CHAPTER SEVEN

Barker came into the laboratory the next day with his eyes red-rimmed. His hands shook as he got into his undersuits.

Hawks walked up to him. "Are you sure you're all right? If you're not feeling well, we can cancel until tomorrow."

Barker said: "Just stop worrying about me."

Hawks put his hands in his pockets. "Well. Have you been to see the navigating specialists?"

Barker nodded.

"Were you able to give them a clear account of yesterday's results?"

"They acted happy. Why don't you wait until they get it digested and put the reports on your desk? What does it matter to you what I find up there? All I'm doing is blazing a trail so your smart technicians won't trip over anything when they go up to there to take it apart, right? So what's it to you, unless you lose me and have to go find a new boy, right? So why don't you just leave me alone? I'm here to do something. I intend to do it. It's all I want to do, right now. All right?"

Hawks nodded. "All right, Barker. I hope it doesn't take too long to do."

That day, the elapsed time Barker was able to survive within the formation was raised to four minutes, thirty-eight seconds.

On the day that the elapsed time was brought up to six minutes, twelve seconds, Hawks was in his office, tracing his fingertip down the crumpled chart, when his desk telephone rang.

He glanced at it with a flicker of his eyes, hunched his shoulders, and continued with what he was doing. His fingertip moved along the uncertain blue line, twisting between the shaded red areas, each marked with its instruction and relative time bearing, each bordered by its drift of black x's, as if the chart represented a diagram of a prehistoric beach, where one stumbling organism had marked its labored trail up upon the littered sand, between the long rows of drying kelp and other flotsam which now lay stranded under the lowering sky. He stared down raptly at the chart, his lips moving, then closed his eyes, frowned, and repeated bearings and instructions, opening his eyes and leaning forward again.

The telephone rang once more, softly but without stopping. He tightened his hand into a momentary fist, then pushed the chart aside and took the handset off its cradle. "Yes, Vivian," he said.

He listened, and finally said: "All right. Let him come in."

Hawks looked up curiously from behind his desk as Connington walked slowly across the office. "Wanted to talk to you," he mumbled as he sat down. "It seemed as if I ought to." His eyes searched restlessly back and forth.

"Why?" Hawks asked.

"Well—I don't know, exactly. Except that it wouldn't feel right, just sort of letting it drop. There's—I don't know, exactly, what you'd call it, but there's a pattern to life . . . ought to be a pattern, anyhow; a beginning, a middle, and an end. Chapters, or something. I mean, there's got to be a pattern, or how could you control things?"

"I can see that it might be necessary to believe that," Hawks said patiently.

"You still don't give an inch, do you?" Connington said.

Hawks said nothing, and Connington waited a moment, then let the matter drop. "Anyhow," he said, "I wanted you to know I was leaving."

Hawks sat back in his chair and looked at him expressionlessly. "Where are you going?"

Connington gestured vaguely. "East. I'll find a job there, I guess."

"Is Claire going with you?"

Connington nodded, his eyes on the floor. "Yes, she is." He looked up and smiled desperately. "It's a funny way to have it end up, isn't it?"

"Exactly the way you planned it," Hawks pointed out. "All but the part about eventually becoming company president."

Connington's expression set into a defiant grin. "Oh, I didn't really figure it was as sure a thing as that. I just wanted to see what happened when I put some salt on your tail." He stood up quickly. "Well, I guess that's that. I just wanted to let you know how it all came out in the end."

"Well, no," Hawks said. "Barker and I are still not finished."

"I am," Connington said defiantly. "I've got my part of it. Whatever happens from now on doesn't have anything to do with me."

"Then you're the winner of the contest."

"Sure," Connington said.

"And that's what it always is. A contest. And then a winner emerges, and that's the end of that part of everyone's life. All right. Goodbye, Connington."

"Goodbye, Hawks." He turned away, and hesitated. He looked back over his shoulder. "I guess that was all I wanted to say. I could have done it with a note or a phone call." He shook his head, puzzled, and looked to Hawks as if for an answer to a question he was asking himself. "I didn't have to do it at all."

Hawks said gently: "You just wanted to make sure I knew who the winner was, Connington. That's all."

"I guess," Connington said unsurely, and walked out slowly.

The next day, when the elapsed time was up to six minutes, thirty-nine seconds, Hawks came into the laboratory and said to Barker: "I understand you're moving into the city, here."

"Who told you?"

"Winchell." Hawks looked carefully at Barker. "The new personnel director."

Barker grunted. "Connington's gone East, someplace." He looked up with a puzzled expression on his face. "He and Claire came out to get her stuff yesterday, while I was here. They smashed all those windows looking from the living room out on the lawn. I'll have to have them all replaced before I can put the place up for sale. I never thought he was like that."

"I wish you'd keep the house. I envy you it."

"That's none of your business, Hawks."

Nevertheless, the elapsed time had been brought up to six minutes, thirty-nine seconds.

The day the elapsed time reached nine minutes, thirty seconds, Hawks said to Barker:

"I'm worried. If your elapsed time grows much longer, the contact between M and L will become too fragile. The navigating team tells me your reports are growing measurably less coherent."

"Let 'em try going up there, then. See how much sense they can make out of it." Barker licked his lips. His eyes were hollow.

"That's not the point."

"I know what the point is. There's another point. You can stop worrying. I'm almost out the other side."

"They didn't tell me that," Hawks said sharply.

"They don't know. But I've got a feeling."

"A feeling."

"Doctor, all that chart shows is what I tell it after I've done a day's work. It has no beginning and no end, except when I put one there. Tomorrow, I put the end to it." He looked around the laboratory, his face bitter. "All this plumbing, Doctor, and in the end it comes down to all revolving around one man." He looked at Hawks. "One man and what's in his mind. Or maybe two of us. I don't know. What's in your mind, Hawks?"

Hawks looked at Barker. "I don't pry into your mind, Barker. Don't set foot in mine. I have a telephone call to make."

He walked away across the laboratory, and dialed an outside number. He waited for the answer, and as he waited, he stared without focussing at the blank wall. Suddenly he moved in a spasm of action and smashed the flat of his free hand violently against it. Then the buzz in the earpiece stopped with a click, and he said eagerly:

"Hello? Elizabeth? This-this is Ed. Listen-Elizabeth-oh, I'm all right. Busy. Listen—are you free tonight? It's just that I've never taken you to dinner, or dancing, or anything. . . . Will you? I—" He smiled at the wall. "Thank you." He hung up the telephone and walked away. He looked back over his shoulder, and saw that Barker had been watching him, and he started self-consciously.