Part 29 (2/2)

”There's been no report of any s.h.i.+p leaving Eden, joining you, Captain,”

Hayes said accusingly.

”Because there hasn't been any,” the captain snapped back. ”So it can't have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else.”

”Looks like it, then,” Hayes said with a vast weariness. ”Some member of your crew, or one of the scientists,” he said. ”Keep looking. Somebody's hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then in ten days she'd ...”

”Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already a.s.signed to the s.h.i.+p,” the captain said. ”I mean, we've got to consider all the possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q.”

”Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could lead us to the guy who's hiding her.”

”I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ s.h.i.+p,” the captain said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.

Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide direct intervention.

”Now they want me to make contact with the other s.h.i.+p,” the operator said to the supervisor. ”The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis will talk to him.”

”Well, contact it, contact it,” the supervisor commanded urgently.

”I'm doing it! I'm doing it!” the operator quarreled back.

The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was quite explicit.

”E McGinnis left orders that under no circ.u.mstances was he to be disturbed,” the pilot said. ”He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin, in conference.”

”E Gray! Mrs. Gray!” the chairman exploded. ”Impossible. How the devil did they get into your s.h.i.+p?”

”Don't ask me,” the pilot said in a tired voice. ”I just work here. I'm sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I ever do get back.”

”Now, now,” the Board chairman soothed. ”I'm sure there's a simple explanation.” Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were hard to find.

”Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to hear it,” the pilot said, and without apology cut off the communication.

28

Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered his s.h.i.+p by any normal means.

Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda.

He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive, darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him to adjust to them.

He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the s.h.i.+p's operator had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have been made that rapidly.

He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape s.h.i.+p, the E s.h.i.+p all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kept his head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, to produce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold to that, otherwise ...

He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two police s.h.i.+ps to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and take custody.

But the barrier still remained, and the s.h.i.+ps could not penetrate it.

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