The buildings and central laboratory of Federal Cybernetics, Inc. were located on the outskirts of New York City near the town of Hempstead. It was a complex of four low buildings, all one-story except the main office building which had two stories, set in the center of a wide and neat parklike grounds with a well-kept expanse of green lawn and many trees and shrubs. A high cyclone fence surrounded the grounds, nothing on the building identified it, and there were guards on the single gate in the fence. Unknown to anyone but the Security people and the President of the company, there was a complex and efficient electronic security system that included alarms, scanners to detect any objects going in or out of the plant or lab, coded detectors to authenticate all badges worn by personnel or visitors, and a complete computer file of the full labor force.
On an evening two days after the fourth failure of the Full Moon Project rocket launch, the production areas were working at top capacity on the complicated electronic equipment made by the company. The research laboratory staff was as busy as ever on the future projects of the company. In the main research laboratory the company’s Chief of Research, Dr. Max Ernest, sat alone completing his progress report for the work of the day. The office of the Research Chief was a glassed-in cubicle set in the corner of the laboratory farthest from the entrance. Two closet doors were in the wall, both locked for classified material. There was a small but strong safe behind Ernest’s desk. The Doctor was working with great concentration as the day became evening and the work slowed to a halt. Ernest did not hear the approach of his employer until he opened the door of the glassed cubicle. Then Ernest looked up, saw his boss, and leaped to his feet to help.
“Don’t jump up like a jack-in-the-box all the time, Max!”
Dr. Ernest reddened. “Sorry, Mr. Bryan. I just… .”
“I know what you just,” J. Wesley Bryan snapped testily. “But I can maneuver perfectly well as I’ve tried to impress on you.”
J. Wesley Bryan, President and sole owner of Federal Cybernetics, Inc., was a small, sharp-faced man who sat and moved in a wheel chair. Impeccably dressed in a simple business suit, Bryan looked like a grey mouse in his motorized chair. There were no outward signs of the injuries that confined him to the chair, and his sharp black eyes snapped with a very un-mouselike fire. He maneuvered his chair, as he had said, with amazing agility, helped by the complex electronic controls of his own design. Now he wheeled to the desk where Dr. Max Ernest had sat down again. Bryan glanced at the report Ernest was working on, and then his piercing eyes looked at the Research Chief.
“Has the shipment gone?”
Ernest nodded. “Yes, two hours ago.”
“Good,” Bryan said. The tiny man rubbed his thin hands together. “So, we are almost at the end, or should I say the beginning? Yes, the beginning by all means.” Bryan’s black eyes snapped at Ernest. “You heard about the failure at Full Moon again? Do they have anything to report?”
“I’m expecting Farina any minute. I imagine he’ll give the details if he has any,” Dr. Ernest said.
“So? He comes here? Perhaps they have found something wrong in the fuel control after all?”
Bryan said, a certain look of worry on his face now.
Ernest shook his head. “Impossible. The control is perfect. They made every possible test that we did not.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course!” Ernest said.
Bryan watched his Research Chief. “Perhaps, but I think I will do some work myself. I’d rather not see Farina anyway. The key?”
Dr. Ernest got up and walked to the small but powerful safe. He worked the combination dial.
The safe opened and the Research Chief took out a key. He handed it to Bryan and closed the safe. Bryan took the key and wheeled to one of the doors clearly labeled: Storage. The President of Federal Cybernetics took a second key from his pocket. With each key he unlocked part of the same lock—inserting each key in turn into the same keyhole. He replaced both keys in his waistcoat pocket and swung open the door. He wheeled in and the door closed behind him.
When the door had been open anyone who had seen the interior would have seen—a closet with shelves of papers and bottles!
Dr. Max Ernest returned to his desk and went on with his report. Some ten minutes later, less than a half an hour before five o’clock, the intercom buzzed on Ernest’s desk. The Research Director flipped his speak switch.
“Yes?”
“Professor Stanley Farina to see you sir,” a female voice announced.
“Send him in,” Ernest said.
The Research Director leaned back in his chair and waited. A smile wreathed his face as the small, stocky rocket expert from the NASA Utah Base entered his office. Farina smiled in return.
The two men shook hands cordially. Ernest waved Farina to a chair in front of the desk and offered the rocket man a cigar. Farina declined. After his initial smile, Farina’s face had set in a deep and worried frown. He looked at the Research Chief.
“You heard, Max?”
Ernest nodded. “I heard. The fourth time. I just can’t figure it, Stanley. Is there any chance that it has anything to do with the fuel control?”
“Not that I can determine,” Farina said. “Or anyone else.”
