DOUBLE TROUBLE-3
770 Words
JIMMY BAKER NODDED. He told his story over the roar of the wind as we headed back across the desert. Occasionally he touched a stud on an electric windlass to which the kite wire was attached. Apparently these adjustments moved planes or fins on the kite and accounted for the car’s ability to move in any direction.
“If I weren’t a realist, I’d say that Larynx Incorporated has been bewitched,” he began slowly. “We pay our men high wages and give them excellent living conditions with a vacation on Callisto every year. Up until a short time ago most of them were in excellent health and spirits. Then the Red Spot Fever got them.”
“Red Spot Fever?” Grannie looked at him curiously.
Jimmy Baker nodded. “The first symptoms are a tendency to garrulousness on the part of the patient. Then they disappear.”
He paused to make an adjustment of the windlass.
“They walk out into the Baldric,” he continued, “and nothing can stop them. We tried following them, of course, but it was no go. As soon as they realize they’re being followed, they stop. But the moment our eyes are turned, they give us the slip.”
“But surely you must have some idea of where they go,” Grannie said.
Baker lit a cigarette. “There’s all kinds of rumors,” he replied, “but none of them will hold water. By the way, there’s a cockatoo eyrie ahead of us.”
I followed his gaze and saw a curious structure suspended between a rude circle of flagpole trees. A strange web-like formation of translucent gauzy material, it was. Fully two hundred cockatoos were perched upon it. They watched us with their mild eyes as we passed, but they didn’t move.
After that we were rolling up the driveway that led to the offices of Larynx Incorporated. As Jimmy Baker led the way up the inclined ramp, a door in the central building opened, and a man emerged. His face was drawn.
“Mr. Baker,” he said breathlessly, “seventy-five workers at Shaft Four have headed out into the Baldric.”
Baker dropped his cigarette and ground his heel on it savagely.
“Shaft Four, eh?” he repeated. “That’s our principal mine. If the fever spreads there, I’m licked.”
He motioned us into his office and strode across to a desk. Silent Xartal, the Martian illustrator, took a chair in a corner and got his notebook out, sketching the room’s interior. Grannie Annie remained standing.
Presently the old lady walked across to the desk and helped herself to the bottle of Martian whiskey there.
“There must be ways of stopping this,” she said. “Have you called in any physicians? Why don’t you call an enforced vacation and send the men away until the plague has died down?”
Baker shook his head. “Three doctors from Callisto were here last month. They were as much at loss as I am. As for sending the men away, I may have to do that, but when I do, it means quits. Our company is chartered with Spacolonial, and you know what that means. Failure to produce during a period of thirty days or more, and you lose all rights.”
A visiphone bell sounded, and Baker walked across to the instrument. A man’s face formed in the vision plate. Baker listened, said “Okay” and threw off the switch.
“The entire crew of Shaft Four have gone out into the Baldric,” he said slowly. There was a large map hanging on the wall back of Baker’s desk. Grannie Annie walked across to it and began to study its markings.
“Shaft Four is at the outer edge of the Baldric at a point where that corridor is at its widest,” she said.
Baker looked up. “That’s right. We only began operations there a comparatively short time ago. Struck a rich vein of Acoustix that runs deep in. If that vein holds out, we’ll double the output of Interstellar Voice, our rival, in a year.”
Grannie nodded. “I think you and I and Xartal had better take a run up there,” she said. “But first I want to see your laboratory.”
There was no refusing her. Jimmy Baker led the way down to a lower level where a huge laboratory and experimental shop ran the length of the building. Grannie seized a light weight carry-case and began dropping articles into it. A pontocated glass lens, three or four Wellington radite bulbs, each with a spectroscopic filament, a small dynamo that would operate on a kite windlass, and a quantity of wire and other items.
The kite car was brought out again, and the old woman, Baker and the Martian took their places in it. Then Jimmy waved, and the car began to roll down the ramp.
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- Writer
