Rogue Moon

1

In the morning, at a quarter to nine, the phone rang in the laboratory. Sam Latourette took it from the technician who’d picked it up. He said, “Well, if he’s like that, don’t take any crap from him, Tom. Tell him to wait. I’ll notify Ed Hawks.” He hung up and padded in his old shoes across the floor, to where Hawks was with the crew of Navy dressers laying out the equipment Barker would wear.

The suit lay open on its long, adjustable table like a sectioned lobster, trailing disconnected air hoses from its sides, its crenelated joints bulging arthritically because of the embedded electric motors and hydraulic pistons that would move them. Hawks had run leads from a test power supply into the joints; the suit flexed and twitched, scraping its legs ponderously on the table’s plastic facing, writhing the tool and pincer clusters at the ends of its arms. One of the Navy men wheeled up a compressed air cylinder and snapped the air hoses to it. At Hawks’ nod, the helmet, crested with reinforcing ridges, its faceplate barred by a crosshatch of steel rods, hissed shrilly through its intakes while the table surface groaned.

“Leave it, Ed,” Sam Latourette said. “These men can handle that.”

Hawks looked apologetically at the Navy men, who had all turned their eyes on Latourette. “I know that, Sam.”

“Are you going to wear it? Leave it alone!” Latourette burst out. “Nothing ever goes wrong with any of the equipment!”

Hawks said patiently, “I want to do it. The boys, here—” he gestured toward the dressers — “the boys don’t mind my playing with their Erector set.”

“Well, this fellow Barker’s down at the gate. Give me his pass and stuff, and I’ll go down and get him. He sounds like a real prize.”

“No, I’ll do that, Sam.” Hawks stepped back from the table and nodded toward the dressers. “It’s in fine shape. Thank you.” He left the laboratory and went up the stairs to the ground floor, preoccupied.

Outside, he walked along the fog-wet, black asphalt driveway toward the gate, which was at first barely visible through the acrid mist. He looked at his wrist watch, and smiled faintly.

Barker had left his car in the outer parking lot and was standing on the other side of the small pedestrian gate, staring coldly through it at the guard, who ignored him stiffly. Barker’s cheekbones were flushed red, and his poplin windbreaker was curled over his left forearm as though he expected to begin a knife fight.

“Morning, Dr. Hawks,” the guard said as Hawks came up. “This man’s been tryin’ to talk me into lettin’ him in without a pass. And he’s been tryin’ to pump me about what you’re doin’.”

Hawks nodded and looked thoughtfully at Barker. “I’m not surprised.” He reached into his suit pocket, under his smock, and banded over the company pass and security O.K. slip from the FBI. The guard took them into his cubicle to record the numbers on his log sheet.

Barker looked defiantly at Hawks. “What’s in this place? Another atom bomb project?”

“There’s no need to fish for information,” Hawks said quietly. “And no purpose in doing it with a man who lacks it. Stop wasting your energy. I’d be happier if I hadn’t guessed exactly how you’d act here.” Hawks said, “Thank you, Tom,” as the guard came out and unlocked the gate. He turned back to Barker. “You’ll always be told everything you need to know.”

Barker said, “Sometimes it’s better for me if I’m allowed to judge what I need, or don’t. But—” He bowed deeply from the hips. “At your service.” He straightened and glanced up at the length of heavy-gauge pipe forming the lintel of the gate in the Cyclone fencing. He twisted his pinched lips into a smile. “Well, morituri te salutamus, Doctor,” he said as he stepped through. “We signify your status at the point of our death.”

Hawks’ face twitched. “I’ve also read a book,” he said softly, and turned away. “Put on your badge and come with me.”

Barker took it from the guard, who was holding it out patiently, and clipped it to his Basque shirt pocket. “And thank you, Tom,” he said over his shoulder, falling into step with Hawks.

“Claire didn’t want me to come,” he said, cocking his head up to glance significantly at Hawks. “She’s afraid.”

“Of what I might do to you, or of what might happen to her because of it?” Hawks answered, keeping his eyes on the buildings.

“I don’t know, Doctor.” There was wariness in Barker’s tension. “But,” he said slowly, his voice hard and sharp, “I’m the only other man that ever frightens her.”

Hawks said nothing. He continued to walk back toward the laboratory, and after a while Barker smiled once again, thinly and crookedly, and also walked with his eyes only on where his feet were taking him.

The stairway down into the laboratory from the main floor, where the passenger elevators stopped, was clad with plates of non-skid sheet steel. The green paint on the plates was fresh at the edges, worn off the tops of the die-stamped diamonds closer in. Nearer the center, the diamonds had been worn down to the underlying angled parallel ridges. In the center itself, a freehand pattern of electric welds had been imposed over the thinned, flat metal. Hawks’ and Barker’s footsteps slurred and rang in the battleship-gray stairwell.

“Shuffle your victims up and down in long, shackled lines, do you?” Barker said.

“I’m glad to see you’ve found a new line of talk,” Hawks answered.

“Many’s the agonized scream that’s echoed up this shaft, I’ll wager. What’s beyond those doors? The torture chamber?”

“The laboratory.” He held open the swinging door. “Come in.,,

“Pleasure.” Barker straightened his shoulders into perfect symmetry, threw the folded windbreaker half across his back, and stepped past Hawks. He walked out a few feet into the main aisle between the cabinets holding the voltage regulator series and put his hands in his pockets, stopping to look around. Hawks stopped with him.

All the work lights were on. Barker turned his body slowly from the hips, studying the galleries of signalmodulating equipment, watching the staff assistants running off component checks.

“Busy,” he said, looking at the white-coated men, who were consulting check-off sheets on their clipboards, setting switches, cutting in signal generators from the service racks above each gallery, switching off, resetting, retesting. His glance fell on the nearest of a linked array of differential amplifier racks on the laboratory floor. “Lots of wiring. I like that. Marvels of science. That sort of thing.”

“It’s part of a man,” Hawks said.

“Oh?” Hawks lifted one eyebrow. His eyes were dancing mockingly. “Plugs and wires and little ceramic widgets,” he challenged.

“I told you,” Hawks said calmly. “You don’t have to try to get a rise out of us. We’ll tell you. That’s part of a man. The amplifier next to it is set up to be another part.

“That entire bank of amplifiers is set up to contain an exact electronic description of a man: his physical structure, down to the last moving particle of the last atom in the last molecule in the last cell at the end of his little toe’s nail. It knows, thereby, his nervous reaction time and volume, the range and nature of his reflexes, the electrical capacity of each cell in his brain. It knows everything it needs to know so it can tell another machine how to build that man.

