Four

We had several strategy sessions in the next couple of weeks, coming up with all sorts of ideas on how to manipulate the situation--none of which actually turned out to be of any use. Anyhow, they all seemed to end in Mike's being determined to keep Michele off the mission, and she just as adamantly refusing to be left out. He even spoke privately to me about it, as if I could "make her see reason," and since I didn't see whatever reason Mike could see against it, he didn't get very far. Finally, he seemed to write us both off as hopeless, and didn't bring up the subject any more.

What happened, once we saw Keith Jackson, is that the secrecy people, whoever they were--I still don't know what the organization actually was, except that it had contacts all the way up to the President (we verified that, and actually met him)--outsmarted themselves. They were convinced that the three of us were mad scientists, like Dr. Frankenstein, and that our threats to let the world know about mass-reduction unless we got our way might actually be carried out.

As it happened, of course, the test we proposed was the kind of thing they wanted to find out too. What would happen to a rocket equipped with these mass-reducers? Could you actually get it so that a gallon of gasoline would make it do what hundreds of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen used to be needed for?

And Jupiter, with its Red Spot, was just as romantic a destination for them as it was for us. I suppose they had other reasons they didn't let on to us about.

At any rate, after about a year of negotiations, he agreed that we could have absolute charge of production of the thousands of mass-reducers of all sizes and strengths that would be needed for every component of the rocket and space craft--and space suits and so on for us. This was no real problem, since with a single pocket computer, with parallel processing, we could change the size of the circuit from (using proton photography for it) about what you see as the period on this page up to (with regular light) a centimeter or so in diameter--which was bigger than needed, but most were this size so they could easily be kept track of--and besides, they were cheap.

Since it would have been at least theoretically possible to analyze the circuit if it got into the wrong hands (though it would have taken years, because it was a three-dimensional one), we had to be sure that any mistakes got smashed beyond recognition, and that we three were the only ones who tested the circuits once they were attached.

There was supposed to be a Venus flyby from earth, using one of the last of the Saturn V rockets; and we managed to divert that to our own project. Some astronomers, who were interested in Venus, complained that the project was changed, but our people put out an explanation that the rocket was too old to hold the heavy equipment and that a delay was necessary to see if with more sophisticated equipment we could take advantage of Jupiter's favorable location. This quieted them down, except for one, who kept writing letters to the editor of whatever publication would accept them about the miseries of getting involved in government projects.

What really amazed me is how many people there are who can be at work on a project, and really interested in it, and not have the faintest idea of what it is they're working on--or for that matter, how many people there are who are for practical purposes running the whole project and giving approval to this and that and the other, and who are being led by the nose. Really. It is frightening to see how few people need to know anything about something that thousands of people are working on, and which costs millions of dollars. No wonder Hitler was able to do what he did.

The only snag we ran into was from what was to me a totally unexpected quarter. One day, Keith Jackson came up to me and said, "Well, we've completed our checks on all of you, and as far as we can tell, you're all right."

"Well thanks," I said. I couldn't stand him, and it was always hard to keep my feelings to myself. I knew, of course, that we'd had to have had security checks, but the tone he said it in--as if our passing surprised him a little.

"You've known Dr. Wang ever since you were kids, haven't you?"

"You don't need to have me answer that. You were in the same school with us."

"Well yes, but I wasn't his friend."

Or anyone else's, I thought. Well, you're in the right business. "What's the problem?" I asked aloud.

"Well, he's Chinese, you know."

"Good God! He's no more Chinese than I'm Argentine! He was born here! The fact that he's got almond eyes and a flat nose has nothing to do with anything you'd be interested in. He's genetically Chinese, but loyalty to a country is not a genetically transmitted character."

"As I said, he's perfectly all right, as far as we can tell. But there are a couple of people who are a little--um--concerned, especially since we found out that this project was his idea--"

"Now wait a minute! You were the one who approached him. If it hadn't been for you, he'd never have thought of it."

"Well, it didn't exactly happen that way."

"What do you mean?"

"It's true that I came to him and asked him to talk about the strange events that were going on around your lab: that accident you had on the basketball-court after suddenly becoming very close-mouthed to your colleagues, and then the mice disappearing, and behaving in very strange ways in your apartment--"

"How did you find that out?"

