The old man blinked. After a moment, he exploded. “Now what are you up to, Howard? You know I never—”
“Think, Uncle Lester! Please. Way back when you were a boy—anything like that?”
“Of course not!”
“You’re sure? Because I’m warning you, Uncle Lester, you’re going to have to take the strictest security check anybody ever took. You’ve stumbled onto something important. You’ll have to prove you can be trusted or—well, I can’t answer for the consequences. You see, this involves—” he looked around him furtively—“Schenectady Project.”
“Schenec—”
“Schenectady Project.” Mooney nodded. “You’ve heard of the atom bomb? Uncle Lester, this is bigger!”
“Bigger than the at—”
“Bigger. It’s the molecule bomb. There aren’t seventy-five men in the country that know what that so-called driver in the truck was up to, and now you’re one of them.”
Mooney nodded soberly, feeling his power. The old man was hooked, tied and delivered. He could tell by the look in the eyes, by the quivering of the lips. Now was the time to slip the contract in his hand; or, in the present instance, to—
“I’ll tell you what to do,” whispered Mooney. “Here’s my key. You go up to my room. Don’t knock—we don’t want to attract attention. Walk right in. You’ll see a man there and he’ll explain everything. Understand?”
“Why—why, sure, Howard. But why don’t you come with me?”
Mooney raised a hand warningly. “You might be followed. I’ll have to keep a lookout.”
Five minutes later, when Mooney tapped on the door of the room—three taps, pause, three taps—and cautiously pushed it open, the pale blue mist was just disappearing. Harse was standing angrily in the center of the room with the jointed metal thing thrust out ominously before him.
And of Uncle Lester, there was no trace at all.
V
Time passed; and then time was all gone, and it was midnight, nearly the Nexus Point.
In front of the hotel, a drowsy cabdriver gave them an argument. “The Public Liberry? Listen, the Liberry ain’t open this time of night. I ought to—Oh, thanks. Hop in.” He folded the five-dollar bill and put the cab in gear.
Harse said ominously: “Liberry, Mooney? Why do you instruct him to take us to the Liberry?”
Mooney whispered: “There’s a law against being in the Park at night. We’ll have to sneak in. The Library’s right across the street.”
Harse stared, with his luminous pale eyes. But it was true; there was such a law, for the parks of the city lately had become fields of honor where rival gangs contended with bottle shards and zip guns, where a passerby was odds-on to be mugged.
“High Command must know this,” Harse grumbled. “Must proceed, they say, to Nexus Point. But then one finds the aboriginals have made laws! Oh, I shall make a report!”
“Sure you will,” Mooney soothed; but in his heart, he was prepared to bet heavily against it.
Because he had a new strategy. Clearly he couldn’t get the survival kit from Harse. He had tried that and there was no luck; his arm still tingled as the bellboy’s had, from having seemingly absentmindedly taken the handle to help Harse. But there was a way.
Get rid of this clown from the future, he thought contentedly; meet the Nexus Point instead of Harse and there was the future, ripe for the taking! He knew where the rescuers would be—and, above all, he knew how to talk. Every man has one talent and Mooney’s was salesmanship.
All the years wasted on peddling dime-store schemes like frozen-food plans! But this was the big time at last, so maybe the years of seasoning were not wasted, after all.
“That for you, Uncle Lester,” he muttered. Harse looked up from his viewer angrily and Mooney cleared his throat. “I said,” he explained hastily, “we’re almost at the—the Nexus Point.”
Snow was drifting down. The cabdriver glanced at the black, quiet library, shook his head and pulled away, leaving black, wet tracks in the thin snow.
The pale-eyed man looked about him irritably. “You!” he cried, waking Mooney from a dream of possessing the next ten years of stock-market reports. “You! Where is this Vale of Cashmere?”
“Right this way, Harse, right this way,” said Mooney placatingly.
There was a wide sort of traffic circle—Grand Army Plaza was the name of it—and there were a few cars going around it. But not many, and none of them looked like police cars. Mooney looked up and down the broad, quiet streets.
“Across here,” he ordered, and led the time traveler toward the edge of the park. “We can’t go in the main entrance. There might be cops.”
“Cops?”
“Policemen. Law-enforcement officers. We’ll just walk down here a way and then hop over the wall. Trust me,” said Mooney, in the voice that had put frozen-food lockers into so many suburban homes.
The look from those pale eyes was anything but a look of trust, but Harse didn’t say anything. He stared about with an expression of detached horror, like an Alabama gentlewoman condemned to walk through Harlem.
“Now!” whispered Mooney urgently.
And over the wall they went.
They were in a thicket of shrubs and brush, snow-laden, the snow sifting down into Mooney’s neck every time he touched a branch, which was always; he couldn’t avoid it. They crossed a path and then a road—long, curving, broad, white, empty. Down a hill, onto another path. Mooney paused, glancing around.
“You know where you are. Going?”
“I think so. I’m looking for cops.” None in sight. Mooney frowned. What the devil did the police think they were up to? They passed laws; why weren’t they around to enforce them?
Mooney had his landmarks well in mind. There was the Drive, and there was the fork he was supposed to be looking for. It wouldn’t be hard to find the path to the Vale. The only thing was, it was kind of important to Mooney’s hope of future prosperity that he find a policeman first. And