“It happens to be a man named Sam Latourette, but it could be anyone. It’s our standard man. When the matter transmitter’s scanner converts you into a series of similar electron flows, the information goes on a tape to be filed. It also goes in here, so we can read out the differences between you and the standard. That gives us a cross-check when we need accurate signal modulation. That’s what we’re going to do today. Take our initial scan, so we can have a control tape and a differential reading to use when we transmit tomorrow.”

“Transmit what?”

“You.”

“Where?”

“I told you that, too. The Moon.”

“Just like that? No rockets, no countdowns? Just a bunch of tubes sputtering and squish! I’m on the Moon, like a three-D radiophoto.” Barker smiled. “Ain’t science great?”

Hawks looked at him woodenly. “We’re not conducting any manhood contests here, Barker. We’re working at a job. It’s not necessary to keep your guard up all the time.”

“Would you know a contest if you saw one, Doctor?”

Sam Latourette, who had come up behind them, growled, “Shut up, Barker!”

Barker turned casually. “Jesus, fellow, I didn’t eat your baby.”

“It’s all right, Sam,” Hawks said patiently. “Al Barker, this is Sam Latourette. Doctor Samuel Latourette.”

Barker glanced at the amplifiers and back. “We’ve met,” he said to Latourette, extending his hand.

“You’re not very funny, Barker.”

Barker lowered his hand. “I’m not a comedian by trade. What’re you — the house mother?”

“I’ve been looking over the file Personnel sent down on you,” Latourette said with heavy persistence. “I wanted to see what your chances were of being any use to us here. And I just want you to remember one thing.” Latourette had lowered his head until his neck was almost buried between his massive shoulders, and his face was broadened by parallel rows of yellowish flesh that sprang into thick furrows down the sides of his jaw. “When you talk to Dr. Hawks, you’re talking to the only man in the world who could have built this.” His pawing gesture took in the galleries, the catwalks, the amplifier bank, the transmitter hulking at the far wall. “You’re talking to a man who’s as far removed from muddleheadedness — from what you and I think of as normal human error — as you are from a chimp. You’re not fit to judge his work or make smart cracks about it. Your little personality twists aren’t fit for his concern. You’ve been hired to do a job here, just like the rest of us. If you can’t do it without making more trouble for him than you’re worth, get out — don’t add to his burden. He’s got enough on his mind already.” Latourette flashed a deep-eyed look at Hawks. “More than enough.” His shoulders arched forward. His forearms dangled loosely and warily. “Got it straight, now?”

Barker’s expression was attentive and dispassionate as he looked at Latourette. His weight had shifted almost entirely away from his artificial leg, but there was no other sign of tension in him. He was deathly calm.

“Sam,” Hawks said, “I want you to supervise the tests on the lab receiver. It needs doing now. Then I need a check on the telemeter data from the relay tower and the Moon receiver. Let me know as soon as you’ve done that.”

Barker watched Latourette turn and stride soundlessly away down along the amplifier bank toward the receiving stage. There a group of technicians was fluoroscoping a series of test objects being transmitted to it by another team.

“Come with me, please,” Hawks said to Barker and walked slowly toward the table where the suit lay.

“So they talk about you like that around here,” Barker said, still turning his head from side to side as they walked. “No wonder you get impatient when you’re outside dealing with the big world.”

“Barker, it’s important that you concern yourself only with what you’re here to do. It’s removed from all human experience, and if you’re to go through it successfully, there are a number of things you must absorb. Let’s try to keep personalities out of this.”

“How about your boy, over there? Latourette?”

“Sam’s a very good man,” Hawks said.

“And that’s his excuse.”

“It’s his reason for being here. Ordinarily, he’d be in a sanatorium under sedation for his pain. He has an inoperable cancer. He’ll be dead next year.”

They had passed the low wall of linked gray steel cabinets. Barker’s head jerked back around. “Oh,” he said. “That’s why he’s the standard man in there. Nothing eating at the flesh. Eternal life.”

“No usual man wants to die,” Hawks said, touching Barker’s shoulder and moving him gently toward the suit. The men of the Navy crew were darting covert glances at Barker only after looking around to see if any of their teammates were watching them at that particular instant “Otherwise, the world would be swept by suicides.”

2

Hawks did not introduce Barker to the crew. He pointed to the suit as he reached the edge of the table. “Now, this is the best we can do for you in the way of protection. You get into it here, on the table, and you’ll be wheeled into the transmitter. You’ll be beamed up to the Moon receiver in it — once there, you’ll find it comfortable and easily maneuverable. You have power assists, activated by the various pressures your body puts on them. The suit will comply to all your movements. I’m told it feels like swimming. You have a selection of all the tools we know you’ll need, and a number of others we think might be called for. That’s something you’ll have to tell us afterward, if you can. It’s important that you thoroughly familiarize yourself with the operations of the suit — most of them are automatic, but it’s much better to be sure. Now I’d like you to get into it, so the ensign and his men, here, can check to see that you won’t have any difficulties.”

The naval officer in charge of the specialist crew stepped forward. “Excuse me, Doctor,” he said. “I understand the volunteer has an artificial limb.” He turned to Barker. “If you’ll please remove your trousers, sir?”

Hawks smiled uncomfortably. “I’ll hold your jacket,” he said to Barker.

Barker looked around. Beads of cold moisture appeared on his forehead. He handed the windbreaker to Hawks without turning his face toward him, opened his belt and stepped out of the slacks. He stood with them clutched in his hands, looked at Hawks, then rolled them up quickly and put them down on the edge of the table.

“Now, if you’ll just lie down in the suit, sir, we’ll see what needs adjusting.” The ensign gestured to his team and they closed in around Barker, lifting him up and putting him down on his back inside the opened suit. Barker lay rigid, staring up, and the ensign said, “Move yourself around, please — we want to make sure your muscles make firm contacts with all the servomotor pressure plates.”

Barker began stiffly moving his body.

The ensign said, “Yes, I thought so. The artificial limb will have to be built up in the region of the calf, and on the knee joint. Fidanzato—” He gestured to one of his men. “Measure those clearances and then get down to the machine shop. I want some shim plates on there. I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Barker, “but you’ll have to let my man take the leg with him. It won’t take long. Sampson — help this man off with his shirt so you can get at the shoulder strap.”

