Professor Loughty made sure everyone else stayed at the door, including his daughter Philippa. Given his druthers, she wouldn’t even be here, but his headstrong, only, daughter was not one to be easily thwarted. Especially not when her beau was the one that had disappeared.
Royston Loughty, PhD, FRS, CBE, CStJ, already thought of Gareth as his son-in-law. The young man had pressed his case early on, and then spent several years reminding Royston and Philippa of his love. But nobody and nothing could crack that man’s hard head that he had to be promoted to the rank of Field Agent before he would formally propose. And Royston had tried every trick he could think of over the years.
Worse, he had known that Gareth was all prepared to finally propose, but Royston couldn’t tell Pip that. She was already on the verge of tears, standing in the doorway with a fist to her mouth, the short, red shirt and tunic of a Sky Patrol Auxiliary reminding everyone how tough she was.
Royston smiled at his daughter as his portable scanner went to work. She had her mother’s red hair and green eyes, rather than his own darker complexion, but Pippa had gotten her height from him, as well as his bones, in comparison to his dear-departed Elizabeth.
However, Pip had had gotten Elizabeth’s strength, and her force of will, which served the young woman well, both in dealing with Gareth and her father, and also with society in general. The world frowned on a woman of science, such as Pip had become. She had earned her university degree, but no college would admit her to higher studies, so he had brought her with him to Earth Force’s Headquarters in orbit where she had met and fallen madly in love with a rising agent.
Who had just vanished.
Royston would have considered the entire thing to be an elaborate practical joke, even after listening to the audio tapes of Gareth’s last call, except that the portable scanner kept returning bizarre radiation signatures, no matter how he tuned it. Nothing dangerous or he would have never allowed his only daughter in here regardless of her impending engagement to the man in question.
No, just strange. Nothing he could explain, and he was Earth Force’s preeminent expert on stellar radiation.
Something must have shown on his face.
“What is it, Father?” Pippa asked in a serious voice that still could have filled opera halls with its musicality, had she been of the mind.
“Sir?” Sector Marshal Alvin Siddall asked from over Pippa’s shoulder from the hallway.
Royston found it amusing that the commander of The Arsenal itself was so deferential, but the situation was well outside anything Earth Force had ever encountered. That was why he had called in Royston. Plus, it had been Gareth. Everyone knew about that connection.
“There is something here,” Royston admitted. “I cannot explain it. However, I can see it, and thus, it must exist and be explainable. Seal the room off for now. I will need to return with better equipment.”
“Where is he?” Siddall asked. “Where could Gareth go?”
Royston drew himself up fully. Like the Sector Marshal, he was over six feet tall. Unlike the other man, Royston was only a little pudgy around middle and not turning fat like the man who spent too much time behind a desk.
“I don’t know, Marshal Siddell, Pippa,” he acknowledged them both, especially the depths of fear in Philippa’s eyes. “Nothing I know can explain a man just vanishing like that. But I will find out.”