Twelve Times Zero Part 8

It could, Kirk thought, be a short wave radio transmitter. If it was, it looked like none he had ever come across before. On the other hand it could be some sort of infernal machine, ready to blow half the city to bits at the turn of a dial.

Even as his mind was weighing the advisability of tampering with the thing, his fingers were reaching for the various controls. Gingerly he moved one or two of the dials but nothing happened. A little more boldly now, he began to depress the b.u.t.tons. As the third sank in, a low humming sound began to fill the room. Before Kirk could find a cut-off switch of some kind, the faint light of day streaming through the room's one window winked out, plunging him into a blackness so infinitely deep that it was like being buried alive.

Nothing can plunge a man into the sheerest panic like the absence of light. Even a man like Martin Kirk, who had walked almost daily with danger for the past fifteen years. And since the form panic takes varies with the individual, the Lieutenant's reaction was an utter inability to move so much as a finger.

Abruptly the low humming note ceased entirely, replaced immediately by the sound of a human voice. "Mythox. Contact established. Proceed."

Almost as though the words had tripped a lever in his brain, Kirk's paralysis ended. Both his hands seemed to swoop of their own volition to the invisible control panel and their fingers danced across the dials and b.u.t.tons.

"Mythox," said the voice again. It seemed to swell and recede, like a direct radio newscast from half around the world. "Contact estab--"

The word ended as though it had run into a wall. The humming note came back, then ceased--and without warning daylight from the window washed over the bewildered and thoroughly frightened police officer.

Not until five minutes had pa.s.sed was Martin Kirk sufficiently in control of his nervous system to even attempt replacing the loose panel in the headboard. When at last he managed to do so, he returned the bed to its original position, closed and bolted the kitchen door, took one last look around to make sure nothing was out of place, then slunk out of the apartment.

By the time he was back behind the wheel of his car and had burned up half a cigar, Kirk's brain was ready to function with something like its normal ability. He sat limp as Satan's collar, trying to piece together the significance of the last half hour's events.

There was no longer any doubt that Alma Dakin was in this mess up to her bangs. Linked as she was to the murders (and Kirk was convinced heart disease had nothing to do with it) of those scientists, he would have sworn she was a foreign agent bent on weakening America's defenses.

Except for one thing. That machine. The kind of mind that could design and put together a mechanism like that was not of this planet. No longer did Paul Cordell's story of a girl who floated in a ball of blue fire sound like the ravings of a deranged brain. And the seeming miracle of Naia North's escape from a cell block now pa.s.sed from fantasy to the factual.

What to do about it? Martin Kirk, at this moment undoubtedly the most bewildered man alive, put his head in his hands and tried to reach a decision. Take his story to the Police Commissioner? It would mean a padded cell--and without even bothering to see if Alma Dakin possessed a machine more complicated than an electric iron. Some government agency?

By the time the red tape was unsnarled the former secretary could have reached Pakistan on foot.

Slowly from the depths of his terror of the Unknown, Martin Kirk's training in police procedure began to make itself felt. A plan started to form--hazy at first, then in a sharp and orderly pattern.

He left the car and returned to the apartment building. A glimpse of his badge and a few incisive orders masked as requests reduced the superintendent to a state of almost obsequious co-operation. Nor was the tenant of apartment 3D, a middle-aged spinster, any less anxious to a.s.sist the law. It seemed she had an older sister living on the other side of town who would be happy to put her up for a few days. She departed within the hour, a traveling bag in one fist.

Before that hour was gone, Chenowich, in response to a sizzling phone call, skidded a department car to a stop at the curb a block from the building. He delivered a dictograph to his superior, listened to a grim warning to keep his mouth shut about this at Headquarters, asked a couple of questions that drew no answers, and departed as swiftly as he had come.

The next step was the dangerous one. The superintendent admitted Kirk to the Dakin apartment and went down to the foyer to ring the bell in case the girl arrived at the wrong time. He soothed the Lieutenant's anxiety somewhat by explaining that she seldom returned to the place before seven o'clock, over three hours from now, but Kirk was taking no chances.

By five o'clock he had Alma Kirk's bedroom bugged and the instrument in working order and thoroughly tested. He was painstaking about removing all traces of plaster and sawdust and bits of wires before pus.h.i.+ng the dresser back into place to cover the dictograph's receiver.