Barker jerked his arms up out of the suit, grasped the edges of the torso backplate, and pulled himself up to a sitting position. “I’ll take my own shirt off, sonny,” he rasped, and pulled it off over his head. As Sampson unbuckled the leg’s main strap, Barker looked twistedly at Hawks and ticked the edge of the armor shell with his fingers. “New artifices, Mage?” He seemed to be expecting some special response to this.

Hawks frowned. Barker’s grin became even more distorted with irony. He looked around him. “Well, that’s one flunk. Anybody else care to try? Maybe I should tie one hand behind my back, too?”

The ensign said uncertainly to Hawks, “It’s a quotation from a play, Doctor.” He looked at Barker, who solemnly wet a fingertip and described an X in the air.

“Score one for the NROTC graduate.”

The other men in the dressing team kept their heads down and worked.

“What kind of a play, Ensign?” Hawks asked quietly.

“I read it in my English Lit course,” the ensign said uncomfortably, flushing as Barker winked. “Merlin the Magician has made an invincible suit of armor. He intended it for Sir Galahad, but as he was making it, the needs of the magic formula forced him to fit it to Lancelot’s proportions. And even though Lancelot has been betraying King Arthur, and they’ll be fighting in the joust that day, Merlin can’t let the armor just go unused. So he calls Lancelot into his workshop, and the first thing Lancelot says when he comes in and sees the magic armor is: ‘What’s this — new artifices, Mage?’ ”

Barker grinned briefly at the ensign and then at Hawks. “I hoped you’d recognize the parallel, Doctor. After all, you say you’ve read a book or two.”

“I see,” Hawks said. He looked thoughtfully at Barker, then asked the ensign, “What’s Merlin’s reply?”

“’Aye. Armorings.’”

Barker’s mouth hooked upward in glee. He said to Hawks, “’Armorings? Sooth, Philosopher, you’ve come to crafting in your tremblant years? You’ve put gnarled fingers to the metal-beater’s block, and hammered on Damascus plate to mime the armiger’s employe?’”

The ensign, looking uncertainly from Hawks to Barker, quoted: “’How I have done is no concern for you Content yourself that when an eagle bends to make his nest, such nests are built as only eagles may inhabit. — Or those who have an eagle’s leave.’”

Barker cocked an eyebrow. “’And I’ve your leave, old bird?’”

“’Leave and prayer, headbreaker,’” the ensign replied to him.

“’You like me not,’” Barker said, frowning at Hawks. “’And surely Arthur’d not command you to enwrap this body’s hale and heart beyond all mortal damage. Nay, not this body — he’s not fond of my health, eh? — Well, that’s another matter. You say this armor comes from you? Then it is proof, weav’d up with your incantings? ’Tis wondrous strong? For me? As I began, you like me not — why is this, then? Who has commanded you?’”

The ensign licked his lips and looked anxiously at Hawks. “Should I go on, Doctor?”

Hawks smiled thinly at Barker. “Why, yes — let’s see how it comes out. If I like the condensation, maybe I’ll go out and buy the book.”

“Yes, sir.” The ensign’s men had not looked up. Sampson was fumbling absorbedly with the buckles of the shoulder strap.

“’My craft commands me, Knight. As yours does you, in sign that craft loves man full well as wisely as a woman will. Take it. Never has armor such as this bestrode a horse. Never so good a craftsman’s eye has measured out its joinings, or wrought so tenderly. Never have maker’s eyes so earnestly conjoined with artificer’s hands and engine-shaper’s mind, as were met here to borrow from your thews that motive force which, in the sum, will take all glory. Take it — be damned to you! — take it, you that have overmastered more than is your measure, and seek to overmaster morel’”

“’There’s a jealousy in you, old man,’” Barker said.

“’You know not what of!’”

“’You know, then, so surely, the things my silent mind wots? Be not so proud, Magician. ’Tis as you say — I, too, know what it is to be of craft. And I’ve my pride, as well as you have yours. Will it entail me glory, do you think, to take with your gift what I well might giffless gain?’”

“’You must!’ “

“’Or where’s your mageing? Aye — and what’s my craft, to ware itself of yours? Take it I shall, though I misdoubt myself. You warrant it for proof? It will not fail, upon some field, against some lance unknown to your devising?’”

“’An it shall fall, then fail I with you, Knight.’”

Barker impatiently shrugged Sampson off and reached up to where the narrow band of leather had creased his shoulder permanently. He pulled it down and unbuckled the broad band across his stomach. “’Then fail not, Armiger,’” he whispered. “’I pray you — do not fail.’”

Hawks looked at Barker quietly for a moment. Then he wet a forefinger and described an X in the air. “Score one for the whole man,” he said. As he said it, a flash of pain crossed his face.

3

Fidanzato walked away with Barker’s leg. A technician came up to Hawks. “Your secretary’s on the phone, Ed,” he said. “Asked me to tell you it’s urgent.”

Hawks shook his head to himself. “Thanks,” he said distractedly, and went across the laboratory to an isolated wall box. He picked up the extension handset. “This is Hawks, Vivian. What is it — a call from Tom Phillips? No, it’s all right — I’ve been expecting it. I’ll take it here.” He held on, his eyes blank, waiting while the admiral’s call was switched to the laboratory. Then the diaphragm in the earpiece rattled again, and he said, “Yes, Tom. Oh, I’m all right. Yes. Hot in Washington, is it? No, not here. Just smog. Well.” He stood listening, and looking at the featureless wall before him.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Well, I rather thought the report on Rogan would have that effect. No, listen — we have a new approach. We’ve found a new man. I think he’ll work out all right. No, look — I mean a new kind of man; I think we’ve got a good chance with him. No, no — listen, why don’t you look up his record? Al Barker. Yes. Barker. There should be an Army 201 file from the Office of Strategic Services records. And an FBI security clearance. Yes. You see, the thing is, he’s a completely different kind of organism from a nice, decent kid like Rogan. Yes, the records would show it. How about a personal interview, if you need it for a convincer with the Committee? No, I know they’re upset about Rogan and the others, but maybe if you—”

His unoccupied left hand plucked blindly and persistently at one of the buttons of his smock.

“No, Tom — think. Think, now — Look, if this was just one more volunteer, what purpose would I think I was serving? No, he is different. Look, if you — All right, if there isn’t time, there isn’t time. When are they going to meet again? Well, it seems to me there’s plenty of flying time between now and day after tomorrow. You could come out here and—”

He shook his head at the wall and put the flat of his palm up against it. “All right. I know you’re a busy man. All right, then, if you’re on my side and you don’t need to fly out here because you trust me, why don’t you trust me? I mean, if I think the next shot’ll make it, why can’t you take my word for it?”

