Security

'You know I can't tell you anything like that.'

'It's all right. Here are my credentials.' Berg extended a wallet. Lancaster scanned the cards and handed them back.

'Okay, so you're in Security,' he said. 'I still can't tell you anything, not without proper clearance.'

Berg chuckled amiably. 'Good. I'm glad to see you're discreet. Too many labmen don't understand the necessity of secrecy, even between different branches of the same organization.' With a sudden whip-like sharpness: 'You didn't tell anyone about this meeting, did you?'

'No, of course not.' Despite himself, Lancaster was rattled. 'That is, a friend asked if I'd care to go out with her tonight, but I said I was meeting someone else.'

'That's right.' Berg relaxed, smiling. 'All right, we may as well get down to business. You're getting quite an honor, Dr. Lancaster. You've been tapped for one of the most important jobs in the Solar System.'

'Eh?' Lancaster's eyes widened behind the contact lenses. 'But no one else has informed me—'

'No one of your acquaintance knows of this. Nor shall they. But tell me, you've done work on dielectrics, haven't you?'

'Yes. It's been a sort of specialty of mine, in fact. I wrote my thesis on the theory of dielectric polarization and since then—no, that's classified.'

'M-hm.' Berg took another sip of his drink. 'And right now you're just a cog in a computer-development Project. You see, I do know a few things about you. However, we've decided—higher up, you know, in fact on the very top level—to take you off it for the time being and put you on this other job, one concerning your specialty. Furthermore, you won't be part of a great organizational machine, but very much on your own. The fewer who know of this, the better.'

Lancaster wasn't sure he liked that. Once the job was done—if he were possessed of all information on it—he might be incarcerated or even shot as a Security risk. Things like that had happened. But there wasn't much he could do about it.

'Have no fears.' Berg seemed to read his thoughts. 'Your reward may be a little delayed for Security reasons, but it will come in due time.' He leaned forward, earnestly. 'I repeat, this project is top secret. It's a vital link in something much bigger than you can imagine, and few men below the President even know of it. Therefore, the very fact that you've worked on it—that you've done any outside work at all—must remain unknown, even to the chiefs of your Project.'

'Good stunt if you can do it,' shrugged Lancaster. 'But I'm hot. Security keeps tabs on everything I do.'

'This is how we'll work it. You have a furlough coming up in two weeks, don't you—a three months' furlough? Where were you going?'

'I thought I'd visit the Southwest. Get in some mountain climbing, see the canyons and Indian ruins and —'

'Yes, yes. Very well. You'll get your ticket as usual and a reservation at the Tycho Hotel in Phoenix. You'll go there and, on your first evening, retire early. Alone, I need hardly add. We'll be waiting for you in your room. There'll be a very carefully prepared duplicate—surgical disguise, plastic fingerprinting tips, fully educated in your habits, tastes, and mannerisms. He'll stay behind and carry out your vacation while we smuggle you away. A similar exchange will be affected when you return, you'll be told exactly how your double spent the summer, and you'll resume your ordinary life.'

'Ummm—well—' It was too sudden. Lancaster had to hedge. 'But look—I'll be supposedly coming back from an outdoor vacation, with a suntan and well rested. Somebody's going to get suspicious.'

'There'll be sun lamps where you're going, my friend. And I think the chance to work independently on something that really interests you will prove every bit as restful to your nerves as a summer's travel. I know the scientific mentality.' Berg chuckled. 'Yes, indeed.'

The exchange went off so smoothly that it was robbed of all melodrama, though Lancaster had an unexpectedly eerie moment when he confronted his double. It was his own face that looked at him, there in the impersonal hotel room, himself framed against blowing curtains and darkness of night. Then Berg gestured him to follow and they went down a cord ladder hanging from the window sill. A car waited in the alley below and slid into easy motion the instant they had gotten inside.

There was a driver and another man in the front seat, both shadows against the moving blur of street lamps and night. Berg and Lancaster sat in the rear, and the secret agent chatted all the way. But he said nothing of informational content.

When the highway had taken them well into the loneliness of the desert, the car turned off it, bumped along a miserable dirt track until it had crossed a ridge, and slowed before a giant transcontinental dieselectric truck. A man emerged from its cab, waving an unhurried arm, and the car swung around to the rear of the van. There was a tailgate lowered, forming a ramp; above it, the huge double doors opened on a cavern of blackness. The car slid up the ramp, and the man outside pushed it in after them and closed the doors. Presently the truck got into motion.

'This is really secret!' whistled Lancaster. He felt awed and helpless.

'Quite so. Security doesn't like the government's right hand to know what its left is doing.' Berg smiled, a dim flash of teeth in his shadowy face. Then he was serious. 'It's necessary, Lancaster. You don't know how strong and well-organized the subversives are.'

'They—' The physicist closed his mouth. It was true—he hadn't the faintest notion, really. He followed the news, but in a cursory fashion, without troubling to analyze the meaning of it. Damn it all, he had enough else to think about. Just as well that elections had been suspended and bade fair to continue indefinitely in abeyance. If he, a member of the intelligentsia, wasn't sufficiently acquainted with the political and military facts of life to make rational decisions, it certainly behooved the ill-educated masses to obey.

'We might as well stretch ourselves,' said the driver. 'Long way to go yet.' He climbed out and switched on an overhead light.

The interior of the van was roomy, even allowing for the car. There were bunks, a table and chairs, a small refrigerator and cookstove. The driver, a lean saturnine man who seemed to be forever chewing gum, began to prepare coffee. The other sat down, whistling tunelessly. He was young and powerfully built, but his right arm ended in a prosthetic claw. All of them were dressed in inconspicuous civilian garb.

'Take us about ten hours, maybe,' said Berg. 'The spaceship's 'way over in Colorado.'

He caught Lancaster's blank stare, and grinned. 'Yes, my friend, your lab is out in space. Surprised?'

'Mmm—yeah. I've never been off Earth.'

'Sokay. We run at acceleration, you won't be spacesick.' Berg drew up a chair, sat down, and tilted it back against a wall. The steady rumble of engines pulsed under his words:

'It's interesting, really, to consider the relationship between government and military technology. The powerful, authoritarian governments have always arisen in such times as the evolution of warfare made a successful fighting machine something elaborate, expensive, and maintainable by professionals only. Like in the Roman Empire. It took years to train a legionnaire and a lot of money to equip an army and keep it in the field. So Rome became autarchic. However, it was not so expensive a proposition that a rebellious general couldn't put some troops up for a while—or he could pay them with plunder. So you did get civil wars. Later, when the Empire had broken up and warfare relied largely on the individual barbarian who brought his own weapons with him, government loosened. It had to—any ruler who got to throwing his weight around too much would have insurrection on his hands. Then as war again became an art—well, you see how it goes. There are other factors, of course, like religion—ideology in general. But by and large, it's worked out the way I explained it. Because there are always people willing to fight when government encroaches on what they consider their liberties, and governments are always going to try to encroach. So the balance struck depends on comparative strength. The American colonists back in 1776 relied on citizen levies and weapons were so cheap and simple that almost anyone could obtain them. Therefore government stayed loose for a long time. But nowadays, who except a government can make atomic bombs and space rockets? So we get absolute states.'

Lancaster looked around, feeling the loneliness close in on him. The driver was still clattering the coffee pot. The one-armed man was utterly blank and expressionless. And Berg sat there, smiling, pouring out those damnable