The Veiled Threat Read Online Free PDF Page B

them. Considering events in hindsight, he might have used a little more tact in the course of their initial confrontation. But national security had been at stake. National security! If he hadn’t come down hard on them when they’d first been picked up, someone else in the service would have been sure to question his methods.
    How could the government dismiss him and not want to make use of what he knew? Because of “baggage”? Because there were whispers that he was “unstable”? It was crazy! Madness! Seymour Simmons, unstable. When had he ever given the slightest indication of being even a little bit offline, unbalanced, over the edge, or slipping on the floor of his attic? As he walked back to his apartment he kicked angrily at every piece of newspaper the wind blew his way. Occasional passersby glanced in his direction—which in Manhattan was saying something. Maybe their reactions had something to do with the fact that he kept shaking his head while muttering to himself.
    He didn’t really need the job in his mother’s deli. His severance package combined with his pension took care of his basic needs. But the food at the deli was the best, and anyway he needed something to do. Something to get him out among people. Because if all he had to do was sit in his apartment and stare at the TV or the computer or work on his project while completely out of touch with the rest of mankind,why, even someone as inherently stable as himself might go a little—mad.
    So when his mother, seeing her son adrift, had offered him the job in the deli, he had taken it. Daily contact with others, even thin-tie-wearing twits who were willing to loudly and in public desecrate a pastrami sandwich, helped him to maintain stability. And focus. He needed to focus. As he let the comforting thought wash over him, a knowing and slightly disturbed grin spread across his face. At the sight of it, one couple coming toward him on the windswept sidewalk hurriedly changed course to cross the street.
    If he failed to focus, he would never be able to complete his project.
    Go ahead and dissolve Sector Seven. Hire a bunch of egghead scientists at inflated salaries to feather their own NEST. Ignore the continuing threat from beyond the solar system.
He
, Seymour Simmons, knew what was going on. He, Seymour Simmons, would take it upon himself to save the world from what he knew was under way.
    Invasion.
    There was no use trying to pretty it up, no point in searching for a less alarming euphemism. Even as he strode purposefully down the side streets of Manhattan, the Earth was suffering an invasion and humanity’s fate hung in the balance. If “they” would not let him participate in its unified defense, then he would do so on his own. One day they would realize what they had sacrificed by not employing him. One day they would know. He would save mankind in spite of itself.
    He would do it from his basement.
    The lower level of a ground-floor walkdown, an apartment already one level below that of the street, was as dark and dank as the inside of a bigot’s mind. Instead of speleotherms, however, the workshop Simmons had set up was festooned with enough tools to stock an entire aisle of a major home retailer. Very few of them were designed for brute-force work. There were no sledgehammers, no oversized circular saws, no industrial-strength lathes or heavy drill presses.
    Instead the well-lit work space was packed with an assortment of gear more suited to an active hobbyist. Dremel accessories and dentist tools decorated most of one wall. A computer-controlled injection molder stood off to one side. Electronic components overflowed from half-shut bins.
    Illuminated by overhead lights, a single rectangular worktable dominated the middle of the room. Resting on it, tightly clamped in place and connected to dozens of color-coded wires that fanned out in all directions, sat what at first glance appeared to be a cross between a Koons sculpture and a space