He listened, and said peevishly: “Well, damn it, if the Committee won’t make an official decision until day after tomorrow, why can’t I go ahead until then? I’ll have a successful shot on my record by then, we’ll be rolling with this thing, we’ll — Look — do you think I’d waste my own time if I didn’t think this man could do it?”

He sighed, and said huskily, “Look, if I could guarantee what the results were going to be, I wouldn’t need a research program! Let’s try and do this thing step by step, if we’re going to do it at all!”

He rubbed his hand over his face, pressing heavily against it. “O.K., we’re back to the same thing — what’s the good of arguing? You’ll give me money, rank, equipment, and everything, because it’s me, but the first time it comes down to taking my word for something, nobody out there can get out of his half-assed panic long enough to think who they’re dealing with. You think I’m doing all this by guesswork?”

He licked his lips and listened intently. Then he relaxed. “All right, then,” he said with a wintery smile. “I’ll call you early day after tomorrow and let you know the results. Yes, I’ll remember the time difference! All right. And no, no — don’t worry,” he finished, “I’ll give it the very best try I can. Yes. Well, you too, Tom. Be seeing you.”

He racked the handset and turned away from it, his face drawn. He looked at his hands and put them in his pockets.

Sam Latourette had been waiting for him to finish. He came forward worriedly. “Trouble, Ed?”

Hawks grimaced. “Some. Tomorrow’s shot has to make it.”

“Or else?” Latourette asked incredulously. “Just like that? Years of work and millions of dollars, down the drain? Are they crazy?”

“No. No, they’re human, Sam. It’s beginning to look like good money after bad, to them. And men being lost. What do you want them to do? Go on feeling like accessories to senseless murder? And, after all — it’s not as if the end of the Moon shots would be the end of the transmitter program, you know.”

Latourette’s face flushed. “Come off it, Ed! All that needs to happen is for the transmitter program to get one black eye like this, and even the company’ll let it go. They’ll pick it up again sometime, but not right away — and not with you. You know that. They’ll ease you out and close this down until it’s cooled off a little. They—”

“I know.” Hawks said. “I’ve got too much of the smell of death around me.” He looked around. “But they won’t do it if Barker pays off for us, tomorrow. ‘Success blinds all.’ Chaucer. Out of context.” His face writhed into a twisted smile. “The level of culture in this place is rising.” He swung his shoulders around, his face still contorted, like a child’s in the grip of unbearable frustration searching for the nursery door. He said in a very low voice, “Sam, what a complicated and terrible thing the human mind is!” He moved to begin walking across the laboratory floor, his head down.

Latourette pawed clumsily at the air. “You can’t use Barker! You can’t afford to get involved with someone as wild and unpredictable as that! Ed, it won’t work — it’ll be too much.”

Hawks stopped still, his hands in his pockets, his eyes shut. “Don’t you think he’ll work out?”

“Listen, if he has to be put up with day after day, it’ll get worse all the time!”

“So you do think he’ll work out.” Hawks turned and looked at Latourette. “You’re afraid he’ll work out.”

Latourette looked frightened. “Ed, he doesn’t have sense enough not to poke at every sore spot he finds in you. And you’re not the kind to ignore him. It’ll get worse, and worse, and you—”

“You said that, Sam,” Hawks said gently. After a moment, he sent Latourette back to the transmitter, and once again set out to walk across the laboratory toward Barker.

Hawks stood watching Barker’s leg being refitted. Bulges of freshly ground aluminum were bolted to the flesh-colored material.

“Barker,” he said at last, lifting his eyes to the man’s face.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“We’re pressed for time. I’d appreciate it if you went up and had our physician examine you now. As many of us as can be spared will take our lunch in the meantime.”

“Doctor, you know damned well I passed an insurance physical last week.”

“Last week…” Hawks said, looking down at the floor, “is not today. Tell Dr. Holiday I asked him to be as quick as he can and still be thorough. Try to return here as soon as he’s finished.” He turned away. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Hawks waited alone in Benton Cobey’s reception room for twenty minutes, looking patiently down at his shoes. Finally the receptionist told him he could go in.

He crossed the bristly carpet, knocked once on the featureless mahogany sheet of Cobey’s door, opened it and went through.

Continental’s president sat behind a teak table that glowed with the oil of its dark, hand-rubbed finish, almost as black as bituminous coal. Cobey himself was a small, aggressive man with an undershot jaw and a narrow skull as bald as an egg. His deep tan had the faint tinge of a quartz lamp’s work, and his lips were lightly blued by the first hint of cyanosis. His face had the pinched look of ulceration.

“All right, Ed,” he said immediately. “What is it?”

Hawks pulled one of the over-comfortable armchairs away from the side of the desk a little, and sat down, adjusting the crease in his trousers.

“Something wrong down in the lab, again?” Cobey asked.

“It’s a personnel problem,” Hawks said, looking over Cobey’s left shoulder. “And I have to be back in the laboratory by one o’clock.”

“See Connington about it.”

“I don’t know if he’s in today. It’s not in his province, in any case. What I want to do is make Ted Gersten my top assistant. He’s qualified; he’s been Sam Latourette’s second for a year and a half. He can do Sam’s job. But I need your authorization to do it by tomorrow. We’re set up for a new shot then — the astronomical conditions are already past optimum; I want to get in as many shots as I can this month — and I want Sam off it by then.” His right hand had unconsciously moved to the end of his tie. He clamped the end between his fore and middle fingers, and began working the point of the cloth in under his thumbnail.

Cobey leaned back and folded his hands. His knuckles became mottled with red. “Six months ago,” he said in a low voice, “when I wanted to have Latourette sent home, you pulled that phony business of needing him to help set up your amplifier, or something.”

Hawks took a breath. “Hughes Aircraft needs a project engineer on a short-term research program for the Army. Frank Wasted wants Sam on it, if he can get him. He can get a contingent approval from Hughes’ personnel department.”

Cobey sat forward. “Wasted wouldn’t call you about Sam if he didn’t have an idea he could get him. Look, Hawks,” Cobey said, “I’ll take a lot from you — even more than the Navy makes me take. Don’t kid yourself, if I didn’t respect your brains, I’d have your hide any time I wanted it, and blow the contract; I’ll still be here and the company’ll still be here after this Moon business is over and done.

