Rogue Moon

He licked his lips and listened intently. Then he relaxed. “All right, then,” he said with a wintery smile. “I’ll call you early day after tomorrow and let you know the results. Yes, I’ll remember the time difference! All right. And no, no — don’t worry,” he finished, “I’ll give it the very best try I can. Yes. Well, you too, Tom. Be seeing you.”

He racked the handset and turned away from it, his face drawn. He looked at his hands and put them in his pockets.

Sam Latourette had been waiting for him to finish. He came forward worriedly. “Trouble, Ed?”

Hawks grimaced. “Some. Tomorrow’s shot has to make it.”

“Or else?” Latourette asked incredulously. “Just like that? Years of work and millions of dollars, down the drain? Are they crazy?”

“No. No, they’re human, Sam. It’s begi

Latourette’s face flushed. “Come off it, Ed! All that needs to happen is for the transmitter program to get one black eye like this, and even the company’ll let it go. They’ll pick it up again sometime, but not right away — and not with you. You know that. They’ll ease you out and close this down until it’s cooled off a little. They—”

“I know.” Hawks said. “I’ve got too much of the smell of death around me.” He looked around. “But they won’t do it if Barker pays off for us, tomorrow. ‘Success blinds all.’ Chaucer. Out of context.” His face writhed into a twisted smile. “The level of culture in this place is rising.” He swung his shoulders around, his face still contorted, like a child’s in the grip of unbearable frustration searching for the nursery door. He said in a very low voice, “Sam, what a complicated and terrible thing the human mind is!” He moved to begin walking across the laboratory floor, his head down.

Latourette pawed clumsily at the air. “You can’t use Barker! You can’t afford to get involved with someone as wild and unpredictable as that! Ed, it won’t work — it’ll be too much.”

Hawks stopped still, his hands in his pockets, his eyes shut. “Don’t you think he’ll work out?”

“Listen, if he has to be put up with day after day, it’ll get worse all the time!”

“So you do think he’ll work out.” Hawks turned and looked at Latourette. “You’re afraid he’ll work out.”

Latourette looked frightened. “Ed, he doesn’t have sense enough not to poke at every sore spot he finds in you. And you’re not the kind to ignore him. It’ll get worse, and worse, and you—”

“You said that, Sam,” Hawks said gently. After a moment, he sent Latourette back to the transmitter, and once again set out to walk across the laboratory toward Barker.

Hawks stood watching Barker’s leg being refitted. Bulges of freshly ground aluminum were bolted to the flesh-colored material.

“Barker,” he said at last, lifting his eyes to the man’s face.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“We’re pressed for time. I’d appreciate it if you went up and had our physician examine you now. As many of us as can be spared will take our lunch in the meantime.”

“Doctor, you know damned well I passed an insurance physical last week.”

“Last week…” Hawks said, looking down at the floor, “is not today. Tell Dr. Holiday I asked him to be as quick as he can and still be thorough. Try to return here as soon as he’s finished.” He turned away. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Hawks waited alone in Benton Cobey’s reception room for twenty minutes, looking patiently down at his shoes. Finally the receptionist told him he could go in.

He crossed the bristly carpet, knocked once on the featureless mahogany sheet of Cobey’s door, opened it and went through.

Continental’s president sat behind a teak table that glowed with the oil of its dark, hand-rubbed finish, almost as black as bituminous coal. Cobey himself was a small, aggressive man with an undershot jaw and a narrow skull as bald as an egg. His deep tan had the faint tinge of a quartz lamp’s work, and his lips were lightly blued by the first hint of cyanosis. His face had the pinched look of ulceration.

“All right, Ed,” he said immediately. “What is it?”

Hawks pulled one of the over-comfortable armchairs away from the side of the desk a little, and sat down, adjusting the crease in his trousers.

“Something wrong down in the lab, again?” Cobey asked.

“It’s a perso

“See Co

“I don’t know if he’s in today. It’s not in his province, in any case. What I want to do is make Ted Gersten my top assistant. He’s qualified; he’s been Sam Latourette’s second for a year and a half. He can do Sam’s job. But I need your authorization to do it by tomorrow. We’re set up for a new shot then — the astronomical conditions are already past optimum; I want to get in as many shots as I can this month — and I want Sam off it by then.” His right hand had unconsciously moved to the end of his tie. He clamped the end between his fore and middle fingers, and began working the point of the cloth in under his thumbnail.

Cobey leaned back and folded his hands. His knuckles became mottled with red. “Six months ago,” he said in a low voice, “when I wanted to have Latourette sent home, you pulled that phony business of needing him to help set up your amplifier, or something.”

Hawks took a breath. “Hughes Aircraft needs a project engineer on a short-term research program for the Army. Frank Wasted wants Sam on it, if he can get him. He can get a contingent approval from Hughes’ perso

Cobey sat forward. “Wasted wouldn’t call you about Sam if he didn’t have an idea he could get him. Look, Hawks,” Cobey said, “I’ll take a lot from you — even more than the Navy makes me take. Don’t kid yourself, if I didn’t respect your brains, I’d have your hide any time I wanted it, and blow the contract; I’ll still be here and the company’ll still be here after this Moon business is over and done.

“Don’t go pussyfooting around behind my back! Don’t tell me about calls from Waxted when I’d lay dollars to dimes he doesn’t know the first thing about it yet! I’m telling you, Hawks.”

Hawks said, “I’m here. I’m telling you what I want. I’ve arranged the situation so all you have to do is make a yes or no decision.”

“I always say you do neat work. What is this, Hawks? Why do you want Latourette off your hands?” Cobey’s eyes narrowed. “Latourette’s been your shadow ever since he came here. If I want ten minutes of lecture on the march of modern electronics, I ask Latourette how you’ve been feeling lately. What’s the matter, Hawks — you and Sam have a falling out?”

Hawks had still not met Cobey’s eyes from the moment he had entered the office.

“Relationships between people are a complicated thing.” Hawks was speaking slowly and distinctly, as if he anticipated a stoppage in his throat. “People lose control of their emotions. The more intelligent they are, the more subtly they do it. Intelligent men pride themselves on their control. They go to elaborate lengths to disguise their impulses — not from the world; they’re not hypocrites — from themselves. They find rational bases for emotional actions, and they present logical excuses for disaster. A man may begin a whole series of errors and pursue it to the brink of the pit, and over the brink, all unaware.”

“What you mean is, you had some kind of set-to with Latourette. He wants to do one thing and you want to do another.”

Hawks said doggedly, “People under emotional stress always resort to violence. Violence doesn’t have to be a fired gun; it can be a slip of a pencil on a chart, or a minor decision that brings an entire program down. No supervisor can watch his assistants continually. If he could, he wouldn’t need help on the job. As long as Latourette’s on the project, I can’t feel I’m in total control of things.”