Ernest was thoughtful. “Still, the fuel control is the only really new piece of equipment.
Everything else has always worked well. Mr. Bryan is concerned. He counts a great deal on the fuel control being perfect.”
“We’re checking it out again, Max, but I’m sure its okay. You have all my tests reports. It should work perfectly. All the tests you couldn’t make we did with our full facilities,” Farina said. The small rocket expert frowned again. “It has to be sabotage, Max. I think we all know that now. There is no other explanation. Even Oates and Commissioner Weston have to agree after this failure.”
“You’re sure? I find it hard to think who would sabotage Project Full Moon. After all, it’s not a military project. The Soviet, the British, the French, have all cooperated. We’ve even promised them the fuel control if it works out. What can they gain? The United States has already agreed to an ‘open’ Moon. I simply don’t understand. Do you?”
Farina shook his head. “No, I don’t. And no one else does either. A man named Cranston was with us, he’s a trained criminologist, and he can’t understand why we would be sabotaged.”
“Lamont Cranston?” Ernest said. “Of Lamont Cranston Enterprises? He supplies you too, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, two of his companies do,” Farina said. “Do you know him?”
Ernest nodded. “Yes, but only by sight and reputation. He is a powerful man, very clever.”
Farina narrowed his eyes as he watched Dr. Ernest. There was a momentary silence in the glassed-in office. Outside, in the main laboratory, the workers were clearing their benches in preparation for the end of the day. Farina’s voice was low when he spoke again.
“You’re not suggesting that Cranston might be behind the sabotage?”
Max Ernest shook his head. “No, not really. It is impossible to believe; a man of his reputation. Still, he does have a close access to many vital parts.”
“True,” Farina said. “But so do you.”
Ernest smiled. ” Touché, I do indeed. And, I might add, so do you, Stanley.”
Farina sighed. “That’s the trouble—there are a lot of possible suspects, but not one you can really accuse. Besides, no one was near the Base.”
“Except Cranston,” Ernest said.
“Yes, except Cranston—who was late to arrive!” Farina said. “I wonder?”
“So do I,” Max Ernest said.
At this moment, unseen by Farina, a small light glowed beneath the desk of Dr. Max Ernest.
Ernest gave no hint of the existence of the small light, or of the fact that he had seen it. Instead he smiled at Farina, and then casually stood up.
“Maybe we had better make one more check of the production line, Stanley. Just to be sure. It will take some hours, but the line will shut down soon, and we can take it step by step. With such delicate work we only work the eight hours with two shifts. Four hours a man is all we dare let them work. After that the margin of error becomes too high.”
Farina nodded wearily. “We better be sure. I’ve got a long session with Oates soon.”
Dr. Ernest led Farina from the glassed-in office and across the now deserted laboratory. They went out into the main hall of the laboratory building. The door closed behind them. For a time there was only silence in the dim laboratory. All the workers had gone, the desks and benches were clean and bare of all but the experiments that could not be stopped. These lengthy experiments went on untended, the solutions and equipment like some mysterious landscape in the darkened laboratory. All was still and silent. Then there was a sound. It came from the empty office of Dr. Ernest.
The door that was so clearly labeled, Storage, now opened and the wheel chair of J. Wesley Bryan came out. The chair, on rubber wheels and with ball-bearings, made almost no sound as it glided across the office. The light under the desk of Dr. Max Ernest had now gone out. Bryan sat in his chair in the silent office for a few moments. His quick black eyes studied the office and the dim laboratory outside through the glass walls. Then he wheeled to the safe and opened it. He took out a large ledger-type book and slowly made an entry. He closed the book and returned it to the safe. Then the small, mouselike man wheeled around and propelled himself out of the office and across the deserted laboratory. He stopped once to closely inspect an experiment that was proceeding automatically on a bench. Bryan studied it, made a small adjustment, nodded with the satisfaction of the scientist who sees an experiment proceeding well, and wheeled himself to the door and out into the corridor.
Again there was silence in the laboratory.
It was some five minutes before anything moved in the laboratory again. A man seemed to rise up from the dim light itself. He came from inside a long laboratory bench and stood up in the 19
dimness. He was a small, dark-haired, wiry man of middle age. He wore the white laboratory coat of a senior research chemist over his business suit. He was, in fact, one of the men Dr.
