Invaders From Earth

18

The house seemed to be sleeping; its windows were opaqued, its lawn overgrown and unkempt. Kennedy paid the cab driver and cautiously went up the walk to the door. The .38 was not far from his hand; he was ready in case Security men might be near.

He put his hand to the door, opened it, went in.

Marge was waiting in the living room for him.

She looked bad. She had aged, during the month; her face was pale and she had lost weight. Her hair looked stringy. Her lips were quivering; her face had no make-up on it, and her eyes were darting nervously around the room as Kennedy entered.

“Marge…”

“You saw the ad,” she said in a harsh whisper. “I was praying you wouldn’t. You never used to read that part of the paper.”

“Praying I wouldn’t? But—”

“Good evening, Ted,” a male voice said. Dave Spalding stepped out of the kitchen. A tiny nickel-jacketed gun glinted in his hand.

“Spalding? But—”

“Please put your hands up, Ted. Marge, see if he has a gun.”

Marge rose and walked unsteadily toward him. Her hands fumbled over him, quickly found the .38 in his pocket, and withdrew it. Silently she handed the gun to Spalding, who kept both of them covered during the procedure.

“I’m glad you didn’t have any strange ideas about that gun, Marge,” Spalding said levelly. There was just the hint of a quaver in his voice. “As I told you before, I can tell when you’re getting ready to do something. You would have been dead five seconds before you pulled the trigger.”

It irritated Kennedy to hear Spalding speaking this way in his own home. Leadenly he realized he had fallen into a trap with Marge as the bait.

He said, “What is this, Spalding?”

“Very simple. You’re a very valuable piece of merchandise to me. I’m glad I got to you before Security did. I figured you might fall for something like this.”

Kennedy looked at Marge in surprise. “I thought you two were simon-pure idealists. What’s happening?”

“I left the agency shortly after your trip into space,” Spalding said. “But it occurred to me recently that I might do better for myself if I returned. I phoned Dinoli and offered to find you—in exchange for a second-level position in the agency for myself.”

Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. “All the cynicism in the air finally made its impression on you, eh, Dave?” The callousness of the younger man’s statements astonished him. “So you used Marge as bait and got me here, and now you’ll sell me to Dinoli so you can get back into the agency you despised so much a few months ago. Very pretty, Dave.”

Something like torment appeared on Spalding’s face for a moment. Kennedy said nothing, staring at the gun in the other’s hand.

He wasn’t too surprised. He had always suspected that Spalding was a man of no real convictions, following the tide and struggling to find a safe port He had found that port now. He had given up trying to swim upstream.

Spalding said, “I phoned Dinoli at home, as soon as I saw you coming into the house. Security men will be here soon. I just have to keep you here and wait for them, and I can have my second-level slot.”

Kennedy glanced at Marge. “That was a splendid little speech you made on the recorder, Marge. All about how you were leaving me for Dave because Dave was true and good and virtuous and I was just an agency scoundrel. But I guess you see—”

“Shut up!” Spalding muttered.

“You’ve got the gun,” Kennedy said. “If you don’t like what I say, shoot me.”

“No,” Marge said. “Ted, he’s gone crazy. Don’t say things like that or he will shoot. He doesn’t care.”

Kennedy heard the clock ticking somewhere in the kitchen. He wondered how long it would take for the Security men to arrive. They would take him away, bury him somewhere in one of their interrogation centers, and the Ganymede invasion would go off as planned.

“Marge,” Spalding said. “My throat’s dry. Get me a drink of water from the kitchen.”

She nodded and went inside. Kennedy smiled. “I’m disappointed,” he said. “Not in you but in Marge. I thought she was a better judge of character than she turned out to be. She was really sold on you, I guess.”

“I quit the agency, Kennedy. I tried to free-lance. I found out what it’s like not to have money. I found out that having ethics isn’t enough. They beat you down; they don’t let you live. I couldn’t fight them, so I made up my mind to join them again.”

“Using me as the passkey,” Kennedy said. “You knew that Dinoli and Bullard were combing the country for me, and that you had bait you could dangle, in the form of Marge. So you bargained with them. Well, good for you. I hope you’re a success on second-level.”

Marge returned from the kitchen, bearing a tall glass of water filled to the very top. “Here you are, Dave. It’s ice-cold. Be careful you don’t spill any. Get him, Ted!”

She hurled the water in Spalding’s eyes and in the same motion threw herself against him, knocking his gun-hand to one side. Kennedy heard a roar and a boom and the thud of a slug burying itself in the wall, as he sprang toward the drenched, momentarily blinded Spalding.

He caught Spalding by the middle and spun him around. The gun waved wildly in the air. Kennedy grabbed for the gun-hand wrist, seized it and twisted, hoping to make him let go of the weapon. Instead, there was a second explosion.

Kennedy stepped back, startled by the vehemence of the blast. He felt no pain himself, and saw Marge’s pale, frightened face. Spalding was sagging to the floor, a jagged hole in his throat and a bewildered, surprised look on his face.

Then Kennedy felt Marge against him. She was quivering, and he held her tight, trying to keep himself from quivering also. He did not look at the dead man on the floor. He said quietly, “The gun went off while we were fighting. He shot himself. I think he’s dead, Marge.”

Through almost hysterical tears she said, “H-he put the ad in the paper. Then we came over here to wait for you. I tried to find some way of warning you, but there wasn’t any. And now—”

A shudder ran through her, and through him as well. “I guess he deserved it,” she said bleakly. “He would have turned you in. Ted, I’ve never seen a man get so rotten so fast. I was all wrong about him.”

“You thought you loved him, didn’t you?”

“Does it matter now?”

He tried to smile. “I guess not.”

