Mind, Machines and Evolution Part 14

IMMEDIATE.

The rest of the preflight dialogue took only a few seconds.

ESTIMATED FLIGHT TIME IS 18 MINUTES. DETAILED FLIGHT PLAN REQUIRED?.

NO.

FUEL ADEQUATE. ESTIMATED RANGE REMAINING ON ARRIVAL WILL BE 328 MILES.

OKAY?.

YES.

VEHICLE SYSTEM SLAVING TO TRAFFIC CONTROL. CLEARED FOR IMMEDIATE.

TAKEOFF.

Five minutes later, the man who currently called himself Hadley Kra.s.sen was gazing down from one of the speeding dots in the westbound traffic corridor at ten thousand feet, Route 305, of the Omaha Traffic Area.

Over fourteen hundred miles away, in an office block in the center of San Francisco, the plaque on the door of one of the suites proclaimed it to be the registered business premises of J.J. MARSHALL, INDUSTRIAL FINANCIAL a.n.a.lYST. Inside, the offices all looked normal enough One room at the rear of the suite, however, was different. Inside it, four people-three men and a woman, all in their late twenties to late thirties-sat surrounded by an array of consoles, keyboards, and display screens amid a confusion of banks of electronic and computing equipment. Working in these cramped conditions over the previous five months, this team had penetrated the "hyper-safe" integrated communications and database network of the NORAM Defense Department. That, of course, included the computers at Anderscliff.

From their room in San Francisco, the Martian Federation scientists could extract and alter any data in the Anderscliff system and monitor the operation of its most highly protected programs. Also, if they wished, they could insert into the system, and run, programs of their own devising-the personnel record for Kra.s.sen, Hadley B., had not found its way into the Anderscliff file system through the normal channels.

The woman noted a change in the pattern of symbols on one of the screens and keyed a command string into her console. Groups of numbers appeared in columns on another display.

"The call code and flight-profile data for his airmobile have just been received from air traffic control, along with detail of a bunch of other vehicles," she announced.

One of the men behind her consulted another readout. "They'll all be incoming flights," he said. "Morning commuters into Anderscliff. Area control is programming the local ground processors and approach radars at Anderscliff to handle the landing sequences."

"He must be nearly there, then," somebody commented.

The a.s.sa.s.sin gazed down at the expanding sprawl of office blocks, laboratory buildings, domes, storage tanks, and girder lattices, all tied together loosely by a triangle of roadways and pipelines, that made up the Joint Services Armaments Research Establishment. His vehicle was sinking toward a rooftop parking area, which he recognized as one of the staff parking zones from ground plans taken from satellite pictures; he had memorized it all thoroughly before leaving Mars.

The vehicle slowed as it descended, finally coming to hover thirty feet above the next available s.p.a.ce along one of the partially filled rows. The optical scanner presented a view of the landing spot, and he satisfied himself that the area was clear before okaying the computer to proceed with the final phase of landing.

Three minutes later, briefcase in hand, he was walking toward the rooftop entry gate and checkpoint, through which he would have to pa.s.s to enter the Establishment itself. He had timed his arrival to coincide with the morning rush. Ahead of him, a half dozen or so persons, some shouting morning greetings back and forth, were converging on the door that led in to the checkpoint. n.o.body took any notice of him as he tagged along behind two men talking shop in loud voices, and followed them through the doorway between two steel-helmeted guards.

Inside, the pair in front pa.s.sed their hand-baggage to an attendant behind a counter, who in turn pa.s.sed it through the hatch in the wall behind her for checking. The a.s.sa.s.sin followed suit. There was no sign of the spot body-searches for which he had been told to be prepared.

Following the still-chattering duo, he found himself in a short queue shuffling slowly forward toward a desk where pa.s.ses were being checked. Almost immediately, others lined up behind him. He watched the procedure being followed at the desk, searching for any subtle differences from what he had been briefed to expect. There were none. Whoever had been responsible for research for the a.s.signment had done a thorough job.

Avoiding eye contact with the security officer seated at the check-in desk, he stepped forward, extracted the magnetically coded name-tag from his pa.s.s folder, pushed it into the slot provided, and keyed the memorized check digits into the keyboard below. He then pressed his right thumb against the gla.s.s plate located next to the slot and recited aloud into the microphone above: "Kra.s.sen, Hadley B. 7x8H/927380.BB."

Elsewhere in the Establishment, a computer located the record and compared the check digits stored with the pa.s.s code against the sequence that had just been keyed in at the gate. They matched. The thumbprint and voiceprint profiles held in the record also matched those that had just been input.

"I don't know you, do I?" The security officer at the desk regarded him through narrowed eyes.

"Only started working here a coupla days ago." The a.s.sa.s.sin's reply was in a matter-of-fact drawl. His face retained the deadpan stare of the early-morning riser not quite awake yet.

"Your pa.s.s folder, please."

The a.s.sa.s.sin pa.s.sed the folder across and stood impa.s.sively while the officer ran his eye rapidly down the card, pausing to compare the photograph inside it with the features confronting him.

"Who's your boss?"

