“I `know what you rrtean,” Clarke snapped. “Go on.”
“Yes, sure.” San dstrom licked his lips. “Well, right away we both reali°za something was wrong. Should have displaying t4v regular pattern bright as day. And the screen stay “dead. I knew there wasn’t a fault in the unit because i ame fresh from overhaul this morning.”
“So what did you do then?”
“Sounded the recall siren and told the crewmen what I suspected. And- Leo exchanged their routine gear for-uh -the appropriate equipment. In fact, by that time one of the crews, making for the master switching bunker, bad had their own suspicions aroused. The locks on the bunker door were not at their former setting. The door is fourinch sintered-ceramic, a kind of artificial ruby, with . . . but I guess you’ve been to lots of these sites.”
“Yes,” Clarke said. “So? What next?”
“I ordered a top-to-bottom check of the site. Didn’t want to risk the chance that we’d been issued with data that actually related to somewhere else..”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
“No, sir, never. But we were warned in training not to proceed if it did happen.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Well”-Sandstrom made a helpless gesture-“we satis-
fied ourselves the site really was shut down. So I sent out
the alarm.” _
“When?”
“I logged that, sir,” the freckle-faced Leo broke in. “Fifty-three minutes after we landed.”
“Fifty-three minutesl” Clarke exploded. “Nearly an hourl And now . . .” He checked his watch. “Now it’s an hour and a half later stilll What the hell were you doing all that time?”
Listening, Turpin recognised the faint whine what sharpened his voice, and shivered. He knew many people like this, more women than men but plenty of men too, who had let petty power go to their heads and enjoyed stamping on the least suggestion of dilatoriness or incompetence among their subordinates . . . and were always full of excuses for their own shortcomings. He knew, and suspected that Clarke knew too, that checking out a site of this complexity in an hour was fast work.
Unfortunately, of. course, when it comes to someone
who holds a redbook like Clarke’s, .you can’t talk about
“petty” power . . . –
Sandstrom had stiffened, his mouth tensn”-V though he wanted to snap back but dared not. He said lih..a dead tone, “What I was doing, sir, was acting in accordance with my instruction manual. That’s to say, evaluating the status of every potentially deadly item of equipment in the reserved area in order to protect my crewmen from accidental injury. If that’s a satisfactory answer, I’ll proceed to what I did after sending out the alarm.”
“So tell -me,” Clarke said with a scowl.
“I deployed half my men along the beach, under orders to look for any sips of someone coming from the sea who might have sabotaged the installation. And I deployed the other half into the woods and along the track leading to the superway, with the same-”
“Gunnarl” A top-of-the-lungs shout. They spun around. On the dirt road leading towards this spot, a man running and calling and waving, obviously very agitated. “Gunnar, this way, quick!”
And, a couple of minutes later, Turpin, Clarke, Sandstrom, and two members of the maintenance crew were staring down at a footprint on the side of a now-dry puddle-or rather, at half a footprint. Only the sole had left a mark. But that was clear enough for the brand-name to be read.
Well ahead of the scheduled time of Magda’s meet with her client, Danty had left the apartment, revelling in the sensation of not being driven to do things whose outcome he could not foresee. He had sometimes tried to describe his-his . . . No, the word didn’t exist. Say “premonitions”? That was absolutely wrong. “Previsions”? Wrong again. Fits of clairvoyance, perhaps . . .
Anyway: He had tried to describe them; and failed. They were an abstract, like hunger and thirst, and could only be assuaged h; letting himself drift until he found the proper conr.e of action, and pursued it. Occasionally there wac _ tingling or throbbing at the back of his head.