"Well . . ." There was no way I'd ever like him. "And after all," he went on, "he is Chinese--genetically, as you said, but Chinese--and, you see, we wanted to find out what was going on."

"And you found out."

"Didn't we, though? To an extent. You three have a commendable sense of secrecy. We've tried experiments to see if your methods or procedures or even your theoretical calculations can be discovered, and up to this point, we've assured ourselves that they can't."

"By trying to steal it for yourselves. Brother!"

"What trust, eh? Well, life involves trust, but we want to be sensible too."

"Well let me just mention that even if our computers happen to disappear temporarily from our pockets, there are parts of the program that have to be put in every time and that exist nowhere but in the heads of the three of us."

"We know."

"Whose?" I asked, turning on him.

"You can't expect us to tell if you--why not? All three of you. We've had more practice than you have; you're pretty naive, you know, in many ways, and we find it somewhat amusing at times, if you'll forgive us. But you've got the basic, simple idea that always works. Keep it memorized and never write it down. And we're keeping an eye open so that our greater experience can help keep anyone else from taking advantage of you. We want you to succeed as much as you do. I mean, we know you're using us; but just be aware of the fact that we don't mind being used, as long as we're both using each other.

"But of course, we'd very much resent it--very much--if we were being used for a space voyage that ended, say in the Gulf of Tonkin. Are you absolutely certain that you aren't being used, Paul?"

"By Mike? Of course. Absolutely."

"Don't just react, now."

"Oh, stop it! I've known Mike ever since we were four years old. He's never held anything back from me, or been evasive, or anything. Mike isn't that way. I could suspect Michele of something easier than I could Mike."

"All right. You have to remember that we don't know him as well as you do, and we see the dangers as clearly as you do--a good deal more clearly, probably. We aren't as easily convinced. And because we aren't, I want to mention the real reason I had this little chat with you."

"What's that?"

"Those old rocket ships always had on them something that would allow the ground crew to abort the mission if anything went wrong. We haven't taken that capability off the Saturn you're going to be going in--and I should add that it'll be in a place where you can't get at it once the launch occurs."

"I see . . . . Well, all I can say is you won't have to use it."

"I'm sure we won't. I just wanted to let you know, if you see some special guards around sometimes."

"I can spell 'Tuesday.'"

"You what?"

"Skip it. You want me to tell Michele and especially Mike about this."

"It wouldn't hurt, and it might sound better coming from you. You can put the blame on us, that's perfectly all right; but I won't have to stand there and take it for what's undoubtedly an unnecessary precaution."

"All right; I see your point of view. Of course you know that we're taking along with us everything about the mass-reducers that we don't burn; so if the mission is aborted, it's as if they'd never been discovered."

"That's very unfortunate. But not as unfortunate as some other possibilities."

Of course I told Michele and Mike right away, and Michele laughed and Mike fumed. But there was nothing to be done, and so we went ahead with the work.

It was fascinating to watch the attaching of the mass-reducers to the various parts of the rocket and its instruments. It was done during inspection, of course, and most of the time was under the guise of an inspection seal. All of the larger components had reducers that could be turned on and adjusted from a special console that Mike had designed, with a computer I worked out and had built by an outsider (which occasioned some nervousness, until I proved that it was just a complicated switching device); but the small instruments needed reducers that were so tiny they had to be always "on," and the assembling of them was quite tricky. We had to do it ourselves after hours (fortunately, there wasn't much of it), and we spent a frustrating two weeks at the start of this phase of the operation, picking instrument needles and so on off the ceiling when they slipped out of place. We finally built a shelf on top of the work bench, put a light under it, and used the underside of the shelf as our bench; and then, thinking of up as down, we began to make real progress.

In the end, the most delicate instruments were left with most of their mass, with just the casings reduced; because with the control we had of the basic ship and the larger parts, we could still make everything, us included, weigh less than ten grams on Jupiter if we wanted to.

One of our checks was to weigh everything with the mass-reducers on when the workers had left, but before they were allowed out of the building (They hated the wait, which they saw no need for). Toward the end, we hurried through this phase, which was a double check anyway, and nothing had been missed in two years.

