uproar. “Mr. Darzek is right. This talk is getting us nowhere. I’ll deal with the matter myself, and see that you are kept informed.”
“Just a moment,” Cohen said. “We didn’t even find out what the guy’s fee would be.”
“The meeting is adjourned,” Watkins said icily. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you to make no statements on this matter, public or private.” He hurried after Darzek, and drew him aside. “Just what is the difficulty?”
“I don’t work well with a crowd looking over my shoulder,” Darzek said.
“There won’t be. You’ll co-operate with Ted to whatever extent seems feasible, and answer only to me. Is that satisfactory?”
“Perfectly satisfactory—provided that I don’t have to attend any more board meetings.”
Arnold caught his eye, motioned to him and Perrin, and ambled out. He led them on a reckless dash along a corridor and down two flights of stairs, and pulled up at the door of his own office panting and fumbling with a bunch of keys.
“If I could spare a few transmitters,” he said, “I’d put one in here and spot the others around the building. For my personal use. I’ve supervised the development of a revolutionary means of transportation, and I still spend half of my time going up and down stairs or waiting for elevators.”
“It’s good for the waistline,” Darzek said, following him into the room. “The stairs, I mean, not the elevators. For heaven’s sake—no swimming pool?”
The office was enormous, and virtually empty. A desk stood in one corner, flanked by empty bookcases. There was a swivel chair at the desk, and a battered sofa misaligned in the center of the room, as though the movers had dropped it and fled. Sundry electronic equipment was piled along the walls.
“Swimming pool?” Arnold said. “Oh, you mean the room. The corporate status system is to blame. My office has to be larger than any of the other engineering offices, but it can’t be quite as large as the office of a vice president. I don’t do much here except try to think.”
“Watkins must have an entire floor to himself.”
“Just a little cubbyhole. He’s beyond status. Well, Perrin, the question of the moment is how to keep it from happening again.”
Perrin gestured disgustedly. “We might assign a hostess to each gate, and have her lead the passengers through by the hand.”
“I foresee certain difficulties. It would require at least ten times as many hostesses as we have now, and the passengers might resent it.”
“Also,” Darzek put in, “the hostesses might resent it.”
“That’s irrelevant even if it’s true. But we’d have to hire special supervisors to route the hostesses to where they’d be needed, and getting them back there after every trip would drive the traffic managers nuts. But I’ll think about it. You might as well go back to work. If there are any more disappearances—”
“What?” Perrin demanded.
“Nothing. Just come back here and help me pick a window to jump out of.”
Perrin left, and Arnold sat down at his desk and slipped out of his shoes. “Can’t remember when I’ve had to spend so much time on my feet,” he said. He tilted back, deliberately placed his feet on the desk, and gazed hypnotically at one toe that wiggled through a hole in his sock.
Darzek removed his coat and stretched out on the sofa, watching him. He had seen Arnold imperturbable in the face of numerous crises, but clearly this turn of events had shaken him. Absently he snapped on his lighter, and singed his nose before he realized that he had no cigarette in his mouth. Then, when he had fumblingly opened a new pack and pried one loose, he forgot to light it. He continued to stare at his toe.
“There’s got to be a simple explanation for this,” he announced finally. “But supposing there isn’t? Supposing we have sent these people into some nth dimension? It’s impossible, but they’re not arriving at their destinations is impossible, too. So many impossible things have happened with our transmitters, but always before this I could work out some kind of explanation. This time—”
“I’m not a scientist,” Darzek said. “I won’t believe in an nth dimension until I’ve seen it.”
“If a whisper of this gets out, we’re ruined. And I can’t see any possible way to prevent that.”
“Can the directors be trusted to keep their mouths shut?”
“Perhaps. But those women must have relatives or friends expecting them or waiting to hear that they’ve arrived safely. By morning the reporters will have it, the police will have it, there’ll be headlines in every newspaper in the country, if not the world, and we’ll have had it.”
“That would be unfortunate,” Darzek said. “I have a feeling that the quickest way to solve this would be to catch them trying again. Obviously if you have to close down we may never catch them.”
Arnold lowered his feet with a thump, and swiveled towards Darzek. “Did you have to insult the directors that way?”
“I thought it might shock some sense into them. I’m sure Watkins is all you’ve said he is, but how did he get saddled with a bunch of nincompoops like that? I wouldn’t trust Grossman to manage my loose change for me. Harlow exists in a legal vacuum. The two vice presidents are nothing but ciphers with vocal cords. Miller I can’t quite make out.”
“He owns a small trucking business,” Arnold said. “Fancies he’s an expert on freight. Maybe he is. When we get around to coping with the freight problem he might be useful—if we’re able to stay in business that long. We started out with a first-rate Board, but as our troubles multiplied we gradually lost it. Wise men, as well as rats, desert a sinking ship.”
“Anyway, I’ve learned from bitter experience not to trust anyone I don’t have to trust. As far as I’m concerned, the less the directors know about what I’m doing, the better.”
“What’s the dark secret about the umbrella?” Arnold asked.
“Nothing much. I saw an old dame with an umbrella in the lobby lineup early this afternoon. She created a disturbance, and I wondered at the time why she was lugging an umbrella around on a day like this one.”
“What sort of disturbance?”
Darzek told him. “Not that it helps us any,” he added.
“Might. She could have been attempting a crude form of sabotage, trying to frighten away the paying customers. But don’t forget that this disappearing act is on an entirely different level. There must be clever planning behind it, and perhaps organization, and maybe even a better engineering staff than mine.”
“Or maybe just enough money to bribe the right Universal Trans employees.”
Arnold stared. “The devil! You’ll have to work on that angle. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“You might start by buying yourself some cameras.”
Arnold reached for his telephone. “What sort of cameras?”
“You’re the engineer. Something that would photograph each passenger as he approached the transmitter—preferably without his knowing about it.”
“Motion-picture cameras?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why not? They’d record any suspicious actions that could be concealed from the gate attendant. Such as pitching handbags and umbrellas through the transmitter.”
“Suit yourself,” Darzek said. “All I want is a good shot of the passenger’s face. Then if one disappears we’ll know what he looked like. If you’re worried about concealed actions, why don’t you put a mirror at the end of the passageway?”
“Ah!