The Lagrangists. Mack Reynolds
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until the item got to me.”
“If a man survives two hit attempts without help, either his enemies are amateurs or he’s incredibly lucky,” Rex mused.
“Both jobs bore professional touches,” Mickoff supplied. “The professor’s luck can’t last—so we’re depending on our own professional, and you’re my choice.”
Rex gave him a bogus smile, then looked from one of them to the other. “Where is the professor?”
Susie said, “Until tomorrow, when we’ll return to Island One, he’s right here in New Princeton University City. He still holds his position as professor in the Physics Department, though he’s on leave from teaching.”
Rex Bader got up and went over to a drawer built into the mini-apartment’s wall. He opened it and for a moment stared down at its contents, considering. Then he shrugged out of his jacket, reached down and took up the 9mm Gyro-jet pistol with its holster and harness.
While the girl and John Mickoff watched wordlessly, he brought the gun out and its magazine. It was fully charged with its rocket slugs. He thrust the magazine back into the butt of the gun with the heel of his hand and then jacked a cartridge into the firing chamber and threw on the gun’s safety. He replaced the pistol in its holster, tried it a couple of times to ensure a free pull, and then resumed his jacket. He picked up an extra magazine of the 9mm slugs and dropped it into a pocket. Rex Bader turned to the other two and said, “Wizard, let’s go meet the professor.”
They stood too but Mickoff shook his head. “Not me. I don’t want to be seen in his vicinity, especially by any news hawks. I’m too well known by the boys and they might smell a story in the fact that an IABI man was with Professor Casey. Younger brother, contact me if you need anything, or if anything special comes up. But keep such calls to a minimum. My chief and I are the only two men in the whole bureau who know about you. We’re keeping this as quiet as possible. Here’s an IABI tight beam transceiver, and here’s my restricted call number.” He handed over the device, which looked like an old-time cigar case, and a small card.
“Good backup,” Rex said. “But I’m not sure I’ll take on this job. I don’t consider myself a gunman. However, the least I can do is talk to Professor Casey.”
Susie bit her underlip a little at that but turned and let him open the door for her. She and Rex took one elevator and the IABI man another.
On the way up to ground level of the high-rise, Rex Bader looked over at Doctor Susie Hawkins, over and down. He hadn’t realized before how small she was. Her posture was so excellent, the head held so high, and her tweeds were so trim and businesslike that somehow she looked taller.
He said, “I’m surprised that Professor Casey is here at the New Princeton University City. I’d think he’d be at Los Alamos, one of the manufacturing plants, one of the schools teaching construction workers how to operate in space, at the Luna base, at Lagrange Five at the orbital manufacturing facility, or even at the Island One construction site, although it must be a little rugged out there at this point. There aren’t much in the way of living facilities, are there?”
“Oh yes. The shell of Island One has been completed, you know, and the atmosphere and most of the water, installed. They are actually working, at this point, in finishing the interior and constructing the manufacturing facilities on the outside. It’s a shirtsleeve environment. We even have apartment buildings and a hotel completed. You’ll be surprised. The Tri-Di shows don’t begin to put over the whole picture. At any rate, the professor goes zipping around the whole shebang in his special space taxi.”
“Space taxi?” Rex said. “That’s a new one. I thought I was more or less up on this subject. That’s why I’ve been living at the university, taking Ellfive courses.”
She grinned at him, a grin that came out nicely on the too businesslike face of Susie Hawkins. She said, “We on the project have our own slang. Various craft have been developed using no more than the basic equipment initially designed for the space shuttle. We have a space tug that hauls crucial materials from Earth orbit, after the space shuttles and heavy lift freighters get the staff lifted from Earthside. The tugs, usually automated, carry it over to L5. From there, still other versions of the original space shuttle can run it down to the Luna mining base, if that’s its destination. The space taxi, as we call it—although some are large enough to be called space buses—is used for running back and forth from the orbital manufacturing facility to Island One, or to hang about where the principal operation is going on. They’re actually quite efficient and comparatively simple and inexpensive. As you can imagine, very little power is needed to propel a space vehicle about at Lagrange Five. It isn’t very seriously affected by the gravity wells of the Earth and Luna.”
They had reached ground level and left the elevator and headed for the main entry. As they left the edifice, both of them simultaneously looked back and up at the one-hundred-and-ten story aluminum sheathed towers of the high-rise apartment building. The girl shook her head in rejection. “Why would you choose to live in a place like this, Mr. Bader?”
“If I get to call you Susie, you get to call me Rex.”
“Especially in that underground, windowless miniapartment, Rex. I’m sure that I’d get claustrophobia. But even higher up, and I’d think the higher the better, would be bad enough. I would estimate that a building of this magnitude would afford at least two thousand apartments. Surely, yours must be one of the least attractive.”
“It is,” Rex told her wryly. “And as I said, it’s also one of the cheapest. I’m down on the service levels, along with the ultra-market, the automated restaurant kitchens and the garages and theatres.”
“I see,” Susie said. “Well, here we are.”
They had come up upon a conservative but efficient hover-car, a two-seater. Rex eyed it in surprise while the physicist popped into the driver’s position behind the manual controls. As a city dweller, Rex Bader seldom saw a privately owned car. Automated hover-cabs, yes, but not private cars.
She activated the small vehicle, dropped the lift lever and trod on the accelerator. The electro-steamer smoothed into motion under her manual control.
“We’ll head for the offices,” Susie told him. “At this time of the day, that’s where the professor would be.”
Rex said, in the way of idle conversation, “I thought it was against the rules to bring a privately owned vehicle onto city streets.”
They were proceeding through the acres of parks and playgrounds, gardens and small lakes surrounding the high-rise which housed his tiny apartment.
“Against the rules, Rex, but one is able to pull a few wires when one commands the professor’s prestige. Anything to speed up the efficiency of his activities.” There was prim satisfaction in her tone.
“By the way,” he said, as they pulled up to the entry of the expressway and she skillfully came to a halt on a dispatcher.
She threw a switch, deactivating the manual controls, then reached to the dashboard and dialed what was obviously their destination before relaxing back into her seat. The auto-controls of the underground expressway took over and within moments they were proceeding at full cruise speed.
“Yes?” she said.
“Just what is the position that Professor George Casey holds down on the Lagrange Five Project?”
“Why, none,” she told him, evidently surprised that he should ask.
CHAPTER THREE
Colonel Ilya Simonov, recently arrived from Greater Washington by Supersonic, had had his Zil auto-cab drop him at the old baroque palace on Kaluzhskaya street. Somewhat to his surprise, there was no sign of a guard at the somber entry. On second thought, it called for more than surprise. He made a mental note to mention the fact to his superior in the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya upon his next interview with Minister Kliment Blagonravov. The days of the terrorism of the 1960s and the 1970s were over; indeed, they had rarely applied