But one day, when everyone had left, I looked at something Mike had on a scale, and said, "Mike, isn't that gyroscope too heavy?"

"No, it's--no wait. You're right! Oh, God! I wasn't paying any attention! Who was working on this?"

I flipped open my computer and looked at the files. "Janice. Janice Jones."

"That's right. She handed it to me just before she walked out, but I had fourteen or fifteen other things to--where is she?"

"Get Keith!" I pushed the button on my computer to call him.

"No, wait. Get her." Mike pulled out his computer, when it rang.

"Dr Wang?" came a voice when he answered. I was listening in on mine. "This is Janice Jones. You know, the one who works at the third assembly table--"

"Yes, I know." He sounded calm, but he swallowed silently.

"Dr. Wang, I know this is funny, me calling you like this, but something funny has happened, and--well, I thought you might be able to tell me what happened."

"What happened?"

"Well, I left like always and took the bus home, and everything, and everything was just like always, and I got home, and I was going to take a bath, and I ran the water in the tub and everything, and turned on the TV, you know, because my program usually comes on just after I get home, and I like to watch it in the tub, you know, and anyway I was just taking off my blouse when I noticed that it felt kind of light-like, and then when I got it off, it kind of floated, sort of, and I got scared and let it go, and there it is on my bathroom ceiling and I'm scared to go in the room."

"Janice, I'm glad you called me. Janice? Are you there, Janice?"

"Yeah."

"Listen, Janice, don't touch it."

"I can't. It's on the ceiling. And anyway, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole!"

"Well don't. Not even with a ten-foot pole. And don't let anybody into your place until I get there."

"Oh, Dr. Wang, is it going to explode or something? Because the TV's in there, and I'm missing my program, but I'm scared to go in!"

"No, it's all right, you're safe enough; only don't touch it. Better yet, keep out of the room altogether, just to be sure. I think I know what's wrong with it. It's okay as long as it stays up there, but if it falls down--well, just stay out of the room, that's all."

"But what about my program?"

"Go to a neighb--no! No, you just stay there until I come. I'm sorry about your program, but it can't be helped."

"Well, okay if you say so. Can I listen to it from the door?"

"Oh, sure. In fact, that'd be a good idea. You sit there at the door and listen, and keep your eye on the blouse in case it falls. I'll be there as soon as I can. Where do you live?"

She told him. It was only a few blocks away, but we decided driving would be quicker.

"This has got to rank right up there with you flying over the basketball court," said Mike as we got into the car. As he closed his door, he added, more or less to himself, "It would be Janice."

"Oh?" I said. "Do you know her?"

He looked down the road as he pulled the car out. "Not so you could say 'know.'"

"She couldn't have stolen it and photographed it and then called in case we missed it, could she?"

"Janice? From what I know of her, she wouldn't be able to point the camera in the right direction."

"It does sound rather far-fetched. But you wonder."

"You're letting Keith Jackson and his minions get to you. How would you feel if your shirt suddenly took off for the ceiling?"

"I suppose. She sounded the way you'd expect."

When we got there, she looked the way you'd expect: terrified. Mike pacified her, while I went and got a chair and took the blouse down. It was easy to find the mass-reducer because one side of the blouse was lighter than the other. It had attached itself to the underside of the armpit.

Just as a precaution, I told her we'd have to take the blouse away, but that we'd have it back to her tomorrow.

"You can have it!" she almost shrieked. "I wouldn't touch that thing with a ten-foot pole! I never want to see it again! I never liked it anyway, and I only wore it to work because I don't care how I look at work. But what happened to it?"

"Well . . ." said Mike, and I broke in with the speech I had been preparing in the car, "It got an extra big charge of static electricity, that's all; you know, the kind of thing that makes sparks when you take your clothes off?"

"Really?" Her eyes widened. "Can static do that?"

"Only if there's a lot of it. Haven't you seen balloons stick to the ceiling after you rub them on a sweater?"

". . . I guess," she said a bit dubiously. "Of course, it always did have a lot of static in it. You could see the sparks sometimes if you took it off in the dark."

"I'll bet you felt a real tingle this time when you took it off," I said, planting a suggestion in her.

