Rogue Moon

“I have a studio downtown. I have to work late tonight, too.”

“Will you give me your address and phone number, so I can call you tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow night?”

“If I may.”

She said, “Don’t ask me questions if you know the answers.” She looked at him. “Don’t tell me unimportant things just to pass the time.”

“Then I’ll have many more things to tell you.”

She stopped the car in front of Continental Electronics’ main gate, to let him out. “You’re the Edward Hawks,” she said.

“And you’re the Elizabeth Cummings.”

She gestured toward the sprawled white buildings. “You know what I mean.”

He looked at her gravely. “I’m the Edward Hawks who’s important to another human being. You’re the Elizabeth Cummings.”

She reached out and touched his sleeve as he opened the car door. “That’s too hot to wear on a day like this.”

He stopped beside the car, opened the jacket, took it off, and again folded it over his arm. Then he smiled, raised his hand in a tentative gesture, turned, and walked through the gate that a guard was holding open for him.

CHAPTER THREE

1

In the morning, at a quarter to nine, the phone rang in the laboratory. Sam Latourette took it from the technician who’d picked it up. He said, “Well, if he’s like that, don’t take any crap from him, Tom. Tell him to wait. I’ll notify Ed Hawks.” He hung up and padded in his old shoes across the floor, to where Hawks was with the crew of Navy dressers laying out the equipment Barker would wear.

The suit lay open on its long, adjustable table like a sectioned lobster, trailing disco

“Leave it, Ed,” Sam Latourette said. “These men can handle that.”

Hawks looked apologetically at the Navy men, who had all turned their eyes on Latourette. “I know that, Sam.”

“Are you going to wear it? Leave it alone!” Latourette burst out. “Nothing ever goes wrong with any of the equipment!”

Hawks said patiently, “I want to do it. The boys, here—” he gestured toward the dressers — “the boys don’t mind my playing with their Erector set.”

“Well, this fellow Barker’s down at the gate. Give me his pass and stuff, and I’ll go down and get him. He sounds like a real prize.”

“No, I’ll do that, Sam.” Hawks stepped back from the table and nodded toward the dressers. “It’s in fine shape. Thank you.” He left the laboratory and went up the stairs to the ground floor, preoccupied.

Outside, he walked along the fog-wet, black asphalt driveway toward the gate, which was at first barely visible through the acrid mist. He looked at his wrist watch, and smiled faintly.

Barker had left his car in the outer parking lot and was standing on the other side of the small pedestrian gate, staring coldly through it at the guard, who ignored him stiffly. Barker’s cheekbones were flushed red, and his poplin windbreaker was curled over his left forearm as though he expected to begin a knife fight.

“Morning, Dr. Hawks,” the guard said as Hawks came up. “This man’s been tryin’ to talk me into lettin’ him in without a pass. And he’s been tryin’ to pump me about what you’re doin’.”

Hawks nodded and looked thoughtfully at Barker. “I’m not surprised.” He reached into his suit pocket, under his smock, and banded over the company pass and security O.K. slip from the FBI. The guard took them into his cubicle to record the numbers on his log sheet.

Barker looked defiantly at Hawks. “What’s in this place? Another atom bomb project?”

“There’s no need to fish for information,” Hawks said quietly. “And no purpose in doing it with a man who lacks it. Stop wasting your energy. I’d be happier if I hadn’t guessed exactly how you’d act here.” Hawks said, “Thank you, Tom,” as the guard came out and unlocked the gate. He turned back to Barker. “You’ll always be told everything you need to know.”

Barker said, “Sometimes it’s better for me if I’m allowed to judge what I need, or don’t. But—” He bowed deeply from the hips. “At your service.” He straightened and glanced up at the length of heavy-gauge pipe forming the lintel of the gate in the Cyclone fencing. He twisted his pinched lips into a smile. “Well, morituri te salutamus, Doctor,” he said as he stepped through. “We signify your status at the point of our death.”

Hawks’ face twitched. “I’ve also read a book,” he said softly, and turned away. “Put on your badge and come with me.”

Barker took it from the guard, who was holding it out patiently, and clipped it to his Basque shirt pocket. “And thank you, Tom,” he said over his shoulder, falling into step with Hawks.

“Claire didn’t want me to come,” he said, cocking his head up to glance significantly at Hawks. “She’s afraid.”

“Of what I might do to you, or of what might happen to her because of it?” Hawks answered, keeping his eyes on the buildings.

“I don’t know, Doctor.” There was wariness in Barker’s tension. “But,” he said slowly, his voice hard and sharp, “I’m the only other man that ever frightens her.”

Hawks said nothing. He continued to walk back toward the laboratory, and after a while Barker smiled once again, thinly and crookedly, and also walked with his eyes only on where his feet were taking him.

The stairway down into the laboratory from the main floor, where the passenger elevators stopped, was clad with plates of non-skid sheet steel. The green paint on the plates was fresh at the edges, worn off the tops of the die-stamped diamonds closer in. Nearer the center, the diamonds had been worn down to the underlying angled parallel ridges. In the center itself, a freehand pattern of electric welds had been imposed over the thi

“Shuffle your victims up and down in long, shackled lines, do you?” Barker said.

“I’m glad to see you’ve found a new line of talk,” Hawks answered.

“Many’s the agonized scream that’s echoed up this shaft, I’ll wager. What’s beyond those doors? The torture chamber?”

“The laboratory.” He held open the swinging door. “Come in.,,

“Pleasure.” Barker straightened his shoulders into perfect symmetry, threw the folded windbreaker half across his back, and stepped past Hawks. He walked out a few feet into the main aisle between the cabinets holding the voltage regulator series and put his hands in his pockets, stopping to look around. Hawks stopped with him.

All the work lights were on. Barker turned his body slowly from the hips, studying the galleries of signalmodulating equipment, watching the staff assistants ru

“Busy,” he said, looking at the white-coated men, who were consulting check-off sheets on their clipboards, setting switches, cutting in signal generators from the service racks above each gallery, switching off, resetting, retesting. His glance fell on the nearest of a linked array of differential amplifier racks on the laboratory floor. “Lots of wiring. I like that. Marvels of science. That sort of thing.”

“It’s part of a man,” Hawks said.

“Oh?” Hawks lifted one eyebrow. His eyes were dancing mockingly. “Plugs and wires and little ceramic widgets,” he challenged.