Ten hours after its arrival, the object just sat there. True, the team of scientists (which had now grown to seventeen) found the manner of its sitting there very impressive.
Harkness, who had just arrived, did not. You'd have thought that this bunch of supposedly high-powered scientists could have come up with something better. That black pyramid wouldn't fool anyone with common sense, least of all him.
Harkness' lip curled. What fools these so-called scientific experts always turned out to be. Fancy being suckered by what was an obvious hoax. The thing didn't even do anything. Well, their asses would flame out, when the "UFO" proved to be a fake.
Harkness turned to study his prey: Professor Tremelo. One of Harkness' assistants was busy with background security checks right now. Harkness didn't like Tremelo's attitude. Not one damn bit.
He decided to turn on the pressure. But first—
He turned to the Chicago police officer who had attached himself to Harkness' group. A classical ass-kisser by the name of Lieutenant John Salinas. Harkness recognized the type perfectly.
"John, I can't abide this crap." He waggled the packet of powdered creamer and tossed it into a nearby wastebasket. "See if you can find me some real cream somewhere, would you? I can't think clearly with my mouth tasting like mud."
It was a staged performance—Tom Harkness would have cheerfully stirred turpentine into his coffee if that was the preference of his own superiors—but it helped to establish control. Nodding eagerly, Salinas took off at a half trot.
Harkness turned to the swarming scientists, fiddling with their electronic toys. "Tremelo!" he said loudly. "Come over here. We need to talk." The tone said that it wasn't going to be a nice talk.
Those who knew Miggy Tremelo well would have been running for cover. Academics are easygoing about titles—among their peers. Chairs of departments are small tin gods within their own firmament. And generally speaking they stick within that firmament, believing all else to be of lesser virtue. This former head of High Energy Physics, otherwise known as HEP, was one step worse. He was a big platinum god. As a consultant for certain very secret Department of Defense projects at Nellis proving grounds, he was a big platinum god with the Pentagon too. As it happened, he had a higher security clearance than Tom Harkness. And he was totally unused to a lack of respect.
"That's Professor Tremelo to you, whatever-your-name-is." The professor didn't let the fact that his pajama jacket was sticking out of the top of his lab coat stop him from giving the NSC representative a glare that had withered many a bumptious colleague.
It nearly made Harkness' piggy little eyes pop out of their sockets. "Now see here, Tremelo! You don't take that tone with me . . . "
Lieutenant Salinas was returning to the scene, triumphantly carrying packets of real creamer he'd found in a refrigerator in an adjoining lab, when he heard Professor Tremelo erupt like a volcano. Salinas was still an entire corridor's length away, but the verbal imitation of Mount St. Helens stopped him in his tracks. The tall gray-haired physicist had one of those piercing voices which, when raised in anger, can carry for an incredible distance.
"God grant me patience, you mindless idiot! What do you mean—A FAKE? If I ever had a student as stupid as you, Harkness, I'd flunk them all the way back to the second grade. No substance absorbs all energy. That material is harder than diamond, it absorbs laser with no effect, it—"
The violet discharge from the apex of the pyramid cut the diatribe short. Tom Harkness got his wish. The device had finally done something. It made Harkness disappear.
Professor Tremelo found himself leaning over empty air.
Lieutenant Salinas would have described the next few seconds as being full of screaming and running, if he hadn't been too busy to notice. He was busy both screaming and running. Well, nearly everybody was. He found out later that one of the remaining FBI agents stood his ground emptying nine-millimeter rounds ineffectually at the pyramid before fleeing. The rest of them didn't waste that much time.
Three of the NSC team had vanished, including Tom Harkness. Two of the six FBI agents had disappeared too. So had one of the scientists . . . as abruptly as a promised Christmas bonus.
It was just as well that all the survivors ran like hell. A few seconds later the pyramid expanded once again. It didn't just topple bookcases, it sent entire stacks sailing like so many missiles.
Miggy Tremelo knew that slowing down to look back was plain foolishness. But he had to. Therefore he saw the ceiling above the pyramid shatter explosively as the object trebled in size and drove right through it.
"RUUUUN!" he yelled.
That bellow saved a good many lives.
The floor did not succeed in resisting the pyramid's sudden expansion either. When the debris finally stopped falling, the black pyramid was now resting on the ground floor. It emerged from the cloud of dust, amid the tumult of falling masonry. Oddly, no dust clung to the sides of the pyramid. It gleamed as slick as new-cut metal. An academic confetti of thousands of volumes fluttered gently down amid the bedlam of crashing shelving and shouting people.
When it was all over, the interior of the library's west wing was a gutted ruin.
In his visiting professor's office on the Oriental Institute's third floor, Jerry Lukacs was supremely unaware of all this. Actually, in his ardent pursuit of the genii-sphinx linkage in the disparate mythologies of the Near East, Jerry was as near to being absent from this world as you can be—outside of a coma or death.
In the air handler room two floors below, Lamont Jackson was now enjoying some Coltrane. His only concern was whether he could reasonably milk the job long enough to spend the whole day at the Institute. It was a cheerful sort of concern. Lamont's skill at overstating the difficulties of a job was not much less than his skill at the actual repair work itself.
No sweat, he told himself. Think I'll play Thelonious Monk next.
In her office, less than two blocks away, Liz De Beer finally began shaking off her sorrow. Yesterday was yesterday, she reminded herself firmly, and today is today. Besides, she had work to do.