3
AS SAVAGE DROVE out to the lakeside, Jennifer was silent for a while. Finally, she asked, “Just what sort of work do you do?”
“I investigate. That big visitor you had last night is my baby, the reason I’m here. It’s my job to check out all sort of weird happenings around this area of the country.”
“For whom? I mean, for what do you work?”
“Well, a combination of agencies, really,” he said carefully.
“Government?”
“Some,” he admitted, “and some private foundations as well. Whoops! Here comes the roadblock. Army men this time. Hope you don’t mind the delay.”
“That’s all right,” she said quietly. “I have nothing else to do.”
The sentry was not as trusting as the trooper had been; Savage’s DIA credentials were meticulously scrutinized. However, when the man was satisfied, he motioned Savage on through and told him to park next to a troop carrier about a hundred feet farther on.
“Wait here,” Savage told Jennifer, and got out.
In a few minutes, he had spotted the obvious supervisor, a chicken colonel, who, Savage saw from his nameplate, was named Marovec.
“Morning, Colonel,” Savage called pleasantly.
“Who the hell are you?” snarled Marovec, some exasperation in his voice. Ever since coming in at about 6 A.M., he had been besieged with town officials, public works men, and a few reporters.
“Savage, DIA, Pentagon,” he replied crisply. “I didn’t get any word that regulars were being sent up.”
“You wouldn’t,” Marovec replied in a more subdued tone. “Didn’t know it myself until a few hours ago. I got the order to move down — have a little installation up in the hills there — and wait for an Air Force specialty team.”
“Any idea why?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “I think NORAD tracked this thing down and didn’t like something about the way it came in.”
“Flying saucers?” Savage asked derisively.
“Naw. None of that goddam silly stuff. Could be a lost Russian item or something, though. I’m told that what bugged hell out of them was the slow descent and, the fact that it changed course for no apparent reason, like it wanted to hit just where it did. Anyway, we want to see what’s there.”
“So, do I, Colonel, so do I. What’s going to happen now?”
“Well, we wait for the flyboys to come in. Should be good — never saw flyboys in scuba gear before. All we need now is the Navy.”
“Well, look, I’ve got a local in the car. Let me drop here off and I’ll come on back?”
“No hurry,” the lieutenant colonel replied. “They’re flying in some people fom Vandenberg and—” he looked at his watch, “they just now left. It’s almost ten now I figure they couldn’t get to Mycroft, get their stuff, arrive, get out to this site before three or four. Good thing it’s summer: plenty of working light.”
“Okay,” Savage replied. “I’ll complete my interviews with the locals in town and meet you about three, then.”
“Should be time enough. Probably just a big rock, anyway, buried so deep they’ll never get it out.”
“I don’t think so, Colonel,” Savage objected. “Look out there at the center of the lake. See that dark blotch? I think that’s it.”
“Could be,” Marovec admitted. “We’ll see.”
As Savage walked back to the car, he saw that Jennifer had gotten out and was leaning against the door, letting the warm breeze off the lake hit her in the face. He stopped to stare at her for a moment.
Funny, he thought to himself. Here I meet her only this morning and, in the middle of the biggest job of my life, I can’t think of much else but her. This sort of thing happens to other people, not to me, he told himself. But the strong emotional feeling, somewhat ill defined and very alien, just wouldn’t go away. He found himself liking — even admiring — the unkempt, informal look; her deficiencies, so obvious earlier, seemed to turn into assets or become suddenly irrelevant.
Walking back up to her, he put his left hand in hers. She smiled. “So how’d it go?”
“Nothing much doing until the big boys get here this afternoon,” he told her. “Let’s go back.”
He helped her into the car and started back to the Merritt. As he drove, be punched the stud and picked up the transceiver once again.
“Duty Watch,” responded the same gruff male voice he had talked to earlier.
“Savage again,” he reported. “The big boys are coming in from Vandenberg at three. Can you vouch for through DIA and get me in on the show?”
“Already done after your first call. Looks like a rough one, Savage. Particularly if there’s still something alive in there.”
