The Lagrangists. Mack Reynolds
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speed dropped off and shortly they branched off the main road, went on possibly a kilometer and took a still smaller branch. They approached an entry and the vehicle came to a halt on the dispatcher. Susie took over the controls again and shortly they came upon a building entry and entered it, obviously heading for underground garages. The building, though nothing like Rex’s high-rise, seemed large, of recent construction, and expensive.
They pulled up before an entrance and a doorman, very military in posture and dressed like an Hungarian Field Marshal, opened up for them. He said, “Good afternoon, Doctor Hawkins.”
Susie nodded at him and flashed a quick smile and moved toward the entrance briskly, Rex following. Nobody else seemed to be around and Rex Bader got the impression that this was a private entrance. Possibly the professor refused to feed at the government’s public trough but he wasn’t actually at work in a garret.
Inside, there were only two elevators. Rex followed his guide into one of them.
She said into the screen, “Professor Casey’s private office, please.”
“Carried out, Doctor Hawkins,” the robot said.
On the way up, Rex said curiously, “And you’re on the same basis? That is, you don’t work for the Lagrange Five Project directly either?”
She shook her head. “No, I am on the project payroll, assigned as a research aide to the professor. All expenses involved in the professor’s work are borne by the government, usually through NASA.”
Rex said, “And that’ll be my position, eh? Always supposing I accept it.”
She nodded. “That is correct. You will be on the payroll as a research aide.”
“What happens when some sage character in administration checks me out and finds that I’m not exactly qualified to be a research aide?” he demanded. “The computers in the National Data Banks would come up with that information from my Dossier Complete in ten seconds flat.”
“That’s John Mickoff’s problem,” she told him. “He’s handled worse. Ah, here we are.”
The elevator stopped and its doors slid open.
Rex had expected to emerge on the floor on which were the offices of the celebrated Professor Casey and that they’d have to proceed to the offices themselves on foot. Instead, they emerged directly into his office. It would seem that the elevator was a private one.
It was a large office and somewhat colorless. It had four identical desks of steel. The walls were lined with steel files and book shelves that reached the ceiling. In some respects, it looked more like a library than a standard business office. There was practically nothing in the way of decoration save three ancient photographs depicting serious-looking types wearing the clothes of earlier generations. Rex assumed that they were pioneers in the emergence of man into space, such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard and Hermann Oberth. The floors were lacking in rugs but were of some dark plastic, probably for the sake of easy, automated cleaning.
Only two of the desks were occupied. At one of them sat an overly earnest young man, somewhere in his late twenties and wearing a white smock, who was dictating what sounded like gibberish into a voco-typer. The other was Professor George Casey, Father of the Lagrange Five Project. The latter came to his feet upon their entry and advanced around the desk to greet them.
Rex hid his surprise; he had seen the professor on Tri-Di shows on more than one occasion. This would seem to be a younger and less serious-faced version of the same man. Perhaps it was because the other was more formally attired when on public display. Now he was in a sweat shirt, khaki slacks and somewhat scuffed blue tennis shoes. He looked less than the forty-eight Rex knew him to be; a trim, dapper man with a modified shag haircut and a fine-boned slender face. His smile was retiring but genuine. Now he advanced with an outstretched hand.
“You must be the Rex Bader who was recommended to us,” His voice was quiet.
“Guilty as charged,” Rex said taking the hand.
The professor turned to the younger man on the voco-typer and said, “Doctor Rykov, I wonder if this wouldn’t be a good time for you to look into that matter pertaining to the advanced lift vehicle development.”
The other looked up, a bit in surprise, but obviously realized that his superior wished privacy.
“Certainly, sir,” he said. He got up and left through a door at the opposite side of the room.
While the door was open in Rykov’s passing, Rex caught a glimpse of the busy office beyond and a dozen persons at desks or business machines, none of which he recognized. For a moment, there were the usual office sounds, then the door closed. Thanks to excellent soundproofing, silence descended again.
The professor himself brought up a steel straight chair for Rex. Susie, obviously needless of masculine courtesy or assistance, brought up her own before Rex could intervene.
“Sit down, Susie, Mr. Bader,” the professor said, resuming his own swivel chair behind his desk which was littered in a sort of controlled chaos.
Rex sat and remained silent. It was Casey’s top; let him spin it.
Casey looked over at him for a long moment, summing him up before saying, “So you are willing to come in with us. Frankly, I’ve never met a professional detective before.”
Rex said easily, “Then we’re even. I’ve never met a Father of the Lagrange Five Project before. But I’m not so sure about coming in, Professor Casey. It’s true that I’m a licensed private investigator but I’m not a professional gunslinger. I can’t see why John Mickoff recommended me to you.”
The professor said, “You have other qualifications. You seem to have studied up on the space colonization project. By the way, we usually avoid public use of the word, ‘colonize’. It’s less controversial to use the terms ‘space manufacturing facilities’ and ‘high orbital manufacturing’ when working on the project with industrial and governmental figures. You also seem to have a certain amount of background in political economy. I understand that your father, Professor Bader, was outstanding in the field of socioeconomics and that some of it must have, ah, worn off on you.”
“What’s political economy got to do with it?” Rex said.
“There would seem to be quite a few ramifications in that direction,” Casey told him. “The plan is for you to be on my staff as a research aide specializing in such matters. I’ll go over it with you some other time, Doctor Bader.”
“Doctor Bader? I’m not doctor. I dropped out of school before even taking my bachelor’s.”
Casey chuckled. “You’re a doctor in economics now. Mr. Mickoff took care of it in your Dossier Complete. Let me give you some background: from the first, the mail that we got from all over the world ran a hundred to one in favor of the project. Also encouraging was the fact that less than one percent of all mail was irrational.”
“How do you mean, irrational?” Rex said.
“Crackpot,” the other told him. “Say, some religious fanatic who would warn us against intruding into the heavens. Possibly, he’d cite the Tower of Babel and how God had become enraged at its being built—up to heaven.”
Rex said, “You think it might be some religious fanatic that made the two attempts on you?”
The physicist shook his head. “I’d hardly think so, since one of them took place in space. A religious nut would hardly be up there. Space calls for intelligent, rational, pragmatic types. Any others wouldn’t last long. Even the so-called hardhat construction workers can’t be semi-illiterates. I would estimate that the average education level of the two thousand who are now in space is a Master’s degree. Even most of the laborers have backgrounds in engineering.”
“Mickoff mentioned the oil sheiks as being opposed to your project for materialistic reasons.”
Susie