JSJ S-F: The Silver Goose

The Silver Goose
by Jim Jardine

First draft 9/71, Submitted to Analog 3/72

Ted Berchem tightened the last spade lug securely under the last brass screw in the traffic control box, waved to his foreman and closed the box. It snapped shut, locked against the curious and sealed against the weather until the next highway crew member mould come along to open it. Ted's foreman unclipped the pen-sized wireless microphone from his jacket pocket and called their dispatcher.

"Crew three here. We have Filstrope and Mardac intersections ready for testing."

"Check, three. Do you have all three intersections ready?"

"Yeah, and the partial roadblocks are up to slow traffic and it's almost quitting time," Larry Garcia answered him with light sarcasm.

"OK, power coming up in a few minutes."

Larry thought back a few years - well, not so few at that he caught himself, Maria had been only three and a half - he shook his head to get himself back on the track he had been following. In those days you just hooked up the wires, waited for a slack in the traffic and turned them on. Now the whole system was controlled by the central computer in Traffic Control, even this semi-isolated strip of three intersections in the quiet residential section that was the Mesa Project.

While these streets did not normally carry very much traffic, even at peak hours, Mardac Avenue was a main connecting link between two freeways outside of their junction and in case of a major accident in or near the interchange the computer would route and control both quantity and speed of traffic using these lights and other features of the system to prevent the pileup of cars.

Larry pulled his watch from its pocket below his wide belt. Only fifteen minutes to test and be in the truck heading in if they were to have their usual leisurely clean up. Then home and tomorrow. What a hell of a day tomorrow! His oldest daughter getting married. Damn. Where did it all go?

The lights came on. A high-pitched warning blast came from the metal loudspeakers which served as an emergency notification system, giving instructions during accidents, storms and the like. Mardac came on with two green lights and one yellow, quickly tuning to red, followed in a few seconds by the other two lights.

There was a wave from each of the men stationed to watch the lights at each corner for any defects in operation. If things went all right on the first round any future problems would be sensed by the computer and alternate lights, redundant wire paths and secondary master controls would be switched in to assure continued proper operation of the lights.

Larry glanced once more at his watch. Ten minutes now, just enough time to test the red light warning system. He climbed into the truck and drove toward the light, which had just turned red. A light began to flash on the dash, brighter and faster as he continued to accelerate toward the signal. Then a shrill whistle rang through the cab, stopping only when he slammed on the brakes to stop a few feet inside the intersection.

He proceeded to test the other lights, from all four sides. The lights and whistle would function not only in his truck to alert him, but in any other cars approaching that intersection so that they would be warned of someone about to violate their right-of-way, and perhaps their life style. An emergency vehicle emitted yet another signal that caused the lights to change in its favor or simply stop all traffic while broadcasting a warning over the speakers.

All aspects of the test checked off on the list, Larry counted heads in the back of the truck, waited for Ted to climb in front with him and drove off.

"One minute late," he commented with mock seriousness. "I'll have to beat that last light or we'll be the last crew in the yard." They fairly flew through the yellow-turning-red light as a few drops of rain hit the windshield.

"So that wasn't just another cloudbank rolling over," Ted noted. It had been gusty and overcast all afternoon. "I guess we break out the wet weather gear on Monday."

Larry looked at the road ahead and said with a scowl: "We'll worry about that on Monday."

Ted was somewhat taken aback. He knew that Larry was not all that nonchalant about his job, nor overly serious. Still it annoyed him that anyone would have such a sharp cutoff point in his concern about the job.

By the time they reached the yard the roads were lightly wet and slick, the sky was nearly black with heavily laden clouds.

The wind had died down slowly and seemed almost to be resting. The ground, now thoroughly soaked, gave off that once-a-rain smell of things freshly wet after a long dry spell. It was two in the morning and there had been no cars on any of the streets that intersected Mardac Avenue for a long spell. A short while before, while the wind was still about, a small red car had moved slowly along Mardac. Now the only sound was a light dripping of water from rain-soaked trees and roofs lit by the soft illumination of streetlights on the wet pavement.

This quiet scene was shattered by the sudden wail of a siren. A red and white ambulance, with two flashing red lights and a rotating red beacon over the cab flew into the Mesa Project. The siren screamed in fifteen-second-long cycles as the ambulance flashed down Mardac, through the three intersections and was gone into the wooded Free Land that bordered the project.

Samuel Jonast raised a sleepless head from his pillow as the siren first broke into his hearing range. Dammed coffee! he cursed silently as he swung his feet from the bed cautiously so as to not wake his sleeping wife. He walked briskly to the kitchen. The siren grew louder, loudest, then faded and stopped just as he reached the icebox and pulled out a twelve-ounce can of beer. He poured it into his favorite beer mug and went into the living room, opened the curtains in the direction that the ambulance had just taken and sat down.

It was two miles from his house to the freeway. The road between, while not flat and straight, went through rolling country that allowed occasional glimpses of pavement and flashes of lights at nighttime. Now Samuel could see nothing. Strange, he thought, even if there had been an accident in the Free Land that his living room looked off into, there should at least be a police helicopter or maybe a suspended flare illuminating the area. Then too, he mused, unconsciously raising one foot to the windowsill, the opposite hand to his hip, why would it be coming from the area of the hospital? And if it had to travel as far as the freeway - why, the ground ambulances weren't even used for long runs any more.

