I pray to god, he thought, that it happened fast.
“You can’t do anything for her?” he asked von Vogelsang. “At your moratorium?”
“Not this late. There wouldn’t be any residual half-life left, not with this complete deterioration. Is – she the girl?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“You better leave this hotel. Right now. For your own safety. Hollis – it is Hollis, isn’t it? – will do this to you too.”
“My cigarettes,” Joe said. “Dried out. The two-year-old phone book in the ship. The soured cream and coffee with scum on it, mold on it. The antiquated money.” A common thread: age. “She said that back on Luna, after we made it up to the ship; she said, ‘I feel old.'” He pondered, trying to control his fear; it had begun now to turn into terror. But the voice on the phone, he thought. Runciter’s voice. What did that mean?
He saw no underlying pattern, no meaning. Runciter’s voice on the vidphone fitted no theory which he could summon up or imagine.
“Radiation,” von Vogelsang said. “It would seem to me that she was exposed to extensive radioactivity, probably some time ago. An enormous amount of it, in fact.”
Joe said, “I think she died because of the blast. The explosion that killed Runciter.” Cobalt particles, he said to himself. Hot dust that settled on her and which she inhaled. But, then, we’re all going to die this way; it must have settled on all of us. I have it in my own lungs; so does Al; so do the other inertials. There’s nothing that can be done in that case. It’s too late. We didn’t think of that, he realized. It didn’t occur to us that the explosion consisted of a micronic nuclear reaction.
No wonder Hollis allowed us to leave. And yet-
That explained Wendy’s death and it explained the dried-out cigarettes. But not the phone book, not the coins, not the corruption of the cream and coffee.
Nor did it explain Runciter’s voice, the yammering monologue on the hotel room’s vidphone. Which ceased when von Vogelsang lifted the receiver. When someone else tried to hear it, he realized.
I’ve got to get back to New York, he said to himself. All of us who were there on Luna – all of us who were present when the bomb blast went off. We have to work this out together; in fact, it’s probably the only way it can be worked out. Before the rest of us die, one by one, the way Wendy did. Or in a worse way, if that’s possible.
“Have the hotel management send a polyethylene bag up here,” he said to the moratorium owner. “I’ll put her in it and take her with me to New York.”
“Isn’t this a matter for the police? A horrible murder like this; they should be informed.”
Joe said, “Just get me the bag.”
“All right. It’s your employee.” The moratorium owner started off down the hall.
“Was once,” Joe said. “Not any more.” It would have to be her first, he said to himself. But maybe, in a sense, that’s better. Wendy, he thought, I’m taking you with me, taking you home.
But not as he had planned.
To the other inertials seated around the massive genuine oak conference table Al Hammond said, breaking abruptly into the joint silence, “Joe should be back anytime now.” He looked at his wrist watch to make certain. It appeared to have stopped.
“Meanwhile,” Pat Conley said, “I suggest we watch the late afternoon news on TV to see if Hollis has leaked out the news of Runciter’s death.”
“It wasn’t in the ‘pape today,” Edie Dorn said.
“The TV news is much more recent,” Pat said. She handed Al a fifty-cent piece with which to start up the TV set mounted behind curtains at the far end of the conference room, an impressive 3-D color polyphonic mechanism which had been a source of pride to Runciter.
“Want me to put it in the slot for you, Mr. Hammond?” Sammy Mundo asked eagerly.
“Okay,” Al said; broodingly, he tossed the coin to Mundo, who caught it and trotted toward the set.
Restlessly, Walter W. Wayles, Runciter’s attorney, shifted about in his chair, fiddled with his fine-veined, aristocratic hands at the clasp lock of his briefcase and said, “You people should not have left Mr. Chip in Zurich. We can do nothing until he arrives here, and it’s extremely vital that all matters pertaining to Mr. Runciter’s will be expedited.”
“You’ve read the will,” Al said. “And so has Joe Chip.
We know who Runciter wanted to take over management of the firm.”
“But from a legal standpoint-” Wayles began.
