Part 2

A half hour later, his eyes began to droop. He picked up the sleeping pill, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, then put it back on the table. His breathing became deeper.

A sound startled him awake. It was an odd sound, not a part of the subdued hospital noises. It was a persistent, metallic, scraping sound, and it came from outside his window.

Dr. John O'Hara Smith grabbed his glasses and rolled out of bed. He bunched up his pillow under the covers and crawled into the deeper darkness of the corner to the left of the window, which was open several inches. He crouched there, knees quivering from weakness.

There followed an interval of almost inaudible prying at the screen, broken by periods of silence as someone outside the second-story window apparently paused to listen. Finally, the screen was released with a faint pop. The lower half of the double-hung window eased upwards.

Again there was silence, save for the distant clatter of the self-service elevator.

Abruptly, a pencil-thin beam of light shot through the room, toward the bed. It focussed on the mound made by the pillow.

Short tongues of flame leaped out three times, with soft, spitting sounds. The pillow and the tangle of blankets twitched realistically.

The beam of light winked out; the screen plopped back into place. There were a few hasty, sliding noises of retreat, and that was all.

John O'Hara Smith's breath came in short, strained gasps, as though he were choked up with asthma. When he got control of himself, he eased back the edge of the drape and looked out the window. It was nearly twenty feet to the ground. A car turned off the boulevard, and came up the side street. The glow of its headlights briefly silhouetted the ladder angled against the side of the hospital.

Dr. Smith sat on the edge of the bed to think things over. His left thumb probed the holes in the blanket and pillow. This seemed to make up his mind.

He got his clothes from the closet and dressed as quickly as he could force his hands to move and co-ordinate. His trousers hung so loosely that the last hole in his belt made no difference. He pulled the belt tight and knotted it.

Next, he carefully folded his sketches and put them in the inside pocket of his coat. As an after-thought, he also put the sleeping pill in his pocket. Then he drank half a glass of water and painfully edged himself out the window. His chest scraped the ledge, and it was all he could do to strangle an out-cry of pain.

At the foot of the ladder, he staggered and nearly fell. But after a moment's rest, he squared his shoulders and walked across a corner of the lawn, into the shadows and the night.

* * * * *

The Los Angeles Mirror-News got further than any other paper with the story of Dr. John O'Hara Smith's mysterious disappearance from General Hospital, leaving behind a bed riddled with three bullets. In fact, the Mirror-News story had cleared the copy desk and was on its way down to the composing room before it was killed by the managing editor "for security reasons".

An all-points police bulletin was sent out, but no one was optimistic about immediate results. When you can't admit a man is missing, when you can't publish his photograph, you deprive yourself of the eyes and ears of the public, which turn up seventy-five percent of the leads in missing persons cases.

Security considerations posed three alternatives:

If Dr. Smith was telling the truth, then it was better to let whoever had twice tried to kill him wonder whether the second attempt had been successful.

If Smith had broken with an espionage ring, and had been marked for death by former associates, the various agencies concerned with security wanted a chance to find him first.

If Smith was playing some devious game of his own, let him make the next move.

As days went by, telephone circuits from Washington to Los Angeles carried messages that grew increasingly uncomplimentary. FBI headquarters hinted that certain field representatives might be transferred from Southern California to southern Kansas if results in the Smith case were not forthcoming promptly. The Air Force suggested that if both Dr. Smith and the X-15 prototype continued to be among the missing, it would not be wise to present the pending promotion of General Sanders to the White House.

The General was moodily digesting this thought, while half-listening to a discussion at a morning staff conference, when an aide whispered:

"A call from the North American Lancaster plant, Sir. It's urgent--and personal...."

General Sanders excused himself and hurried into his adjoining private office.

"Sanders," he barked.

The high, imperious voice that replied was instantly recognizable:

"General Sanders, I suggest you don't try to have this call traced, or we might not be able to finish our conversation!"

The General pressed his intercom button and held the connection open, waiting for a chance to use it.