He sipped at the beer, shook his head appreciatively at its refreshingly bitter taste, walked over to his reading chair and sat down. The novel he had been working on was right where he had left it - tucked between the cushion and the side of the chair. He switched on the light and began to read.

He had read two pages when it occurred to him that the ambulance should have at least come back by Mardac; it was a short cut between the two intersecting state highways which went climbing off into the hills and Underwood, the county seat and the largest town around, unless you wanted to drive the extra ten miles to Platsville and then come back on 490...Samuel caught himself and shook his head. It must have been his grandmother who had said that same phrase, how many times over? He hated to catch himself using phrases that were trite with local usage. Standard English, he cautioned himself.

Samuel was at the window again but there was still nothing in sight. The rain really does relax you, he thought as he stared blankly out into the dark, he recalled how his wife and their two teen-age sons had gone off to bed early, leaving him with his project design homework and a pot of coffee.

It really had been a productive week for him. He had even managed to get feedback from everyone else on the project and had just this evening finished incorporating as many of the more practical considerations into his drawings as were possible at this drawing board-stage of development. He turned from the window and eyed the beer, still half full.

Maybe he would eventually hear the ambulance returning. He picked up the book again. Strange, he thought as he stared at the open book, the time that he had wasted wondering about the ambulance...if he had been asleep, he would not have even known it had passed.

Samuel awoke slowly to a dull ache in his neck and his right hand tingling and numb, He straightened his head slowly to see the mantle clock: 3:45. Massaging his neck clumsily with his cramped hand, he went to bed.

III

At two minutes after two Sunday morning a red and white ambulance appeared from the darkened, sparsely settled region that lay between the Mesa Project and Drowina, the small town on the road to Underwood. It approached Filstrope Street at close to seventy miles an hour, its siren emitting the same long-cycle wail. The lights on the ambulance were flashing red. The traffic lights in the intersection were flashing yellow. None of them changed to the emergency vehicle mode. No warning tone came from the metal loudspeakers atop the traffic control pods. The ambulance sped off into the darkness after covering the half-mile spread illuminated by the housing project's streetlights in less than thirty seconds.

"There it is again, honey!" Samuel said to his wife as the siren's distant tone first reached his ears.

"What? Oh, the ambulance you told me about." She looked away from the movie they had been watching, got up and went to his side. "Look, there it is."

They watched in silence. The ambulance was past them in what seemed like a blur, so close to the street was their spacious living room. The head of the driver, only barely visible, did not deviate from its concentration on the road.

"I couldn't even see the license plate," Mary commented distractedly.

"The light was out."

"And he was going too fast."

"I agree, but what concerns me even more is that the now lights did not go into the emergency vehicle mode. Also, for a run this long, why didn't they use a chopper?"

"That's right!" Mary exclaimed, raising her hand to her mouth in surprise. "We voted on that last year. I had forgotten about it, even though I argued for it in the county board meeting when we put it on the ballot." She fell silent, wondering about her memory. Shortly her attention returned to Samuel, still looking out of the window. "What now?"

"Well, remember that I told you that the lights should at least be visible occasionally as it went through the Free Land? Look, by now it has had time to cross both of those first two little rises, even at half the speed that it was going when it passed here. But there is nothing there now and I haven't even blinked since it first dropped out of sight." He had a sudden thought, reached over and cranked the window open and waited. "Still nothing," he said slowly, looking past Mary without seeing her. He went to the desk phone and punched out a number.

The police sergeant who took his report told him that he was the third person to call regarding the ambulance. However the other two parties had only complained about the noise. Samuel had been the only one who noticed the malfunction of the emergency vehicle mode on the new traffic lights. A night crew would be out within a half hour to investigate. Almost as an after thought Samuel mentioned the previous night's run. Well, there had been an accident on the interchange…yes, the officer could be heard clicking the console keys to display the log from the previous watches...but it had been handled properly, with a helicopter, without whose help the two children would have died before medical attention could...well this certainly was worth checking into further and thank you again Mr. Jonast. By the way, there might be one of our field investigators in the area tomorrow. Are you planning to be home...well, thank you again.

Field Inspector Jim Ryland sat back in his comfortable swivel chair, salvaged from the Old Department days, sipping gingerly at the cup of coffee he had just carried back from the squad room. He began to review the accumulation of notes on the Siren Case. On the surface it wasn't much, but underneath there was a pile of loose ends. Completely innocuous loose ends, or so they seemed, but enough for any good detective to want to get his teeth into.

The three teams of emergency personnel, each from a successively higher echelon, had gone completely through the EVM system, both at Mardac's problem area and in the computer itself. Each team had verified at all points and in all modes, including some very unlikely models dreamed up by the computer programmers: the EVM system was in perfect order. At those particular intersections it functioned more times that Sunday than it would for the next ten years.

There had been no hospital for one hundred miles around Underwood that dispatched any ambulances for anything but short runs and all of that time mileage had been accounted for. There was the possibility that someone was borrowing or had stolen an ambulance from a repair service in the area, but that would not be known until Monday morning when the world came back to life. He made a note for someone on tomorrow's day shift to check that out. There had been no complaints outside the Mesa development. Residents on Mardac Avenue toward Drowina could not recall anything related to the incidents on either night, and many people lived close enough to the road so as to not miss the noise of the siren and had been up, at least Saturday night, watching late video or entertaining. Many ambulance drivers, however, would not use a siren except as a warning at intersections. It had been many years since the anti-noise laws had put many a joy-riding emergency vehicle driver into other professions: sirens were used now only to warn others, to save lives, not upset them unnecessarily.

