At first sight, the laboratory was empty; then a young lab assistant came out of the specimen room. Carlsen recognised him as one of his admirers.
“Oh, hello, sir. Come to see the film?”
“What film?”
“From the Vega. It arrived this morning.”
The Vega was one of two big space cruisers that had set out for the derelict a month ago. They could achieve up to ten million miles a day.
“Good. What’s the news?”
“There’s another hole in the Stranger, sir.” The Stranger was a name the popular press had invented for the derelict.
“How big?”
“Pretty big. Thirty feet across.”
“Christ! That’s unbelievable.” His immediate impulse was to rush upstairs and find out more; then he remembered Seth. He introduced the two young men. “Seth Adams, Gerald. . . I’ve forgotten your other name.”
“Pike, sir.”
“When are you leaving, Gerald?”
“In about ten minutes, sir. Why? Can I help you?”
“No, it doesn’t matter. I wanted someone to show Mr Adams the lab while I go upstairs.”
Seth said: “If you’re in a hurry, perhaps I could just see the aliens?”
“Sure. Come on.” He led him into the specimen room. Against the wall at the far end, a row of mortuary cabinets had recently been installed. He said: “Do you know where they are, Gerald?”
“Yes sir. I’ll show you.”
He pulled out a drawer that opened like a filing cabinet. The man’s body lay inside. His eyes still stared blankly upwards.
Carlsen said: “Strange. He looks more alive than when I last saw him.”
Gerald said: “Well, of course, he is alive.”
Seth asked quickly: “Is that certain?”
“Quite,” Carlsen said. “If he wasn’t, he’d be rotten by now.”
“Can he be wakened?”
“If he can, we don’t know the secret. His body’s lifefield is still strong — that means he’s alive. It drains away completely after death. He’s in some kind of a trance, and we don’t know how to bring him round.”
Gerald Pike opened the other two drawers. The naked bodies looked much as Carlsen remembered them, but the faces were no longer corpselike. They might have been asleep.
Seth was looking at them with fascination. When he spoke, his voice caught, and he had to start again. “They’re beautiful.” He bent over, stretching out his hand. “May I. . .”
“Go ahead.”
He laid his hand lightly on the breast of the dark-haired girl, then ran it down over the stomach, brushing the pubis. He said: “Incredible!”
Gerald said: “Yes, they are rather pretty.” He had seen the bodies every day. “I think the man has the most interesting face.”
Seth asked: “Any idea of their age?”
“None at all.” It was Gerald who answered. “They could be older than the human race.”
“And what methods do you use to try to bring them back to life?”
“Well, it’s rather complicated. It’s a matter of trying to build up the lambda field by nondirect integration.”
“Could you explain that in words of one syllable?”
Carlsen said: “Listen, I’ll leave you two together for five minutes, if I may.”
In his own office, he dialled the projection room. It appeared on the telescreen. Every seat was taken, and people were standing in the aisles. On the big screen at the end of the room he recognised the Stranger, its vast bulk scarcely illuminated by the sunlight. The camera was evidently pulling back for a final shot. A moment later, the screen went blank, and people began to stand up.
He rang the director’s office; he knew Bukovsky would have seen the transmission earlier. Bukovsky’s rasping voice said: “Who is it?”
“Carlsen, sir.”
“Olof! I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon.” The tone was reproachful.
“Sorry, sir. I fell asleep in Hyde Park.”
“Well, thank God you’re here now. Listen, you know what’s happened?”
“Not really, sir.”
“Then listen and I’ll tell you. The Vega reached the Stranger at half past ten this morning. The first thing they discovered was an enormous hole in the roof. A meteor had gone through it like a cannonball. What do you think of that, eh?”
“You astound me, sir. An incredible coincidence.”
“That’s what I think. You didn’t report any meteor showers, did you?”
“There weren’t any, sir. Meteor showers are always associated with comets, and there wasn’t a comet within forty million miles.”
“Yes, yes.” Bukovsky hated to be told anything. “Then how could it happen?”
“It must have been a sporadic meteor. But the chances against that are about a million to one.”
Bukovsky grunted. “Just what I said. But of course, there’ll be pressure to act quickly as soon as the news gets out. You realise that, don’t you? Would you be able to appear on television tonight and explain that it’s a million-to-one chance?”
“Of course, sir. If you think it necessary.”
Bukovsky’s door opened, and half a dozen people came in; he recognised them as advisory staff. Bukovsky said: “I think you’d better get up here right away. How soon can you be up?”
“In five minutes, sir.”
“Make it two.”
He hung up. Carlsen looked at his watch and said: “Hell.” That meant leaving the interview with young Adams until later. He pressed the button that would connect him to the laboratory telescreen. The lab was empty. He reconnected with the specimen room. There was no telescreen in there, but there was an observation camera and a speaker system.
Seth Adams was alone. Carlsen was about to speak; then something made him pause. Adams was crossing the room furtively, like a cat stalking a bird. Carlsen switched back to the lab, looking for Pike, but he was nowhere to be seen. He switched through to the doorman.
“Have you seen Gerald Pike, the young man from electronics?”
“Yes, sir. He went out a few minutes ago.”
So Seth Adams had been alone for at least five minutes. He switched back to the specimen room. As he expected, Seth had opened one of the drawers. It was the one containing the man. He reached into his pocket, and took out a small object — a pen. He unscrewed the end, placed it close to his eye and pressed a button. It was a pen camera, of the type perfected in the twentieth century for spying. Carlsen should have remembered that no gossip columnist was ever without one.
He was disappointed. He did not like Seth Adams, but he had been willing to help him. In fact, he had even begun to feel a kind of sporting excitement at the prospect of his sensational scoop. Didn’t the young idiot realise that it was stupid to do this kind of thing? Now he wouldn’t get his damned interview, and if Bukovsky found out, he’d get kicked off the paper. He watched Adams close the drawer and open the next one. He was tempted to clear his throat and give him a fright. Or would it be simpler to pretend he didn’t know what had happened and let him get away with the photographs? It would be easy enough to stop the newspaper from using them.
Adams photographed the blonde girl, closed the drawer, then moved on. He pulled open the remaining drawer and sighted down the pen. A moment later, the pen was back in his pocket, and he had straightened up; his sigh of relief was audible over the telescreen. He tiptoed to the door and peered out, to verify that the laboratory was still empty. He looked carefully around the room, but failed to notice the disguised camera lens that followed him. Then he went back to the drawer and stood looking down at the girl. She was on a level with his knees. He bent over and touched the breast, then ran his hand slowly down over the body. Then he reached up and stroked the face, caressing the lips with his fingertips and pulling the lower one down. The other hand was resting on the thigh. Carlsen could gauge his increasing excitement by the sound of his breathing, which was clearly audible. When Adams dropped on his knees beside the drawer, Carlsen felt, it was time to interrupt. He crossed to the door, intending to slam it; the sound would carry over the loudspeaker. With the door open, he paused. He could see the shoulders bent over the drawer, but there was something unnatural about them; they were tensed, and the body was writhing. Fascinated and touched by sudden foreknowledge, he crept back to the telescreen. Seth’s head was inside the drawer, his face against the girl’s; but his body was jerking, as if in agony. Carlsen called out, and the body seemed to twist more violently. Then it became frozen again. It seemed to last for a long time. Then, very slowly, Seth Adams crumpled backwards, and fell. A hand appeared on the edge of the drawer. Unsteadily, as if waking from a deep sleep, the girl sat up. She looked around, ignoring the man’s body, then swung her legs over the side of the drawer, as if getting out of bed.