D-99: a science-fiction novel by H. B. Fyfe (cool books to read TXT) 📗

coming across too well. Not bad looking, in a breezy sort of way. The agent that sprung her had to skip too, because he thought the Greenhavens—they call them Greenies—had spotted his disguise."

"Oh, boy!" breathed Pauline. "The cops must have been hot on their trail!"

"Either that, or he wanted to go along with her for other reasons," said Westervelt. "They seemed kind of chummy."

"Can they do that?" asked Beryl. "I mean, without orders, and all that?"

Westervelt grinned.

"I don't know," he admitted, "but he's doing it. He can't go back now. Anyway, Smitty simmered down fast and promised a draft for expenses would be waiting for him when the ship made planetfall. Technically, the D.I.R. ought to pay, because it turns out the guy is on their rolls and was only working with us temporarily."

Simonetta nodded wisely.

"You watch our boss," she predicted. "He'll have this man on our lists. He always gets free with the money when he sees a good prospect from the main branch. Even if they stay in the honest side of the outfit, they co-operate with the back room here."

Smith walked in with Parrish, beaming. His eye found Westervelt.

"Willie," he said, "make a note, and tomorrow look up the planet Rotchen II. I have to send credits, and I didn't want to say into wide, wide space that I didn't know where it is. Bad for the department's prestige!"

He looked about genially.

"I see you've told the news," he commented. "It was a lift for me too. We haven't done too badly, after all. Won two, lost one—damn!—and one is still a stalemate."

"Anyone tell Bob?" asked Parrish quietly.

They all exchanged searching glances. Smith began to lose some of his ebullience. After a moment, he turned to Pauline.

"Buzz his office!" he said in a preoccupied tone.

Westervelt tried to subdue a mild chill along the backbone as Pauline gave Smith a wide-eyed look and slipped into her cubbyhole.

He couldn't have phoned downstairs, he reassured himself. Pauline would say all the lines were busy, or cut off or something. But what if he looked out a window?

Smith had sauntered over to the center desk, where he waited beside the phone. It seemed to be taking Pauline a long time.

"Check with Joe," advised Parrish. "Then try around the other rooms. Ten to one he's in the lab."

"Has anyone seen him in the last half hour?" asked Smith.

Westervelt pointed out that he had been the chief's company in the communications room. The girls had not seen Lydman, but admitted that he might have gone past in the corridor without their having noticed.

"Yeah, he doesn't make much noise," Parrish agreed.

Smith had a thought. He moved toward his own office, paused to jerk his head significantly toward Parrish's, and opened his own door. Parrish went over past Beryl's desk and thrust his head into his own office. Lydman was not in either room.

"Mr. Smith!" called Pauline in a worried tone. "I'm sorry, but I can't seem to reach him."

"Oh, Christ!" said Parrish. "He isn't talking again!"

He did something Westervelt had never seen that self-possessed man resort to before this evening. He began to gnaw nervously upon a knuckle. He saw the youth staring, and snatched his hand from his mouth.

Smith glowered unhappily at the floor. Westervelt thought he could hear his own pulse, so quiet had the office grown.

The chief backed up to the unpleasant decision.

"We'd better spread out and wander around until someone sees him face to face," he said. "If he wants to be let alone, let him alone! Just pass the word on where he is."

Westervelt volunteered to go down one wing while Parrish took the other. As they left, cautioned to take their time and act natural, Smith was telling the girls to open the doors to the adjacent offices again and keep their ears tuned, in case Lydman should come looking for him or Parrish.

Westervelt turned right past the stairs, and went to the door of the library.

It will be perfectly natural, he told himself. We made out on two cases. I just want to tell him about it, in case he hasn't heard. Why the hell don't they get that cable fixed? They want their bills paid on time, don't they?

He could hear the newcasts now, about how tough a job the electricians faced, and how tense was the situation. Westervelt decided he would not listen.

He opened the door to the library casually and sauntered in. The pose was wasted; Lydman was not there.

Westervelt went on to the conference room on this side, and found it empty as well. He looked in on Joe Rosenkrantz, who, from the door, appeared to be alone. Just to leave no stone unturned, he retreated up the hall to the door marked "Shaft" and poked his head inside. He had to grope around for a light switch, and when he found it was rewarded with nothing more than the sight of a number of conduits running from floor to unfinished ceiling. A little dust drifted down on him from atop the ones that bent to run to outlets on the same floor.

"Well, nobody can say I overlooked anything," grumbled Westervelt.

He went back to the communications room. Rosenkrantz was listening in on some conversation from a station on Luna that was none of his business.

"Any sign of Lydman around here?" asked Westervelt.

"Not since the Yoleen brawl," grunted Rosenkrantz. "That's a good-looking babe running that Lunar station. Why can't we dig up some messages for them?"

"I'll work on it," promised Westervelt halfheartedly.

He walked quietly around the corner past the power equipment. No Lydman. The next step was the laboratory. He looked at his watch, then leaned against the wire mesh partition for a good ten minutes. Let Parrish cover the ground, he decided.

In the end, with no sign of Parrish or Lydman, he opened the door and stepped into the dark laboratory. He made his way cautiously ahead, thinking that Lydman was probably in his office. Feeling his path with slow steps, and carefully avoiding the possibility of tipping over any of the stacks of cartons, he had progressed to the center of the large chamber when the lights went on.

Westervelt felt as if he had jumped a foot, and the blood pounded through his veins.

Gaping around with open mouth, he finally met the eye of Pete Parrish, who stood half inside the doorway to the corridor, his hand still raised to the light switch.