Ernest had been observing at work in the laboratory some hours earlier. Now he stood motionless for a time, and then he moved quickly and without hesitation across the laboratory and into the glassed-in office of Dr. Ernest. There he looked around for a moment. He walked quickly to the door marked Storage, and stood looking at it. It was clear that he had seen J. Wesley Bryan come out of the door. He studied it for a time, and then tried to open it. The door was locked. The small man rubbed his chin. Then he turned with a nod of his head and went to the small safe. He bent down over it. His fingers worked deftly, his ear close to the dial, and he neither saw nor heard the faint sound out in the laboratory. For a second, if he had looked, he might have seen a flash of white. But he did not look, and the flash of white was gone as soon as it had appeared.
The man sat back, the safe swung open. Crouched on his heels, the man took out the contents of the safe and studied each of them carefully one by one. He put everything back except the ledgerlike book that J. Wesley Bryan had made an entry in. The man opened this ledger and very slowly turned the pages. After a time he began to frown; he leaned over the pages and seemed to study them intently. Then he became suddenly excited. He stared at the open pages of the ledger.
Finally he began to nod, his eyes highly excited. He took a tiny camera from his pocket and began to photograph the pages one by one. Not all the pages, only certain ones. The job completed, the wiry man put the camera back into his pocket, returned all the material to the safe, and closed the safe. He stood up, looked around the office of Ernest again, then walked to the door and out into the main room of the laboratory. He crossed the laboratory, looked all around, and went out the same door as Bryan into the corridor.
For the third time the dim laboratory was silent. Seconds ticked off.
Minutes.
The flash of white appeared again. It came from a door to the left. Not the door into the corridor which was on the right of the laboratory, but the door in the left wall that was simply marked: Women’s Locker Room. The white was another laboratory coat that emerged from the Women’s Locker Room. The coat was worn by an older blonde woman who limped perceptibly as she crossed the laboratory toward the office of Dr. Max Ernest. She was clearly a woman about fifty, not tall, and her face was heavily lined with years of close work bending over experiments in laboratories. She, too, was one of the research personnel of the laboratory. As she limped across the laboratory her quick eyes were alert for any movement, any intrusion. She entered the office of Ernest but did not waste time trying the door of the room marked Storage. It was plain that the woman had been observing the wiry man as he worked in what he thought was an empty laboratory. She went straight to the safe and bent down over it.
She manipulated the dial, again in a manner that proved that she had observed the combination worked out by the small, wiry man. She did not hesitate, nor did she place her ear to the dial to hear the tumblers. She turned the dial like one who knew the combination. The safe opened. She reached in and made a quick study of the contents, and then turned her full attention to the ledgerlike book Bryan had made his entries in, and the wiry man had become so excited about. Some time passed as the woman studied the ledger page by page. From time to time she stopped to read a page more closely. Her lined and middle-aged face showed considerable puzzlement as she read. Once or twice she seemed to stare at something and think hard. She read every page in the book, and when she closed it at last she stood and stared off into the space of the silent laboratory for some minutes. Then she returned the book and all the other material to the safe, closed the safe, and went back out into the main room of the laboratory. As she recrossed the laboratory toward the door of the Women’s Locker Room, she suddenly darted for cover behind a dim bench.
She had heard a sound in the corridor. She crouched out of sight.
The door into the corridor opened. A man in the grey uniform of a company security guard looked into the laboratory. He carried a time clock. He went to the laboratory time station and used the key to mark his time clock. He looked around once more. Then he went back to the door and out into the corridor.
The woman scientist stood up and stared after the guard for a moment. Then she turned quickly and limped to the door into the Women’s Locker Room. Inside the locker room she moved down the rows of benches and dimly seen lockers. She went to the last row of lockers, turned and walked down the aisle until she reached the corner of the locker room directly beneath a high window. There she sat on the bench and bent over her left hand. She began to speak low and soft. Her voice was not the voice of a woman of fifty.
In fact, ever since she had entered the locker room there had been a sudden and remarkable transformation. She had seemed to become taller, straighter. The limp had vanished as she walked quickly through the locker room. Her entire manner and movement had seemed to shed twenty years, to become the quick, smooth and sure movements of a young woman. Even her lined face had appeared to become younger. Her clear eyes had assumed a sharp and purposeful look as she turned into the last aisle and sat on the bench under the window in the dim corner of the locker room. Now her voice was low, crisp and efficient as she spoke directly into a small ring she wore on her left hand.
“Margo reporting. Come in Control Central. Agent Lane reporting from Federal Cybernetics.
Come in Chief.”
In her disguise as the crippled and middle-aged woman chemist, Margo Lane sat and listened for her reply. Margo, the secretary to Lamont Cranston and Number One agent of The Shadow, waited in the silent locker room for her Chief to answer.
To Be Continued
MONDAY
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HERO HISTORIES
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by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
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