The Silencers

The squat little church was of stone, and parts of it had fallen into rubble, but sections of the roof remained, and most of the bell tower. Up there, camouflaged from air observation by the remnants of the wooden belfry, was the gadget. Actually, it was a kind of parabolic ante

To be perfectly honest, I can't guarantee such rigs are concerned with radar; that's just what somebody told me once. Electronics isn't my field at all, any more than atomics. I won't even guarantee that this dingus was parabolical. It could have been hyperbolical or spherical, but it's my impression that the electronics boys have more fun with parabolas, for mathematical reasons we won't go in here.

Anyway, it was a bowl-shaped contrivance of rods and wires several feet in diameter. It was aimed in a general westerly direction-out towards the great open valley below-and it was searching busily, swiveling back and forth and up and down in an intricate pattern. There was a man up in the belfry with it. I didn't envy him his job. For one thing, it must have been cold, just sitting there, and for another, that old stonework hadn't been designed to support a lot of heavy, vibrating machinery.

Wegma

I asked, "What does it do, catch flies and small birds?"

"Not small birds, Mr. Helm," he said. "Not small birds-large ones."

XXIII

High in the old church, a hundred and fifty yards across the little gulch from where we had stopped at the edge of the pines, the radar-like gizmo continued to trace out its complex search pattern, looking more alive and intelligent and energetic than the few half-frozen people in the place. From one of the old stone huts came the incongruous putt-putt noises of an internal combustion engine, probably a diesel or gasoline generator. I stamped my feet to bring back circulation, wishing I could perform a similar favor for my hands, which were still tied behind me.

"What does he mean?" Gail asked, speaking for the first time since we'd left Ruidoso. "What is it? What is that thing, Matt?"

"You heard him. It's the Wegma

Wegma

"Sought refuge," I said. "That's a nice way of putting it."

He shrugged. "You got von Braun. We got Hallenbek. Far from being Mark I, this is, I believe, the eleventh model produced, but only the fourth we have received here. Considering the difficulties of smuggling the machinery into the country and assembling it in a suitably desolate location, it can be understood that only the most promising versions reach us. The others failed to pass the preliminary tests on the Siberian missile ranges and were therefore not issued to us for field trials."

"I see," I said. "Field trials."

"An interesting concept, don't you think? What better way to test your equipment against the probable enemy's? We have been very careful. Down there, they still believe their chronic troubles to be due to stray radio transmissions of an i

Dr. Naldi, standing nearby, was regarding Wegma

"You thought this was the first machine of its kind, brought here with great difficulty and expense just to serve your purpose?" Wegma

"I see," Naldi said slowly. "I see."

"The only real miracle," said Wegma

It was a real reaming-out, such as Naldi himself might have given a careless technician in his employ, and the scientist's face turned darkly red. His eyes grew narrow and angry behind his glasses.

"Really, Mr. Wegma

"It will be stopped," Wegma

"As for the films, I do not think it is fair to accuse me of complete failure. They must be here, somewhere."

"What makes you think so?"

Naldi frowned. "What do you mean?"

"What makes you think they must be here?" Wegma

He waved his arm to the west, where the morning haze still concealed the mountains on the far side of the great geological basin. Naldi did not look that way, however, nor did Gail. They were both staring at me in a startled way. Gail spoke first.

"You mean… you mean he never had them? But he told me-"

"I have no doubt he told you many things, Mrs. Hendricks," Wegma

"But-"

Wegma

The scientist's face showed indignation. "Why didn't you tell us this earlier? Why did you let us… If he had no films, what was the point in setting such an elaborate trap? You deliberately let us make fools of ourselves capturing and searching-"

Wegma

"But why if there were no films?"

"Quite simply," Wegma

"You're going to kill them?" Naldi sounded shocked.

Wegma