The Stardroppers Read online

  “No. It’s like being killed in a car crash—you always think of it happening to someone else.”

  Which wasn’t in itself a reason for taking crazy risks, Dan countered silently. He said, “I keep hearing stories about people who—who actually disappear. You too?”

  A note of real envy crept into her voice. “They’re the ones, aren’t they?” she said. “They’ve got it and gone!”

  “Where?”

  “If I knew, wouldn’t I be there too?” She looked at him, puzzled. “Say, I think you’re putting me on!”

  “I’m not. I honestly want to know your views. These people who’ve disappeared—did you know any of them?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then how did you hear about them?”

  “Oh, everybody knows. You don’t talk about it much. It’s—sort of scary, follow? But that’s it, that’s the thing.”

  “Well …” Dan was groping for the right questions now. “Well, what do people think may happen when someone disappears?”

  “Oh, there are lots of theories,” she said scornfully. “But me, I suspect it’s something you can’t understand until you get there yourself. Sometimes, listening to a ’dropper, you almost see how it could be done. You nearly get it. You make to catch hold, and it’s gone again. It’s like trying to catch a wriggly fish with your bare hands. You miss it ten times, a hundred times, but you get closer, you get better at it. You have to keep plugging away. You have to be so hungry for fish, you daren’t get impatient; you have to keep calm, and concentrate, and stick at it. Can I try your ’dropper now?”

  She tossed her coffee cup in a litter basket and reached for the instrument without awaiting an answer. Reluctantly, Dan surrendered it to her.

  “This is a beaut!” she said in an impressed tone. “I thought it looked pretty good from the outside, but inside it’s a dream, isn’t it? I never used a fuel-cell model before. How do you switch on the power?”

  He showed her the little sliding switch on the cell, and she tucked the earpiece into position, leaned back on the bench, and closed her eyes.

  All the premature hardness went out of her face; the taut, nervous lines beside her sullen mouth faded and she began to smile a little. Dan watched her anxiously. He had an obscure sense of guilt, as though he were conniving at the corruption of a minor, and yet it was pleasant to see the change that had come over her.

  She moved the adjuster knob with such patient care, seeking the right setting with such miniscule motions, that at first he did not realize she had stopped turning it. Then he began to wonder how long he should let her continue, whether it was dangerous to interrupt her, and even—the thought was ridiculous, but it crept eerily into his mind—whether she might here and now find what she was after … and vanish.

  He shivered. It was growing genuinely cool as evening approached, and the rush-hour traffic was filling all the nearby streets. But that wasn’t what caused it. He lit another cigarette and compelled himself to be as patient as Lilith. Sometimes the people coming and going around the park gave a second glance as they passed the bench, but not often. Lilith was far from the only person in sight listening to a stardropper; idly, he counted seven in direct view.

  Almost half an hour elapsed, and he was preparing himself to take the risk of turning the knob and taking the instrument away, when she stirred and opened her eyes. She looked vaguely disappointed. Removing the earpiece, she closed the box with a sigh.

  “It didn’t work out,” Dan said.

  “Oh, it did!” she exclaimed. “It was great! This is a far more powerful instrument than my old one, but it’s the first I’ve tried which does anything at all for me apart from that.”

  “What difference does the extra power make?” Dan asked, thinking of the confused state of the “art” reflected in those letters he’d read in Starnews.

  “It feels—uh—harder to sort out what matters,” Lilith said, and bit her lip. After a moment, she shrugged. “But it was great anyway. Right now I simply can’t concentrate any more. But I’d love to try it again sometime. Please say I can!”

  Dan hesitated. If this kid started to pester him for the use of his stardropper, she could clearly become a damned nuisance. On the other hand, his brief required him to investigate the impact of the craze in as much detail as possible, so it would be very useful to have an entrée to this commune she’d said she was staying at, where everyone was involved with stardropping. He spread his hands and nodded.

  Grinning like a monkey, she jumped to her feet. “I’m terribly sorry about—about what happened,” she said. “If I’d had any sense I’d just have walked up and asked you, wouldn’t I? Can I try again in the morning?”