"Go ahead, Smith," he said.

"I'll come directly to the point," said Smith. "I want two things: A place to work in safety and the funds to build another Eddie!"

"And what makes you think you can get them from me?"

"Because Eddie can help you find the X-15."

The General hunched closer to the intercom, raising his voice.

"Smith," he stalled, "why don't you come in and talk things over?"

"I do not intend to sit around waiting to be killed while your security bunglers try to decide whether I'm telling the truth!"

A Staff Sergeant looked in the door.

"Is anything wrong, Sir?"

The General motioned for silence, then scrawled on a note pad:

"Trace this call!"

"Now, Dr. Smith," he said, "if you're telling us the truth, you've got nothing to worry about...."

"General," Smith replied acidly, "do you know any better way of convincing you than to let Eddie find the X-15?"

"Well, I--"

"Goodbye, General. You think it over--and I'll call you later. Your word will be sufficient!"

The phone clicked, and General Sanders cursed bitterly. Later, he talked it over with Amos Busch, who nodded agreement to the General's proposal.

"Sure," he said. "It's worth a gamble--and we'll have Smith where we want him!"

When John O'Hara Smith phoned that afternoon, the General said promptly:

"Come on in, Dr. Smith--you've got a deal."

The available records on this phase of the case show that a Dr. J. O. Smith and three "assistants" were added to the payroll of a small Pasadena electronics firm on September 17, 1955. They were installed in one wing on the top floor of the building. The entrance to this wing was sealed off with the familiar sign: "Restricted--Permission to enter granted only on a need-to-know basis".

Apparently, few needed to know, for Smith and his assistants seldom had visitors. Deliveries of electronics components were received by one of the assistants. The four men arrived together, and left together. They brought their lunch.

Dr. Smith, of course, had been interrogated briefly when he had turned himself in at USAF Western Division Headquarters. But only the General and Amos Busch had questioned him this time.

"Look, Smith," said Amos, "if we're supposed to protect you, I want to know from what--and why it's necessary...."

John O'Hara Smith looked almost embarrassed.

"I suppose I made the same error that is so often made in declassifying information...."

"How's that?"

"When information is declassified, it's done without mathematically computing the infinite number of possible ways such information may be useful to a hostile government.... Of course, you need an Eddie to make such a computation!"

"What's this got to do with trying to knock you off?" Busch demanded.

"It's quite evident that someone read my article in the Research Engineers' journal more carefully than you did! As a matter of fact, Eddie actually warned me that anyone hostile to the United States could not possibly allow my work to continue!"

Amos Busch and General Sanders exchanged wary glances.

"All right," said General Sanders, "We'll let that go for the moment--but what made you ask about the X-15 in the first place?"

"Eddie suggested that if the ICBM missiles could theoretically be stolen over the mid-Atlantic, it would be vastly less difficult to steal an X-15 over the Mojave Desert!"

As the two Air Force men digested this statement, along with the indisputable fact that an X-15 _had_ disappeared, John O'Hara Smith blandly informed them:

"Incidentally, gentlemen, you'll have to get Eddie's duplicate tapes for me."

Busch reddened, and could not resist asking:

"Including those short-wave broadcasts from Moscow Radio?"

"Naturally!" Dr. Smith snapped. "I'm sure Eddie extracts a great deal of useful information from them!"

This second interrogation, like the previous one in the hospital, ended on a triumphant note for the exasperating Dr. Smith. When they were alone, General Sanders turned to Busch and sighed:

"We've got a double security problem, Amos! If word of this deal with Smith gets back to Washington, I'll be laughed right out of the service!"

But the General didn't begin to grasp the full implications of his predicament until the afternoon of Oct. 7, when Dr. Smith phoned to say Eddie was completed.

"Good," grunted the General. "Get going, then!"

"We'll need more information first."

"What kind of information?" General Sanders demanded suspiciously.

His suspicions were reinforced by Smith's terse dictum:

"Eddie must have all the facts on the X-15."

