Cities in Flight

“I want it clearly understood, once and for all,” Horsefield was rumbling, “that this entire project is going to wind up under military control unless we can show results before it’s time to ask for a new appropriation. There’s still a lot going on here that the Pentagon will regard as piddling inefficiency and highbrow theorizing. And if that’s what the Pentagon reports, you know what the Treasury will do—or Congress will do it for them. We’re going to have to cut back, Gunn. Understand? Cut right back to basics!”

“General, we’re as far back to basics as we possibly can get,” Harold Gunn said, placatingly enough, but with considerable firmness as well. “We’re not going to put a gram of that drug into production until we’re satisfied with it on all counts. Any other course would be suicide.”

“You know I’m on your side,” Horsefield said, his voice becoming somewhat less threatening. “So is General Alsos, for that matter. But this is a war we’re fighting, whether the public understands it or not And on as sensitive a matter as these death-dopes, we can’t afford—”

Gunn, who had spotted Paige belatedly at the conclusion of his own speech, had been signaling Horsefield ever since with his eyebrows, and suddenly it took. The general swung around and glared at Paige, who, since he was uncovered now, was relieved of the necessity for saluting. Despite the sudden freezing silence, it was evident that Gunn was trying to retain in his manner toward Paige some shreds of professional cordiality—a courtesy which Paige was not too sure he merited, considering the course his conversation with the girl had taken.

As for Horsefield, he relegated Paige to the ghetto of “unauthorized persons” with a single look. Paige had no intention of remaining in that classification for a second longer than it would take him to get out of it, preferably without having been asked his name; it was deadly dangerous. With a mumbled “—at eight, then,” to the girl, Paige sidled ingloriously out of the Pfitzner reception room and beat it

He was, he reflected later in the afternoon before his shaving mirror, subjecting himself to an extraordinary series of small humiliations, to get close to a matter which was none of his business. Worse: it was obviously Top Secret, which made it potentially lethal even for everyone authorized to know about it, let alone for rank snoopers. In the Age of Defense, to know was to be suspect, in the West as in the USSR; the two great nation-complexes had been becoming more and more alike in their treatment of “security” for the past fifty years. It had even been a mistake to mention the Bridge on Jupiter to the girl—for despite the fact that everyone knew that the Bridge existed, anyone who spoke of it with familiarity could quickly earn the label of being dangerously flap-jawed. Especially if tie speaker, like Paige, had actually been stationed in the Jovian system for a while, whether he had had access to information about the Bridge or not.

And especially if the talker, like Paige, had actually spoken to the Bridge gang, worked with them on marginal projects, was known to have talked to Charity Dillon, the Bridge foreman. More especially if he held military rank, making it possible for him to sell security files to Congressmen, the traditional way of advancing a military career ahead of normal promotion schedules.

And most especially if the man was discovered nosing about a new and different classified project, one to which he hadn’t even been assigned.

Why, after all, was he taking the risk? He didn’t even know the substance of the matter; he was no biologist. To all outside eyes the Pfitzner project was simply another piece of research in antibiotics, and a rather routine research project at that. Why should a spaceman like Paige find himself flying so close to the candle already?

He wiped the depilatory cream off his face into a paper towel and saw his own eyes looking back at him from the concave mirror, as magnified as an owl’s. The image, however, was only his own, despite the distortion. It gave him back no answer.

CHAPTER TWO: Jupiter V

… it is the plunge through the forbidden zones that catches the heart with its sheer audacity. In the history of life there have been few such episodes. It is that which makes us lonely. We have entered a new corridor, the cultural corridor. There has been nothing here before us. In it we are utterly alone. In it we are appallingly unique. We look at each other and say, “It can never be done again.”

—LOOREN C. ELSELEY