  “On one condition.”

  “That I don’t become a nuisance? I promise.”

  This kid was definitely a character, whatever kind of mess she’d got herself into. “That’s right,” Dan said. “So how can I reach you?”

  “It’d be easier for me to reach you, I think—we don’t have a phone in the house where I’m living. Tends to ring at the worst possible moment, if you follow me. You are an American, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I suppose you’re in a hotel. Which?”

  He told her, and she walked off across the grass with her hands in her pockets, humming a cheerful tune. After a little she began to skip on every other step, as though joy had made her too light to stick to the ground.

  When she was out of sight, he opened the stardropper again and, out of curiosity, put in the earpiece. The knob was still on the setting which had given her so much pleasure. He upped the power and waited.

  No good. What he heard sounded like a dozen banshees having an orgy, a pattern of shrill acid whistling noises. It was a setting he’d chanced across the first time he tried out the instrument, and had disliked intensely.

  Now Lilith had owned a Gale and Welchman, and he’d been convinced already that that instrument had a particularly attractive setting in its repertoire. How could this unbearable racket relate to what Watson had demonstrated at Cosmica? More: how could it conceivably become meaningful?

  Well, he had learned a lot as a result of his chance meetings today, there was no denying. It was probably appropriate to the whole curious muddle that the more he learned the more confused he became.

  The hell with it for today, anyhow. If he acquired any more contradictory data before he’d relaxed with a good dinner and a night’s sound sleep, he’d develop a dreadful case of mental indigestion.

  V

  He was shaving next morning when the phone sounded. A familiar voice followed his touch on the attention switch.

  “Morning, Cross. I’ve arranged for you to see Dr. Rainshaw today, as I promised.”

  “Morning, Redvers. That’s very kind of you. Ah—I don’t want to seem unappreciative, but are you sure this is purely in the interests of cooperation?”

  Redvers gave an engaging chuckle. “I told you yesterday, Cross: we desperately need an outside opinion on the muddle we’ve drifted into, and you’re the best outsider we have on hand. Tell me, incidentally: has Watson invited you to Club Cosmica this evening?”

  “Don’t tell me you have that store of his bugged!”

  “No. But I gather you called there yesterday, and Watson is utterly predictable. He talks every customer he can into signing on. By the way, in case you were wondering, it appears to be a genuine organization, not a commercial racket. Some of the most respectable people working in the stardropper field are regular attenders at its meetings.”

  “You must be very interested in Watson,” Dan said. “Why?”

  “For the same reason that I assume took you to his store. The biggest firm of its kind in the country is an obvious place to keep in touch with what’s going on. Look, I imagine you haven’t had breakfast yet, so I won’t keep you from it. Dr. Rainshaw is at a government research station in Richmond, on the fringe of London. If I call for you at ten sharp, we’ll be in
plenty of time to keep the appointment I’ve made.”

  Promptly at ten Redvers arrived, driving not an official car but—presumably—his own, a small electrice-blue Healey steam convertible of a type Dan had expected to see all around London, knowing the demand for them, but which were still rare in Britain because so many were being exported to pollution-conscious California. Having left a message with a supercilious and puzzled reception clerk, to say that if a Miss Lilith Miles called she should be given an apology for his absence, he went out to the sidewalk. On the point of getting into the car, he heard his name called shrilly.

  And there was Lilith, hurrying toward him with a suspicious expression.

  “Just a moment,” Dan told Redvers under his breath, and turned to greet the girl with a smile.

  “Sorry!” he exclaimed. “I have to go see someone unexpectedly. I left a message at the desk asking you to call back later.”

  “Ohhh—I.” For an instant he thought she was going to hit him; her fists doubled shut and her mouth turned sharply down at the corners. But she recovered, and said in a moderate tone, “You did make me a promise, though—didn’t you?”

  “Sure I did. And I’ll keep it too. But this is important, and I didn’t hear about the appointment until this morning.

