Williams was looking at me with—curiosity? Suspicion?
I rubbed my eyes, put weariness in my voice.
“I’m tired,” I said. “Almost dozed off, didn’t I? Well—”
The sound of the ticker behind Williams interrupted my alibi. I knew in a moment what was happening. A televised report had come into my own office which my secretary was switching to the ticker for me. That meant it was important. It also meant—as I had reason to hope an instant later—that the visor was shut off in my office and the news clicking directly here for our eyes alone.
Leaning over Williams’ shoulder, I read the tape feeding through.
It read—
Unidentified activities in progress around New Ring lake. Suggest destroyers work over area.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Only one thing stood clear in my mind’s confusion—this must not happen. There was some terrible, some deadly danger to the whole fabric of civilization if Fitzgerald’s message reached any other eyes than ours. I had to do something, fast.
Williams was rereading the tape. He glanced up at me across his shoulder.
“Fitz is right,” he said. “Of course. Can’t let anything get started down there. Better wipe it out right now, hadn’t we?”
I said, “No!” so explosively that he froze in the act of reaching for the interoffice switch.
“Why not?” He stared at me in surprise.
I opened my mouth and closed it again hopelessly, knowing the right words wouldn’t come. To me it seemed so self-evident I couldn’t even explain why we must disregard the message. It would be like trying to tell a man why he mustn’t touch off an atom bomb out of sheer exuberance—the reasons were so many and so obvious I couldn’t choose among them.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know.” My voice sounded thick and unsteady even to me. “Fitz is wrong. Let that lake alone, Williams!”
“You ought to know.” He gave me a strange look. “Still, I’ve got to record the report. Headquarters will make the final decision.” And he reached again for the switch.
I’m not sure how far I would have gone toward stopping him. Instinct deeper than all reason seemed to explode in me in the urgent forward surge that brought me to my feet. I had to stop him—now—without delay—taking no time to delve into my mind and dredge up a reason he would accept as valid.
But the decision was taken out of our hands.
A burst of soundless white fire flashed blindingly across my eyes. It blotted out Williams, it blotted out the ticker with its innocent, deadly message. I was aware of a killing pain in the very center of my skull. …
II
The Other Peril
Someone was shaking me.
I sat up dizzily, meeting a stare that I recognized only after what seemed infinities of slow waking. Davidson, his pink face frightened, shook me again.
“What happened? What was it? Jim, are you all right? Wake up, Jim! What was it?”
I let him help me to my feet. The room began to steady around me but it reeled sharply again when I saw what lay before the ticker, the tape looping down about him—face down on the floor, blood still crawling from the bullet hole in his back. …
Williams never saw who got him. It must have been the same flash that blinded me. I felt my cheek for the powder burn that must have scorched it as the unseen killer fired past my face. I felt only numbness. I was numb all over, even my brain. But one thing had to be settled in a hurry.
How much time had elapsed? Had that deadly message gone out while I lay here helpless? I made it to the ticker in two unsteady strides. The tape that looped the fallen Williams still bore its dangerous message.
Whoever fired past my cheek had fired for another reason, then, than this message. Of course, for how could anyone else have known its importance? There was a bewildering mystery here but I had no time to think about it.
I tore off the tape, crumpled it into my pocket. I flipped the ticker switch and sent a reverse message out as fast as my shaking hand could operate the machine.
Fitzgerald urgent urgent meet me at Ring Post 27 am leaving headquarters now do nothing until i arrive urgent signed J. Owen.
Davidson watched me, round-eyed, as I vised for a helicopter. He put out his hand as I turned toward the door. I forced myself to stop and think.
“Well?” I said.
He didn’t speak. He only glanced at Williams’ body on the floor.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t kill him. But I might have if that had turned out to be the only way. There’s trouble at the lake.” I hesitated. “You were there too, Dave. Do you know what I mean?” I wasn’t quite sure what I was trying to find out. I waited for his answer.
“You’re the boss,” was all he said. “Still, it wasn’t any mutation that did—this. It was a bullet. You’ve got to know who shot him, Jim.”
“I don’t though. I blanked out. Something …” My mind whirled and then steadied again with a sudden idea. I put a hand to my forehead, dizzy with trying to remember things still closed to me.
“Maybe something like a mutation had a part in it at that,” I conceded. “Maybe we’re not alone in wanting to—to keep the lake quiet. I wonder—could something from the Ring have blanked me out deliberately, so I wouldn’t see Williams killed?”
But there wasn’t time to follow even that speculation through. I said impatiently, “The point is, Dave, one man’s death doesn’t mean a thing right now. The Ring. …” I stopped unable to go on. I didn’t need to.
“What do you want me to do?” Davidson asked. That was better. I knew I could depend on him, and I might need