“Don’t go pussyfooting around behind my back! Don’t tell me about calls from Waxted when I’d lay dollars to dimes he doesn’t know the first thing about it yet! I’m telling you, Hawks.”

Hawks said, “I’m here. I’m telling you what I want. I’ve arranged the situation so all you have to do is make a yes or no decision.”

“I always say you do neat work. What is this, Hawks? Why do you want Latourette off your hands?” Cobey’s eyes narrowed. “Latourette’s been your shadow ever since he came here. If I want ten minutes of lecture on the march of modern electronics, I ask Latourette how you’ve been feeling lately. What’s the matter, Hawks — you and Sam have a falling out?”

Hawks had still not met Cobey’s eyes from the moment he had entered the office.

“Relationships between people are a complicated thing.” Hawks was speaking slowly and distinctly, as if he anticipated a stoppage in his throat. “People lose control of their emotions. The more intelligent they are, the more subtly they do it. Intelligent men pride themselves on their control. They go to elaborate lengths to disguise their impulses — not from the world; they’re not hypocrites — from themselves. They find rational bases for emotional actions, and they present logical excuses for disaster. A man may begin a whole series of errors and pursue it to the brink of the pit, and over the brink, all unaware.”

“What you mean is, you had some kind of set-to with Latourette. He wants to do one thing and you want to do another.”

Hawks said doggedly, “People under emotional stress always resort to violence. Violence doesn’t have to be a fired gun; it can be a slip of a pencil on a chart, or a minor decision that brings an entire program down. No supervisor can watch his assistants continually. If he could, he wouldn’t need help on the job. As long as Latourette’s on the project, I can’t feel I’m in total control of things.”

“And you have to have that? Total control?”

“I have to have that.”

“So Latourette’s got to go. Just like that. Six months ago, he had to stay. Just like that.”

“He’s the best man for the job. I know him better than I know Gersten. That’s why I want Gersten now — he hasn’t been my friend for ten years, the way Sam has.”

Cobey caught his lower lip between his teeth and slowly pulled it free without relaxing the pressure. He leaned forward and tapped a memorandum pad with the end of his pen. “You know, Hawks,” he said, “this can’t go on. This began as a simple Navy research contract. All we were was the hardware supplier, even if you did initiate the deal. Then the government found that thing on the Moon, and then there was all that trouble, and suddenly we’re not just working with a way to transmit people, we’re operating as an actual installation, we’re fooling around with telepathy, we’ve got men dead and men psychotic, and you are in it up to your ears.

“I came in here one morning, and found a letter on my desk informing me you’re all at once a Navy commander and in charge of operating and maintaining the installation. Meaning you’re in a position to demand from us, as a Naval officer, any equipment you, as one of our engineers, decide the installation needs. The Board of Directors won’t tell me the basis for the funds they’ve allocated. The Navy tells me nothing. You’re supposed to be a ConEl employee, and I don’t even know where your authority stops — all I know is ConEl money is being spent against the day when the Navy might pay us back, if Congress doesn’t cut the armed services budget so that they can’t, under the terms of the research contract — which, for all I know, has been superseded under the terms of some obscure paragraph in the National Defense Acts. All I do know is that if I run Continental into the red so deep it can’t get out, I’ll be out on my ear for the stockholders to be happy over.”

Hawks said nothing.

“You didn’t make the system I’ve got to work with,” Cobey said. “But you’ve sure as hell exploited it. I don’t dare give you a direct order. I’m dead sure I couldn’t fire you outright if I wanted to. But my job is running this company. If I decide I can’t run it with you in it, and I can’t fire you, I’m going to have to pull some dirty deal to force you out. Maybe I’ll even make that nice little speech about emotional violence.” He turned sharply and said, “Look at me, God damn you! You’re making this mess — not me!”

Hawks stood up and turned away. He walked slowly toward Cobey’s door. “Can I, or can I not release Sam to Waxted and promote Gersten?”

Cobey scrawled a note on his memo pad with jabbing strokes of his pen. “Yes!”

Hawks’ shoulders slumped. “All right, then,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

4

When he returned to the laboratory, Barker had been fitted with the first of his undersuits and was sitting on the edge of the dressing table, smoothing the porous silk over his skin, with talcum powder showing white at his wristlets and around the turtle neck. The undersuit was bright orange, and as Hawks came up to him Barker said, “I look like a circus acrobat.”

Hawks looked at his wrist watch. “We’ll be ready for the scan in about twenty minutes. I want to be with the transmitter test crew in five. Pay attention to what I’m going to tell you.”

“Lunch disagree with you, Doctor?”

“Let’s concentrate on our work. I want to tell you what’s going to be done to you. I’ll be back later to ask you if you want to go through with this, just before we start.”

“That’s very kind.”

“It’s necessary. Now, listen: the matter transmitter analyzes the structure of whatever is presented to its scanners. It converts that analysis into a signal, which describes the exact atomic structure of the scanned object. The signal is transmitted to a receiver. And, at the receiver, the signal is fed into a resolving stage. There the scanned atomic structure is duplicated from a local supply of atoms — half a ton of rock will do, and to spare. In other words, what the matter transmitter will do is to tear you down and then send a message to a receiver telling it how to put you together again.

“The process is painless and, as far as your consciousness is concerned, instantaneous. It takes place at the speed of light, and neither the electrochemical impulses which transmit messages along your nerves and between your brain cells, nor the individual particles constituting your atoms, nor the atoms in their individual movements, travel at quite that rate.

“Before you could possibly be conscious of pain or dissolution, and before your atomic structure could have time to drift out of alignment, it will seem to you as if you’ve stood still and the universe has moved. You’ll suddenly be in the receiver, as though something omnipotent had moved its hand, and the electrical impulse that was a thought racing between your brain cells will complete its journey so smoothly that you will have real difficulty, for a moment, in realizing that you have moved at all. I’m not exaggerating, and I want you to remember it. It’ll be important to you.

“Another thing to remember is that you won’t actually have made the journey. The Barker who appears in the receiver has not one atom in his body that is an atom in your body now. A split second ago, those atoms were part of a mass of inorganic material lying near the receiver. The Barker who appears was created by manipulating those atoms — stripping particles out of some, adding particles to others, like someone robbing Peter to pay Paul.

