Servomotors Missing
Rick and Scotty took time to shower and change, then left on their prearranged errands. Scotty headed for his own department, to check all travel to the north since the Orion firing. Rick set out to find John Gordon.
The Spindrift scientist was not in his office, nor could Rick find him around the base. Finally he took the jeep and headed for the firing area.
There was considerable activity down on the lake bed. At a pad close to the blockhouse a tower was under construction. That was the launching tower for Cetus. But of even more personal interest to Rick was the presence of a gantry crane at a third firing pad where one of the special rocket-transport trucks was just putting the first stage of Pegasus into place!
It was at the Pegasus pad that he found Gordon, in conversation with Gee-Gee Gould, Dick Earle, Frank Miller, Cliff Damon, head of the instrumentation section, and Lars Jannsson, head of the Pegasus propulsion section.
"We'll start security immediately," Gordon was saying as Rick walked up. "Tom Preston will arrange for a guard around the clock. We'll also arrange an exchange-badge system, so no one gets inside the fence without handing in his own badge and getting a special one. That way, we'll have absolute control on who comes and goes."
Gee-Gee Gould saw Rick and dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Rick and I will do the final electronics check, just as we did on Orion."
Rick looked at Gordon. "Did you say something about a fence, sir?"
"I did. Look over there." Gordon pointed to a crew with a mechanical posthole digger that was just starting work, then gestured to sticks with red flags that formed a huge box around the pad. "That's where the fence will go. And there will be only one gate."
Rick took advantage of the brief exchange with Gordon to wink at the scientist. Gordon picked up the cue quickly. "Can I ride back to the base with you? I rode down with Dick, but he's not ready to leave yet."
"Glad to have you, sir," Rick replied.
On the way back to the base Rick told his story in detail, starting with Scotty's and his own first suspicions about Mac and Pancho and ending with their rescue by Deadrock Ogg.
John Gordon remained silent for long minutes after Rick had finished. Finally he said, "You've certainly stirred up something, Rick, but I don't know how it fits into the over-all pattern. You and Scotty meet me in thirty minutes in my quarters and we'll see."
Rick dropped the scientist off at his office, then went to find Scotty. His pal was just emerging from the big maintenance shed. "Anything new?" Rick greeted him.
"Mac and Pancho took their truck out last night," Scotty reported. "The timing was right. They could have been driving the second vehicle that arrived while we were getting loose in the jail."
Rick looked at him curiously. "Funny. Why would they take a truck out? I mean, what legitimate reason could they have?"
"They made one. Mac told the dispatcher they'd left an important piece of gear at Careless Mesa."
So their hunch about Mac and Pancho had been right! But Rick still couldn't figure out how they were involved.
"How did you find out?" he asked.
"Easy. I checked the board. The dispatcher was sitting right there, so I just kind of wondered aloud what a tracking team would be doing off the base at night. He's a talkative sort, anyway, so he just handed me the dope."
Exactly twenty minutes later Rick and Scotty walked through the door into the barracks in which John Gordon had his quarters. They hadn't been inside before, although they had taken the precaution of locating it in advance. It wasn't like their barracks. Instead, it was divided into a series of individual rooms, occupied by the chief executives of the base.
Gordon was waiting, and with him was Colonel Tom Preston. Preston shook hands with them.
"Apparently John was right," he greeted them. "You two do have a knack of sniffing things out."
Rick looked at the thin partition. "Is it okay to talk here?"
"It is now. I've checked. The occupants of nearby rooms are out. We'll be able to hear if anyone comes in."
Rick immediately launched into a recital of their activities since arriving in Las Vegas. Now and then Scotty elaborated. A few times Preston interrupted to ask for clarification on a point or two.
"Good," he said when they had finished. "I'll see that Deadrock gets his parts back."
"Who is Deadrock Ogg?" Scotty asked.
Preston smiled. "Quite a character, isn't he? Normally he's a Forest Ranger. At the moment he's on loan to me, serving as my outside security officer. He did a good piece of work, getting that license number. We'll hand it to the FBI bureau in Las Vegas and they'll take it from there."
"He must have had advance information, to be at the right spot to get it," Rick observed.
"No more than you had," Preston told him. "We reached the same conclusion that you and Luis Hermosa did, about how stolen goods could get off the base. We've been watching from the inside, and Deadrock has been watching at the Steamboat end."
