“The crash itself is suspicious, sir.” Police Chief Dunbar told the DSC officer. “The craft’s safety protocols were bypassed and it appears to have been piloted directly into the bluff face.”
Eric Wallace, part of the Domestic Security Corps, was called in to investigate because of the sensitive nature of Whitney’s work. The tall DSC man strode towards the edge of the bluff. He wore a white panama, a blue chalk stripe double-breasted with wide lapels that only gave a hint of a tie beneath its knot, and a white carnation. He removed his hat as he looked over and wiped sweat from his brow.
“Is the scene preserved?”
Chief Dunbar gave a nod.
Walking over to the investigators, he strapped into one of their climbing harnesses and with a quick “on-belay” he was over the edge.
The crash was some twenty feet from the top of the bluff; the rushing Missouri was another thirty feet below that. The government man found himself face to face with the mysterious Dr. Ambrose Whitney. The restraint system had deployed, and the suspended body should have received no harm.
His face was frozen in a look of wonder. There was a red glow to his cheeks, and his agape mouth turned up at the corners. The restraint system had stopped a single tear rolling down his cheek. Over his eyes were goggles—round dark-lenses sheathed in a brown leather shield.
Wallace was the first to deactivate the restraint system releasing all the evidence to laws of thermodynamics. Before deactivation, the computer in his carnation recorded the crash data and position of all the evidence in a three-dimensional rendering. Dr. Whitney’s body slumped forward when it was released from stasis.
Wallace quickly felt for a pulse. The Doctor’s heart, when stasis was deactivated, raced for a few seconds before stopping suddenly. He was dead.
****
Wallace put his panama on the hat tree in the corner of the office and sauntered to the banker’s box filled with contents of Whitney’s car. They went over mag-craft with a fine-toothed comb, no sign of mechanical failure. In fact the craft’s computer pointed to deliberate action on the part of Dr. Whitney. All the same they sent the craft to the manufacture for diagnostic.
Wallace riffled through the box, he found an empty coffee cup, smelling it he determined it was a cappuccino, dry, double. There was a gum wrapper.
“Probably chewed it after the coffee,” his young partner Ella Forester offered walking in the room.
“Not a chance,” Wallace responded waving the cup, “a man who orders his cappuccino dry would never follow it up with sweets.”
He picked up a black hardbound pocket-sized book; undoing the elastic clasp he flipped through pages of sketches and formulas.
“A Moleskine,” he explained. “Hemmingway carried one for his notes.”
“What are all those drawings?”
“Scribbling… there seems to be no logic to it,” He replied.
Then he turned to the back cover. There was a pocket there, and hidden with in was a sketch of the archaic goggles that the doctor was wearing when he was found.
“Why was he wearing these things anyway?” Wallace asked holding the goggles comparing them to the picture in the book.
“His mag was a convertible, maybe he thought it was fashionable to wear goggles,” Forester replied. Looking closer at the sketch and its various labels, her face creased and turned to the side slightly. “What the hell is that thing?”
“The goggles? Lets find out.”
****
A government mag-craft set down in front of a building with title Gnomon Research Laboratories. A man in a suit and a panama hat, and a woman in a dark blue s-line dress and dark hair up in an array of gossamer spikes walked through the glassy doors.
On the 26th floor of the laboratories the debonair blue-suited DSC man picked up a blinking object and turned it over looking at it. “What did you say Dr. Whitney was working on?” Wallace asked the white-coated lab tech.
“I didn’t, Mr. Wallace was it?” the tech said as he took the object from the agent’s hand. “His work is confidential.”
“What is it that Gnomon does in general?” Forester asked.
“We are in time. Atomic clocks and the like,” the tech answered.
Wallace looked around at the various digital clock faces on the walls and nodded with a raised eyebrow.
“And what do you make of this?” Wallace asked pulling the goggles from his breast pocket.
“The prototype, where did you get that?” the tech ejaculated reaching for the goggles.
“Hold on there buckwheat, this is evidence.” Wallace warned pulling back.
“At least keep it in this,” the tech sighed agitated, as he placed a metal suitcase on the table. It opened with a gasp. Inside was a molded pad that held the goggles perfectly in controlled humidity and temperature. When Wallace placed the goggles inside, the case sealed with a magnetic hum.
“What do the goggles do?” Wallace didn’t expect the tech to be forthcoming.
Silence.
“Why so surprised to see them?” Forrester followed up.
“The prototype was stolen from the lab vaults two weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you notify the Corps of the theft?”
Silence.
“Do you know why anyone would want to hurt Dr. Whitney?” Wallace asked.
The tech shook his head. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
****
“I don’t like that guy,” Forrester said. “ He is hiding something.”
“He’s hiding more than that,” Wallace said looking at his pad. “Gnomon is classified G12. We may have more than we can chew here. Lets check on the mag-craft diagnostic.”
Mag-Craft Corp. is the world leader in magnetic repulsion vehicles. It is to mags what Kleenex is to tissue. They were headquartered in a sleek building near Chicago. The two Corps agents wasted no time in arriving. They made their way to the all to familiar test facility.
“Jose, my friend, what do you make of the mystery mag?”
“I don’t know Eric. It looks flawless, or at least as flawless as you’d expect after becoming part of the Iowa landscape…. One odd thing though: the craft’s chronometer is off a few hundredths of a second.”
“Doesn’t sound like much,” Wallace replied.
“It’s a whole hell of a lot when you consider it is atomic.”
“Let me guess, Gnomon Labs?”
“Yeah… Oh-oh here comes the boss.”
“Wallace!” A sizeable man yelled as he waddled across the floor. His hair was slick and his cloths were as loud as his gruff voice.
“Bustamonte, what a pleasant surprise.”
“Pleasant my sweet behind. You know damn well that we have not had any fatalities since we introduced the Emergency Stasis Restraint system twenty years ago, what is the meaning of sending us this crapper?”
“You know how it is Bustamonte, just have to rule out the global corporate giant as a murder suspect.”
“Murder? See, I knew it wasn’t our system that killed the man.”
“We’ll see,” Forrester said under her breath.
“Let me know if you find anything else Jose,” Wallace said quietly as Bustamonte was walking away.
“You bet, Eric.”
****
Part 2