It was certainly characteristic of the human organization, he reflected, that it would take so many years for people to realize that most drivers weren't paying attention to sirens anyway. Why even when he had been an ambulance rider on the Chicago force - Jim dropped his line of reminiscing and reached for the phone activator.

He finally reached the lieutenant in charge of the night shift which just assumed duty. They agreed that the word would be passed along to the dogwatch to put a car in the Mesa Project about one-thirty Monday morning. Yes, it should not get into the record that any time was actually being committed to this case other than Jim's routine investigation. No, especially not a helicopter, after all, however mysterious this might appear, it was still only a possible traffic violation.

"What did you have in mind?" asked the lieutenant.

"I would say stop the ambulance, or chase it at least. The boys will certainly have just cause to pursue it if it repeats the last two nights' performances. But they should use caution. We already know that the ambulance doesn't belong to any local organizations and the driver may not want to stop, so the next important thing would be to get a make on the plate or just trail along behind it to see where it goes. It would be nice if we could spare two units and put one a little further down the road in the Free Land, behind a tree or something."

"Well we can see to it that a special unit - one of the roving patrols - goes into the tract. That will leave the regular beat men to sit in the Free Land and record their reports."

"Sounds perfectly routine to me." They both laughed. "Remember though, no risks - it's not that important"

"Yet."

"Right. See you."

"Control 581, 10-20."

"Cruising the Mesa Project. On Filstrope approaching Mardac."

"10-6"

"10-4." Patrolman Irving Hecht pushed the channel selector button on the patrol car's radio to one of the two alternate channels.

"Yeah, Bill, what do you want?" They both knew, but all of the radio traffic was recorded on tape downtown, along with phone calls and other types of communication that might be worthwhile to have documented.

"How about parking there for a while and listen for that ambulance that was on the report tonight."

"OK. Check with you before we chase it?"

"Affirm. Control clear channel B."

"581 clear B," he switched to the third channel, which allowed two-way car-to-car communication, "411, did you copy?"

"Right. We'll keep our eyes and ears open. How about our riders go car-to-car on the portables, then we can keep directly in touch with Control,"

"OK, I'm going back to A."

"I wish we didn't have to leave the windows open," griped Irv's younger partner. It was his first winter on the force. "Don't say it!" he raised his hand defensively and turned back toward the windshield. "I know: I'll get used to it."

"I guess I am wearing out that phrase, Jonnie. Come to think of it. I guess it was Jim Ryland that got me to using that expression when he broke me in."

"Ryland broke you in? I'm impressed. How come you never mentioned it before?"

"So you're impressed! I'm glad to see that there is something that you don't take matter-of-factly. I never mentioned it before because it never occurred to me to mention it. I forgot that Jim has become sort of a hero-image-type to you younger guys."

"Just how in the hell old do you think you are?"

"Got you again! I told you that you can't let anyone worm his way under your skin. What time it it?"

"0151." Jonnie answered automatically, then realized his error - the digital clock on the dash was visible to both of them - he slumped a little further down into the seat and hung his head out the window, trying to concentrate on listening. Irv keyed his recorder and began to dictate the details of their two earlier cases.

"0202, siren heard." Jonnie said into the input of his X unit. Irv repeated the message formally to the dispatcher as he let the car begin to creep forward. The siren grew louder.

"If his speed looks at all out of line, stop him, 581,"

"581 acknowledge and clear." The patrol car was only fifty feet from the corner when the ambulance flashed by, and they were already up to thirty, just about as fast as they could safely take the turn. Irv hit the siren and lights and the traffic control system went into the EVM as it should have as they cut through the intersection and began to accelerate after the fleeing ambulance. Irv corrected only slightly to stop the sideways drift of the rear of the patrol oar and then their heads snapped back on the rests as the auxiliary winding cut in on the specially wound motor.

Jonnie called 411 and informed them of the situation. Irv put the patrol car's lights on high beam and then spoke to Jonnie over the whine of the engine. "Get the spotlight up on it. I can't even see a license plate, let alone read it."

"Hell, the light doesn't affect the back of the ambulance at all. It's either very dirty or painted with some non-reflective paint."

It probably was dirty, thought Jim Ryland the next day as he read the report on his desk. He also noted with interest that Ebeling and Hecht agreed that when they got close enough, what little they could see of the plate was orange. Not from our state, unless it was from some twenty years back, reflected Jim, only Nebraska, in this part of the country, had orange background on their plates. The two officers also agreed with Mattos and Smith, in the other unit, that the ambulance had not been overtaken within the Mesa Project not did it ever reached the second patrol car. Somewhere in the Free Land, it had simply disappeared.

Inspector Ryland then spoke to his division chief, the patrol lieutenant and the personnel secretary and found that there were enough loose souls around the department this morning for a search party. He authorized the vehicle withdrawal for the truck and went off to eat. The search would start at one o'clock.

The search party, consisting of a few rookies, several trainees and one sergeant, stood in the sunshine, avoiding the shade of the trees that lined Mardac Avenue. They were within rock-throwing distance of Samuel Jonast's house. Jim was finishing his briefing.

