The Lost Perception Read Online Free PDF Page A

against the desk. “So we sit on our hands in our plush quarters and wait—but for what?”
    Security Bureau Headquarters were, Gregson conceded, indeed plush. Gutted by the swiping force of the blast that had demolished Yonkers and created a new Hudson River bay, the top several floors of the Secretariat Building had had to be condemned. But the rest of the structure, having responded to reconditioning, now served admirably as administrative center for the coordinated world-wide reconstruction effort and the struggle against the Screamie plague.
    “I said,” Wellford repeated, “what are we waiting for?”
    “If Radcliff’s hunch is right, you’ll get action sooner or later.”
    “I should prefer it sooner—less anxiety that way.”
    “At least the bureau isn’t drawing a complete blank.”
    “That affair in the Pyrenees last week? It was next to nothing. Not very much satisfaction in smashing an evacuated base, then letting the plane that led you there get away.”
    Gregson bent forward for a better view of First Avenue below. His attention was somehow drawn to an ancient car passing slowly in front of the Secretariat Building. It pulled almost to a stop, then moved off, turning left on Forty-Fourth.
    Wellford went over to the window. “The entire matter strikes me as being somewhat ridiculous—an aggressive culture that’s conquered interstellar space and has designs on Earth, yet chooses to sneak in through the back door and do nothing more than snip at our heels,”
    “Maybe you can’t apply human logic to Valorian strategy.” Gregson stared more intently into the street.
    “Seems to me all logical systems must be equivalent I say—what has got your attention down there?”
    “That car. What do you notice about it?”
    “Seems to be chugging along on nothing but guts and low-grade petrol. And it appears rather interested in the Secretariat Building.”
    “‘Rather’ is right. That’s its third or fourth time around. There it goes—back out Forty-Fourth.”
    “Well, then,” the Englishman said. “Supposing we have a closer look when it completes the fifth lap.”
*  *  *
    Outside, Gregson and Wellford pushed past the cordon of blue-uniformed International Guardsmen. They crossed the lawn, skirting the access driveway—at the same moment that the Security Bureau director’s limousine pulled in from the street.
    Wellford stared at the car while it braked to a stop. “That chap with the director—he looks familiar.”
    “Ought to. He’s Frederick Armister, Governor of New York.”
    “Oh, but of course. Remarkable character, I understand. An ex-Screamer, isn’t he?”
    Gregson nodded, remembering last year’s campaign. Armister’s pitch had been a memorable one: “You can’t afford not to have an ex-Screamer as your governor. My candidacy is the only one that guarantees administrative continuity, unbroken by consignment of the chief executive to an isolation institute.”
    But, then, that same argument had won political office for many another candidate who had successfully surmounted the Screamie barrier. In the same manner, corporations seeking to stabilize their top managerial echelons had long since begun elevating ex-Screamers to executive positions.
    Alighting from the limousine, the director held the door open for Armister—a somewhat nondescript little man with a sallowish complexion and pinched cheeks.
    In the next instant, though, Radcliff blanched and shoved the governor back into the car, diving in after him.
    Simultaneously, the inquisitive automobile heaved back into sight. It leaped the sidewalk and veered across the lawn, an obsolete automatic rifle thrust through its right window.
    Gregson brought Wellford down out of the line of fire with a crushing body block.
    The rifle discharged an entire clip. But Radcliff had managed to close the limousine’s door and the slugs only ricocheted off armor-plated panels.
    The attacking car completed its sweeping turn and