PAGE 8
By Proxy
by
Bill Rodriguez stopped the car, got out, and walked over to the gate. He pressed a button in one of the metal gateposts and said, “Ed? This’s Bill. I got Mr. Skinner and that New York reporter with me.”
After a slight pause, there was a metallic click, and the gate swung open. Rodriguez came back to the car, got in, and drove on through the gate. Elshawe twisted his head to watch the big gate swing shut behind them.
After another ten minutes, Rodriguez swung off the road onto another side road, and ten minutes after that the station wagon went over a small rise and headed down into a small valley. In the middle of it, shining like bright aluminum in the sun, was a vessel.
Now I know Porter is nuts, Elshawe thought wryly.
Because the vessel, whatever it was, was parallel to the ground, looking like the fuselage of a stratojet, minus wings and tail, sitting on its landing gear. Nowhere was there any sign of a launching pad, with its gantries and cranes and jet baffles. Nor was there any sign of a rocket motor on the vessel itself.
As the station wagon approached the cluster of buildings a hundred yards this side of the machine, Elshawe realized with shock that the thing was a stripped-down stratojet–an old Grumman Supernova, circa 1970.
“Well, Elijah got there by sitting in an iron chair and throwing a magnet out in front of himself,” Elshawe said, “so what the hell.”
“What?” Rodriguez asked blankly.
“Nothing; just thinking out loud. Sorry.”
Behind Elshawe, Mr. Skinner chuckled softly, but said nothing.
When the station wagon pulled up next to one of the cluster of white prefab buildings, Malcom Porter himself stepped out of the wide door and walked toward them.
Elshawe recognized the man from his pictures–tall, wide-shouldered, dark-haired, and almost handsome, he didn’t look much like a wild-eyed crackpot. He greeted Rodriguez and Skinner rather peremptorily, but he smiled broadly and held out his hand to Elshawe.
“Mr. Elshawe? I’m Malcom Porter.” His grip was firm and friendly. “I’m glad to see you. Glad you could make it.”
“Glad to be here, Dr. Porter,” Elshawe said in his best manner. “It’s quite a privilege.” He knew that Porter liked to be called “Doctor”; all his subordinates called him that.
But, surprisingly, Porter said: “Not ‘Doctor,’ Mr. Elshawe; just ‘Mister.’ My boys like to call me ‘Doctor,’ but it’s sort of a nickname. I don’t have a degree, and I don’t claim one. I don’t want the public thinking I’m claiming to be something I’m not.”
“I understand, Mr. Porter.”
Bill Rodriguez’s voice broke in. “Where do you want me to put all this stuff, Doc?” He had unloaded Elshawe’s baggage from the station wagon and set it carefully on the ground. Skinner picked up his single suitcase and looked at Porter inquiringly.
“My usual room, Malcom?”
“Yeah. Sure, Sam; sure.” As Skinner walked off toward one of the other buildings, Porter said: “Quite a load of baggage you have there, Mr. Elshawe. Recording equipment?”
“Most of it,” the reporter admitted. “Recording TV cameras, 16mm movie cameras, tape recorders, 35mm still cameras–the works. I wanted to get good coverage, and if you’ve got any men that you won’t be using during the take-off, I’d like to borrow them to help me operate this stuff.”
“Certainly; certainly. Come on, Bill, let’s get this stuff over to Mr. Elshawe’s suite.”
* * * * *
The suite consisted of three rooms, all very nicely appointed for a place as far out in the wilderness as this. When Elshawe got his equipment stowed away, Porter invited him to come out and take a look at his pride and joy.
“The first real spaceship, Elshawe,” he said energetically. “The first real spaceship. The rocket is no more a spaceship than a rowboat is an ocean-going vessel.” He gestured toward the sleek, shining, metal ship. “Of course, it’s only a pilot model, you might say. I don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend; I had to make do with what I could afford. That’s an old Grumman Supernova stratojet. I got it fairly cheap because I told ’em I didn’t want the engines or the wings or the tail assembly.