"Then you already knew about Mac and Pancho leaving last night," Scotty stated.
"Yes. But we really don't know any more than you two have found out. We're no closer to finding out who sabotaged the rockets—or who stole the transistors and the servomotors."
"What?" the boys exclaimed in unison.
Tom Preston's eyebrows went up. "You haven't heard? But of course you haven't, because you weren't here when we finished inventory. We're missing ninety thousand dollars' worth of servomotors."
"Suffering spacefish!" Rick groaned.
Scotty asked quickly, "When did it happen?"
"During the Orion shoot. Project Cetus had drawn servos the day before, and they were on the shelves then."
"The stock clerks . . ." Rick began.
"Ran out to see Orion," Colonel Preston finished. "They've gone out to see every shoot since the first one. But all of them swear no unauthorized personnel got into the warehouses. Of course they can't be sure, because none of them kept eyes on the doors."
"Could any of the clerks be in on the thefts?" Scotty asked.
"If so, we have no evidence of it. But we have so little evidence it doesn't count for much anyway. Of course we have some ideas, and I suppose you do, too."
Rick and Scotty nodded.
Preston continued, "The thing that's clear to us is that there isn't just an Earthman. There's a gang. Someone sabotages the rockets. Someone else steals the stuff from the warehouse. Someone else—and it looks like Mac and Pancho—takes the stuff to Careless Mesa, or Steamboat, or both. And someone else—the gang that captured you—gets it at Steamboat and takes it to Vegas. Then, I suppose, still another man or group gets rid of it through trade channels."
John Gordon had been listening without comment. Now he spoke up. "The pattern seems to indicate sabotage, in order to create a diversion for thieves. I can't buy it."
The boys and Preston waited for his reason.
"The thefts are peanuts. Oh, not in terms of ordinary thefts. But it doesn't seem reasonable that anyone, no matter how greedy or crooked, would destroy ten million dollars' worth of rocket to steal goods only a tiny fraction of that in value."
Gordon's comments were an echo of what Rick had thought when the theft of transistors first came to light. He simply couldn't believe theft was the only reason. He had also rejected theft as a means of hampering operations. While loss of parts was a nuisance, it wasn't crippling.
"Then the Earthman—I mean the Earthman who sabotages the rockets—has to be a part of the technical staff," Rick said.
Gordon and Preston nodded. "Because only the project people have ready access to the rockets," Gordon agreed. "Have you found out anything suspicious about any of them, Tom?"
Preston shook his head. "I've studied their security background investigations until I'm half blind. There isn't a thing that has even a remote connection."
Gordon added, "Maybe finding the actual saboteur is the toughest part, but there are some things about the thefts that aren't clear to me. For instance, how did Deadrock Ogg know the car would be traveling without lights? He told the boys how he planted himself at the Pahrump Valley turnoff because the sedan would have to turn on lights there. How did he know?"
Rick had figured that part out. "At night, car lights can be seen for miles. The last thing in the world the thieves would want would be to attract attention to Steamboat. The only way to be sure would be to travel without lights. Turning them on during the run through the twisting roads into the valley wouldn't be too much of a risk, because the road can't be seen for long distances there."
Scotty asked, "But why did the men handle us so gently last night? They didn't rough us up, especially. And one of them said we could get loose."
"You didn't see them, did you?" Preston countered. "It was too dark. So there was no danger of your identifying them. Why add murder or mayhem to the list of charges when you gain nothing?"
John Gordon stirred restlessly. "We'd better end this meeting. If the boys are associated with us, and especially with you, Tom, it will mean an end to their usefulness."
"You're right, John." Preston looked at the boys. "The biggest value you have is as free agents. I won't try to keep you posted on all my activities. And don't bother trying to contact me, or John, about what you're doing. It's too dangerous—unless you turn up a definite lead. Meanwhile, go on as you have been. I'd say you were doing fine. Just be careful. These men may have been gentle last night when they had nothing to lose, but that doesn't mean it's a way of life with them. Now scoot. And try not to be seen leaving."
The boys shook hands and started out, but Rick paused at the door and said something that had been on his mind since the Orion disaster.
"There's one thing. Let's hope that when the Earthman finally trips up, it won't be in front of everybody, especially after a shoot that he's just sabotaged. Otherwise, we'll never get a chance to question him. He'll be dead—lynched on the spot by the rocketeers!"