Read Online The Fury Out of Time by Lloyd Biggle jr. - Free Book Online Page B

rolled smoothly along the paved road that led to the hangars. At Hangar Seven they ran the long gamut of identification and search, and finally they were allowed to enter the darkened building. One of the civilian guards obligingly followed, and turned on the lights.
    “Were you looking for someone?” he asked. “They all went outside to watch the planes.”
    “They?”
    “Some of those scientists. I don’t think they were doing much anyway. Just sitting around talking about football.”
    “I have a hunch,” Karvel said, as they moved toward the center of the hangar, “that our esteemed scientists are stumped.”
    “You mean you aren’t?” Ostrander asked.
    “Not stumped. Frustrated.”
    “Haskins would say it amounts to the same thing.”
    “The U.O. is enough of a problem. I’m not going to try to figure out Haskins.”
    “Who do you suppose he is?”
    “CIA, at a guess. He knows all the right people, and when he wants something, nobody asks him why.”
    Karvel signaled a halt by a filing cabinet and took out the folder with the instrument panel photos. He laid aside the enlargements of individual instruments and sat back to study a shot of the full panel.
    It seemed to simple, and yet it was so utterly incomprehensible. The raised symbols—tiny, angular maze, jagged serpentine, tangled, unsymmetrical web—did they mark off centuries, or miles, or light-years? Or some strange concept of velocity, such as centuries per minute?
    The small, buglike lever was poised to crawl curvingly from symbol to symbol, over the hump of the outsized integer—if number it was—that occupied the central position. No symbol was repeated anywhere, and the symbols on the lesser instruments were, if anything, more intricate in design.
    “Is it possible to have a numerical system where the smaller numbers are the most complicated?” Karvel asked.
    “Sir?”
    “Never mind. I was wondering— What’s the matter?”
    “Frankly, sir, I’d rather be up there.”
    “I told you yesterday you could chuck this assignment whenever you like. I don’t require a pilot, or even an officer, to push my wheel chair. How about it? Shall I tell Haskins to draft an enlisted man for me?”
    “I’d feel as though I were running out on you, sir.”
    “You wouldn’t be. It won’t take me five minutes to train a new man for the job. I’ll take care of it in the morning. Now let’s see if we can eliminate a little of my frustration before we call it a day. Has anyone explained this small hole at the top of the instrument panel?”
    “They think there’s an instrument missing. It’s the same size as the holes that take the smaller capsules, but none of them will fit into it.”
    “Of course not, since each one is keyed for its own hole. Interesting, but maybe not critical. We both know that there are a number of instruments on the panel of an F-102 that the plane would fly without, even if not so conveniently.”
    “The U.O. flew all right—if that’s the word for it.”
    “I don’t think we can be certain that it flew all right,” Karvel said. “It killed its pilot. But never mind. We aren’t likely to figure out the function of what’s missing until we’ve made some headway with what we have. Where are the capsules?”
    “Maybe they put them back.”
    Ostrander took a flashlight from a workbench and went to the U.O. The dilating hatch opened smoothly and silently when a hand placed on a recessed handle was moved in a circular motion; it closed automatically when released. Ostrander opened the hatch and aimed the flashlight. “Yes. They put them back.”
    “Did they try to manipulate the things at all?”
    “Sure. They manipulated them for hours. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d worn them out.”
    Karvel propelled his chair toward the U.O. and pulled himself erect, balancing awkwardly on his artificial leg. “I wish I could get inside,” he said.
    “Tell me what you want done, and I’ll do it.”
    “Pull