To The Stars

Jan broke the connection and turned on the lights, yawning and rubbing his prickly face. Somebody wanted him out of the station and back to London in a hurry. It had to be Security. But why? The answer seemed obvious enough. Men just don’t disappear in space. Yet one had. Could it be that? He had the rather unhappy sensation that it was.

The return flight was an easy one — he was well adjusted to the sensation of free fall by now and he felt strangely heavy when he walked down the ramp on Earth. In a few days he had become used to the reduced gravity of the station. The Atlantic flight was equally uneventful, he slept most of the way. His eyes were gritty but he felt rested when he climbed from the plane in Heathrow. Outside was the world of weather again and he hurried, shivering, to his waiting car where the attendant had left it. The thaw had finally set in and the snow was turning to slush. It still felt cold to someone acclimatized to a controlled environment. His coat was in the boot and he quickly pulled it on.

When he entered his apartment the first thing he noticed was the MESSAGE WAITING light on the phone. He thumbed the button and read the display on the screen:

I WILL BE WAITING IN MY OFFICE. SEE ME AS SOON AS YOU ARRIVE.

THURGOOD-SMYTHE

It was no less than he expected. But Security, and his brother-in-law, could wait until he had washed and changed and put some decent food inside him. Rations at the station had been frozen, nourishing and boring.

While he was eating, Jan had the sudden thought that there was something else he could do when he saw Smitty. Right in the middle of Security! Dangerous, but hard to resist. When he emptied his pockets and changed clothes he managed to pick up a small device that he had constructed with some labor. Now he would find out how well it worked.

Security Central was a great, gray complex of windowless concrete buildings stretched along the north side of Marylebone. Jan had been there before and the central computer carefully remembered this fact. When he slipped his ID into the slot before the garage door, it returned it instantly to his hand and rolled open the door. He left the car in the visitors’ bay and entered the lift which took him, under its own control, to the reception floor.

“Good afternoon, Engineer Kulozik,” the girl behind the massive desk said, glancing at her screen. “If you will kindly take lift three.”

He nodded and stepped through the security arch. There was a quiet buzzing and the guard looked up from the controls.

“Would you please step over here, your honor,” he said..

This had never happened before. Jan felt a sudden coldness that he had to hide from the guard.

“What’s wrong with the machine?” he asked. “I’m not carrying a gun.”

“Sorry, sir. Something metallic in that pocket there. If you please.”

Why had he brought it? What criminal bit of stupidity had led him to this folly? Jan put his hand slowly into his pocket and took out the device he had made and held it out before him.

“Is this what you mean?” he said.

The guard looked at the glow lighter and nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s it. Lighters don’t usually trip the alarm.”

He bent to look carefully at it, reached for it. Jan stopped breathing. Then the man dropped his hand.

“Must be the gold plating. Sorry to bother you, sir.”

Jan put his hand and the lighter into his pocket and nodded — he couldn’t risk saying a word — and walked on to the open doors of the lift. They closed behind him and he relaxed, letting the lighter drop from his clenched fist. Close, entirely too close. He could not risk detection now by actuating the circuitry he had built into it. Far too dangerous.

Thurgood-Smythe sat behind the desk, unsmiling, and only nodded coldly when Jan entered. Uninvited, Jan dropped into an armchair and crossed his legs as casually as he could. “What’s all this about?” he asked.

“I have a feeling you are getting into very deep trouble.”

“I have the feeling that I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.”

Thurgood-Smythe leveled a finger like a gun, grimly angry.

“Don’t try to play games with me, Jan. There’s been another one of those coincidences. Soon after you arrived at Station Twelve a crewman vanished from one of the spacers.

“So? Do you think I had anything to do with it?”

“Normally I would not know or care. But the man was one of ours.”

“Security? I can see why you’re concerned.”

“Can you? It is not that man but you I am concerned about.” He counted slowly on his fingers. “You have access to a terminal involved in illegal tapping. Then you happen to be in Scotland during trouble at a camp. And now you are present at the time a man disappears. I don’t like it.”

“Coincidence. You said so yourself.”

“No. I don’t believe in coincidence. You are involved in security violations…”

“Listen, Smitty — you can’t accuse me like that, without any evidence…”