"Impossible!"

Dr. Smith's sniff indicated he nurtured utter disbelief in the concept of the impossible.

"Eddie operates on facts," he reminded the General.

General Sanders didn't sleep much that night. Neither did Amos Busch. They talked and argued until three in the morning, when the General poured one last drink and raised his glass.

"O.K.," he said grimly. "I've gone this far and I've got to go the rest of the way!"

They drank, and he continued:

"At least, now I won't have to worry about being laughed out of the service--I'll get court-martialed out!"

He jabbed viciously at an ice-cube with his forefinger.

"But there's one thing I'll do first," he promised.

"What's that, Sir?"

"Strangle Smith with my bare hands!"

* * * * *

General Sanders sat on a metal folding chair in front of Eddie, the educatable computer, and stared belligerently at the roughly-finished aluminum facade.

Eddie didn't look like much--certainly nothing like $13,456.12 worth of components paid for out of the General's contingency fund. Speed had been the primary consideration in rebuilding Eddie. The exterior case was unpainted, and rather inexpertly held together with metal screws. There were no knobs on the front panel controls. The vocader grill was open; the input microphone simply rested on the workbench beside the case. The entire assembly measured about three feet long, two feet deep and eighteen inches high.

"O.K., what do I do now?" rasped the General.

"Just start talking--into the mike."

General Sanders took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. He glared at Smith:

"You get the hell out of here! This is classified information!"

Dr. Smith smiled mockingly. On his way out of the room, he paused.

"The circuits will stay open--take as long as you wish."

Feeling like a combination of fool and Benedict Arnold, General Sanders cleared his throat and began to read:

"The North American X-15 is one of several projects now nearing the hardware stage that will take living men as well as instruments into the fourth environment of military activity, that of space.

"As soon as the satellite project completes preliminary exploration of the massive high energy spectrometer, the X-15's system should be ready to fly within two years. X-15s A, B, and C will explore 3000 mph, 50 mi. up; 4500 mph, 100 mi. up; and 6000 mph and over, 150 mi. up and out...."

General Sanders jerked open his tie. His tanned bald head was damp with sweat. He glanced around the empty workroom, set his jaw stubbornly and continued:

"Meanwhile, tests are in progress with a pilot model of X-15 to work out an entirely new vehicle system slow enough to maintain laminar flow in the boundary layer and fast enough to maintain control effectiveness at near sea-level environment. Unlike the ICBM which need only remain lethal for a few seconds, both the X-15 and its personnel must return to fly again...."

For three hours, General Sanders read steadily from his file material. During the last half hour, his voice grew husky, his throat dry and raw.

When he finished, he went to the door and shouted:

"All right, Smith.... Come in here and put this damn thing to work!"

Smith came in and informed him imperturbably:

"Not so fast, General! Eddie will still require a great deal more information."

"More? Dammit, I covered everything!"

"Everything you know about the X-15," Dr. Smith agreed, "but Eddie is now venturing into a new field and must have more than technical electronics and avionics data. He needs complete reports on the progress of the search to date, as well as the weather, topography, economy, history and current happenings in the entire peripheral area. I have built a supplemental circuit to accommodate this sort of material...."

General Sanders groaned.

"How the hell do I get into these things?"

During the next ten days, Eddie scanned microfilm on all the newspapers published since X-15's disappearance. Also marshalled before the scanner was every pertinent reference work available at public, private and university libraries in California.

At length, even John O'Hara Smith seemed satisfied. He shut off the scanner, turned on the selector mechanism and the vocader switch.

For two hours, Eddie did nothing, except hum contentedly, like a miniature washing machine. Occasionally, a weird, flickering pattern of multi-colored lights would trace across the scanning screen.

At 11:06 A.M., October 19, 1955, a flat, toneless voice came from the vocader grill:

"Laminar flow equilibrium temperature at mach 8.0, altitude 150,000 ft., of a point 10 ft. back from the leading edge is 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, assuming skin has 0.85 emissivity."

