Earth Cult Page 12

  He thought of the antineutrinos from the galactic centre that Friedmann and his team had detected and it was on the tip of his tongue to add a corollary to his previous statement to the effect that an increase in antineutrinos by a factor of two hundred might just be the one exception to the rule. But he had given his word that he wouldn’t reveal the information to anyone until Friedmann and Leach had had time to discuss it and reach a decision; so he resisted the temptation and said nothing. But he was conscious that time was running out for the Project, and not only because of the threats issued by the Tellurians. The storm was gathering in more ways than the meteorological – he could sense it every where, a dreadful foreboding in the atmosphere that was as tangible as a physical if unseen presence.

  They walked across the muddy red compound to the hut which housed Professor Friedmann’s office and were about to enter when the door was abruptly wrenched open and they were confronted by Dr Leach. The shock of his grotesque appearance, this small ill-made man framed in the doorway, took Helen aback and she gasped involuntarily.

  His thatch of thick black hair and his dark-eyed gaze seemed to add emphasis to his deformed stature, almost as if nature had bestowed these attributes to draw attention to her botched handiwork. He said roughly:

  ‘What are you doing here, Kersh? I thought we agreed that you’d await our decision.’

  ‘That’s right, we did.’ Frank looked down on the dark stunted man in the white lab coat blocking the doorway. ‘I’d like to see Professor Friedmann.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are a couple of things I want to discuss with him. Recent events have altered the situation. And I think he ought to know how the people of Gypsum are reacting; there could be trouble.’

  Leach studied him for a long moment, his eyes hard and suspicious beneath the single dark bar of his eyebrows. Helen had moved closer to Frank, intimidated by his aggressive manner and physical appearance.

  Dr Leach said, ‘You can’t see him, it isn’t possible.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘I’ve said you can’t see him. Isn’t that plain enough?’

  ‘If he’s here I insist on seeing him. It’s important.’ Frank stared into his eyes, meeting his look squarely, refusing to let the man’s hostility frighten or get the better of him.

  ‘What is it you wish to say to him? Tell me and I’ll pass the message along.’

  ‘That won’t do.’

  ‘It will have to do.’

  ‘Is he underground in the detection chamber?’ Frank asked, glancing towards the head of the shaft. ‘If so, I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘You’re leaving. Right now. Professor Friedmann isn’t here, so there’s no point in you staying.’

  ‘Okay,’ Frank agreed amiably. ‘If the Professor isn’t here, where is he? I take it you know how to reach him.’

  Leach looked away, his eyes flickering, almost as if he were unsure what to do next. He licked his wide pale lips and a tiny muscle jumped above his left eye.

  Helen had apparently overcome her trepidation, for she said, ‘We haven’t come all the way up here to be fobbed off with a weak excuse. It’s very important that we see Professor Friedmann urgently. If you know where he is it’s in everyone’s interest that you tell us. We must speak with him.’

  Leach seemed to waver momentarily, the same shifting glance of uncertainty appearing in his eyes; then he shook his head defiantly. ‘You’ll have to leave. When the Professor returns I’ll ask him to call you at your hotel. I’m not asking, I’m telling you to leave, right this minute.’

  ‘Suppose we don’t intend to?’ Frank said. He was surprised by a slow beating pulse of anger building up inside. It was the anger of frustration, of meeting threats and blank refusals wherever he went, and it was compounded by the nagging irritation that everyone but him was privy to secrets which if revealed and brought together would make sense of this whole bizarre business. Why was Leach so anxious to prevent him seeing Professor Friedmann? And if the Professor wasn’t here, where was he? Leach himself didn’t seem sure about anything.

  But the small deformed man was sure about one thing. He said in his harsh grating voice, ‘If you don’t get off, Kersh, I’m going to have you thrown off. I’ll have them strap you and your girlfriend in that fancy red car of yours and roll you back down the mountain. And don’t think I won’t do it.’

  ‘I don’t think he wouldn’t do it,’ Helen said nervelessly.

  Frank wished that at moments like these she wouldn’t choose to indulge herself in slick verbal repartee. She had an acute mind and a keen intelligence but on occasion he would have preferred it if she kept her mouth shut.

  As if to back up his threat Leach had brought his hands out of the pockets of his white coat. They were large and powerful and covered in dark hair, made to seem even more capable of a cruel strength by being so disproportionate to the rest of him.

  Frank said quietly, ‘You have a short memory, Dr Leach.’

  Leach fixed him with his dark stare. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘We have an agreement, remember? You gave me certain information which I promised not to reveal. But since then the situation has changed, and if you still refuse to allow me to see Professor Friedmann you leave me no alternative but to break that agreement. I can be back in Chicago by this evening and I’m sure my editor will find space for the story in the next issue.’

  Leach reacted with a speed and suddenness that left him unprepared, with no time to avoid the blow which knocked the breath from his body: he went down on his back in the red mud, winded and gasping, and Leach came after him with a single-minded ferocity, snarling with rage and anger.

