The Siege of Eternity

"Not him. Maybe the Doc's trying to tell us something about that, only we can't figure out what. Maybe-" She thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know if I'm supposed to let you see this stuff, but, what the hell, you're a spook yourself, aren't you? Wait a minute. This is Priam Makalanos's office, and I don't know all the systems, but-Here."

She finished playing with the controls on Makalanos's desk, and the pictures on the wall screens changed. They were drawings, done in the Doc's neat draftsmanship. The first one showed the UN Building in New York, then Beijing's Forbidden City, the Arc deTriomphe in Paris, India's Taj Mahal-one after another, the most celebrated sights on Earth. And in all of them there was something that didn't belong there: Scarecrows. Walking around. The pictures weren't photographs, but they were neat and unmistakable drawings of the pumpkin-headed creatures. They were showing Scarecrows present in all the major cities of Earth.

Dannerman frowned at the pictures and shook his head. "It beats me," he said. "It can't mean what it looks like. If there were that many Scarecrows here, we would have seen some trace of them, wouldn't we?"

"It beats me, too," Pat One said somberly. "But I'm sure of one thing. It isn't good."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Lawyer Hecksher got to Pat Adcock's office before Dannerman got there with the signed papers, but he didn't seem to mind waiting. He sat in a corner, carefully rereading his papers and making cryptic pencil-on-pad notes for himself, paying no attention to Pat or his surroundings as she went on with her work.

It wasn't a long wait. Dannerman had made a quick trip from the airport, and as Pat went out to meet him she found him standing at the reception desk, his Anita Berman on his arm, chatting with Jan-ice DuPage, who was standing uncomfortably on her crutches.

Pat frowned. She hadn't expected to see Janice there. Then she remembered why. "I thought you were going to your friend's funeral."

Janice looked put-upon. "It's been postponed. Don't ask me why. Some damn kind of red tape."

"Too bad," Pat said absently, taking the clutch of documents from Dannerman and leaving him there.

Mr. Hecksher took the papers from her courteously and spent a good five minutes checking them over. Then he gave her a cheerful smile. "Looks all right. Signed in all the right places. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll start getting them served."

"Does that mean somebody will have to fly to China and all?"

"China, no. We'll serve that one on their ambassador here, that's what ambassadors are for. But I think we'd better serve the Europeans in person-oh, I see what's on your mind," he added, beaming at her. "You're worried about the costs. Don't worry. It'll all be on the bill when we settle."

"And if we don't settle?" Pat asked.

He looked surprised. "But we will. Did you read the texts you signed? Part of the court submission is a request for an estoppal, ordering them to make no changes in the artifacts already on hand because of the risk of damaging the Observatory's property." Pat frowned. "They're not going to do that, are they?" "Exactly, my dear! They're going to want this little problem to go away, and the easiest way to do it is to throw money at us. Oh, I think we'll have an offer to settle within a week; the only question is how much we're willing to take. We should discuss that, of course. I was originally thinking of a hundred million dollars, adjusted for current inflation, with an additional royalty on all commercial devices based on the discovered technology, but-" He paused, listening. "What's that?"

Pat had heard it too, raised voices from outside. She went to the door and looked out. Pete Schneyman was standing there, looking thunderstruck. "We're invaded," he announced. "It's the Feds. They've taken Janice away, and now they want to question all of us."

Ls soon as Lawyer Hecksher saw what was going on he patted the nearest Pat on the shoulder, and said benevolently, "I'll take care of this."

But he didn't. He went away with the agent in charge and didn't come back. There were at least a dozen new Bureau agents, tough ones. They were full of questions, though what they were questioning everybody about, exactly, they would not say. The first thing they did was to shuttle everybody in the Observatory up to its top floor, with Bureau agents making sure they stayed there. Phones rang unanswered, computer screens beeped impatiently for inputs that didn't come. The Observatory staff milled in the top-floor file rooms and hallways while they were taken, half a dozen at a time, down to the middle floor for interviews.

When it came Pat's turn she was conducted to her own office, where a middle-aged woman had preempted her desk. Now, that was too much! Scowling, she asserted herself: "I protest this unwarranted-"

"Yes, yes," the agent said without patience. "Have a seat. What I want to know is what Janice DuPage has been doing in the last three weeks."