DOUBLE TROUBLE-4
909 Words
NOT UNTIL THEY HAD vanished in the desert haze did I sense the loneliness of this outpost. With that loneliness came a sudden sense of foreboding. Had I been a fool to let Grannie go? I thought of her, an old woman who should be in a rocking chair, knitting socks. If anything happened to Annabella C. Flowers, I would never forgive myself and neither would her millions of readers.
Ezra Karn and I went back into the office. The old prospector chuckled.
“Dang human dynamo. Got more energy than a runaway comet.”
A connecting door on the far side of the office opened onto a long corridor which ended at a staircase.
“Let’s look around,” I said.
We passed down the corridor and climbed the staircase to the second floor. Here were the general offices of Larynx Incorporated, and through glass doors I could see clerks busy with counting machines and report tapes. In another chamber the extremely light Acoustix ore was being packed into big cases and marked for shipment. At the far end a door to a small room stood open. Inside a young man was tilted back in a swivel chair before a complicated instrument panel.
“C’mon in,” he said, seeing us. “If you want a look at your friends, here they are.”
He flicked a stud, and the entire wall above the panel underwent a slow change of colors. Those colors whirled kaleidescopically, then coalesced into a three-dimensional scene.
It was a scene of a rapidly unfolding desert country as seen from the rear of a kite car. Directly behind the windscreen, backs turned to me, were Jimmy Baker, Grannie, and Xartal. It was as if I were standing directly behind them.
“It’s Mr. Baker’s own invention,” the operator said. “An improvement on the visiphone.”
“Do you mean to say you can follow the movements of that car and its passengers wherever it goes? Can you hear them talk too?”
“Sure.” The operator turned another dial, and Grannie’s falsetto voice entered the room. It stopped abruptly. “The machine uses a lot of power,” the operator said, “and as yet we haven’t got much.”
The cloud of anxiety which had wrapped itself about me disappeared somewhat as I viewed this device. At least I could now keep myself posted of Grannie’s movements.
Karn and I went down to the commissary where we ate our supper. When we returned to Jimmy Baker’s office, the visiphone bell was ringing. I went over to it and turned it on, and to my surprise the face of Antlers Park flashed on the screen.
“Hello,” he said in his friendly way. “I see you arrived all right. Is Miss Flowers there?”
“Miss Flowers left with Mr. Baker for Shaft Four,” I said. “There’s trouble up there. Red spot fever.”
“Fever, eh?” repeated Park. “That’s a shame. Is there anything I can do?”
“Tell me,” I said, “has your company had any trouble with this plague?”
“A little. But up until yesterday the fever’s been confined to the other side of the Baldric. We had one partial case, but my chemists gave the chap an antitoxin that seems to have worked. Come to think of it, I might drive over to Shaft Four and give Jimmy Baker the formula. I haven’t been out in the Baldric for years, but if you didn’t have any trouble, I shouldn’t either.”
We exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then he rang off. In exactly an hour I went upstairs to the visiscreen room.
Then once more I was directly behind my friends, listening in on their conversation. The view through the windscreen showed an irregular array of flagpole trees, with the sky dotted by high-flying cockatoos.
“There’s an eyrie over there,” Jimmy Baker was saying. “We might as well camp beside it.”
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MOMENTS LATER A RUDE circle of flagpole trees loomed ahead. Across the top of them was stretched a translucent web. Jimmy and Grannie got out of the car and began making camp. Xartal remained in his seat. He was drawing pictures on large pieces of pasteboard, and as I stood there in the visiscreen room, I watched him.
There was no doubt about it, the Martian was clever. He would make a few rapid lines on one of the pasteboards, rub it a little to get the proper shading and then go on to the next. In swift rotation likenesses of Ezra Karn, of myself, of Jimmy Baker, and of Antlers Park took form.
Ezra spoke over my shoulder. “He’s doing scenes for Grannie’s new book,” he said. “The old lady figures on using the events here for a plot. Look at that damned nosy bird!”
A silver cockatoo had alighted on the kite car and was surveying curiously Xartal’s work. As each drawing was completed, the bird scanned it with rapt attention. Abruptly it flew to the top of the eyrie, where it seemed to be having a consultation with its bird companions.
And then abruptly it happened. The cockatoos took off in mass flight. A group of Earth people suddenly materialized on the eyrie, talking and moving about as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
With a shock I saw the likeness of myself; I saw Ezra Karn; and I saw the image of Jimmy Baker.
The real Jimmy Baker stood next to Grannie, staring up at this incredible mirage. Grannie let out a whoop. “I’ve got it!” she said. “Those things we see up there are nothing more than mental images. They’re Xartal’s drawings!”
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- Writer