"So we are looking for tire tracks leading off the road, any unusual marks on the road, such as might be made by loading the ambulance into a helicopter, or anything else that is man-made, from safety pins to hubcaps. As you know, there can be nothing but foot traffic and recreation activities in this Free Land area so anything might be a clue. Remember your basic training: do not disturb anything that you find; simply mark it, report its description and...."

Not even a match was found. Jim shook his head slowly as he thought over the day. All of his years on the force - three police forces - and he had forgotten to check all of the possibilities: it was road-cleaning day in the Free Land. By nine that morning the crews had swept the several thousand acre strip clean of any refuse, mixed it thoroughly, and had sent it to the recycling center. There were the photographs taken by the two helicopters which had assisted in the search. At least they had proved negative and - unless the cleaning crews had purposely swept clean any vehicle tracks leading off the road - that was some progress: the ambulance had not driven off into some underground garage - hopefully.

Of course there was nothing else in this case that made sense. Why the ambulance at all? There had been no robberies or anything of that nature that might possibly use an ambulance as a cover or getaway car. If any sort of illicit operation were involved, it might be that the ambulance runs were a distraction of some sort, but a distraction from what?

Jim talked with the night watch lieutenant again. This time a more effective setup was laid out, putting two cars in the housing tract and moving the third one up closer. One car would pull out ahead of the ambulance while it was still only audible. The second car would film everything as it chased the ambulance using a portable videotape system. Another phone call set up Jim and Samuel Jonast with a one AM appointment to use Samuel's front window as an observation post. Inspector Ryland was simply due to see this phenomenon himself. He went home to eat and catch a brief nap - if the kids would let him.

Using an old video set in the Jonast garage, the nine police personnel and Samuel watched the scene play off of the tape for the second time. The first viewing had been very quiet. Now Jim Ryland began to point things out.

"You see that the police car headlights do not appear to illuminate the back of the ambulance, but here is a portion" - he stopped the tape - "where it is under one of the street lights."

"No change in the reflection from the ambulance," commented someone.

"No shadow;" noted Samuel.

"Exactly!" snapped Jim." Just as Mr. Jonast and I noted from his window, there not only was no shadow but there was still light from the street light _underneath_ the ambulance!" He pointed to the stilled picture on the video set. "We also noticed, from our vantage point at the side of the ambulance, that there was no reflection from the windows as it passed the lights. The driver was apparently unaware of anything but a straight road - he didn't look to either side during the whole, ah, I guess 'cycle' is as good a word as any."

"So you have a projection from someplace else," stated Samuel matter-of-factly. "Or maybe even a film, based on the consistency of its actions."

"Oh, that's great!" said Irv Hecht with some sarcasm. "I mean that's worse than what we had before. We'll have to do a lot of digging to find a transmission link to this area from maybe even a satellite or we'll have to search all of the houses in this district. Damn, it was so quiet up till now: just a routine mystery to distract us from the old routine, now we'll have to deal with a lot of outsiders."

"I assume that there is no way to keep this under wraps, nor any real reason." Samuel began. "But I would think that you would welcome outside help..."

"Oh, sure..." interrupted Irv Hecht.

"What Irv means, Mr. Jonast," said Jim, overriding Hecht's exploitation of his favorite theme. "Is that the news media will get ahold of the story - we'll will probably hold a little press conference - and then we will have to handle that traffic as well and sort out good suggestions and genuine leads from a pile of pet theories from every ding-a-ling that hears about it." He paused to see if Samuel had any comment. "There are many people that I have the opportunity to meet in all of my years with three police departments. I say opportunity because I consider each new contact an aid to my personal growth. Still, one must look at things realistically and the majority of our contacts are with those who, for some reason or another, need our help, be it to protect or correct their life style or because they need help or information that they can't find elsewhere.

There is a group of people, though, that call the police constantly about the most unmitigated crap that you can imagine. For the regulars, a file is usually kept and - in the case of Drowina's police anyway - the dispatchers know ahead of time how to handle them. For those that have really gone over the edge, who can't bear living alone and call for company, a special watch is kept for signs of breakdown and we then put them in touch with any of several organizations which might help them to not lead such miserable lives."

"From this group of people come those who have to explain the world around them in terms that are acceptable to their own patterns and beliefs of what makes the world go 'round. Such incidents as this will bring them out of the woodwork with long-distance calls, letters, telegrams and not a few personal visits. Of course there is the other side of the coin - maybe our world is only as it seems to us because we hold the majority view."

"Yes," said Samuel. "I was about to add that - or a similar comment. Of course a logical related concept is that we all have to explain the world around us in terms that we can accept. And I have sometimes wondered about the notion that asks why it is that the so-called insane are always in the minority of any population."

"Certainly." said Irv. "We find the same thing on a day-to-day basis. I have often wondered if some of the people who I am giving citations to aren't vastly more qualified to judge their actions at that particular moment. But we have to stick to our guidelines so that the average guy can depend on _something_, in the world as he lives out his life."

"That," said Samuel with emphasis. "Is the most important justification for a somewhat orderly society. Well, I can't say that this hasn't been one of the most rewarding evenings I've spent in a long time. I would appreciate it if you would let me know how things come out."

Samuel collected the coffee cups up on the tray and carried them to the back, tapping the automatic garage door closing control as the others cleared the entrance.