There was a small, whirring noise, and the vocader circuit clicked off.

"What the devil does that mean?" demanded the General.

"Your aerophysicists might like to know!" came back the tart reply.

At 1:34, Eddie clicked into action again:

"In flight between two planets, the theory of minimum energy orbit should be discarded in favor of acceleration at reduced speed for calculated periods of time."

"By the time we're flying between planets," General Sanders commented bitterly, "the record of my court-martial will be ancient history!"

Twenty minutes later, Eddie added:

"In the operation of small exploration vehicles, the fuel cell of the 4-H Clubs in Hanford and Bitteroot Creek will compete with the chemical energy of recombination for the prize sweet potato trophy."

Even John O'Hara Smith looked startled. But he recovered his aplomb instantly.

"Must be a circuit crossover," he explained. "No trouble to adjust it...."

While he probed into the interior of Eddie with a glass-handled screwdriver, General Sanders took out a fresh cigarette and shredded it between his fingers.

At 2:51, Eddie had this to report:

"Just as the basic physical precept of invariancy to reflection is not necessarily true, Newton's laws of motion may not always apply under certain circumstances. This would make it possible to penetrate and misdirect a navigational system based on the concept of inertial guidance."

General Sanders had been tilted back in his chair, half dozing. He bounced forward with a jar.

"What was that?"

Dr. Smith replayed this portion of the output tape.

"We talked about that at the hospital," he sternly recalled to the General. "And if the long-range missiles fired from Florida can be taken over in flight, what's to prevent their being guided to a submarine at sea?"

The General frowned in deep concentration, then relaxed and shook his head.

"Even if something like that would be possible, we've got nothing to worry about. Every missile carries a device which can be used to destroy it if the missile goes off course."

John O'Hara Smith shook his head like a teacher confronted with a pupil who was not too bright.

"Now, General, if an inertial guidance system can be penetrated, a destructor can be blocked."

"That's a mighty big if," the General shot back.

Dr. Smith smiled sardonically.

"It may not be so big when Eddie tells us what happened to the X-15!"

"When!" the General groaned. Then he came back to the problem of intercepted ICBM missiles. Half seriously, half sarcastically, he asked:

"What does Eddie think we should do about those missiles?"

"Undoubtedly there are other guidance systems that can't be broken so easily ... meanwhile, Eddie suggests booby-trapping the missiles so they'll explode when tampered with."

General Sanders closed his eyes again, and tilted back his chair. The frown between his eyes deepened.

It was six o'clock, and the early dusk was closing in on the workroom, before another statement came from Eddie. In its characteristic monotone, the educatable computer said:

"The existing developmental missile program will not be affected by the rising divorce rate in Bakersfield and Kern County."

Dr. John O'Hara Smith pursed his lips in disapproval.

"Eddie's not behaving at all well! I'm afraid that new circuit relay will take some working over...."

General Sanders climbed slowly to his feet. He picked up his hat.

"O.K., Smith," he said, "You sold me a bill of goods, and I bought it! Now I'm turning you and this whole damn mess back to the FBI! Let Cowles go crazy for awhile!"

* * * * *

As Frank Cowles sat in the General's office and heard what had been going on, he said mildly:

"Well, I guess you had to take the gamble."

"Thanks," said General Sanders. "I hope the Pentagon will look at it the same way--but I doubt it!"

"We've got a problem, too, General," Cowles pointed out. "When everything's said and done, there's absolutely no charge we can file against Smith."

"But he just can't walk away--not with all he--or that miserable Eddie--knows about the X-15!"

Cowles smiled faintly.

"I would imagine that Eddie now belongs to the Air Force."

"We'll break the damn thing up for scrap!"

The General's intercom buzzed. An aide's voice said apologetically:

"That Dr. Smith is calling you again, Sir."

"Tell him to go to hell!"

A few seconds later, the intercom buzzed again.

"Dr. Smith on the line, Sir--He says it's something about the X-15 missile."