“Don’t see how we can put the lid on it now,” Savage agreed. “The best we can do is cover the examination when they get the thing out. That won’t be easy — a couple of days and some heavy equipment.”
“Okay. Stay there and do what you can. Above all keep us informed. We have Della Rosa already on Air Force team and Peterson’s there with his Washington Post cover. We’re ready to drop in the Team and to hell with it if things get really messy.”
“Right. Back at three or earlier, if things develop,” Savage told him. “Clear for now.”
“Clear,” responded the watch officer.
“That really was a spaceship that crashed in there, wasn’t it?” Jenny asked suddenly.
Savage was startled. “Huh? What makes you think the flying saucers are among us all of a sudden?”
“When you’re blind,” she explained, “you train your other senses to a fine point. I heard both ends of the conversation.”
Savage turned into the parking lot and parked the car. He sat for a long moment, thinking about what to say.
“Yes,” he said finally. “We think it was. And it could be extremely dangerous.”
He got out of the car and opened her door, helping her out. As he closed her side and they started for the door to the inside hall, Savage heard a series of electrical bells.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“The ice cream truck,” she replied. “It usually makes two runs through the area, right about now and later this evening.”
“But I thought the guy who ran the truck was the father of the girl who was killed,” he said in a puzzled tone.
Jennifer, too, looked suddenly strange. “He is, come to think of it.”
Savage took her by the hand and they walked around to the front of the apartment complex. The truck, one of the snub-nosed, box-shaped trucks that specialized in soft ice cream, was just pulling out, its bells jangling. A half-dozen or so kids were standing in the lot watching it go. Most were holding ice cream cones or bars, which were dripping messily in the hot sun, but, none seemed to be eating. Instead, they all watched the truck roll down the road and out of view, dreamy sort of half-smiles on their faces.
That was what was wrong. That being the fact that kids almost never mill around after a truck leaves. They rush to buy the stuff, then run back to eat, get messy, and return to play. Savage desctibed the scene to Jennifer.
They approached one of the kids, a boy of eight or nine just standing there, a double-dip chocolate cone oozing down.
“Hi!” Savage greeted the boy cheerfully. “Was that Mr. McBride?”
“Yeah,” the boy answered sullenly, sounding like his mouth was full of mush.
“Is that you, Tommy?” Jennifer put in, recognizing the voice.
“Yeah, Jenny,” he replied with the same mushy indifference.
“How did Mr. McBride look and act, Tommy?” Savage asked him.
The boy shrugged. “‘Bout the same, I guess. Didn’t notice, ‘cause of Charley.”
“Who’s Charley, Tommy?” Jennifer prodded.
“He’s our friend,” the boy responded dreamily.
“Is Charley a dog or something?” Savage asked.
“Naw. He’s — well, sort of a little purple haystack, ya know.”
And, with that, Tommy seemed to lose interest and wandered off with the other kids.
Savage frowned. “Ever hear of anything like that before?” he asked Jennifer.
“No,” she admitted. “Not that. But kids have such great imaginations, and McBride was always good with them. He always pretended he had an invisible friend in the freezer who handed him the ice cream bars. They love it.”
Savage shrugged, and they returned to the doorway, but something in the back of his mind told him that things weren’t kosher. McBride out the day after his daughter was killed, her body still in the lake. And the kids’ reactions. He put it out of his mind for now as they approached Jennifer’s door.
“Come on in for a few minutes, Paul,” she invited as she unlocked it. “You said you had some time. And excuse the looks of the place.”
He entered without a word and watched as she kicked off her sandals and plopped on the bed. He just sort of stood there for a second, cursing himself, unsure of what to do next. He knew what he wanted to do, but there were inhibitions long ingrained in him which whispered that, no matter what he did, it would be the wrong move and he’d blow it. Calm and as implacable as ever on the outside, he was a raging torrent on the inside.
“Come on over and sit on the bed,” she said, and he did, putting his left arm around her.
“Have you had a lot of girls, Paul?” she asked. “World traveler, detective, and all that — you must have.”