“It makes no functional difference — this is in theory, remember — that the Barker who appears is only an exact duplicate of the original. It’s Barker’s body, complete with brain cells duplicating the arrangement and electrical capacities of the originals. This new Barker has your memories, complete, and even the memory of the half-completed thought that he finishes as he stands there. But the original Barker is gone, forever, and his atoms have been converted into the energy that drove the transmitter.”

“In other words,” Barker said, “I’m dead.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, that’s what you promised me.”

“No,” Hawks said. “No,” he repeated slowly, “that’s not the thing I promised you. Theoretically, the Barker who appears in the receiver could not be distinguished from the original in any way. As I said in the beginning, it will seem to him that nothing has happened. When it happens to you, it’ll seem to you that it’s you who’s standing there. The realization that somewhere else, once, there was a Barker who no longer exists, will be purely academic. You will know it because you’ll remember my telling it to you now. You won’t feel it.

“You’ll have a clear memory of being put into the suit, of being wheeled into the transmitter, of feeling the chamber magnetic field suspending your suit with you inside it, of the lights being turned out, and of drifting down to the chamber floor and realizing you must be in the receiver. No, Barker,” Hawks finished, nodding to the dressing team, which came forward with the cotton underwear and the rubberized pressure suit Barker would wear next to his armor. “When I kill you, it’ll be in other ways. And you’ll be able to feel it.” He walked away.

He came up to where Sam Latourette was checking over the transmitter, and raised his arm, but stopped himself before putting it around the man’s shoulders. “How’s it going, Sam?” he asked.

Latourette looked around. “Well,” he said slowly, “it’s transmitting the test objects perfectly.” He nodded toward the attendant cradling an anesthetized spider monkey in his arms. “And Jocko’s been through the transmitter and out the receiver here five times. The scan checks perfectly with the tape we made on the first shot today, and within the statistical expectation of drift from yesterday’s tape. It’s the same old Jocko every time.”

“We can’t ask for more than that, can we?” Hawks said.

“No, we can’t,” Latourette said implacably. “It’ll do the same for him.” He jerked his head in the direction of the dressing table. “Don’t worry.”

“All right, Sam.” Hawks sighed. “I wouldn’t propose him for membership in a country club, either.” He looked around. “Is Ted Gersten with the receiver crew?”

“He’s up working on one of the signal modulation racks. It’s the only one that didn’t test out. He’s having it torn down. Say’s he’ll have it rewired tonight in plenty of time for tomorrow.”

Hawks frowned thoughtfully. “I’d better go up there and talk to him. And I think he should be here with us when Barker goes in for the scan.” He turned away, then looked back. “I wish you’d cycle Jocko through once more. Just to be sure.”

Latourette’s lips pinched together. He motioned to the monkey’s attendant with a clawed sweep of his arm.

Gersten was a spare man with leathery features and deep, round eyesockets whose rims stood out clearly under his taut facial skin. His broad, thin lips were nearly the color of his face. When he spoke, they peeled back from his teeth to give an impression of great intensity. His voice, in contrast, was soft, deep, and low. He stood gently scratching his iron-gray hair, watching the two technicians who were lifting a component chassis out of its rack, which had been pulled out of the array and set down on the gallery floor.

The test-signal generator’s leads dangled from the service rack overhead. Other pieces of test equipment were set down around the three men. As Hawks came walking up from the ladder at the end of the gallery, Gersten turned and watched him. “Hello, Ed.”

“Ted.” Hawks nodded and looked down at the work being done. “What’s the problem?”

“Voltage divider. It’s picked up some kind of intermittent. Tests out fine for a while, then gets itself balled up, and straightens out again.”

“Uh-huh. Sam tells me you’re O.K. otherwise.”

“That’s right.”

“O.K. Listen, I’m going to need you on the transmitter with Sam and myself when we scan the new volunteer. Want to come with me now?”

Gersten glanced at the technicians. “Sure. The boys’re doing fine.” He stepped clear of the test instruments and walked down the gallery toward the ladder, beside Hawks.

When they were out of earshot of the technicians, Hawks said, casually, “You may have a lot to do tomorrow, Ted. No sense wasting time on a wiring job tonight, when you could be sleeping. Requisition a new divider from Manufacturing, messenger express delivery, and send the old one back to them. Let it be their headache. Either way, you’d have to run complete tests all over again anyhow.”

Gersten blinked. “I should have looked at it that way myself, I think.” He glanced at Hawks. “Yes. I should have.” He stopped and said, “I’ll be right down after you, Ed.” He turned and walked back toward his technicians.

Hawks lowered himself down the iron ladder, his shoe soles tapping regularly and softly. He walked back across the laboratory floor, where Latourette was watching the instruments above the tape deck of a castered gray cabinet connected to a computer, and occasionally calling for the computer technician to read out his figures. The spider monkey was once again in the attendant’s arms, stirring drowsily against his chest as the anesthetic wore off.

Hawks watched silently as Latourette compared the taped readings with the data being given to him by a technician from the receiver crew, who was operating another service computer.

“All right, Bill,” Latourette said, turning away. “But let’s run both sets together for comparison, now. Let me know if anything’s off.”

The technician nodded.

“Well,” Latourette said to Hawks, “as far as I could tell from the rough check, your friend Barker still has the equipment one hundred per cent behind him.” He looked toward the spider monkey. “And Jocko certainly looks healthy enough.” He turned back. “Where’s Gersten?”

“He’ll be right down.” Hawks looked up at the galleries. “I wish I knew Gersten better. He’s a hard man to understand. He never shows more than he has to. It’s very hard to accommodate yourself to a man like that.”

Latourette looked at him peculiarly.

5

Barker lay on the table, enclosed in the armor suit, with his faceplate open. He looked calmly up as Hawks bent over him.

“All right?” Hawks asked.

“Fine.” Barker’s voice echoed in the helmet and came distorted through the narrow opening. His air hoses lay coiled on his stomach.

The ensign, standing beside Hawks, said, “He seems to be quite comfortable. I don’t think there’ll be any trouble with claustrophobia. Of course, we won’t know until we’ve closed his faceplate and had him breathing tanked air for a while.”

“Son,” Barker said, “I’ve dived more feet in my life than you’ve walked.”

“This is hardly scuba gear, sir.”

Hawks moved into the line of vision between Barker’s face and the ensign’s. He said, “Barker, I told you I was going to give you a chance to back out now, if you wanted to.”

“I like the way you put that, Doctor.”