  “What’s the trouble?” Redvers called from the car. Dan explained in a few words. Listening, Lilith looked so woebegone it was almost funny. When he had finished, she broke in before Redvers could answer.

  “If you’re going somewhere on business, you won’t need your instrument, will you? Can’t you just lend it to me?”

  “I shouldn’t,” Redvers said, addressing Dan. “Not if you want to see it again.”

  She favored him with a furious glare.

  “Well …” Dan gave a shrug. “I’m on my way to see Dr. Rainshaw, the man who discovered the whole thing. You wouldn’t want me to miss a chance like that, would you?”

  “Goodness, no!” Lilith’s expression changed magically. “Oh, you lucky devil! I’d give anything to—Hey! Can I come along?”

  “No, you cannot,” Redvers said crossly. “Come on, get in! I’m likely to be booked for blocking traffic if I stay here much longer, and that’ll be embarrassing.”

  “One moment,” Dan requested, his mind racing. “Ah … I have it. Redvers, we’re not likely to be at this place all day, are we?”

  “I hope not. I’m figuring on being back at the office before lunch.”

  “In that case …” Dan dug out the memo book he always carried and felt for a pen. “Lilith, give me the address you’re staying at, and I’ll call around this afternoon. And that’s a firm promise, okay?”

  “And you’ll tell me about meeting Dr. Rainshaw?”

  “Well, naturally.”

  “Okay, then.” Though it was clear from her face she regarded this as a second-best. She reeled off the address and added that there was a bus which passed the door, and he smiled at her and got into the car at last. The instant he was settled, Redvers let off the brake and shot into the traffic.

  Glancing at his rear-view mirror, which showed the despondent Lilith standing miserably on the pavement, he said, “Going in for cradle-robbing now, are you?”

  “Hardly. But I feel sorry for her. She’s in a hell of a state.”

  “Addict?”

  “If you can call it addiction.” Dan heard the puzzlement in his own voice. “It’s something different, I think. More what they call psychological dependence. Perhaps it’s something to do with what you were mentioning yesterday, this search for security. I had a long talk with her and asked all the questions I could think of, and she gave me much clearer answers than I was expecting. But even so I’m still sweating on what she told me.”

  “Such as?”

  Dan ran over their conversation, frowning. “What fogs me,” he finished, “is—Hmm! I was going to say her cold-blooded attitude, but that’s not right. It’s more her open-eyed recognition of the fact that what she’s doing is dangerous.”

  “You find that surprising?” Redver countered curtly. “Nobody but a moron could overlook the risks, could they?”

  “Is something wrong?” Dan asked in surprise, for the superintendent’s voice had shaken on the last remark, and he was holding the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. Sweat glistened on his forehead, too.

  “Is that thing of yours switched on?” he demanded.

  “This?” Dan flipped the lid of his stardropped. “No, of course it isn’t—why?”

  Then he caught on. Tilting his head, he detected at the edge of hearing a buzzing sound like a swarm of bees. But it didn’t come from within the car; it was ahead of them. He said as much, and Redvers apologized with an effort.

  “You’re perfectly right,” he said, halting the car for a stoplight. “It’s that car over there—see it?”

  He pointed. Slowing down on the other side of the intersection was a large Austin with a loudspeaker showing shrough the open passenger window. Once the traffic had stopped, it was plain that that was the source of the noise.

  “Wired up to a stardropper?” Dan said.

  “Exactly.” Redvers craned to read the registration number of the offending car. “He hasn’t any business to be doing that. Illegal. Noise Abatement Act.”

  Fumbling under the dash, he produced a microphone on a spring-loaded reel of cord and spoke briefly into it. As the lights changed to green, he put it away and let the car roll.

  “They’ll catch up with him in a few minutes,” he said. “Though you can’t help feeling sorry for the poor so-and-so—can you?”

  He seemed to have recovered completely now that the noise of the loudspeaker was drowned out by the moving traffic.

  “Why is he doing it?” Dan said, puzzled.