"Professor Henderson, Department 39, Plasma Physics."

The security officer surveyed the column of illuminated signs on his console panel, all glowing POSITIVE for the computer checks, then nodded and pa.s.sed the folder back together with a plastic lapel badge.

"Okay. Hope you enjoy working at Anderscliff, Dr. Kra.s.sen."

"Thank you."

The a.s.sa.s.sin removed the magnetic name-tag from the slot in front of him, moved a few paces forward, and paused to insert it in the window of the lapel badge and fasten the badge to his jacket. Then he moved on to the counter beyond and retrieved his briefcase, checked and cleared.

For the first time in several minutes he allowed himself to relax a little, drawing in a long, slow breath and exhaling with it the worst of the tension that had built up inside him. He was in. He had penetrated the impenetrable. He knew of course that the real work had been done long before, and represented something like ten man-years of effort.

He took an elevator down to ground level and emerged from the building through a set of gla.s.s doors surmounting a flight of shallow steps, where he stopped for a while to study the geography of this part of the Establishment, especially the approaches to the building he had just come out of. Then, guided by his predeparture briefing and the direction signs about the Establishment, he made his way through the maze of buildings and up to the cafeteria on the third floor of the domestic block.

As he progressed from one area to another, detectors above the doorways through which he pa.s.sed picked up the signal being transmitted by the microcircuit in the lapel badge. The signal was unique to his pa.s.s code, controlled by the magnetic name-tag that he had inserted from his pa.s.s folder. Everybody in Anderscliff carried such a badge. All the signals picked up by all the detectors all over the Establishment were monitored by a surveillance computer which continuously compared them against stored tables of which pa.s.s codes authorized entry to any particular building, floor, section, or room. An attempt to violate the system of limited access would trigger an immediate alert. The surveillance system thus provided an automatic check of who was entering restricted areas and enabled reports to be printed out, if required, of who had been in any particular place on any given day and at what time.

The surveillance computer was not programmed to track the movements of an individual through the Anderscliff complex, although the data from the detectors would have enabled such a task to be accomplished quite easily. The designers of the system had not seen any purpose in such a function. But the Martian Federation scientists in San Francisco had. Accordingly, they had developed a program of their own that enabled them, from fourteen hundred miles away, to monitor the precise movements of both the a.s.sa.s.sin and his victim. They thus possessed all the information needed to guide him to his target.

He settled himself at an empty table by one wall of the cafeteria and consumed a leisurely cup of coffee, allowing the people who were still arriving time to disperse about the Establishment and settle down to their daily routines. After twenty minutes or so had pa.s.sed, he rose and walked back to the lobby to enter one of the three public infonet booths located near the door. The message waiting for him in the electronic dead-letter box read:

JOHN.

PROFESSOR WILL SEE YOU ALONE AT HOME.

MARY (9:32).

So-Brozlan was alone in his private apartment suite in the residential sector of Anderscliff, as expected.

Weeks of a.n.a.lysis of the data patterns extracted from the surveillance computer had revealed that the professor never left his private quarters before ten-thirty in the morning. Perhaps he was in the habit of working alone for the first part of the morning before going over to the biophysics labs, where he spent most of his time; maybe he was simply a late riser. The reason really didn't matter. The a.s.sa.s.sin knew all he needed to know.

He left the booth, returned to ground level, and waited for one of the Establishment's auto-shuttles to take him to the residential sector. Eight minutes later, a porter seated at a desk just inside the entrance door of Residential Block 3 looked up in surprise as a tall, lean, hatted figure carrying a black briefcase marched straight past him, tossing back a curt "Good morning" over his shoulder. The porter just had time to check the ENTRY AUTHORIZATION POSITIVE display on his panel before the figure disappeared into the elevator at the far end of the hall.

The residential sector was a high-security zone, accessible to only a handful of privileged people apart from the scientists and other special-category personnel who resided within the perimeter of Anderscliff.

The tables stored in the memory subsystem of the surveillance computer, however, told it that the holder of the pa.s.s code a.s.signed to Kra.s.sen, Hadley B., could move freely anywhere within the Establishment.

When he came out of the elevator on the second floor, he was carrying the briefcase under his left arm and holding the pistol, a.s.sembled and loaded, in his right-hand jacket pocket. He moved slowly along the corridor, walking straight past the door that bore the nameplate BROZLAN without checking his stride or turning his head. At the end of the corridor he stopped, turned, and just as slowly walked back again, scanning the walls and ceiling for any sign of TV cameras. Finding none, he stopped when he came back to the door, listened for perhaps ten seconds, then pressed the ball of his right thumb against the printlock plate set into the doorframe. A click sounded as the lock disengaged.

Records of which prints were authorized to operate which of the thousands of printlocks around Anderscliff were also stored in the surveillance computer. Officially, only four prints had been specified to open the lock of Brozlan's private suite: those of the professor himself, the domestic attendant for Residential Block 3, the manager of domestic services, and the duty medical supervisor. Somehow a fifth print had been added to that set; it was identical to the one stored in the personnel record headed KRa.s.sEN, HADLEY B.

