Episode Six: Hidden Faces: The Science Investigations team's search for a saboteur leads them to rogue scientists and clandestine experiments into human cloning.
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Hunting Hidden Faces
July 16, 1957, Burbank
“If not for Klaatu, I’d have come home from Korea in a box.” Science Investigator Steve Flanagan leaned over Eric Donohue’s desk and thumped it for emphasis. “Instead, he scared the world into making peace, and me and my buddies came home in one piece.”“But he lied.” Donohue, self-proclaimed pastor of the Dark Star Methodist Church of Burbank, shook his balding head as if baffled by Steve’s words. “He claimed the universe was peaceful, yet spacemen have attacked us over and over again. There’s no doubt that if we’d disarmed as the false peacemaker suggested, his giant robot would have destroyed us all.”
“There’s no doubt Truman would have dropped the a-bomb on China if the war had gone on,” Steve replied. “Even without that—” He remembered standing in snow above his knees, ducking North Korean bullets. Seeing Buck and Willie shot down. Cursing himself for thinking the Army was a good alternative to jail time. “—liar or not, if he comes back to Earth, I wanna shake his hand.”
“Oh, there’s no question he served a purpose in God’s design.” Donohue spread his arms and gave what was supposed to be a benign smile. The smugness reminded Steve why he never went to church. “Even the Martians served a purpose by scourging us, though we failed to realize how our own sins led to their presence.”
“Your philosophy is fascinating,” Gwen said. The rickety chair she sat on was the only seat in the cramped office besides Donohue’s. “However, we’re here on a mission of national security.”
“My concern is the security of the human soul.” Donohue held up the Los Angeles Times, pointing at the front-page photo of cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepherd. “In three weeks, these men will enter outer space—doing so without purging our sins makes it a certainty God must punish us further.”
“Yeah,” Steve grunted. “I’m sure if we cancel Skybreaker One, we’ll never have to worry about kaijin or spacemen again.”
“What we’re concerned about is this.” Gwen handed Donohue a faintly mimeographed two-page newsletter. “You stated here that the world would be better off if the rocket were destroyed on the launch pad.”
“Ahh, so you suspect me of being, perhaps, a spaceman myself? Who else could question our government’s plans to intrude on God’s design?”
As Gwen asked Donohue if he’d be willing to submit to a brain scan or an LSD test, Steve scrutinized the office for any sign they had a good reason to be suspect the man. He saw Donohue’s framed mail-order divinity-school degree on the wall; a big leatherbound Bible next to a paperback of How to Win Friends and Influence People; a mimeograph machine; and a lonely manila folder of the church’s membership. A congregation of six and a dozen or so other dopes who get the newsletter. Some national security threat.
“I will, of course, submit to having my brain scanned,” Donohue said wearily. “Though tell me—if it turned out I was a spaceman who had come in peace, to guide mankind to God’s true path, what would the government do then?”
“Since they never come in peace, how would we know?” Gwen said with a smile as insincere as Donohue’s. The chair leg groaned alarmingly as she rose. “You might want to consider fixing that.”
“Donations have been down this month, Miss Montgomery.” He gave a small sigh. “But every day I remind myself, a far greater ministry than mine began in a stable.”
“The lousy part is, he’s got a point,” Steve said, as he and Gwen emerged into the heat of the LA sun and headed for the bus stop. “So he mouths off about going into space? Ain’t he got a right of free speech?”
“’Ain’t’ isn’t in the dictionary, Steve.” Gwen adjusted her wide-brimmed hat for a little more shelter from the sun.
“Yesterday, it was the Nine Planets League, the pacifist broad and that queer from the Mattachine Society. Today, it’s Donohue, the Burbank Nazi Party and then that shrink with the miracle cure. I hate Nazis as much as you do—”
“When I was with the OSS, I once heard a concentration camp commandant moan about how the mound of paperwork he had to deal with every day was the greatest injustice in modern Germany. Believe me, you don’t.”
“And the point is, despite Senator Dorman’s objections, the Alien Infiltration Committee requires proof that the TSC takes the threat of an alien fifth column seriously. Which means the TSC board requires a big file of investigations to show them, and since the real cases aren’t common enough—”
“We pick on whoever the Senators or the board are pissed at. Union organizers in Chicago, beatniks in New York, queers everywhere.” Steve knew homosexuals were a security risk in government, but he didn’t like picking on them in private life, especially since Dani had explained homosexuality was really a mental illness. “In the South they lean on Negroes just for talking integration—”
“Another good reason to ignore Momma’s suggestions I move back to Atlanta.” Gwen settled onto the empty bus-stop bench with a sigh. Steve joined her, wishing their boss wasn’t so strict about following Nixon’s gas-conservation rules for federal workers.