“You won’t be bitter about it?”

Kennedy remembered fragments of a Ganny aphorism: Forgiveness is the heart and soul of existence. The past must not bind the people of the present, for they must heed the nearness of the future.

“We can start all over,” he said, and for a few moments they said nothing. Then Kennedy abruptly broke away from her.

“Spalding said he called Security. They’ll be here soon. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where will you go?”

“Downtown, to the agency. I have to get together some evidence.”

“What kind of—”

“I’ll explain everything later. Do you have a car here?”

“It belonged to Dave. It’s outside.”

“Good. We have to get away from here, fast. And I have a job for you.”

“Anything.”

“I want you to get to see Harrison Flaherty—the chief American U.N. delegate.” As he spoke, he removed the gun from Spalding’s clenched hand, pocketed it, and restored his own to the shoulder holster. “I don’t care how you manage it, but get in there to see him. Find out where he lives and see him at home—I know it’s someplace in Manhattan. Tell him you’re my wife, and that I’m coming over later to surrender myself to him in the name of the U.N.”

“What—”

“Don’t argue about it. Just do it. And let’s get out of here now. I don’t want them to catch me before I can give myself up.”

They drove down into New York City, taking the Second Avenue Skyway, leaving Spalding sprawled in the living room for the Security men to find. Kennedy was wanted for one murder already; it made no difference if they tacked another to his dossier.

He drove off the Skyway at East 122nd Street and stopped in a store on the corner, where he checked the directomat and discovered that the U.N. man’s residence was across town, at 89th Street overlooking the Hudson. He jotted down the address and pocketed it, and hailed a cab for Marge. The time was just before nine.

“I expect to be there in less than an hour,” he told her. He slammed the cab door and it drove away. He started to walk.

The business district, at this hour of night, was utterly deserted. The wide streets were empty in a way Kennedy had never seen before. He turned up East 123rd to Lenox, and the office building that housed Steward and Dinoli was before him. He felt a nostalgic twinge. He looked around, and, seeing no watchman on duty, entered.

He passed through the open front door and was met immediately by an inner barrier. He had a key to it, but the key would work only if his thumbprint were registered in the building’s central access file, down in the basement computer banks. It was a long chance, but removing a print from the computer banks was a troublesome business, and perhaps they had neglected to take his out.

He inserted his key and touched his thumb to the plate. The lock clicked; he pushed against the door and it swung back into its niche. They had not bothered to remove his thumbprint from the file after all.

He moved silently through the ghostly building, taking the stairs rather than the elevator (there was a concealed camera in the elevator that photographed all after-hours riders). Eight, nine, ten, eleven. Good old Floor Eleven again, after all these months. Almost three months. Last time he’d been here was the day before his ill-fated Ganymede journey. And now …

He used his key and his thumb again and let himself into the office. The lights were off, the windows opaqued. The familiar steady hum of daytime agency activity was missing.

Quietly he made his way past the outer desk to his old cubicle. He clicked on the pocket flash he had found in the tool compartment of Spalding’s car, and quickly gathered together the materials he wanted:

Dinoli’s bulletin quoting the timetable for unfolding of the project.

The volume of characterizations of colonists he and Spalding had compiled.

Half a dozen damning inter-office memoranda. His own master chart for developing crises in the day-to-day life of the Ganymede colonists.

It made a heavy little bundle. He shuffled it all together, found a big envelope and shoved it in. He had enough material here to explode the Ganymede hoax from top to bottom. The whole thing was here in all its cynical completeness.

He started to retrace his steps. He stopped; a light was on in one of the second-level offices in the back. Hastily, he shifted his burden from his left hand to the right and started to draw his gun.

A voice from behind him said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Kennedy?”

He whirled suddenly and in the dimness he saw Ernie Watsinski, lean and stoop-shouldered, staring at him. The second-level man had evidently been working late this evening. He dodged behind a desk suddenly, and Kennedy saw that the executive had a gun.

Quickly, Kennedy flattened himself against a door and ducked into one of the fourth-level cubicles. He said crisply, “Throw down your gun, Ernie. I don’t want to kill you. I’ve seen enough men dead on account of me.”

“Suppose you throw down your gun,” Watsinski replied. “I figured you’d come here eventually.”

Kennedy leaned out as far as he dared. Watsinski was barely visible; Kennedy saw the edge of one long leg protrude from the side of a desk, then hurriedly draw back. He heard the sound of a telephone dial being turned. He heard Watsinski’s voice: “Yes, give me Security. Hello? Ernest Watsinski speaking—of Steward and Dinoli. I’m in the S and D office now, and Ted Kennedy just attempted to break in. Eleventh floor. Yes, he’s armed. So am I. We’re in something of a stalemate right now. Get right over here.”

The receiver dropped back into the cradle. Kennedy began to sweat. From trap to trap! He eyed the distant door and wondered if he dared make a break for it. He had no idea how good a shot Watsinski was, but he knew quite definitely that if he stayed here much longer he would be boxed in by Security.

He moistened his lips. “Ernie?”

“I’m here. Just sit tight, Kennedy. Security’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Calmly, Kennedy squeezed a shot out. The roar split the silence; he heard the sound of the bullet crashing harmlessly into the desk behind which Watsinski was hiding. The second-level man did not return the fire; the advantage was with him only so long as his gun held ammunition. Kennedy fired two more shots in quick succession. The first hit the wall behind Watsinski; Kennedy was hoping for a lucky ricochet. The second smashed into the lighting fixture above them.

The room went dark. Kennedy sprang to his feet and headed for the door, clutching his package desperately. He heard the sound of shots behind him, wild desperate shots fired by the angry Watsinski.

He grinned to himself as he ran down the eleven flights of stairs.