  Frank rolled away, still shocked by the unexpected attack, and only just made it to his feet when Leach came at him again, swinging his large hairy fists with murderous intent. There was a moment – a split-second – when Frank registered the look in the man’s eyes, and it reminded him of the glazed expression of madness in Chuck Strang’s eyes, the same burning intensity and absolute unwavering purpose. He thought: These people are being driven insane. They’re losing contact with reality, living in dreams and haunted by demented visions—

  But it wasn’t a good time for psychological analysis.

  He stepped quickly to one side as Leach lunged at him and by no more than a fraction of time and space avoided another blow to the stomach. Then they were grappling ineffectively in a parody of a brawl, sliding about in the mud, and Frank knew that if Leach managed to get one good swing at him it would all be over. The man’s arms and shoulders were powerfully made, compensating for his small stature, and he had the strength of someone in the grip of blind frenzy.

  They scuffled about, Frank not releasing his hold, their legs becoming entangled so that they fell and rolled together, Leach struggling to extricate himself. Frank managed to get his fingers round the man’s throat, no longer concerned about anything but the act of self-preservation, forgetting everything in the desperate struggle to survive. It was the most basic of all animal instincts, the need to protect oneself from attack, and he gripped the man’s throat with every ounce of strength he possessed. But Leach didn’t seem to be aware that he was being slowly strangled, even though there were flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth: he lashed out wildly and caught Frank a blow to the temple which seemed to jar his skull and reverberate through his brain and he felt his hand loosening and slipping away, his fingers weak and rubbery as if filled with warm glycerine.

  He was dazed and insensible to his surroundings, his faculties all adrift, lost in a swirling mist that fogged his eyes and ears. His head roared.

  Time fled away and he wondered if he was unconscious. He couldn’t be dead (it was unlikely) because his stomach was hurting where Leach had first hit him. He was probably unconscious, he decided, which under the circumstances wasn’t a bad condition to be in; better than being beaten to a pulp by a demented dwarf with the hands of an ape grafted on to th
e ends of his arms.

  He was quietly contemplating who might have performed the operation when a voice, clear and distinct and close to his ear, said:

  ‘Next time we’ll find a phone-booth and you can change into your cape and boots.’

  Frank said hazily, ‘What happened, did you hit him with something?’

  ‘Not me,’ Helen said. ‘I’m the type of girl who stands idly by during a fight and bites her knuckles.’

  Frank opened his eyes and the world was still there, much as he’d left it, except that Lee Merriam and two other men were holding Dr Leach, pinning his arms behind his back. Lee Merriam saw that Frank was conscious and bent over him, asking how he felt.

  ‘Sick,’ Frank replied truthfully.

  ‘My hero,’ Helen said, and with Lee Merriam’s help got him to his feet.

  Leach had quietened down, though his eyes were intensely dark and brooding in his broad pale face. There was a gleam of spittle on his chin.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Lee Merriam.

  ‘I think you ought to put that question to him,’ Frank said. ‘I wanted to see Professor Friedmann and when I insisted he became what you might call violent.’

  ‘Without putting too fine a point on it,’ Helen said.

  ‘Professor Friedmann isn’t here.’

  ‘I’m slowly beginning to accept that fact. Where is he, do you know?’

  ‘We’re not sure. He could be underground.’

  ‘He could be? Don’t you know?’

  ‘We’re trying to locate him. He was seen early this morning but we’re not sure if he went down to the detection chamber or not. Everyone who goes underground is supposed to make an entry in the log; either the Professor didn’t make an entry or he’s gone off somewhere without telling anyone.’

  ‘It’s important that I speak to him as soon as possible,’ Frank said. He massaged his stomach muscles and winced.

  ‘Do you feel all right?’

  ‘No,’ Frank said. ‘But with sympathetic care and understanding I should pull through.’

  Lee Merriam turned to the two men. ‘Take Dr Leach to the sick-bay. Tell Smitty what happened and ask him to give the Doctor a shot to calm him down. And stay with him,’ he added. He turned back and said in a low voice, ‘Come into the office, I want to talk to you.’

  They stepped inside the hut and went into Professor Friedmann’s office.

  Lee Merriam said, ‘Shut the door.’ He went to a filing cabinet and took out a blue folder, opened it and gave Frank a typewritten sheet to read. He said, ‘I’m breaking all the rules, but to be honest with you I don’t know what to do next. We can’t locate the Professor and Dr Leach has been behaving strangely.’

  ‘We noticed,’ Helen said dryly.

  ‘I need to discuss this with somebody,’ Lee Merriam went on, ‘and you seem the only guy around who might have a clue as to what’s happening.’

  Frank tried to laugh but quickly decided against it when his stomach seized up with cramp. He glanced at the piece of paper, his expression of curiosity slowly changing to one of puzzled consternation.

  ‘What is it?’ Helen said.

  ‘Autopsy report.’

  Lee Merriam nodded grimly. ‘On the four men who were killed underground.’ He waited a moment and said, ‘What do you make of it?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He looked at Lee Merriam. ‘All four died of brain tumours?’

  ‘I thought they drowned,’ Helen said, frowning and glancing from one to the other.

