We left it at that and I told him to contact my office in Athens when he was ready to go to the island and that they would arrange everything.
I found out later, almost by accident, from a friend, that Mike had been “drafted” temporarily to work on something called the Guardian Project. I put in a vidcall and found a wall of red tape and security preventing me from talking to him on Station Three, the space medicine research satellite. Luckily, I knew a bluesky general who shared my passion for Eskimo sculpture and old Louis L’Amour westerns. He set it up and I caught Mike coming off duty.
“What do they have you doing, a portrait of the commanding honcho?”
He smiled wearily and slumped on the bunk, kicking the pickup around with his foot to put himself within range. “Nothing that easy. Guardian is Skyshield all over again, only on priority
“Anything I can do? Want me to see if I can get you out of there? I know a few people.”
He shook his head. “No. Thank you, though. They gave me the choice of an out-and-out priority draft or a contract. I just want to get it over with and back to living my way.” He stared at the papers in his hand with unseeing eyes.
“Is it the low energy particles that’s giving them the trouble?”
He nodded. “Exposure over a long period of time is the problem. There’s a sudden metabolic shift that’s disastrous. Unless we can lick it it will limit the time man can be in space.” He held up a thumb-size node. “I think this might do it, but I’m not certain. It’s the prototype of a Full Scale Molecular System I designed.”
“Can you get a patent?” I asked automatically.
He shook his head and scratched his face with the node.
“Anything I design is theirs. It’s in the contract. You see, the trouble isn’t in this FSMS unit, but in the damned sensing and control systems. First you gotta find the particles, then you gotta get their attention. Christ, if I could just shunt them into subspace and get rid of them, I’d . . .” His voice trailed off and he stared at the bulkhead.
After a moment or two he shook himself and grinned at me.
“Sorry. Listen, let me give you a call later on. I just had an idea.”
“Artistic inspiration?” I grinned.
“Huh? Yeah, I suppose so. Excuse me, huh?”
“Sure.” He slapped the control and I was staring at static. I didn’t see him again for five months, then I took his call patched through from the Sahara base to my Peking hotel. He said he couldn’t talk about the Guardian Project but he was free to take me up on the Sikinos offer, if it was still open. I sent him straight up to the island and two more months went by before anything more was heard. I received a pen drawing from him of the view from the terrace at the villa, with a nude girl sunbathing. Then in late August I took a call from him at my General Anomaly office.
“I finished the cube on Sophia. I’m in Athens. Where are you?
Your office was very secretive and insisted on patching me through to you.”
“That’s their job. Part of my job is not letting certain people know where I am or what I’m doing. But I’m in New York. I’m going to Bombay Tuesday, but I could stop off there. I’m anxious to see the new cube. Who’s Sophia?”
“A girl. She’s gone now.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Neither. I’m at Nikki’s, so come on over. I’d like your opinion on the new one.”
I felt suddenly proud. “Tuesday at Nikki’s. Give her and Barry my love.”
I hung up and punched for Madelon.
2
Beautiful Madelon. Rich Madelon. Famous Madelon. Madelon of the superlatives. Madelon the Elusive. Madelon the Illusion. I saw her at nineteen, slim yet voluptuous, standing at the center of a semicircle of admiring men
