Rogue Moon

“Let’s keep polite, Dr. Hawks,” he said. “Let’s look at it in the light of reason. Continental Electronics pays you to head up Research, and you’re the best there is.” Co

Hawks thought for a minute and then said, “Very well. How soon can I see this man?”

Co

“I know the general location.”

“Good enough. If you’ve got an hour or so, what say we run on down there now?”

“I have nothing else to do if he turns out not to be the right man.”

Co

Hawks nodded and stood up.

Co

Hawks smiled. “How will you like it, then, going to the Board of Directors, telling them my salary has to be higher than yours?”

“Yeah,” Co

He tapped his cigar ash off into the middle of Hawks’ desk blotter. “Get hot, sometimes, inside your insulated suit, does it?”

Hawks looked expressionlessly down at the ash and up at Co

They drove along the coastal highway in Co

The cliffs were sheer and composed of some rough, crumbling stone that had fissured vertically, leaving narrow guts whose bottoms were filled with the same detritus that had been used to form the road. The car murmured forward with one fender overhanging the water side and the other perhaps a foot from the cliffs. They moved along in this ma

The road changed into an incline blasted out of the cliff face, with the insecure rock overhanging it in most places, and crossed a narrow, weatherworn timber bridge three car-lengths long across the face of a wider gut than most. The wedge-shaped split in the cliff was about a hundred feet deep. The ocean reached directly into it with no intervening beach, and even now at low tide solid water came pouring into the base of the cleft and broke up into fountaining spray. It wet the car’s windshield. The timber bridge angled up from fifty feet above water level, about a third of the way up the face of the cliffs, and its bottom dripped.

The road went on past the bridge, but Co

“That’s him,” Co

Hawks frowned and then said, “No.”

“Don’t read the sports pages? No — I guess not.” Co

“Barker’s quite a fellow,” Co

Hawks’ eyebrows drew together and then relaxed.

Co

Before Hawks could answer, Co

“You’re go

Hawks looked at him, pursed his lips, and got out of the car. He squeezed out between it and the cliff, and walked to the point of the dogleg. Standing with the tips of his black oxfords projecting a little way over the edge, he looked down. The spray veiled the bottom of the gut. Hanging from two of the projections in the rough walls were a small automobile fender and a ragged strip of fabric from a convertible top. The fabric was bleached and raveled. The paint on the aluminum fender was rotten with corrosion. Hawks looked at them with intent curiosity.

Co

Hawks ran the tip of his tongue over his front teeth, under his lip. He turned back to the road.

“O.K., now,” Co

Hawks nodded. Co

“We should have parked at the bottom and walked up,” Hawks said.

Co