he and that other lifeless body near by. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of it.

  Were there other survivors?

  He sensed a thin layer of air about him and opened his eyes to discover a faint, faltering daylight. His suit was beginning to react to the tenuous atmosphere. In the next glance he saw his lifeless companion again and turned his head away to look below, instinctively bringing his feet together so that the conjoint energy of the two metal shoes would right him, would cause him to fall feet first toward the planet. He did not know the sun nor the planetary system, so the world below was an unknown mystery. There were both light and dark areas scattered over the world, indicating land and seas; and though he strained his eyes toward the night side, he could find no illumination that might betray a city or a sign of civilization. Perhaps he was still too distant from the surface—perhaps illumination was dim.

  Following the next thought, he clutched the belt about his waist that contained emergency rations and once more turned to look at his dead follower. Food on the strange world might or might not be a problem, but the question of suitable water was of paramount importance. The seas were useless without refining equipment, sufficient rain water could be hard to come by and even then might not be too palatable—he would be wise to take the rations belonging to the dead man.

  A shipwrecked man either lived by his wits, or he did not live at all.

  The atmosphere was gaining substance and depth but still he continued to fall keeping his feet together that the energized shoes might increase his speed of descent. He wanted to be on the ground when the corpse landed, wanted to be in position to salvage the rations. Below him the land areas were taking on sharp definitions and he calculated where he might touch ground off to one side the setting sun-kissed the waters of a nameless sea.

  He thought again of his wife, wondering if she had succeeded in closing her suit, wondering if she had been blown clear of the doomed ship. Would he be able to find her again on the wide world below his feet—if she were alive? Would he be able to locate any other survivors—if they existed? It would be like hunting a lost traveller in a vast jungle, or seeking a castaway on an uncharted island.

  He never thought of himself as lost, as a castaway. He had lived through a stunning calamity, and when he touched ground again he would continue to live if he was able.

  He forced his feet apart finally to slow his fall. He was descending on a sandy, desolate shore.

  I.

  Cummings, just in from Washington, folded his hands over the thick sheaf of typed papers lying on the desk and let his attention stray to the patch of sunlight spilling, in the window. It was a warm summer sun and the window was open, letting in the mild traffic noises of the Knoxville streets. Cummings seemed to be absorbed in the patch of sun on the floor, studying the brightness of it, measuring its incredibly slow movement. The hasty flight from Washington had upset him, disturbed his heart and his stomach as flights always did, and he sought comfort in the warm splotch of light. The sunlight alone seemed peaceful, undisturbed and familiar.

  The second man in the small office held his silence, waiting for his superior to speak.

  Still carefully watching the sunlight and waiting for his body to attain a quietness, Cummings said, “It wasn’t at all necessary to include that vacation request, Dikty. You know me better than that.” Dikty nodded, sombrely agreeing with the supervisor.

  “I know you. But I left you that loophole open, just in case you wanted to put another man on. I hate to admit it but this is one time I’ve fallen down on the job.” He waved a tired hand at the stack of papers on the desk. “I know all of that about the subject, and yet I know nothing.”

  “A tough one,” Cummings said almost to himself.

  “A tough one,” Dikty agreed again. “I’m stopped. Everybody has to be born sometime, somewhere! But not this man—apparently.” The supervisor’s responding smile was small and fleeting, entirely lacking in humour. It had been a quickening of the lips and nothing more. “I appreciate that last.”

  “Another loophole,” Dikty explained uselessly. “I’m assuming he was born.” A trace of bitterness crept into the investigator’s voice. “I’ve seen the man with my own eyes and therefore I know he exists. And I don’t subscribe to any of those theories and stories regarding storks, cabbage leaves or bullrushes. The man must have a set of parents, must have a flesh-and-blood point of beginning in space and time.” He opened the palms of his hands in despair. “But where? The subject simply appeared—pop!—on a day and year, and has existed since.”

  Cummings continued to examine the pool of sunlight, moving his folded hands idly over the typed reports.

  “What was the day and year?” he asked.

  “March 8th, 1940.”

  The supervisor closed his eyes. Dikty, watching him, fancied a shadow of an expression had swiftly crossed his face, and he wondered if the pain were a physical or mental one. After a mome
nt Cummings spoke.

  “Does that date mean anything to you?”

  “Beyond being the birthday of my second child, no.”