He found the superintendent stiffly on guard in the foyer and gave him his final instructions. The man listened respectfully, repeated them back to Kirk to convince him there would be no slip-up, and the Lieutenant went back upstairs to 3D to take up his vigil.

He was in the spinster's bedroom, working out a crossword puzzle, earphones in place, when he heard the sound of the bedroom door closing in the next apartment.

The time was 7:18.

Chapter VI

It was like being in her room with his eyes shut. The soft sc.r.a.ping of drawers opening and closing, the creak of a chair being sat in, the cus.h.i.+oned thump of shoes dropped to the carpeted floor, even the rustle of a nylon slip as she drew it over her head.

It seemed much too early for her to turn in for the night. Was he going to be forced to sit there and listen to twelve of fourteen hours of feminine snoring? It would be d.a.m.ned unlikely in view of what was a cinch to be running through her mind.

Minutes later he heard her leave the bedroom, followed at once by the muted roar of a running shower. After that had lasted a normal length of time, the sound ceased and naked feet were audible on the bedroom rug.

There was more opening and closing of drawers, the whisper of clothing being donned, and an irregular clicking sound like tapping gla.s.s against gla.s.s which he finally interpreted as part of the ritual of alternately combing and brus.h.i.+ng hair while in front of the gla.s.s-topped vanity.

If there was anything of a panicky nature in her movements it would take better ears than his to detect it. But for Alma Dakin to get away with her kind of job required the nerves of lion trainer no matter what pressures she was subjected to.

Kirk stretched his legs, dug a cigar from the breast pocket of his coat and got it burning, then went back to the crossword puzzle with half his attention, keeping alert for any significant sound from the other apartment. His years as a minion of the law had adequately conditioned him to the utter boredom that went with the ordinary stake-out.

Several times the subject left the bedroom, but he was able to pick up sounds familiar enough to trace as emanating from the living room or kitchen. But nothing she did was worthy of notice in the home-town paper or even on the margin of a police blotter.

At 9:24 Alma Dakin again entered the bedroom. A hunch, or a sixth sense, or whatever years of experience in a single field gives a man, told Kirk that this time something would pop. He put aside the newspaper, placed a sheet of blank paper on the cover of a historical romance lifted from the spinster's nightstand, and got out a pencil.

A motor whined unexpectedly from the opposite side of the apartment wall and he could hear a heavy object roll with well-oiled smoothness a short distance across the carpet. He decided it was the bed being moved out from the wall by mechanical means rather than muscle, and it was clear to him now how she was able to get at that hidden radio, or whatever it was.

For the second time that day Kirk heard that eerie humming--a sound, he realized, that ordinarily would have been completely inaudible beyond the girl's bedroom walls. Suddenly the hum was chopped off and a familiar voice spoke familiar words.

"Mythox. Contact established. Proceed."

"A message for Orin. Alma Dakin."

A series of almost undetectable clicking sounds; then:

"Alma?" Despite the fact that the voice was coming through an amplifier, there was no distortion. "Anything wrong?"

It was a man's voice, clear, vibrant, young, and with no trace of an alien accent. Kirk's theory of an interplanetary menace lost some of its strength.

"I--I'm not sure, Orin," the girl said hesitantly. "There was a policeman at my apartment today--the same one Naia went to: The building superintendent told me."

"That's odd. There's no way _you_ can be tied in with her. Or is there?"

"Not that I know of, Orin. Unless they've decided to check back on me just for the sake of something to do. If that's what's happened and they've learned I was working for Dr. Karney at the time of _his_ death, they may get an idea the three deaths are related. And once a police officer gets suspicious, he can hound you unmercifully. That's what worries me, Orin. You know I'm not really an accomplished liar!"

"Shall we bring you here? At least long enough to build you a new ident.i.ty?"

A pause. Then the girl's voice again: "Something else puzzles me, too.

There's no mention of Naia's confession in the newspapers."

"_What?_ You mean they haven't released Cordell? What will Tamu say?"

"If they have, n.o.body knows about it. I told you Naia should have remained in their hands until the young man was set free. You don't know my people as I do, Orin--none of you do."

"But the evidence? n.o.body, not even the most stupid of Earthmen, could have ignored that evidence! Tamu won't like this."

"I can't help it, Orin. I keep telling you, Orin: you must use a new set of standards for this world. If its people thought as yours do, none of these unpleasant things would have to happen."