“No,” he answered her softly. “Nobody. I grew up as much a social prisoner as you, Jenny. The ugly one, Mr. Ape Man, and all that. I never really had much of an adolescence. I stayed away from social contacts — the ridicule was too much. Finally, when one girl did show some interest in me — I was eighteen — I blew everything by not knowing what to do. I — I — couldn’t be human. The armor grew up with me and it proved too thick.”
“You haven’t had any problems with me,” she pointed out.
He leaned over and kissed her, long and hard.
“Did you know I’m twenty-five years old and still a virgin?” she whispered.
She lifted off the t-shirt and slipped out of the jeans, kicking them to the floor. He, too, stripped down, removing also his hand harness, and climbed into bed with her.
“That should be an easy condition to fix,” he replied, his heart pounding.
She reached out. “Oh, God, it’s a big thing,” she whispered.
He had never done it left-handedly, and hadn’t done it at all in a long, long while.
Time passed, but they didn’t notice it; two extremely lonely people, armor down, had found something that transcended such things as the outside world. After, they just lay for a time, not talking, simply touching, knowing for the first time in their lives the involvement that one human being can have for another.
Finally, Jennifer reached over to a clock on a bedside table, its faceplate removed so that she could feel the hands.
“It’s ten to two,” she said. “Hungry?”
“No, not really,” he replied. “I should be, but I’m not. And I have to go to work soon. And if things turn out the way I hope, it’s better that I don’t.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, concerned. “Are you going to do something dangerous?”
“I’m going to dive into that lake, I think, and see that thing close up.”
“Don’t — don’t get killed,” she pleaded with him, a tremor in her voice.
For the first time, the true irony of that comment struck him. He kissed her again, lightly.
“Believe me, honey,” he said enigmatically, “there’s absolutely no way for that to happen.”
Almost inaudible in the apartment, there came the soft sound of electrical bells, moving away.
4
THE HELICOPTERS STARTED landing at about 3:30, making the area around the lake look like a military invasion.
Savage had dressed and said good-bye to Jenny. She’d wanted to come along, concerned for his safety, but he was very firm: if anything came out of that thing, he wanted her as far away as possible.
The route back down to the lake took him past the diner and along a suburbia-looking little section of town he had not noticed before. This time, he saw the crowd of milling children around the ice cream truck up on a corner about half a block from Mycroft’s main drag.
He drove on to the lake.
Two Air Force sargeants were already suiting up for the dive as he approached. A nervous looking major was pacing in front of one of the copters. Savage identified himself to the man.
“Oh, yeah,” the major said. “I got something on you. What do you want to do here?”
“If you’ve got a spare scuba tank, I’d like to go down with the men.”
“Well, we got spares, all right,” the major replied slowly, “but…” His gaze fell to Savage’s claw.
“Oh, the thing’s rustproof, shockproof, waterproof and antimagnetic,” Savage assured him. “Causes me a little balance problem but nothing serious. I’ve dived in worse than this with and without it.”
The major threw up his hands. “Okay, then, on your own head be it. We both work for the same boss.”
Savage decided to wear only trunks and the basic scuba gear; he didn’t want to chance the rubberized suit fouling up his hand mechanism. In a few minutes, they were all ready. The two divers stared at the claw-and-strap arrangement, but made no comment.
“Got any weapons with you?” Savage asked them.
The nearer diver, a young man not more than twenty, raised his eyebrows. “Why? They dump sharks in this pool?”
“No,” Savage laughed. “But we have no idea what the thing is. We know, though, that it appeared to be guided by something. Who knows what. A Russian? A Martian… ?”
“We didn’t bring any weapons, mister,” replied the diver, “but if anybody’s in there, they’ll have to come out up here. Let’s not worry about it. Ready to go?”
“Ready,” Savage assured them.
They walked into the water.
It was extremely clear, the only fouling element their own wakes and air bubbles as they made their way out. After a short time, the lead diver gestured, and they went down.
A small, smashed yellow sports car, upside down, was up ahead. They stopped to look it over. One of the divers attached a line to the car and, using a small canister, inflated a large orange balloon that floated quickly to the surface. The car could now be located by a rig on top and brought up. But this was not their main objective, and they pushed on.
It loomed ahead of, them: a large black blob settled in the mud.