“Even the regular reports about infiltrators turn out to be nothing, 90 percent of the time.” Steve reached into his pocket, groping for cigarettes under the copy of Captain Podkayne of Mars. “This kind of investigation is less than nothing. We should be working with Jo and Trueblood, investigating the Invasion City sabotage.”
“It’s been almost two months and we still don’t have any clue who blackmailed Howard Chableau into reprogramming those robots.” Gwen pulled out her lighter and her silver cigarette case out of her purse. “Interviewing Chableau’s previous employers is just grasping at straws—trust me, Steve, they’re wasting their time every bit as much as we are.”
“No, seriously, doll.” Agent Rob Trueblood smiled winningly at Albert Saunder’s hatchet-faced secretary, setting his homburg down and adjusting a button on his vest. “When I came in and saw you, I could have sworn it was Grace Kelly sitting there.”
Bloody hell, Trueblood, you think it’ll work on that battle axe? Joanna Davies wondered briefly why her partner couldn’t grasp that no matter how fancy his clothes, he wasn’t Rock Hudson, then she refocused on the owner of Saunders Shipping. “So did I hear right, mate? You’re refusing to cooperate in a federal investigation?”
“The Technology and Science Commission is an insult to American sovereignty.” Saunders, a stiff-backed rail of a man with a salt-and-pepper moustache waved a copy of Robert Welch’s Blue Book under Jo’s nose. He’d been clutching it since emerging from his office to wave them off. “First the TSC used its licensing rules to control American research on behalf of the international Communist conspiracy. Then came the World Defense Alliance, which actually shares our research with the Reds. Who, as Mr. Welch makes clear, are already under the control of our enemies from outer space!”
“You do realize it was Eisenhower who created the TSC and the WDA?” Not for the first time since arriving in America, Jo wondered why so many Yanks seemed to be completely crackers.
“Both he and Truman were communist puppets, and now President Nixon has succumbed to the conspiracy by helping the Russians spread their subversive doctrines in outer space.”
“Oh, please, you blokes wouldn’t have gotten off the launching pad without Russian help.” Playing nice with you is a mug’s racket—let’s see what happens if I get under your skin instead.
“If not for the TSC repressing rocket research, we’d undoubtedly have beaten the Russians into orbit. Possibly as a foreigner you don’t realize—”
“I’m an American citizen. How about you?”
“—that the sabotage you’re investigating could be the work of the USSR.” He thrust the book forward, jabbing a corner into her stomach. “You should be making inquiries at the Russian embassy instead of disturbing patriotic Americans at their jobs!”
“Oh, now, I remember your name!” Jo clapped her hands together as if in surprise. “The TSC’s turned you down for a research license what, 162 times? No wonder you don’t like us.”
“My theories are sound!” Saunders looked so furious, Jo backed up a step. “The Saunders Anti-Gravity Generator will revolutionize the world, the latest design for the radioactive core guarantees complete safety—I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians are already building a prototype from plans you people have supplied—”
“You can’t do that!” The secretary shrieked as Trueblood slid open her desk drawer, then snatched out a box. “That’s Mr. Saunders’ property.”
“In a lead box, hmm.” Trueblood slid the metal lid off the box and a purple glow from within seemed to illuminate the room; to Jo’s relief, he covered it up fast. “What do you think, doll, are then any legal crystals that glow like that?”
“Miss Andrews!” Saunders stared at his secretary, caught between rage and dismay, then glanced down the corridor behind him. “Why in the name of heaven would you keep that in there?”
“You told me to hide it when Mr. Moon dropped in yesterday!” Andrews herself looked close to panic. “It was the only place I could reach in time! I don’t know how he knew it was there!”
“I’m psychic,” Trueblood said, grinning. “So Mr. Moon would be, what, the guy who sold you this hunk of space rock?”
“Nope.” A lanky six-footer with cornsilk hair and a dark suit stepped out of an office in the corridor and held up a badge as Jo started to draw her gun. “Mickey Moon, FBI. I’m afraid y’all are interfering in a federal investigation.”
“You told me I’d be safe if I cooperated, Moon.” Saunders knocked over a trash can in his haste to reach the agent’s side. “I came to you, remember? Out of patriotism!”
“Patriotism? You’re hiding radioactive rocks!” Jo met Moon’s eyes, which she noticed were deep blue. “You shouldn’t be protecting him—by the way, I’m Jo. Science Investigations Agent Joanna Davies.”
“I only pocketed it in a moment of weakness!” Saunders sputtered to Moon. “And it’s not radioactive, that’s why the alien energy inside it would have made the perfect power source for my generator.”