General Sanders looked as though he wanted to sweep the intercom off his desk.

"Why not talk to him," Cowles suggested. "I'd like to hear this."

The General picked up his phone, and said with deceptive calm:

"All right, Smith ... make it short."

"It was the logging truck," Dr. Smith replied, in his most superior manner.

"Huh?"

"Eddie's circuit is coordinated now. He says that the same afternoon the X-15 disappeared, a passenger car ran into the back of a logging truck northbound on Highway 395, about fifty miles from the Lancaster base. Two people were killed...."

"Smith, what kind of pipedream are you peddling now?"

"General, the truck was loaded with redwood logs and heading north!"

"I don't give a damn where it was going!"

"Wait, General!" Dr. Smith's tone was almost a command. "Eddie wants to know why a logging truck was traveling _toward_ the redwood country with a load of logs. He also points out that the X-15 is about the size of a redwood log, and could be concealed perfectly in the middle of a load!"

The General seemed to be swallowing something angular and unpleasant.

"We'll check that truck," he said, at last. "But remember, Smith, you've had it--you'll never hook me again!"

He put down the phone, and said to Cowles:

"You get on the merry-go-round this time!"

* * * * *

The California Highway Patrol in Mojave had the report on the accident. Clearly, it had been the fault of the passenger car. The truck driver was identified in the report as Art Backus, an independent hauler, working out of Eureka, located on the far northern tip of the California coast, about eight hundred miles from the scene of the accident.

A routine check by the FBI disclosed that Backus had done time in San Quentin on a morals charge involving a minor girl. He had driven trucks for a dozen lumber companies in northwest California until the past summer, when he had bought a new truck and trailer, for cash, and gone into business for himself.

Two FBI agents stepped up to him in a roadside cafe on Highway 1, between Eureka and Trinidad Bay. A gaunt, stooped man, he nearly collapsed when the agents showed him their identifications. He was broken, and ready to talk, even before mention was made of the fact that the penalty for peace-time espionage is death.

Backus guided the FBI to an abandoned sawmill, some two miles inland, where the X-15 had been taken apart, minutely photographed, and then sunk in the old log pond.

The men who had hired Backus and dismantled the X-15 had left the area several weeks earlier. They were remembered with friendliness by the residents of Trinidad Bay, who described them as "real nice guys and good fishermen, too." They had told Backus they would be back in the late autumn for the steelhead run, and perhaps would have some more hauling business for him at that time.

The FBI offered Backus one chance for life. He accepted it, with abject eagerness.

* * * * *

Beyond this point, there are no more available records on the case of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, and Eddie, the educatable computer. But several items, not apparently related in any way, make interesting speculation.

On January 3, 1956, the Air Force reported that a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, launched from Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, had been destroyed when it appeared to be wandering off course.

About the same date, a Panamanian freighter, riding the gulf-stream toward the West Indies, radioed a report of sighting a massive oil slick and a scattering of debris, some of it bearing Russian insignia. No survivors were found.

The U.S. State Department solicitously inquired of the Soviet Union if any of its vessels had been lost in the winter storms of the Caribbean. The Soviet Union testily replied that no Soviet vessels could have been lost, since Soviet vessels, as a matter of sound international principle, confined their operations to their own territorial waters.

During Easter Week of 1956, the FBI announced the arrests of four men on charges of espionage: A druggist in Tucson, Arizona; an importer in San Francisco; a retired real-estate operator in Los Angeles; an obscure trucker in northern California. All pleaded guilty in order to escape the gas chamber. The details of the charges against them were not disclosed, except to members of a Federal Grand Jury.

Two other published items are worth noting:

The May, 1956, issue of the journal published by the Institute of Research Engineers reported that one of its members, Dr. J. O. Smith, had recovered from injuries suffered in the explosion of a butane stove and had accepted a government research position in Washington, D.C.

The other item was a paragraph in Aviation Weekly, congratulating Major General David William Sanders on his promotion to Brigadier General.