"You're right!" she said, as if she recalled it. "It almost felt alive!"

"Then that's got to be what happened. I noticed all the electricity in it when I touched it on the ceiling, and I discharged it on my way down. What must have happened is that when you took it off, it felt strange, and you threw it up in the air instead of dropping it, and it hit the ceiling and just stuck there because of the electricity. It's perfectly all right now, actually." I dropped it on the ground, and then picked it up; without the mass-reducer, of course, it behaved like a normal piece of cloth.

"Well, how do you like that?" she said, a little disappointed. "And all the time I thought it was something you guys were doing with them little chips we've been putting on the instruments."

"How could they make it fly?" I said. "You never saw any of the instruments fly, did you?"

Of course she shook her head, because the only reducers that anyone else but us put on were the kind that could be turned on and off; this one must have slipped off some component we'd already dealt with.

"Those things are just inspection stickers," I lied. "We've got to be sure every one of the components on these old rockets are checked, because they haven't been used for so long, and the government is too cheap to by new parts for us."

"Oh," she said. She could believe that the government was cheap, all right. "But then why did you get all excited when I called you?"

That was a poser. Mike broke in, "We suspected that there might be some pretty high charges built up. They wouldn't really be dangerous, or anything, but we didn't want to get anybody scared and quit. You know how it is. If you'd come in tomorrow and told everybody what happened, we wouldn't have anyone working for us Thursday."

"Yeah, well anyway you ought to let people know about things before they happen. I coulda had a heart attack."

"Oh, come on now!" he said. "A live wire like you? Why you're pretty shocking anyway; what's a few more volts?"

She didn't get the pun, and was wondering whether to take what he said as an insult, when I said, "You know; shocking. Bzzt!" and held out my finger.

"Oh. Oh, yeah." And she made a rather feeble attempt to laugh. "But it's really okay? I mean really?"

"Of course, Janice. Don't worry about it."

"Well," she said, glancing at the clock, "I know you guys are busy, and . . . " she let her voice trail off. Another program must have been about to start.

"Sure, Janice," said Mike. "We'll see you tomorrow. And I'll have that blouse for you."

"Okay, but never mind the blouse. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole." she said, and turned back to the bathroom as we started to leave.

"Well," I said as we drove back, "if she's a spy, she's got to be the smartest one I ever heard of to act that dumb."

"A spy? Not a chance."

After a pause, I said, "I suppose we'll have to tell Keith anyway."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, why?"

"She's bound to talk about it, and if he hears and we didn't tell him, he'll think something's fishy. You know him. The poor thing; she'll have a tail three miles long now, no matter where she goes."

"That won't bother her, especially if she finds out about it . . . . Well, it could have been a lot worse."

"I'll say," I said. Then I added, "It's a shame it had to happen to you, Mike."

"It could have happened to anybody. No matter how careful you are, those things float around so much that it's next to impossible to keep track of them."

"Yes, but we'll have to be twice as careful from now on. Once we can explain, but not twice. Thank God we're almost at the end of this!"

"Well, what's done is done."

"I hate the thought of facing Keith. He won't like it at all."

And he didn't. He didn't at great length. He must have debriefed Mike and me four times about every last detail of what happened, every word that was said, with all the phrasing and accents, and whether anyone could have used the chip to copy it between the time she left and the time we got there. Clearly, no one could have substituted anything. We finally agreed that something of it could have been copied, but that the really important part of the circuit was buried so deep inside it that you'd have to take a couple of days to get at it, and even then it would only be a ten percent chance you'd actually learn how it worked.

"As you must know by now," I added. "I can't believe you haven't tried yourselves; we can't be everywhere, and you must have 'borrowed' one for a few days to see what you could see."

"You're a little less naive than you used to be, aren't you? Well, to be perfectly frank, I don't think there'd be any damage in that short time, and considering we know we have the original back, then even if Mike and she were in cahoots on this together, your appearance on the scene would have--"

"How on earth could they be? How could he have got in touch with her at the very moment I was noticing the difference in weight?"

"Exactly. But even if anything like that went on, there wouldn't be any way anyone could have profited from it. So we don't need to worry."

If you can follow that kind of reasoning, then you belong in intelligence work.