  Cummings hesitated a moment before replying, wrestling with either his thoughts or his stomach. “March 8th, or thereabouts, was one of the birthdays of hell on earth. You could also consider it our birthday in a manner of speaking; at least, the tentative plans for a secret security police went on paper at that time. On or about March 8th, 1940, the President set up the National Defence Research Committee; both the Manhattan District and our organization grew out of that.”

  “I had always thought Manhattan was the beginning,” Dikty said absently.

  “No.” Cummings opened his eyes again to see if the pool of light had moved. “Another one of those eternal committees came first, in 1939. I forget the name. It didn’t amount to much because it was hampered by lack of funds and lack of support in the right places, but it was the beginning of hell. Our Research Committee grew out of that in 1940, and the Office of Scientific Research and Development grew out of that in 1941. Finally the Manhattan District sprang from them all, in 1942.” He sighed. “And there we are with more birthdays than you can count; I sometimes don’t blame the public for being confused with Washington’s confusion.”

  “Which would you say was the birthday?”

  “Which indeed?” Cummings shrugged his shoulders and almost lifted his eyes from the floor. “It all depends on which date you prefer to observe—if any. The first atomic bomb explosion occurred out there on the desert in July, 1945. But the men responsible for that one regard the real birthday as three years earlier.

  “Three?”

  Cummings nodded. “Those men obtained their first real chain reaction in December, 1942. They want that recognized as hell’s birthday. Personally, I don’t know if the date should be carved in stone and worshipped, or thrown away and forgotten. I think it is the worst step in progress since gunpowder. Oh, well.” He at last moved his eyes from the floor to stare at his assistant. “What most concerns us now is March 8th, 1940. The subject under surveillance first appeared on that date.”

  Dikty added, “Apparently.”

  “Yes, apparently.”

  “He came here to Knoxville about two years later,” Dikty continued after a moment. “And I do know what that date means. When the first engineers walked out into the hills west of here to survey the site for Oak Ridge, our subject had already appeared on the scene and opened an office.” Then he added bitterly, “He calls it an office. Just a couple of blocks from this spot, if you please.”

  Cummings smiled again, a faint trace of genuine humour turning the comers of his lips. “I appreciate that, too. I wonder if you do?”

  “That he located so close to us?”

  “That somehow he anticipated us again. We didn’t get here until several months later, until ground had already been broken on the Ridge. But study the over-all picture, the places and dates as a whole. On or about March 8th, 1940, three things happened—besides the birth of your second child. One, the powers-that-be in Washington decided in earnest to build an atomic bomb and began pouring important money into research. Two, those same powers realized the need of a highly secret security force to guard the bomb, and to guard the guards of the bomb—a hidden wheel within the wheel. And finally three, our subject makes his first recognizable appearance in public. Day and year, all three items. It occurs to me therefore that he might have known of the events of March 8th in advance, and timed his appearance accordingly.”

  “But I located him in Miami on that date,” Dikty protested.

  “To that you should have added, apparently. To be precise, you have succeeded admirably in tracing him back to Miami on March 8th of that year. He purchased a used car there and thus established himself for our scrutiny. You were unable to trace him back before the purchase.”

  “That’s correct, and that’s where I fell down. There isn’t any kind of a trail or hint of a trail prior to that date—in Miami or any other city I’ve searched.” The strong bitterness had returned to his voice.

  “So we know,” Cummings continued, “that he was in Florida on the same day that historic events transpired in Washington. Very well. Eventually our subject wanders into Tennessee and opens an office here in Knoxville, shortly before the government begins building Oak Ridge twenty-some miles away. We see that it has taken him two years to drift the distance from Florida; he certainly has little regard for time, has he? There is nothing really alarming about those facts when considered out of context, is there? Which is why I say he somehow anticipated us again—he arrived before we did, to allay suspicion.”

  Dikty slouched in his chair, staring through the open window. “The entire line of reasoning is rather fantastic.”

  “Agreed.” The supervisor nodded slowly, his gaze lingering for a space on the sunlight brightening the floor. “And so you can tear up that formal request for a vacation. I realize what you’ve run up against and I appreciate what you’ve been able to do. Tell me about the man.” Dikty hauled an old pipe out of his coat pocket and pointed the stem at the desk. “It’s all there in—”

  “I don’t want to read about him. I want to hear your version of him, impressions and opinions and all.” He thumped the papers with locked hands. “This is the dry way of telling it, this is the formal way you dictated it to Hoffman. I’d rather listen to your emotions paint in the colours. Tell me about the man.”