  ‘That was the story we put out,’ Lee Merriam said. ‘Read the rest of it,’ he told Frank. ‘It gives the probable cause of the tumours consistent with the pattern of growth and taking into account the medical histories of the four men. I think with “probable cause” he’s hedging his bets. It’s just that he doesn’t want to come straight out and say it.’

  ‘Say what?’ Helen asked, becoming impatient.

  Frank read the concluding paragraph of the report out loud:

  ‘ “In my opinion the probable cause of such severe damage to the cerebrum and cerebral cortex would seem to be as a result of high-intensity radiation over a relatively short period of time – hours or at the most days, rather than weeks or months. It isn’t possible to specify the type of radiation, nor its source, though no doubt this could be deduced from further analysis of damaged brain tissue in a suitably-equipped research laboratory.”’

  ‘They died of radiation sickness?’ Helen said.

  ‘They died of brain tumour caused by a high dose of radiation, as yet unspecified,’ Frank corrected her. He handed the sheet back to Lee Merriam. ‘We know of one possible source – the chlorine-37 in the tanks decays into argon-37 when a neutrino interacts with it. And argon-37 is radioactive.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Lee Merriam said. ‘But as I understand it the level is so low that they have trouble detecting it at all. They have to let it build up in the tanks and flush it out with helium. Even then there’s hardly much more than that given out by a luminous watch.’

  ‘So it doesn’t seem as though the detection tanks were the source.’

  Lee Merriam shook his head. He closed the blue folder and returned it to the filing cabinet. The mine is as clean as a whistle. We received this report yesterday morning and I went down with a counter and checked it out personally. There’s not a whisper. How can four men be subjected to a fatal dose of radiation when they’re shielded by over a mile of solid rock? You could detonate a hydrogen bomb on the mountain and providing the shaft was sealed good and tight the fall-out wouldn’t affect them. How in hell—’

  He swept his arms wide in a gesture of bewildered defeat.

  ‘What did Professor Friedmann make of the report?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the truth, Frank, it isn’t only Karl Leach who’s flipped his lid round here. Lately both he and the Professor have been acting weird. It’s as if they know something – some kind of secret – and they’re doing everything they can to keep it from the rest of us. When I asked Professor Friedmann about the report he just ignored me, didn’t even bother to reply. I said shouldn’t we notify the Institute of Astrophysics and he told me to mind my own business. He said I wasn’t a member of the scientific staff and it was none of my concern how he chose to run the station. In the past he’s always been a pretty accommodating sort of a guy but in the last few weeks things have certainly changed. I don’t know what to make of it all or what I should do about it.’

  He folded his arms and stared through the small window at the bright orange latticework of girders supporting the winding gear. His eyes had the absent fretful look of a deeply worried man.

  ‘I think the first thing we should do is find Professor Friedmann,’ Frank said. ‘Are you in communication with the detection chamber?’

  Lee Merriam nodded. ‘But there’s no one answering, which doesn’t tell us very much.’

  ‘Then you’d better send somebody down.’

  ‘I already have.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The electric track hasn’t been repaired on the lower level, so it’s going to take them some time to reach the detection chamber. I should know something within an hour.’

  ‘And if he isn’t there?’

  Lee Merriam pursed his lips while he considered this. ‘I guess there’s no option. I’ll have to call the Institute and report on the situation and ask them to send a team out here. With the Project leader missing and his assistant in no fit condition, that’s about all I can do.’

  Helen caught Frank’s eye. She said quietly, ‘Yesterday the babies at the hospital, today the four men who were killed in the mine. Is that the link you’ve been searching for?’

  ‘You mean the radiation?’ Frank said. ‘It’s a link, all right, but you tell me what it means. These men died from it and yet the babies seem to thrive on it almost as though it were a form of nutrition. There’s a connection sure enough, it’s just that we don’t know where the radiation is coming from and what’s causing it.
’

  ‘Are those the kids that have been born over the past two years?’ Lee Merriam asked. ‘The ones in Radium?’

  ‘That’s right. We went to look at them yesterday. You’ve heard about them?’

  Lee Merriam went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a fat file of newspaper clippings, which he dumped on the desk. ‘Every report on those kids since the day the first one was born. Professor Friedmann had his secretary comb every newspaper within a fifty mile radius of here for items on them. There’s also a complete list of their parents’ names and addresses, the date each kid was born, and how they’re progressing. Every last detail is right here.’

  ‘Did he say why he was so interested in them?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Guilt complex,’ Helen said, her eyes flat and cold.

  ‘No, he didn’t give a reason, and it never occurred to me to ask him,’ Lee Merriam admitted. ‘You know what scientists are like, they live in a closed world and tend to do things that non-scientists find inexplicable, even a little weird sometimes.’

  ‘Ain’t that the living truth,’ Helen said with heavy sarcasm.

  Frank looked at the folder on the desk and then at Lee Merriam. ‘We’d better find Professor Friedmann,’ he said. ‘Looks like he’s got some explaining to do.’

  SIX

  They drove back to Gypsum and Frank dropped Helen off at the newspaper office. He made her promise that the Bulletin wouldn’t run the story on what had caused the death of the four scientists until they’d had the chance to talk to Professor Friedmann and find out what explanation he had to offer.