  “Oh, most likely it means something to him, and he wants other people to share his so-called discovery. Or almost means something, and he’s after someone else who can explain the rest of it. Quite common. Tell me, did Watson demonstrate his favorite setting to you, on a machine called a Gale and Welchman?”

  “He did.”

  “Damnably attractive, isn’t it? Any time you feel in danger of getting hooked yourself, call me, and I’ll get one of our specialists to give you a posthypnotic against listening to stardroppers. Or was that part of your preparation for this mission? I’ve been told the Special Agency uses hypnosis quite a lot.”

  “True, it does.” Dan admitted, frowning. “But—actually no. I don’t suppose anybody expected it to be necessary.”

  “If you’re lucky, it won’t be,” Redver shrugged. “I can tell you personally, though, that it sometimes is. I had to have it done myself. My work was suffering. You probably noticed just now what a state I got into when that car went by.”

  Dan gave him a surprised glance. “Oh, you have firsthand experience, do you? I hadn’t realized.”

  “Set a thief to catch a thief,” Redvers grunted. “I didn’t exactly plead to be put in charge of investigating the stardropper problem, you know. They picked on me because I was already involved.”

  Dan thought about that for a while, as Redvers threaded the silent little car through the dense traffic. He said at length, “So it wasn’t merely the fact that I’m an Agency operative which put you on to me. It was my being an Agency operative who also happened to be carrying a stardropper.”

  “That’s right. Not a very subtle kind of clue, hm? But don’t worry—we like the Agency fine, and anyone on its staff is welcome to the free run of this tired old island. Stardropper, on the other hand, give us nightmares. Can you wonder?”

  “After what I’ve seen in less than twenty-four hours, no.” Dan helped himself to a lighted cigarette from the dashboard dispenser; it was a brand he didn’t know, British-made, and he drew on it musingly. “But it surprises me that you already have a special department to deal with this alone.”

  “We’ve grown almost paranoidally suspicious in the past ten years,” Redvers sighed. “We create spe
cial departments to deal with absolutely anything that suggests it might one day lead to a major problem. Which, naturally, implies that people who picked on the wrong subject are furious when their nice private empires are hauled out from under them.… Sometimes I wonder whether we may not be guilty of making pessimistic prophecies fulfill themselves by giving them official recognition! But I don’t think that applies in my case. Stardropping is a genuine headache for us.”

  “But what made you start regarding it as such—the disappearances?”

  “No, not at first. It was the insanity problem, and then the question of addicition—or psychological dependence, as you prefer to call it.” The words were tinged with sarcasm. “Oh, speaking of disappearances,” he added, “watch your tongue with Dr. Rainshaw.”

  “Why?”

  “His son Robin was one of the first to disappear.”

  Apart from the fact that the watchman at the main gate of the research station wore a gun—a rare sight in this counry where even policemen went unarmed—the establishment Dan found himself being taken to might have passed for a stately home, open to visitors at twenty-five pence a head. They were expected, and were smilingly waved through toward a wide gravel drive fringed with well-kept lawns. One of Dan’s strongest impressions since coming to Britain was a sense that people here liked to take trouble over keeping up appearances—the streets were cleaner than in New York, for instance, and the grass of Hyde Park yesterday afternoon he’d found to be almost free of litter. This place was no exception. It wasn’t until they’d reached a fork in the driveway and made a sharp right turn that he saw modern, single-story prefabricated buildings half-hidden among flourishing spring shrubs, identified by a sign as the scientific section of the premises. Prior to that, he’d had a fine view of a late-eighteenth-century manor house in exceptional condition, with a few cars parked in front of it.

  Now, all of a sudden, he was back in modern times. He pondered this as he left the car and followed Redvers toward the nearest of the low buildings.

  What, he wondered, was Rainshaw going to be like? And was it safe to ask how he felt about letting loose his discovery on the world? For good—for ill? What way was there of telling, when the same device could afflict the girl he’d seen drawing those nonsensical spirals on the pavement in Oxford Street, yet bring such a look of fulfillment to Lilith’s face, like a thirsty desert traveler reaching an oasis?