Before he went home to contemplate the day's happenings with a relaxing drink, Jim dictated a rather lengthy set of instructions to his secretary. There was a court order to secure, inquiries to be sent out regarding all legal transmissions that might account for the phenomena...three nights in a row? That really had him stumped. Also some details about the proposed set up for tonight's - no, tomorrow morning's - run. No chase, simply a more detailed observation. They must have a make on that plate. He would be in about ten, no phone calls except for some other emergency. Also advise the information officer of what is going on - get the case folder to him but get it back! - suggest a press conference to him, but don't ask him for one, just mention that the local papers should know. Sam Jonast was right on that score: the sooner the details were out, the sooner someone might provide us with some innocent link that would clear up the whole thing.

He signed out and went home.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly by eleven. But of course that could not possibly continue for long. A call came in from the units serving the court order in the Mesa Project. There was a problem with one of the residents. Her husband had given strict orders that no one was ever to enter his garage/shop when he was not at home. Besides, the place was locked up tighter than a drum and the sergeant doubted very much that anyone in the department could open the manipulation-proof combination looks that kept it private.

"Well, can't you get the guy at work or something?" Jim was mystified as to why the sergeant would call him.

"Yeah, but I just thought that you might like to know that the owner's name is George Klein. He is one of the partners that own the independent video station. You know, KLDG. I wanted to at least alert you before we called him."

"Oh, I see your point." Jim paused thoughtfully. "Good thinking. I'll call him myself. You apologize to his wife and tell her that I am calling her husband at the station. Have the rest go on with the search but leave a man to observe the house, but very, very discretely. See if you can finish up out here this afternoon."

The next face that appeared on his screen was that of George Klein, half owner of KLDG, EE with a Master's in video programming and owner of a tightly locked garage on Western Avenue, just off Filstrope.

"I am Inspector Jim Ryland with the Drowina Police Department. Did Mrs. Klein call you about our visit to your home?" he asked without any preliminaries.

"Yes," The voice matched the face: clear but with a tired edge. "What's up?"

"Sounds fascinating," he agreed as Jim finished relating to him the events to that moment. "And don't worry about my incriminating myself - if any of my equipment is causing this little episode, I am unaware of it. How about if I meet you at my place a little after one. That will give me time to eat. And don't worry, you can check my recorder to be certain that I haven't been in the shop since early this morning.

"Oh? What time this morning?"

"Till about three. I was assembling a new transmitter."

"Did you test it…?"

"Oh, no, no!" he laughed, interrupting Jim. "I didn't even see what you were leading up to. No, it's not quite to that stage yet."

"Do you have any other radio-type equipment under test or maybe standards that you leave on all the time?"

"Yes to both cases. I'll show you those things when you get there."

"So you see, some of the things on this shelf are always on." George Klein pointed to one wall of his complex, clean and very expensive shop as they finished the tour of the premises. "We have done all of our R & D for the station here, and most of the fabrication of the equipment now in use. Without this set up we wouldn't be able to keep KLDG on the air, to say nothing of paying our staff and having something left to pay the rent on our houses."

"What about the occasional items that you mentioned - the ones under test. Were any of those things turned on the past few nights?"

"Just this one unit over here in the gray cabinet. Actually, it's not a piece of gear for the station at all, but something that we bid on for a university radio astronomy department. They call it an auto-correlating receiver."

"How nice." Inspector Ryland smiled, acknowledging his loss to understand the terminology.

"It speeds up the mapping of the skies at various radio frequencies."

"I would like to ask one favor of you. Have you re-worked or changed any of this equipment since last Friday?"

"No, as a matter of fact, we were in the mountains over the weekend and last night I went to the station - you know how all the radio and video stations seem to disappear at midnight on Sundays? We don't take a night off - that's the only time we can do major overhauls on the gear. Then I came here and worked on this beast. What's the favor?"

"Simply that you leave everything exactly as it has been for the past three nights. That will eliminate a possible variable. Maybe you would like to see tonight's run. The intersection is a little ways off, but we'll be set up and waiting before 0145."

"I'll be there with my camera truck. Might make good news copy,"

"As long as you brought it up," said Jim, smiling. "What we really need to crack this thing is the license plate number of that damned ambulance. As long as you are going to go to the trouble of setting up out there, could you try for a shot at the front license plate? A stopped-down, narrow angle shot might be able to get the plate in the diffracted light from the headlights,"

"Good thinking. See you tonight, then?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so - until this thing gets cleared up I'll be working split shifts."

"Don't feel badly. There are some of us who always work split shifts. And at least you can relax between tough cases." They both smiled. Jim recalled the last time he had seen George Klein; with a shoulder-mounted camera recording the aftermath of a murder at three-thirty in the morning.

They shook hands and parted.

Patrolman Hecht looked at his partner as they approached the scene of activity ahead. "I told you. There must be a hundred people up there."

"Well, that would be our first task, then: get them moving."

Irv keyed his radio on the car-to-car channel. "581, 112." he spoke rather loudly as Ryland would probably have his pocket set turned down.

"Go ahead 581."

"You have quite a crowd there. Can we start requesting that those who are not performing some vital function go away? After all, it will be on the morning news."

When the majority of the people were cleared away, there was only a few more cars than were usually parked on the side streets, no foot traffic and a light rain. Radio traffic dropped to nothing as 0150 came and went. Voices in the individual cars dropped off as 0200 crept up and faded away. Windows came lower despite the rain, ears strained. Those who had been for the previous runs wondered what was amiss as 0215 was reached. Those who had come for the first time began to exchange glances.