“The reason we have all this elaborate control gear should be obvious,” Hawks persisted. “The fidelity of the resolving process depends on the clarity of the signal that arrives at the receiver. And even the tightest beam we can drive up to the Moon is going to pick up a certain amount of noise. So we feed from the transmitter here to the amplifier banks, checking the signal against the readings we take on the first scan.

“There’s always a variation between the file tape and the signal, of course. We make a new file tape with every transmission, but there’s stili a time lag between the making of the latest tape and the next transmission of the same object. But that’s why we have a standard man, and a statistical table of the probable degree of variation over given periods of time. By setting up crude analogies in the amplifiers, and introducing the proper statistical factor, we can introduce a certain measure of control.”

“I hope you think I’m following this, Hawks.”

“I hope you try. Now. When we’ve done all this, we have as much accuracy as we can. At that point, the signal is pulsed up to the Moon, not once but repeatedly. Another differential amplifier bank in the receiver there compares each bit of information in each signal pulse to each bit of all the signals it has received. It rejects any bit which differs from a majority of its counterparts. Any error created by transmission noise is almost certain to be discarded in the process.

“What we’re going to do today is scan you for the first time. Nine tenths of our control equipment is useless until it has scan readings to work from. So, the first time, you’re trusting entirely to our ability as electronic engineers, and my skill as a designer. I can’t guarantee that the Al Barker who is resolved in the laboratory receiver will be the same man you are now. You can test an electronic component until you’re blue in the face, and have it fail at the most critical moment. The very process of testing it may have weakened it just enough. And the scanner itself represents a broad departure from the usual electronic techniques for which a broad base of familiar theory is available. I know how it works. But there are places where I don’t yet know why. You have to realize — once the scan is in progress, we can’t correct any errors the hardware may be making. We’re blind. We don’t know which bit of the signal describes which bit of the man. We may never know.

“When Thomas Edison spoke into the horn of his sound reproducer, the vibration of his voice against a diaphragm moved a needle linked to that diaphragm, and scratched a variable line on the rotating wax cylinder. When he played it back, out came ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ But there Edison was stopped. If the needle came loose, or the wax had a flaw, or the drive to the cylinder varied, out came something else — an unintelligible hash of noise.

“There was nothing Edison could do about it. He had no way of knowing what part of a scratch was song, and what was noise. He had no technique for taking a stylus in his hand and simply scratching a cylinder so that it could be played as ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ He could only check his reproducer for mechanical failure and begin, again, with his voice, and the horn, and the diaphragm. There was simply no other way for him to do it. And, of course, he needed none. There is no particularly great expenditure in saying ‘Mary had a little lamb’ over and over again as many times as it may take to get a perfect playback.

“And if Daguerre, experimenting with the beginnings of photography, found a plate overexposed or underexposed, or blotched by faulty chemicals or an imperfect lens, he could usually just try again. It didn’t matter very much if, now and then, a picture was lost because the only way to save it would have been to know something that photography experts are only learning today.

“But we cannot do it, Barker. You are not ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ Nor are you a thing of light and shadow, to be preserved or lost at no critical expense to its source.” Hawks smiled with wan self-consciousness. “A man is a phoenix, who must be reborn from his own ashes, for there is no other like him in the universe. If the wind stirs the ashes into a clumsy parody, then the phoenix is dead f orever. Nothing we know of can bring you back.

“Understand me: the Al Barker we resolve will almost certainly be you. The statistical chances are all on your side. But the scanner can’t discriminate. It’s only a machine. A phonograph doesn’t know what it’s playing. A camera photo… graphs everything it can see in front of it. It won’t put in what isn’t there, and it won’t omit the lipstick smudge on your collar. But if, for some reason, the film has lost its red sensitivity, what comes up on the film doesn’t look like lipstick at all — it might not look like anything. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? The equipment’s set up as well as it can be. Once we have our negative, we get perfect prints every time. But it’s the negative we’re going after now.”

Barker said lightly, “Ever had any trouble, Doctor?”

“If we have, we don’t know it. As far as we could tell, our preliminary scans have all been perfect. At least, the objects and living organisms we’ve dealt with were able to go on functioning exactly as they always had. But a man is such a complex thing, Barker. A man is so much more than his gross physical structure. He has spent his life in thought — in filling his brain with the stored minutiae he remembers and reconnects when he thinks. His body is only a shell in which he lives. His brain is only a complex of stored memories. His mind — his mind is what he does with his memories. There is no other mind like it. In a sense, a man is his own creation.

“If we happen to change him on some gross level that can be checked against whatever is recorded of his life, we can detect that change. But we’re not likely to be that far off. Far more serious is the possibility of there being enough errOr to cause subtle changes which no one could find — least of all you, because you’d have no data to check against. Was your first schoolbook covered in blue or red? If you remember it as red, who could find it now to see what color it was?”

“Does it matter?” Barker shrugged, and the suit groaned on the table. “I’d rather worry about the duplicate being so screwed up that it’s dead, or turned into a monster that needs to die.”

“Well,” Hawks said, wiping his hand over his face, “that’s not at all likely to happen. But you can worry about that if you want to. What you worry about depends entirely on where you draw the line on what parts of you are important to you. You have to decide how much of yourself can be changed before you consider yourself dead.”

Barker smiled coldly up at him. He looked around at the encircling rim of the faceplate opening. “I’m in this thing now, Doctor. You know damned well I won’t chicken out. I never would have. But you know you didn’t do anything to help me.”

“That’s right, Barker,” Hawks said. “And this is only a way in which I might kill you. There are other ways that are sure. I have to do this to you now because I need a man like you for what’s going to be done to him later.”

“Lots of luck, Doctor,” Barker said.

The dressers had closed Barker’s faceplate, and looped the air hoses back into connection with the tanks embedded in the armor’s dorsal plate. A technician ran a radio check, and switched his receiver into the P.A. speaker mounted over the transmitter’s portal. The sound of Barker’s breath over the low-powered suit telephone began to hiss out regularly into the laboratory.

“We’re going to wheel you in now, Barker,” Hawks said into his microphone.

“Roger, Doctor.”

“When you’re in, we’ll switch on the chamber electromagnets. You’ll be held in mid-air, and we’ll pull the table out. You won’t be able to move, and don’t try — you’ll burn out the suit motors. You’ll feel yourself jump a few inches into the air, and your suit will spread-eagle rigidly. That’s the lateral magnetic field. You’ll feel another jolt when we close the chamber door and the fore-and-aft magnets take hold.”

“I read you loud and clear.”

