To put it bluntly, I am subject to doubletakes.
I was several blocks away before I reviewed the swimming pool datum; it had not been much: the gates were locked and it carried a sign—”CLOSED FOR THE SEASON”.
A swimming pool closed down during the hottest part of the summer? What did it mean? Nothing at all; swimming pools have gone out of business before and will again. On the other hand it was contrary to the logic of economics to close such an enterprise during the season of greatest profit except through utter necessity. The odds against it were long.
But a swimming pool was the one place where the masquerade could not possibly be maintained. From the viewpoint of humans a closed pool was less conspicuous than a pool unpatronized in hot weather. And I knew that the masters noted and followed the human point of view in their maneuvers—shucks, I had been there!
Item: a trap at the city’s toll gates; item: too few sun suits; item: a closed swimming pool.
Conclusion: the slugs were incredibly more numerous than had been dreamed by anyone—including myself who had been possessed by them.
Corollary: Schedule Counter Blast was based on a mistaken estimate of the enemy and would work as well as hunting rhinoceri with a slingshot.
Counter argument: what I thought I saw was physically impossible. I could hear Secretary Martinez’s restrained sarcasm tearing my report to shreds. My guesses referred only to Kansas City and were insufficiently grounded even there. Thank you kindly for your interest but what you need is a long rest and freedom from nervous strain. Now, gentlemen—
Pfui!
I had to have something strong enough for the Old Man to convince the President over the reasonable objections of his official advisers—and I had to have it right away. Even with a total disregard of traffic laws I could not clip much off two and a half hours running time back to Washington.
What could I dig up that would be convincing? Go farther downtown, mingle with crowds, and then tell Martinez that I was sure that almost every man I passed was possessed? How could I prove it? For that matter, how could I myself be certain; I did not have Mary’s special talent. As long as the titans kept up the farce of “business as usual” the tell-tales would be subtle, a superabundance of round shoulders, a paucity of bare ones.
True, there was the toll gate trap. I had some notion now of how the city had been saturated, granting a large enough supply of slugs. I felt sure that I would encounter another such trap on the way out and that there would be others like it on launching platforms and at every other entrance and exit to the city proper. Every person leaving would be a new agent for the masters; every person entering would be a new slave.
This I felt sure of without being inclined to test it by visiting a launching platform. I had once set up such a trap in the Constitution Club; no one who entered it had escaped.
I had noticed a vendo-printer for the Kansas City Star on the last corner I had passed. Now I swung around the block and came back to it, pulled up, and got out. I shoved a dime in the slot and waited for my paper to be printed. It seemed to take unusually long, but that was my own nervousness, I felt that every passer-by was staring at me.
The Star’s format had its usual dull respectability-no excitement, no mention of an emergency, no reference to Schedule Bare Back. The lead news story was headed PHONE SERVICE DISRUPTED BY SUNSPOT STORM, with a subhead City Semi-Isolated by Solar Static. There was a 3-col, semi-stereo, trukolor of the sun, its face disfigured by cosmic acne. The pic carried a Palomar date line, as did one of the substories.
The picture was a good fake—or perhaps they pulled a real one out of the paper’s library. It added up to a convincing and unexciting explanation of why Mamie Schultz, herself free of parasites, could not get her call through to Grandma in Pittsburgh.