"Maybe the ambulance driver has the night off." Hecht to Ryland, breaking radio silence for the first time.

"You know, that's not a bad thought. If nothing else, this might clear the field of some of the spectators for tomorrow night."

"How long are we going to hold this cover?" came a third voice, that of Patrol Sergeant Korytowski.

"Let's announce that we are pulling out at 0245," replied Jim. "But 581 and 411 will patrol the area as usual. I'll talk to Mr. Klein about staying around a little longer."

"That should be no problem. If his curiosity doesn't keep him around, at least he lives right here. Which casts some additional doubts in my mind. We haven't eliminated him as a possible cause yet, have we?"

"No, Irv, but he still may be innocent of any willful part in this, even if his own equipment has been generating the phenomena," Jim paused thoughtfully. "I'll discuss that with him when I go to talk to him now. It would be worthwhile to have him go over all of his gear again. Sergeant, go to channel A and announce that pull-out time. I'll remain on this channel while I'm talking to Klein."

The same tired face stared out at him from the equipment-packed video truck. This time it sported almost a day's growth of beard surrounded by a somewhat disheveled lab coat with many stubby tool handles clipped into its single breast pocket. He smiled slightly and waved Ryland into the truck.

"I just wanted to let you know that the announcement we just made about pulling the cover is merely to clear the area of non-essential people, The cover cars will go into a patrol pattern and I wondered if you might not want to stick around, just in case something does break. We would like to be able to get that plate number if anything does go down."

"OK by me."

It was three -thirty when Jim again approached the KLDG truck, and he was standing outside of it, talking to George when the accident occurred.

No one had paid any attention to the solitary four-door sedan which moved into the area at a reasonable speed: they were watching for a raucous, fast-moving ambulance. As the perimeter police units had been sent back to their regular patrols there was no one to mention a car approaching nor the lack of the warning which would arouse suspicion. When the car was midblock between Filstrope and Brooks there was the sound of another car, seemingly coming from the darkened living room of a house. Then the horns, brakes and ear-splitting crash followed sporadically by lights in various homes as the occupants awoke to investigate whatever had disturbed their sleep.

Jim called in the other units and started running toward the scene. George Klein turned his truck around and followed him.

The second car had hit the sedan square in the driver's door, dragging the car across the street some ten feet. Everything about the scene was very dark, For all that it was an apparent intersection that was being projected, it must have been an unlighted one, probably in the country. The flood lights from the police cars and the video truck only served to fade the entire scene. Jim ordered the lights turned off and the two police cars facing in from opposite sides with their yellow lights flashing a warning to real traffic through the area. With the lights off a few more details could be made out.

A man had climbed out of the sedan's passenger seat and was looking into the window of the smaller sports coupe. From some distortion in the projection system's sound voices could be heard coming faintly from somewhere up in the air and off to one side of the wreckage. A woman's voice moaned in pain, the man looking into the coupe calling: "Are you all right? Are you all right?" over and over.

"He's in shock," Jim commented somewhat distractedly. There was a strange feeling of helplessness for him as he looked upon this bizarre accident. Eighteen years as a police officer, many first aid classes attended and taught, many accident victims made more comfortable and even a few still living because of his actions, and now he could only stand and... "Let's move: everyone look for license plate numbers. Irv, shoot out that damn street light over there. We'll have to work with the lights from the cars in the accident. Maybe there's a registration form inside with a map light on. 112 Control." he snapped into his X unit.

"112."

"Clear me a man to run some code 3 registration data through to Omaha. We have an accident for a projection tonight and it appears to be in a rather desolate area,"

"Check. Standing by."

Two minutes later, the numbers were into the DMV central computer in Omaha, some 850 miles away. Names were found, numbers were called, destinations were given along with times of departure and an intersecting point estimated to which helicopters were dispatched. The location was radioed back to Drowina's Inspector Jim Ryland five minutes later. As the helicopters arrived, the scene was bathed in light. Two cars were left to keep cars out of the area and everyone else dispersed.

VII

The door to Field Inspector Ryland's office remained closed all day. He had his own coffee pot and took his own calls and dialed his own numbers so that the Investigation Division secretaries could only guess at what mood he was in and at what moment he might come bursting through the door with either work for all or to merely fly through the office on his way to the outside world.

It was Friday. In the County Hospital in Hudson, Nebraska there were three accident victims resting comfortably in spite of the serious injuries they had received at that lonely intersection. Two of the four people would have died before anyone happened along if the scene had not been picked up on Mardac Avenue. There was also a hot-shot ambulance driver looking for a job. The emergency runs? Only a little misuse of his employers' vehicles to visit his girlfriend during his early morning break.

On the pretense of gathering news, George Klein had accompanied Jim Ryland to Hudson and the scene of the transmissions. Jim thought that there might be people more qualified to help in his investigation in the immediate environs of Drowina but there were two advantages in leaving the job in George's hands. He already knew a lot about the case and within his own field he would know to whom to turn when he was stymied.

They had spent several hours together going over the device that they had found in Hudson, mounted in a tree that overlooked the half-mile stretch of road. George was mystified that the whole projection could be recorded from a single pickup. There would normally be enough spacing between various modules to provide an accurate duplication of dimensions of the area being transmitted. Their conclusion was that either someone had removed the additional equipment - they certainly had had time, it had been on the news for twelve hours before they had arrived there - or the single module was sufficient to do the job.