He paused inside the door and closed it softly behind him. One of the other doors leading off from the small entrance hall was ajar, and from behind it came the sound of movement and the rustle of papers.

The a.s.sa.s.sin moved forward and brought his eye close to the crack at the edge of the door.

The room was a litter of books, papers, and scientific journals, and its far wall consisted entirely of shelves. Sitting at a desk in front of the shelves, a white-haired man, probably in his late fifties, and wearing a plain gray suit, was sorting piles of doc.u.ments into something approaching order. The a.s.sa.s.sin recognized him at once. He stepped quickly and silently around the door. Three catlike paces brought him facing the desk, pistol leveled.

"Keep your hands on the desk. Don't move. Don't make a noise."

The white head jerked up sharply in surprise. Eyes open wide with alarm and disbelief took in the menacing figure confronting them.

"You-you are from the Federation . . ." He had detected the slight Martian accent in the other's voice.

The a.s.sa.s.sin nodded expressionlessly. "And you are Professor Malleborg Brozlan-defector from Mars and traitor to the Federation."

Brozlan saw the coldness behind the unblinking gray eyes and knew then that he had no hope. He tried the only gambit open to him.

"Did they tell you why I defected to Earth? Haven't you wondered?"

"Those things do not concern me." The a.s.sa.s.sin's tone was final.

"But they concern everybody. Did you realize that-"

A dull phutt, a m.u.f.fled thud, and the briefest suggestion of a hiss sounded all at the same time. The professor recoiled back in the chair, his eyes wide with shock. His fists clenched as his body stiffened.

Then his eyes glazed over and stared sightlessly at infinity. The rim of the small hole that had appeared in his s.h.i.+rtfront, an inch to the left of the breastbone, began to turn red.

The a.s.sa.s.sin waited a few seconds longer, then stepped around the desk and lifted the professor's chin with his finger. The head lolled limply to one side. He reached out and felt the temple for a pulse. There was none. He raised the pistol again, rested the tip of the barrel against the pad of muscle over the carotid artery at the side of the neck, and gently squeezed the trigger again.

Five minutes later he emerged from Residential Block 3 and boarded the next pa.s.sing shuttle. As the shuttle was pulling away from the pickup point, the wail of a siren heralded the approach of an ambulance moving at high speed. The ambulance screeched to a halt outside the residential block and disgorged three white-clad medical orderlies, who raced in through the door before the last moans of the siren had died away.

The planners of the a.s.sa.s.sin's mission could not have known that six weeks before to the day, the professor had suffered a heart attack, and that during the ensuing surgery a microelectronic cardiac monitor had been implanted in his chest. The signals transmitted by the monitor were picked up continuously by detectors similar to those that read the lapel badges, and routed to measuring instruments in the Establishment's medical center. The instruments were programmed to sound an alarm the instant that any irregularity appeared in Brozlan's cardiac waveforms.

The a.s.sa.s.sin almost made it. The alarm reached the rooftop checkpoint seconds after he had pa.s.sed through without incident. As the guards came rus.h.i.+ng out of the door behind him, shouting after him to stop, he broke into a run toward the airmobile. The tranquilizer dart hit him squarely in the back of the neck. The dose on it would have stunned an ox.

"Doctor, I think he's coming 'round now." The voice, a woman's, sounded blurred and far away.

Coherent thoughts refused to form in his mind. Bright lights and meaningless patches of color swam before his eyes. Two faces seemed to be peering down at him from a million miles away. He pa.s.sed out again.

He was in bed in what could have been a hospital room. Apart from the uniformed guard standing by the door, there were two other men in the room, seated on chairs flanking his bed. The one to his left was aged maybe forty-five and dressed in a navy-blue three-piece suit, white s.h.i.+rt, and silver tie. His hair was graying and his upper lip adorned by a clipped, military-style mustache that seemed to enhance his generally debonair image. His eyes were twinkling, and he seemed to be waiting for the a.s.sa.s.sin to fully regain his faculties. The other was younger, dark-haired, swarthy-skinned and unsmiling.

"Allow me to offer my congratulations," the older of the two said after a few seconds. "Another minute and you'd have got clean away." He was obviously English, probably an army officer, possibly high-ranking. The a.s.sa.s.sin said nothing, allowing his thoughts time to coalesce into something approaching organized. The most important thing was that the mission had been successful: He had penetrated one of the most closely guarded places on Earth and carried out his a.s.signment. What happened now was of secondary importance.

He hauled himself up for a better view of his visitors, and the Englishman moved the pillows behind him to prop him up. Silence persisted for what seemed a long time.

"What went wrong?" the a.s.sa.s.sin asked at last. His voice was monotonous and resigned . . . but curious.

"Wrong? Actually, nothing, old chap. That is, you didn't do anything wrong. We picked you up through something that you couldn't possibly have known about. Call it an accident. The details of that can wait until later. Right at this moment there are a lot of other things that we'd very much like to know about you."

The a.s.sa.s.sin slumped back against the pillows and raised his eyes to the ceiling in feigned boredom. His expression said the rest.

"You'd be surprised how much we know about you already," the Englishman went on, unperturbed.