There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant, physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any information on the Redford Project into the hands of the opposition—it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the enemy"—there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute to the American efforts to bridge space.
Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project, agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.
But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely meant that it could break down twice as often.
It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that would indicate deliberate damage.
And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did not want to face the implications of that particular fact.
"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.
(That's my cue, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)
"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"
Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair technician—a man who knows how to build and repair complex research instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."
Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."
As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr. David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."
David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."
He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up slowly, ten minutes at a time."
The other man flickered the key on the side of the small carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.
MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said: "O.K.! Hold it!"
Again the lamp flashed.
"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance. Tell Harry to knock off for the day."
While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.
Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.
"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact, shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"
Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube, walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not scratch the glass underfoot.
"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.
"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads, but I don't know if they mean anything or not."
"I wonder if there is a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical run of—"
"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.
"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic discipline."
"So do I," agreed MacHeath.
"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a trace of it—anywhere. It has to be psionic."
"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.
"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a matter of mental delusion."
"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so am I."
Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."
"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let you know."
"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to find out what he's thinking."
MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time they had been down there.
"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."
It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had actually seen him as yet.
Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one. Membership in the "core" group of the Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research required, above all, understanding. And, with that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.
The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without that understanding, no human being can be completely free.
And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to the actual process that must take place. Total understanding, in one sense, would require that a person actually become another person—that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.
Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a consequence, a complete loss of