There had been no marking on the oblong, egg-shaped metal box. There had also been no way to get it open. It was fairly hard and seamless with a non-reflecting silver finish. They had finished the last of the beer at eleven the night before and Jim Ryland had left George and Samuel Jonast sitting on lab stools in the Klein shop staring at the box.

Now Jim completed the last of his long-distance calls and was into his second pot of coffee when his private line flashed. George's somewhat smudgy face smiled at him from the screen.

"You got it open."

"I did, that's still the same little mystery box it was last night. Sam is working on it: shape, materials, weight and all that - he's mechanical, you know."

"He's mec....oh yeah. I almost forgot that you technical types use that sort of terminology."

"Well, in case you didn't know, there are some of us who consider policemen as technicians. You do, after all, perform the practical interpretation of a set of basic principles on a daily basis, just as we do."

"But you two are engineers."

"Yeah, well that's in English. In many languages a technician is an engineer, but by practical definition a technician is one who possesses great technical knowledge or skill in some field, including music and other such so-called esoteric worlds. An engineer is supposed to possess at least a basic amount of building blocks which he can move around and then dream up or calculate the interconnects until they solve the problem at hand. If I were to do only that I would be out of business with just paying the salaries of the electronic and mechanical techs and their support personnel to got done what I can do in half the time. Our yearly time spent on meetings for purposes of clarifying operating procedures is about two hours. That is the stockholders' meeting and we do that on a Friday night and follow it up with a nice dinner,"

"Quite edifying. Thank you. Why did you call?"

"I've located the receiver/projector units,"

"That's about the best news I've had today," Jim leaned eagerly toward the phone screen. "Where were they?"

"Are they, you mean. In the one place that we had overlooked because it was so obvious: the new traffic control poles,"

"Oh, of course, and they are the same shape as the one we brought back from Hudson so that they set right in with the loudspeakers." Jim flashed brilliantly.

"Wrong. You may not require a university education for the people who install and maintain our road equipment,, but they certainly have a modicum of common sense and a lot of general knowledge about their jobs - they would never have left anything so outrageously useless as the silver egg we found get installed in a traffic control system, No, what are in the speaker housings - you got that part right, anyhow - are very delicately formed but extremely ruggedly built resonance and reflector chambers. The receivers are in the traffic control pods, I haven't reasoned out how the signals get from the receivers to the front projecting chambers as yet, but..." he trailed off,

"How did you get the pod open and how do you know what should or should not be there and if not, who did you ask to find out?"

"You see? Now you are applying the technician aspect of police work - cutting through the usual slow approach of innocent questions to get quick answers. I called a friend of mine at the County Corporation Yard and he told me all about the set up. He said that you knew..."

"Yeah, OK," Jim feigned resignation. "Sorry. I have been following up too many leads for too many years. So you and - I guess it was Goode - worked out..."

"We have covered a lot of ground. We have actually known for a couple of hours but Goode went ahead and checked out the origin of these parts as far as he could so that we might present you with a complete package, all neatly wrapped. Unfortunately, all we came up with was more questions."

"I'm listening," Jim encouraged.

"Every piece of that gear came off of the Corp Yard supply room shelves. And of course they perform their intended function. Nothing else in stock has any unusual features, at least that we could determine. The serial numbers, lot numbers and shipping and receiving documents all match and check out. Most things even came from the same boxes that contain normal units and are still in stock. But the chances of getting all of the correct parts at random from the shelves are pretty low. Personnel was the first thing that occurred to Goode; he's on my other phone now but only to tie up a couple of loose ends." There have been no new hires and no terminations since this last January and some of the parts in question have been received since then, which all adds up to no necessary connections to anyone."

"So you two believe that someone had to assure that these parts got placed in the right work order so that they would wind up out at Mardac. One thing: Tom Goode is rather careful about this sort of thing, but mention to him not to discuss what you are looking for to anyone else, I have called Washington and we are to expect two special operatives. They feel that there is enough going here to warrant some experience. Could I impose upon you, Tom and Sam Jonast to help brief them this evening?"

"Yeah, it's still a fascinating puzzle so I'm still willing to put the time in. Do you want me to call Samuel?"

"Thanks, but I can do it and ask him at the same time how the analysis is going. Does he know what you found?"

"Yes, I called him. We all agreed not to disturb the units out here on Mardac in any way - if for no other reason than to not cause problems with the traffic control computer. But we did want to ask you about posting some sort of surveillance...oh. Sorry." he said, turning to someone out of the phone's screen range. "Tom has just informed me that all equipment belonging to Traffic Control is tamper-proof and burglar-alarmed."

"That's true." agreed Jim, wondering how often George Klein committed "we" errors. "But don't forget that somehow a lot of strange things have happened with this particular set of traffic control gear. I think I'll follow your suggestion and put at least some spot checks on the posts. Maybe even one of our CCTV units and monitor it from here. Never tell what might show up."

"OK, That makes me feel a little better. As of a half hour ago the altered units were still in place. You'll call us later on about the time?"

"No sense in doing that. How's seven-thirty for you?"

"We should have held this meeting at my place," grumbled George as his finished his fifth cup of coffee. The other five men in the Inspection Division conference room looked at him with curiosity. "Well, my lab is soundproofed and I'm sure that your anti-bug there on the table works anywhere, but most important, there's no regulations there against drinking beer."

