THE BED alarm had been designed for maximum annoyance with minimum noise. Buried in the pillow, a tiny speaker emitted a perfectly electronically modulated imitation of the irregular and unrelenting howl of a hungry baby, the most totally intolerable and sleep-shattering racket known to man. It was designed to wake up the heaviest of all sleepers from a drugged sleep in ten seconds flat and keep him awake until he fell out of bed and raced across the room to turn the wretched thing off — your money back and all contingent damages guaranteed if it failed. It worked splendidly as Dr. Hank Merry jerked awake in the darkness, muttering unmentionables, and stumbled to the bedroom console to pick up the phone.
It was Margie at the office, apologetic but insistent. “Dr. Merry, I hate to bother you like this. I suppose it’s the middle of the night there but there’s a very nasty man here to see you, and he’s mad as hops and he won’t leave and he says he’s going to have you fired if you don’t see him this very instant, and lots of other unpleasant things.”
“His name isn’t Tarbox, by any chance?”
“Why, yes!” Margie paused. “How did you know?”
Hank Merry groaned as a picture of a pompous little man with a large fat cigar came to mind. “Red hair?” he asked.
“That’s the one. And he’s smelling up the place with — ”
“I know, I know. Someday I’ll get him for aggravated assault because of those cigars.” Frantically, Hank cast about for escape. “Maybe if you get him a cup of Happy-O — ”
“Oh, I tried that. He said I was trying to poison him. Dr. Merry, he’s very offensive, and he says you know why he’s here, and he wants action right now, whether you’re asleep, awake or in limbo.”
“I know.” Hank sighed. “We’ve already met.” He thought of half a dozen ways to avoid seeing one Jonathan Tarbox right then, discarding each in turn as either unworkable, inadvisable, or flagrantly illegal. “Okay,” he said resignedly. “Tell him I’ll get there as soon as I can and start a tape going, in case he gets slanderous. Half an hour, maybe.”
A moment later he was riding the elevator up to the aircar on the roof, getting angrier by the minute. The time-slip you could get used to, an inevitable annoyance you just had to put up with when you rode the Threshold. Your trip was always instantaneous as far as you were concerned, but it could involve up to eight hours gain or loss in Earth time from time of departure to time of arrival. The time-slip was an unavoidable annoyance, but a man like Jonathan Tarbox was something else. Hank set the aircar controls for the Los Angeles Threshold Station and settled back with some coffee. Happy-O was more pleasant for waking up, but he didn’t want to feel pleasant this morning.
He flipped on a news report, and caught the tail end of an early broadcast: “… said the unexpected agreement of the Chinese delegation makes tri-partisan support of Joint Conference Chairman John McEvoy’s program for Venus development almost certain. And now on the Interplanetary front. Threshold Commissioner Henry Merry reported today at a news conference at Ironstone, Mars, that mining operations are 23 per cent ahead of predicted schedule, and that full production of steel can be expected within three years. The commissioner reported that mills at Ironstone might later be built to produce finished steel at the site of the mining, but these plans depend on the number of workers who will permanently colonize Ironstone. And here’s a late bulletin: search parties from Titan have returned from the surface of Saturn empty-handed. There is now little hope remaining that the ill-fated exploring party which disappeared on the surface of the ringed planet two weeks ago could have survived, and search efforts have been abandoned. And now we bring you — ”
Hank made a wry face and snapped off the report. Aside from the glaring inaccuracies of the report (he had said nothing whatever to the reporter about milling steel at Ironstone) he was irritated at the bright and cheerful way commentators had of reporting the most tragic stories. In a world that had expanded in five years from the surface of Earth to cover half the galaxy, a disaster on the surface of Saturn grew more and more remote from the ordinary round of daily living. It could be reported with detachment, a cheery news note on a frosty morning, but that didn’t make the disaster any less tragic for the ones involved. Greedy commentators hungry for news to feed to greedy people….
His mind came back to the unpleasant interview before him. Speaking of greedy people, and a greedy industry I It seemed to Hank that he was doing nothing but dealing with a succession of greedy men and greedy companies these days, instead of what he really wanted to do: study the Benedict Thresholds and how they actually operated. But there he was, and Jonathan Tarbox was waiting most impatiently.
At the Los Angeles Station gate he showed his card, took a chamber ticket from the attendant and rode up the moving incline to the station platform, row upon row of small metal cubicles visible down the brightly lit corridor. He found the door with 23 in fluorescent green over it, pressed the ID plate with his palm and heard three short clicks as the steel door swung open.
The chamber was tiny, hardly big enough for the chair and straps. A blinder-mask grinned at him from the wall; he drew it across his eyes, tightened the straps around his waist (totally functionless, Robert had told him, but it gave a sense of security to the timid) and settled back in the chair. Though he had crossed day after day for years, he couldn’t escape the sudden claustrophobic reaction, the sudden momentary sense of bottomless emptiness that coursed through him at the instant of the passage. He had talked to Ed and Gail about it, the last time they had been out to the Coast, between their behavior-laboratory projects; Gail had claimed the strange sensation never went away. He waited until the soft music from the chamber speaker had relaxed him for a moment, then snapped the activator switch and felt his muscles tense….
It lasted only a fraction of a second, but beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as the chamber door swung open. He pulled off the blindfold, unstrapped, and walked out onto the passenger platform of the Ironstone Threshhold Station.
Ironstone, planet Mars.
Moments later a surface car was whisking him through the odd, spindly city of glass and marble and Concrete to the Administration Building, and he turned his mind again to an angry little man with red hair waiting in his office, and to a puddle of molten and congealed iron lying 850 miles away, somewhere out on the Martian desert.