The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 15

The communicator buzzed, and clicked off with no comment. Below, the computer continued its complicated path through the data.

Five correlations were noted on the program’s first pass. One, every puzzle of any interest was signed “Avery D. Porpoise” as originator. Two, all these puzzles were cast in roughly the same format. 3, 4, and 5 were definitions common to many puzzles: A third of the puzzles asked the question “Who was Peer Gynt’s mother?” and a third each included the definitions “A Legume” and “A Celebes Ox.” The system suspended operations on the newspaper files and worked on other programs while the Crypto team prepared a magna-chip of instructions to follow up all but item number two.

“Everybody knows that crosswords come in pretty much the same pattern ,” said the blonde. “It’s a lot harder to make them up if your pattern is wandering all over the place.”

“Computers don’t ordinarily waste time solving crosswords,” Dean answered. “It’s fine for you to know that this Porpoise is only playing the game by all the rules of puzzle-makers, but that machine downstairs can’t tell the difference in importance between that correlation and the one that tells us that Porpoise is our man “

The second run found another two correlations in the selected puzzles: There was a number or a figure in the solutions of every puzzle signed Avery Porpoise, and the words “Buy,”

“Sell” or “Short” were also constants; every puzzle contained one of the three words.

Output was selected, and ten pages of data rattled off the remote line printer like machine gun fire. The printout was sealed in a flat case, and the redhead carried it personally upstairs to the office where a dozen people were working on the information Napoleon and Illya had gathered during the day. When the dates and numbers were added to the information, a wave of relief passed through the room.

The list of names compiled from buying and selling records broke into three groups, their purchases matching the dates of the puzzles tightly. Quick glances at the prices checked out the clue that had put Illya on the track: when a Porpoise puzzle appeared, at least one third of the investors found their key definition in it, and solved the puzzle. Their instructions were there, and the actual point of transaction was spelled out as a number from zero to seven in a block whose number was the dollars part of each deal. 1 By the time Illya pulled out of the Tunnel, Waverly could tell him his hunch had paid off.

Chapter 7

“This hairbreadth stuff has got to stop.”

Napoleon watched the spacelock close until Arnold and his sick smile were completely shut from sight. Sadists like that make me wish I could transfer to a job with a friendly atmosphere, like cab-driving. He sure gets a kick out of locking people up and flexing his death-traps. Never inclined to take the enemy’s advice, Napoleon decided to see for himself, despite the knives, just how deadly the Space Maze could be.

He started from the spacelock-door in a crouch and made a running leap, clearing the next room and its sliding trapdoor completely. The next alcove was walled with glass and steel, mirrors reflecting mirrors with a hundred Napoleon Solo forms poised on all sides of him, hair disarrayed and every muscle ready to bounce when the next trap was sprung.

Two openings seemed to lead from the little room when he screwed up his vision to eliminate false doors in the reflections. He reached a hand towards one, carefully feeling his way. His fingers brushed glass where there should have been air, and he jerked back in pain. The glass was like fire.

The whole room was heating up, he realized. Not the muggy, drowning heat of the swimming-pool room where Porpoise lolled in ugly luxury, but a dry, baking heat that was less obvious. His skin prickled, and the fine hairs in his ears and nostrils seemed to vibrate. At the edges of his hearing he sensed a roar, a whining buzz, sounds that he couldn’t focus on or really be certain he even heard. He began to sweat. The heat in the center of the room was becoming unbearable, but near the walls there was nearly as much of it, a great physical thing that ground sweat and salt out of him.

Great globes of liquid formed on his hands and arms and brow, and as the heat increased they drew into smaller globes, finally drying on him even as his system pumped more water out. Under his clothes he felt like a walking swamp.

Fire coursed down his leg and sprinkled jingling across the, floor. The coins Apis had left him had literally burned a hole in his pocket and rolled away. Several rolled through the other opening he had been about to follow, bouncing from mirror to mirror. The entire next room suddenly disappeared in a shower of exploding glass as one of the coins rolled against a wall. Tiny fragments of the stuff passed Napoleon, others cut small gashes in his clothing. By some quirk, none actually cut his flesh.

“Those teeth are pulled,” he murmured, staring in awe at the debacle just next door. If he’d gotten into that room before his pocket change had, he might have brushed the exploding mirror as lightly as he’d touched one in the sweat-bath room.

He reached for one of his coins, thinking to use an advance scout again, but fumbled it as his fingers were seared. “Oh well. I didn’t really want to get through here the easy way anyhow,” he whispered as he sucked the injured fingers. He was very careful not to touch anything as he peered carefully through the door to the next room, and found himself looking down a glowing walkway in darkness. There were planets and stars reflected from floor, walls and ceiling.

Napoleon carefully placed a foot on the walkway, and-shock! Current shot up through his leg to arc from his fingers and hair in a pyrotechnical display of high voltage. Against his will one hand clutched the doorway, and a path opened for the current-up his right leg, through the trunk, down his left arm and out the hand. Somehow he kept his head clear, but he knew that a very few moments of this would burst his heart.

He put his whole soul into the only muscles he had that could save him. Writhing out of control in two-thirds of his body, he still had control over his left leg. Quickly, he made the left knee unlock and collapse, until his weight brought him down on the right. He kicked out, swinging his body off balance, and fell backwards onto the field of glass shards. He lay there twitching in reaction to the electricity, and forced new air into his screamed-dry lungs.

Somewhat shakily, he got up from the broken glass and faced the dark pathway again. He squatted into a set of kneebends to bring back coordination in the electrocuted muscles, breathed deeply, and brushed himself clean of glass.

“You’ll have to go back and start it over again, Solo,” said Arnold’s voice from above. A steel door slammed down, cutting off all access to the deadly walkway. Napoleon sat down to stare at it, to wait for Arnold to raise it again or to try to figure out a way through or around it. There was nothing visible forward, but he knew what faced him back in the Space Ship Room if he didn’t give this maze his all.

“Didn’t you understand me?” asked his unseen jailor. “You are to go back to your starting place now. Here’s something to convince you.” The persuader was a set of openings in the ceiling that boiled out a fine brownish mist. It almost had to be chlorine, and that wasn’t something he wanted to stay and find out about for sure. He stepped back into the furnace room, hoping it had cooked a bit since he had last been through.

The heat fooled him at first as he moved to the center of the room. The air was only mildly warm, and he wondered if the beams had turned off. Just a half-pause in the center cured him of that idea-as he became the focus for the ultrasonic blasts, he was forced against the still scorching walls, finding the mirrors hotter than they had been before. He sidled around the room, his only chance to remain uncooked being a hasty retreat to the Space Ship Room. The heat was draining him of strength and body fluid as sweat dried all over him, continually being sucked from his system.