"Well, smiled Jim, rising to his feet and stretching. I think we can call this portion of the brief...sorry," he smiled apologetically to the agent that had corrected him earlier. "This de-briefing is about played out. Both Mr. Klein and Mr. Jonast live in the Mesa Projects, as you heard, so it might be worth our while to kill a few birds..."

"While you kill a few beers at my place."

"The area is pretty well lighted and this should give you the chance to fill in any gaps. Unless you are tired from your trip."

"Nothing of the sort." responded the taller of the two. He had introduced himself as Rodriguez and had the dark hair, eyes and light brown skin, set off by a small trim mustache, which most Americans associated with the label Latino. "Well, I'll admit that we're bushed, but there are a lot of advantages in seeing all that there is to see as soon as possible. I'm sure that you have seen that many times yourself, Inspector Ryland. Even though this doesn't seem to be a life or death matter, it will still be good to get those details and then unwind,"

"You'd be surprised what this does to you," his companion spoke for the second time that evening. He too, stood up and stretched as he spoke, scratching at his broad expanse of overhanging gut. Jim could picture him sitting on a tractor in the middle of a corn field, the already lengthy stubble of beard enhancing the vision. They certainly were an unlikely pair of secret agents. "We both had the weekend off," he waved off the beginning of an apology from Jim Ryland. "If it hadn't been us, someone from our same bunch would have been here. But what I was going to say was that this running around sometimes ties you up in little knots. As you can see," he said, rubbing his stomach. "Beer is one of my tranquilizers too."

VIII

It was a full week later when the ten men conversing at ease in the Klein garage-laboratory gathered around Dr. Kawakami of WIT, and his post-doc assistant to hear their verdict. They had been tearing apart the entire set of modules for the past three days, photographing and documenting every phase of their disassembly process.

"Well that does it," Dr. Kawakami said, brushing his hands together as if to shake off some invisible dust. "I have some ideas about the basics of operation now. With adequate security measures we'll have some brainstorming sessions back at WIT, The only thing that I will venture to say now on an official basis is that these things are like nothing either of us has ever seen before, and I have been to every communications and computing conference in the past seven years. Frankly, it is hard to believe that this could even be built."

"And unofficially?" Jim asked quietly. The agents sucked in a little sharp breath.

"Anything that I say unofficially would revive the UFO cults like flowers in the spring rain - to use an old expression that I just made up. However, you have all put a lot of time into this and I will tell you at least some of the lines of thought that Ken and I have been following."

"There are problems here that involve tracing the origin of these pieces of electronic hardware because we can't find any specific construction techniques that we can compare with known methods. For instance, as Mr. Jonast pointed out, if there were some screws in the assemblies, we could measure them and determine the pitch and diameter and pretty much tie down their manufacture to some part of the world. If they were not standard anywhere we would be at a loss to explain them, but at least we would have some sort of knowledge about the gear. But there are no screws. There are also no rivets, nothing was welded nor soldered together.

"Also, these appear to be production models. There are no marks that are characteristic of prototypes or specially built electronics equipment. The whole assemblies are what we have decided to label 'monolithic'. Monolithic comes from transistor technology meaning that an entire special function is performed on a single chip or 'one rock' as the word's roots translate. By dilithic we hope to convey the meaning of an additional dimension of complexity. Actually there is more than one additional dimension but we like to think that another dimension might be developed from the knowledge we gain from this study. Anyhow, this process that was used to construct the items we have here consisted of at least several hundred operations of depositing, cutting, leaching and etching and maybe several other plating-type processes that we have not heard of. The basis for these processes are present in today's technology but to bring it to the stage we see here, in my opinion, could take generations,"

"Or could have,"

"What?" George asked Jim Ryland. He had just finished tightening the last of thirteen hard-to-reach screws on the cover plate of his 'home brew' video transmitter when the soft-shoed inspector walked into the station.

"Taken generations."

"Huh? Oh, yeah...I hadn't thought of that. So I take it you had some word from WIT or elsewhere in Washington."

"Yes, the confidential official word."

"I.e.: I can't broadcast it."

"No, you'll have to take what comes over the wires. It seem that the technology to develop the projection system is, as Dr. Kawakami said, still in its infancy. The art required to actually produce those units on a large scale is conceivable, but it not anywhere to be found,"

"Yet?"

"Exactly. That is the way Rodriguez put it. What the WIT people boiled it down to was one of two possibilities: the devices were either built in some extraterrestrial civilization or they come from some future time here on Earth."

Klein was aghast. "Where does that leave us?" and amended quickly; "By us I mean your department, my curiosity, the government, the human race."

"It leaves WIT with a new project with unlimited funding - a rarity these days - to develop the techniques required. There should be a lot of spin-off from that, they assure me,"

"But what about the guy who put the things in place: Surely you aren't going to let him get away...oh yeah, what crime, right?"

"It isn't only that, George. The attitude that Washington has adopted is that if - and I emphasize the 'if' - someone did put the proper elements in the proper boxes at the right time and knew what he was doing, he would perhaps be quite a bit cleverer than we are and very difficult to catch. There is one more point, then I'll buy you a beer downtown,"

"The beer I could use," George agreed, mopping his brow. "I'm not too sure about the last item though, but go ahead."

"Maybe if we leave the guy alone, he'll give us some more toys to play with."

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