“Someone said that about that meteorite they found in Tulsa.” Moon replied, looking down at the man. “That’s why we only got half of Tulsa left.
“But I’m afraid I can’t let you arrest him, yet,” he said to Jo and Trueblood. “Or maybe at all.”
“You think you can stop us, Tex?” Trueblood said, slipping the lead box into his pocket. “We’ve got badges too, y’know?”
“But there’s no reason you can’t discuss it, er, Mickey,” Jo said. Damn. Meeting a tall drink of water like this when I’m wearing slacks and my blouse has a coffee stain. “No promises, but maybe we can work something out.”
“Well, let’s go back into the office,” Moon said with a nod. “Mr. Saunders, just go about your business and everything’ll be fine.”
“Fine?” Saunders stared glumly at Trueblood’s pocket. “Don’t you think the least I deserve for my service is a research license?”
“I’ll discuss it, sir,” Mickey said, opening the door on a small office piled with paper, photos and a television screen showing the front office. “How’d you find that, Agent Trueblood? I had no idea, and I’ve been here plenty of times.”
“I wasn’t kidding about being psychic.” Trueblood took a chair and pulled a small cigar from his pocket. “Last year’s annual LSD treatment, it opened something in my mind, I swear it.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Jo said, lighting a Gauloise. “He does get some good hunches, but if you’d ever seen him try to make time with a bird, you’d know he’s no mind-reader. Cigarette, Mickey?”
“No, thank you. My momma brought me up to avoid bad habits.”
“And so what are you investigating that we can’t lock this old crackpot up?” Trueblood said. “Our department handles rogue scientists, not yours.”
“All y’all are supposed to do is license people to invent things and arrest the ones that experiment without licenses” Moon replied, drawing himself up to his considerable full height. “When folks use science to commit crime—the Steigg case, or the Milwaukee Shadow—that’s the FBI’s job. Director Thorpe’s created a special division just to focus on that.” He smiled shyly at Jo. “I got a physics degree and an engineering minor out of Texas State, so they thought I was a good catch.
“Now, let me tell you why you can’t arrest Mr. Saunders.”
Four weeks earlier, he said, a self-proclaimed “group of patriots” had contacted Saunders with a proposal for “liberating American technological prowess from the Red yoke”—which turned out to mean hiring his company to ship black-market, unregistered lab equipment and supplies. Not only would he be well-paid, they’d help set up a rogue engineering facility for his own use.
They’d misjudged their man: Saunders had gone to the FBI, who’d convinced him to cooperate with the group. Since then, he’d transported enough to establish his bona fides, and had begun pushing cautiously to meet someone higher up in the organization about setting up his laboratory, and increasing the amount he was shipping.
“The meeting’s tonight, at the Magnum Club,” Moon said. “We’ve been following the shipments and tracking the buyers, but we can’t move until we learn more about the ring.” He handed Jo a list of material and recipients. “So far they’ve been shipping transistors, a couple of shipments of magnetic equipment—”
“Do you know about the sabotage in Invasion City back in May?” Jo said. Moon nodded. “Someone provided Chableau with the magnetic equipment to turn Professor Caldwell’s robots into killers.”
“We’ve thought about that.” Moon peeled a strip of Juicy Fruit and began chewing. “Nobody so far seems like a likely suspect, but there aren’t that many crooks willing to risk this kind’a thing.”
“So maybe if you bust the ring, we find out who was behind it.” Trueblood tilted his chair back with a smile. “They selling anything else?”
“Microwave transmitting equipment—that’s mostly used in radar, and communications like phones or our wrist-radios. Except unlike most of the stuff, we couldn’t track the shipment: The package got stored in a warehouse overnight and it was gone in the morning.” He pointed at the entry on the typed page. “And the same thing happened to a crate of psi-circuits.”
“What, the stuff they use when they try to build mind-reading machines?” Trueblood said. “Has someone built something advanced enough to be worth stealing?”
“Rogue scientists live on hope, we know that,” Jo said. Her finger, sliding down the page, stopped at another entry. “And more psi-circuits—delivered to the state mental hospital outside Burbank?” Moon nodded; his frown asked why it mattered. “It’s had an amazing success rate with electroshock therapy. A few people say too amazing. We’ve got a couple of people going over there sometime today—I think maybe we’d better warn them about what they’re getting into.”
“And not to arrest anyone before Mr. Saunders has his meeting,” Mickey added, as Jo began tapping out numbers on her wrist radio.
(continued on page 2)
Applied Science 6: Hunting
HiddenFaces
by Fraser Sherman 1 2