“We’re simulating conditions for a Moon shot. I want you to be familiar with them. So we’ll turn out the chamber lights. And there will be a trace component of formalin in your air to deaden your olfactory receptors.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Next, we’ll throw the scanning process into operation. There is a thirty-second delay on that switch; the same impulse will first activate certain automatic functions of the suit. We’re doing our best to eliminate human error, as you can see.”

“I dig.”

“A general anesthetic will be introduced into your air circulation. It will dull your nervous system without quite making you lose consciousness. It will numb your skin temperature-and-pressure receptors entirely. It will cycle out after you resolve in the receiver. All traces of anesthesia will be gone five minutes after you resolve.”

“Got you.”

“All right. Finally, I’m going to switch off my microphone. Unless there’s an emergency, I won’t switch it on again. And from this point on, my microphone switch controls the two servoactivated ear plugs. in your helmet. You’ll feel the plugs nudging your ears; I want you to move your head as much as necessary to allow them to seat firmly. They won’t injure you, and they’ll retract the instant I have emergency instructions to give you, if any. Your microphone will remain on, and we’ll be able to hear you if you need any help, but you won’t be able to hear yourself. All this is necessary on the Moon shots.

“You’ll find that with your senses deadened or shut off, you’ll soon begin to doubt you’re alive. You’ll have no way of proving to yourself that you’re exposed to any external stimuli. You’ll begin to wonder if you have a mind at all, any more. If this condition were to persist long enough, you would go into an uncontrollable panic. The required length of time varies from person to person. If yours exceeds the few minutes you’ll be in the suit today, that’ll be long enough. If it proves to be less than that, we’ll hear you shouting, and I’ll begin talking to you.”

“That’ll be a great comfort.”

“It will.”

“Anything else, Doctor?”

“No.” He motioned to the Navy crew, and they began to roll the table into the chamber.

“I’ve got a word for the ensign,” Barker said.

“All right.”

The officer moved up into Barker’s line of vision through the faceplate. He pantomimed “What?” with his mouth.

“The name is Barker, son. Al Barker. I’m not just another guinea pig for you to stuff into a tin can. You got a name, son?”

The ensign, his cheeks flushed, nodded.

“Be sure and tell me what it is when I come out of this, huh?”

Fidanzato, pushing at the foot of the table, chuckled very softly.

Hawks looked around. Latourette was at the transmitter control console. “Watch Sam,” Hawks said to Gersten standing beside him, “and remember everything he does. Try not to miss anything.” Hawks’ eyes had not turned toward Gersten; his glance had swept undeviatingly over Weston, who was leaning back against an amplifier cabinet, his arms and ankles crossed, and over Holiday, the physician, standing tensely potbellied at the medical remote console.

Gersten grunted, “All right,” and Hawks’ eyes flickered with frustration.

The green bulb was still lighted over the transmitter portal, but the chamber door was dogged shut, trailing the cable that fed power to its share of the scanner components. The receiver chamber was sealed. The hiss of Barker’s breath, calm but picking up speed, came from the speaker.

“Sam, give me test power,” Hawks said. Latourette punched a console button, and Hawks glanced at the technicians clustered around the input of the amplifier bank. A fresh spool of tape lay in the output deck, its end threaded through the brake rollers and recording head to the empty takeup reel. Petwill, the engineer borrowed from Electronic Associates, nodded to Hawks.

“Sam, give me operating power,” Hawks said. “Switch on.” The lights over the transmitter and receiver portals leaped from the green bulbs into the red. Barker’s breath sighed into near silence.

Hawks watched the clock mounted in the transmitter’s face. Thirty seconds after he had called for power, the multichannel tape began to whine through the recording head, its reels blurred and roaring. A brown disk began to grow around the takeup spindle with fascinating speed. The green bulb over the receiver portal burst into life. The green bulb came back on over the transmitter.

The brakes locked on the tape deck. The takeup reel was three-quarters filled. Barker’s shallow breath came panting through the speaker.

Hawks pressed his hand against the back of his bent neck and pulled it around across the taut muscle that corded down to his shoulder. “Doctor Holiday, any time you’re ready to ease up on the anesthesia…”

Holiday nodded. He cranked the reduction-geared control wheel remote-linked to the tank of anesthetic gas in Barker’s armor.

Barker’s breathing grew stronger. It was still edging up toward panic, but he had not yet begun to mumble into his microphone.

“How does it sound to you, Weston?” Hawks asked.

The psychologist listened reflectively. “He’s doing pretty well. And it sounds like panic breathing: no pain.”

Hawks shifted his glance. “What about that, Doctor Holiday?”

The little man nodded. “Let’s hear how he does with a little less gas.” He put his hands back on the controls.

Hawks thumbed his microphone switch. “Barker,” he said gently.

The breathing in the speaker became stronger and calmer.

“Barker.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Barker’s irritated voice said. “What’s your trouble?”

“Doctor Hawks,” Holiday said from the console, “he’s down to zero anesthesia now.”

Hawks nodded. “Barker, you’re in the receiver. You’ll be fully conscious almost immediately. Do you feel any pain?”

“No!” Barker snapped. “Are you all through playing games?”

“I’m turning the receiver chamber lights on now. Can you see them?”

“Yes!”

“Can you feel all of your body?”

“Fine, Doctor. Can you feel all of yours?”

“All right, Barker. We’re going to take you out now.”

The Navy crew began to push the table toward the receiver as Latourette cut the fore-and-aft magnets and technicians began undogging the chamber door. Weston and Holiday moved forward to begin examining Barker as soon as he was free of the suit.

Hawks said quietly to the ensign, “Be sure to tell him your name,” as he walked to the control console. “All right, Sam,” he said as he saw the table slip under Barker’s annor, rising on its hydraulic legs to make contact with it. “You can slack down the primary magnets.”

“You figure he’s all right?” Latourette asked.

“I’ll let Weston and Holiday tell me about it. He certainly sounded as if he’s as functional as ever.”

“That’s not much,” Latourette growled.

“It’s—” Hawks took a deep breath and began again, gently. “It’s what I need to do the job.” He put his arm around Latourette’s shoulders. “Come on, Sam, let’s go for a walk,” he said. “We’ll have Weston’s and Holiday’s preliminary reports in a minute. Ted can start setting up for tomorrow’s shot.”

“I want to do it.”

“No — No, you let him take care of it. It’s all right. And — and you and I’ll be able to go up and get out in the sunshine. There’s something I have to tell you.”