Part 29 (1/2)

”They're faking the reports,” the supervisor grumbled irritably. ”Have to be.”

”Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those buildings in a couple hours,” the operator argued.

”None of our business,” the supervisor cautioned. ”We just take the reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. s.h.i.+p out there's doing.”

”And everybody's got their clothes back on,” the operator said loudly.

There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.

”Now the E's disappeared again,” the operator said, ”They're scanning all over, trying to find him.”

The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.

”I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the complaint first,” he said to the room at large. ”Now you call me if there's any more of this bollix,” he said to the operator as he left.

An hour pa.s.sed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?

His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.

”Oh, no,” he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up the aisle.

”Now the captain of the s.h.i.+p says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once,”

the operator called out. ”Something very important.”

”Very well,” the supervisor said. ”Ring him.”

But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed, tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.

”Give me connection,” he said to the operator as soon as the line opened.

”Bill Hayes here, Captain,” he said, as soon as he received the signal.

”What now?”

”Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard s.h.i.+p,” the Captain said without any preliminaries.

”What do you mean 'disappeared'?” Hayes asked. ”How could she disappear in deep s.p.a.ce? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself.”

”We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out first.”

”She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin s.p.a.ce,” Hayes quarreled back. ”She must be on your s.h.i.+p somewhere. When was she last seen?”

”That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill,” the captain said.

”A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen pa.s.sed her stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man.

Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray.

Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E Gray on the surface of Eden.”