Read Online Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton - Free Book Online

the arms of these other jerks. I
don't know what the hell..."
    I was looking at her car, the way it was
parked beside the observatory. "She didn't come in the way I did,"
I observed.
    "First time she did," Souza said
thoughtfully. "If you mean straight in from the front gate. But she
turned off and went over toward the offices. Didn't know it was
her, then, but she came back like shot out of hell, jumped out of
the car almost before it quit rolling. I thought—"
    I interrupted with, "Later, Greg—stay right
here," and I went quickly inside to find the lady. She was probably
scared half to death, I was thinking, and needed to know that the
situation was in hand—for the moment, anyway.
    But I did not find the lady inside there. I
found a guy in blue jeans and checkered shirt, tiny round
eyeglasses and bird's-nest beard—about my age, very nervous, wary
of me—emerging from an elevator which, I presumed, served as the
chief route to the interior of the massive structure.
    He asked me, "Were those gunshots?"
    I told him, "You bet they were. Where did
Jennifer go?"
    He said, "Jennifer who?"
    I said, "Jennifer Harrel. She was accosted
just outside by a couple of weirdos. She ran in here."
    He said, "I don't know Jennifer Harrel,
except by reputation. I was up in the cage. If she came in
here...I don't know. Who are you?"
    "Security," I lied. "She must be inside
somewhere."
    The guy seemed to have bought the "security"
gag. His attitude became much more relaxed and a lot more helpful.
"If we start getting creeps up here..." He was holding the elevator
door open, ushering me inside.
    "Why were you in the cage?" I asked him
conversationally. "I noticed the shutters are closed."
    "Moonset pretty soon, now," he replied.
"We'll have a nice dark sky; I was just getting ready." He showed
me a
    delighted, boyish grin. "I get ten minutes
of direct observation, from the cage." This, with all the
enthusiasm of a ten-year-old's announcement of a trip to the
circus.
    "Not much of that, anymore," I ventured, not
knowing what the hell I was talking about.
    "Well, it's pretty
inefficient, and there's just so much observing time to go around.
But I really love to touch the universe as directly as possible.
The control room is more comfortable, sure, but..."
    A true astronomer, this
one, filled with the romance of it all; a poet in scientific garb.
The "cage," I recalled from something Jennifer had told me, is a
six-foot capsule near the upper end of the telescope in which the
astronomer "rides" and carries on his/her observations. It could
get very cold and intensely uncomfortable. At one time, here, it
was the only way. Now the whole thing was accomplished from the
comfort of armchairs in a heated, well-lit control room, with a
computer and video screens. But that "cage" had figured rather
prominently in the stirring little seduction story Jennifer shared
with me—love among the stars, okay.
    But there was no "love" in there
tonight...just instrument panels and gadgets, video screens, a
couple of weary looking guys in blue jeans going through some
calculations on the computer. Jennifer was not in there.
    "You might try the catwalk," the poet
suggested, indicating a door behind me.
    I went out there—or in
there, whatever—and was immediately swallowed by an immensity of
steel girders and whatnot, the support structure for this mammoth
eye. There was not a sound or a movement out there beneath the
dome—but I thought I detected a door slightly ajar on the other
side. I went down there to check it out, discovered a door was
indeed ajar and that it led to the visitors' gallery. I went on
through, down a long, winding flight of stairs, and found myself
outside on the building's far side.
    So, what the hell, I followed a sidewalk
around the building and rejoined Souza. He was seated in his car
with a door open, shivering slightly in the chill air, chatting
with a couple of guys who were seated in a car idling with lights
off beside his.
    As I