“It won’t take much longer,” Al said brusquely. With his pen he scratched random lines along the borders of the list he had made; preoccupied, he embroidered the list, then read it once again.
STALE CIGARETTES OUT-OF-DATE PHONE BOOK OBSOLETE MONEY PUTREFIED FOOD AD ON MATCHFOLDER
“I’m going to pass this list around the table once more,” he said aloud. “And see if this time anyone can spot a connective link between these five occurrences… or whatever you want to call them. These five things that are-” He gestured.
“Are wrong,” Jon Ild said.
Pat Conley said, “It’s easy to see the connective between the first four. But not the matchfolder. That doesn’t fit in.”
“Let me see the matchfolder again,” Al said, reaching out his hand. Pat gave him the matchfolder and, once again, he read the ad.
AMAZING OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVANCEMENT TO ALL WHO CAN QUALIFY!
Mr. Glen Runciter of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium of Zurich, Switzerland, doubled his income within a week of receiving our free shoe kit with detailed information as to how you also can sell our authentic simulated-leather loafers to friends, relatives, business associates, Mr. Runciter, although helplessly frozen in cold-pac, earned four hundred-
Al stopped reading; he pondered, meanwhile picking at a lower tooth with his thumbnail. Yes, he thought; this is different, this ad. The others consist of obsolescence and decay. But not this.
“I wonder,” he said aloud, “what would happen if we answered this matchfolder ad. It gives a box number in Des Moines, Iowa.”
“We’d get a free shoe kit,” Pat Conley said. “With detailed information as to how we too can-”
“Maybe,” Al interrupted, “we’d find ourselves in contact with Glen Runciter.” Everyone at the table, including Walter W. Wayles, stared at him. “I mean it,” he said. “Here.” He handed the matchfolder to Tippy Jackson. “Write them ‘stant mail.”
“And say what?” Tippy Jackson asked.
“Just fill out the coupon,” Al said. To Edie Dorn he said, “Are you absolutely sure you’ve had that matchfolder in your purse since late last week? Or could you have picked it up somewhere today?”
Edie Dorn said, “I put several matchfolders into my purse on Wednesday. As I told you, this morning on my way here I happened to notice this one as I was lighting a cigarette. It definitely has been in my purse from before we went to Luna. From several days before.”
“With that ad on it?” Jon Ild asked her.
“I never noticed what the matchfolders said before; I only noticed this today. I can’t say anything about it before. Who can?”
“Nobody can,” Don Denny said. “What do you think, Al? A gag by Runciter? Did he have them printed up before his death? Or Hollis, maybe? As a sort of grotesque joke – knowing that he was going to kill Runciter? That by the time we noticed the matchfolder Runciter would be in cold-pac, in Zurich, like the matchfolder says?”
Tito Apostos said, “How would Hollis know we’d take Runciter to Zurich? And not to New York?”
“Because Ella’s there,” Don Denny answered.
At the TV set Sammy Mundo stood silently inspecting the fifty-cent piece which Al had given him. His underdeveloped, pale forehead had wrinkled up into a perplexed frown.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” Al said. He felt himself tense up inwardly; he foresaw another happening.
“Isn’t Walt Disney’s head supposed to be on the fifty-cent piece?” Sammy said.
“Either Disney’s,” Al said, “or if it’s an older one, then Fidel Castro’s. Let’s see it.”
“Another obsolete coin,” Pat Conley said, as Sammy carried the fifty-cent piece to Al.
“No,” Al said, examining the coin. “It’s last year’s; perfectly good datewise. Perfectly acceptable. Any machine in the world would take it. The TV set would take it.”
“Then, what’s the matter?” Edie Dorn asked timidly.
“Exactly what Sam said,” Al answered. “It has the wrong head on it.” He got up, carried the coin over to Edie, deposited it in her moist open hand. “Who does it look like to you?”
After a pause Edie said, “I – don’t know.”
“Sure, you know,” Al said.
“Okay,” Edie said sharply, goaded into replying against her will. She pushed the coin back at him, ridding herself of it with a shiver of aversion.