They both relaxed. Parrish smiled feebly, with less than normal display of his fine teeth. Westervelt contented himself with passing a hand across his forehead. It came away damp.

"Well," said Parrish, "where was he?"

Westervelt closed his eyes and groaned.

"You're kidding," he said. "Please say you're kidding! It's too late in the day to fool around, Pete."

Parrish looked alarmed. He strode forward, letting the door close behind him. Westervelt, finding himself shivering in a draft, went to meet him.

"I'm not kidding at all," said Parrish. "Did you look everywhere? Are you sure?"

"I even poked into the power shaft," retorted Westervelt. "Were you in his office?"

"Naturally. I checked everything, even the men's room."

They had wandered back to the corridor door, peering about the laboratory to make sure no one could have concealed himself on the floor under a workbench, or behind a pile of cartons.

Parrish opened the door, and they stood puzzling at the empty hall.

"He wasn't even taking a shower," said the elder man.

Westervelt brooded for a moment.

"Did you say everywhere?" he insisted.

"Well ... everywhere he would have any call to go."

They stood there, passing the buck silently back and forth between them. At length, Parrish said, "I'll just look again in his office and the other two rooms, in case he was, and slipped out behind me."

Westervelt watched him run lightly up the hall to each of the doors. Parrish's expression, as he returned slowly, was something to behold.

"I'll go," said Westervelt grouchily.

Parrish put a hand on his arm.

"No, that wouldn't look natural. I'll phone Smitty to send one of the girls down."

"Better phone him to send two," suggested Westervelt.

"Yeah," agreed Parrish. "That's even more natural. Watch the hall while I buzz them."

He went into Lydman's office. Westervelt leaned in the laboratory doorway, feeling depressed. After some delay, he sighted Simonetta and Beryl turning the far corner with their pocketbooks in hand. Neither one looked particularly pleased, but their expressions lightened a bit at the sight of him.

"You there, Pete?" murmured Westervelt.

"Right at the door," whispered Parrish from inside Lydman's office.

The girls clicked in muffled unison along the hall. Beryl paused at the entrance to the ladies' rest room. She raised her eyebrows uncertainly at Simonetta. The dark girl threw Westervelt a puzzled shrug, then pushed past Beryl and went inside. The blonde followed almost on her heels.

Westervelt waited. When he thought he could no longer stand it, Parrish hissed, "How long are they in there, Willie?"

"I don't know," said the youth, "but maybe we'd better—"

The door opened. Simonetta and Beryl walked out, staring quizzically at the two men, who had taken a few steps toward them.

"What is this gag?" asked Simonetta. "There's no one in there. Who would be in there?"

Parrish swore luridly, and none of them seemed to notice.

"It can't be!" he exclaimed. "You're sure?"

"Of course we're sure," said Beryl.

"What if the power came on and we didn't notice?" mused Parrish. "He wouldn't just leave and not tell any of us, would he?"

"You know him better than I do," commented Beryl. "I'm beginning to wonder, from what you told us on the phone, if he jumped out of a window somewhere. I know it's a terrible thing to bring up—"

Westervelt stopped listening to her. He was remembering the draft he had felt, twice now, in the laboratory.

TWENTY

Westervelt watched them walk up the hall. He thought of going back into the laboratory to find the open window. In his mind, he could see the straight, twenty-five story drop down the side of the dark tower to the roof of the larger part of the building.

He recalled having looked down once or twice. The people down there had paved patios outside their offices. A hurtling body would....

He shook the thought out of his head and hurried to catch up to Parrish and the two girls.

They trouped into the main office and took turns in telling Smith the story. He flatly refused to believe it for about five minutes. Ultimately convinced, he told Pauline to check Rosenkrantz by phone every ten minutes.

"If we're wrong," he said, "it's unfair to have him sitting down there all alone. Bob might somehow have outsmarted us, but if he did it to this extent, it means he isn't safe on the loose!"

Westervelt noticed that Simonetta was looking pale. He wondered about his own features. The eye would probably stand out very picturesquely.

"I don't believe it," he said when the others had all fallen silent.

They looked at him, hoping to be convinced.

"He isn't that kind," said Westervelt. "All right, you tell me he had a hard time in space and it left him a little off; but this doesn't sound like the direction he would go off in."

"What do you mean, Willie?" asked Smith intently.

"Well ... maybe he'd run wild. Maybe he'd get desperate and blow something up. I could see him taking a torch to that door and burning anybody that tried to stop him...."

He paused as they hung on his words.

"... but I can't see him quitting!" said Westervelt. "If he was that kind, he never would have gotten back to Terra, would he?"

Smith snapped his fingers and looked around.

"Sure, sure," he said. "I don't know what I was thinking up in my imagination. We've all heard Bob utter a threat now and then, when some bems out in deep space broke his own private law, but no one ever heard him even hint at suicide."

He grinned ruefully, and added, "I should have thought of it myself—I had to review his application and examinations when he came to us."

"Some days," said Parrish, "are just too much. Nobody's fault."

"Then, in that case," said Westervelt, "there was one little thing I noticed."

He told them about the open window. Who would keep a window open with the building air-conditioning operating as perfectly as it did?

Smith fell to running his hands through his hair again.

"Now, let's think!" he muttered. "There must be some logical explanation."

Logical explanations, Westervelt thought, are always the reasons other people think of, not me.

He found a space to sit on the edge of the empty desk. Simonetta leaned beside him, and Beryl wandered over to the window of the switchboard cubicle to listen as Pauline checked Rosenkrantz.

She shook her head to Smith's inquiring look.

Then Lydman strolled through the double doors.

"What's the conference about?"