  The assistant said hesitantly, “He saved my life.”

  “Yes. And so you will colour him. I want to hear that.”

  Dikty packed and lit the pipe, sending great clouds of smoke churning toward the ceiling.

  “It was about a year and a half ago—we had just cleaned up that McKeown business, remember? My wife and the children were coming in on the train and I was late to meet them; I suppose I’d tarried too long over lunch and didn’t realize how late it was getting until I heard a train whistle.” Dikty paused, the memory strong in his mind. “As I ran out of the restaurant I saw a taxi parked about half a block away, and I made for that. I remember thinking that if the cabby took the short cuts and cheated on the red lights, we could get to the station in time.

  “I was—oh, fifty or sixty feet from the cab when I first noticed the woman, an ordinary sort of woman with bundles in her arms. She was running for the same taxi and with a determination to beat me to it. I didn’t have a gallant spark in me—I wanted that cab and I wanted to reach the railway station in a hurry, so I continued running. I’d have made it, too—the cab that is—if he hadn’t stepped in front of me. I blinked, I suppose, and there he was, right in my path. I threw out my hands to keep from colliding with him and he had done the same—for a second or so we stood there, our hands and arms locked in balance with each other. I attempted to disentangle myself as quickly as I could, but he was rather clumsy about it; when I finally got free and stepped around him, the woman was entering the taxi. It sped away from the curb.”

  “And?” the supervisor suggested.

  “That cab rocketed away from the curb and smashed into a gasoline truck at the next intersection. Both vehicles went up in flames.”

  There was a small silence in the office. The pool of sunlight had shifted its position on the floor as the sun continued its westward journey, and the early afternoon traffic of the streets was lighter. Outside the closed door of the room a stenographer’s typewriter was busy. That was the only sound for long moments.

  “And our subject?”

  “I have no idea,” Dikty supplied. “As soon as I could move after the crash, I ran back to the restaurant to call the fire department. When I returned to the scene I thought to look for the man but he wasn’t there. I must have stayed there fifteen or twenty minutes before I again remembered my wife. I took another cab—with instructions to drive slowly—and met her at the station. She was crying.”

  “Crying?”

  “Yes. There was something odd in her behaviour whe
n she saw me and our reunion was rather—affectionate. Quite some time afterward I found out why. The night before coming home she had dreamed of my death, it seems that I was killed in an automobile accident. And you see, when I was so late meeting the train, she thought . . .”

  Cummings nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well—that was my introduction to the subject. I never saw him again until a few months ago, when I received your instructions to investigate him. The name meant nothing to me so I started in the routine manner. He maintains a small office in that building down there”—Dikty pointed through the open window—”and seems to have a small amount of business. He doesn’t advertise himself as a private detective or anything so melodramatic—his office door merely contains his name and the word, Investigations. He has the proper credentials frond the police, he did not apply for a permit to carry a gun, and he has never been involved in any unsavoury situation since he arrived here in 1942. The police haven’t a bad word to say about him—although no one seems to be really friendly with him. The sort of man who keeps to himself and obeys all the rules.”

  Dikty found that his pipe had gone out, and relighted it.

  “When I first saw him, I remembered him as the man who had prevented me from reaching the cab. Up until that moment I considered the whole affair as a lucky break—for me, you understand. I had always assumed it was a fortunate coincidence that he did what he did—until I saw him, in line of investigation. My convictions changed on the spot. I can’t tell you why they changed, or what caused it, but as I studied his face I realized that he deliberately stopped me that day to save me.” Dikty put his hand to his forehead. “But I can’t explain why I think that. I just do.”

  “I’ll believe it,” Cummings said.

  “If I had met him in any other way, had happened across him on the street or in a bar, I suppose I would have reacted normally. I’d have gone on thinking our earlier meeting was a lucky break for me. I’d have bought the man a drink, pumped his hand and probably made a complete ass of myself. But because you had started me working on him my reactions were unexpected, and somewhat startling. Because he was a subject under investigation I leaped to the conclusion that our first meeting was not a coincidence. And that, in turn, made me realize what kind of a meeting it had been. He deliberately saved my life with—well, hardly malice aforethought.