Tomorrow Is Too Far Read Online Free PDF Page A

him that the man was not a culprit, a saboteur or a wrong-doer of any kind. Instead he was on Carson’s side, helping guard a secret so important that the chief security officer had not been made aware of it. With that thought came another which suggested that Carson had no business poking his nose into the affair and might be serving the best interests of his country and his company by letting it drop.
    He did want to serve the best interests of his country, and of the company which entrusted him with its internal and external security. He knew that he was good at the job--conscientious, meticulous, exacting where even the relatively unimportant details were concerned, so much so that in certain quarters he was described as a fussy old woman. But was he considered good at his job by the people who really mattered, Carson asked himself suddenly, or merely as a nosey old woman whose curiosity about everyone and everything rendered suspect his ability to keep his own mouth shut? Was that the real reason he was being kept in the dark?
    That was the most disquieting thought of all. Carson tried to force it out of his mind by concentrating on his paperwork. But much later that evening, when he was sitting on a hard and very cold tool-box in Factory Three with only the top of his head showing above a nearby bench, the thought recurred. This time there was no way of avoiding it.
    Either he was good at his job or he was not. If he was not, then the company would have eased him out before now--they would not wait six years before deciding whether he was efficient. And if he was fulfilling his function as a security officer, then it could be argued that his duties included the protection of any and all secret work in which Hart-Ewing’s was engaged, that it was his duty to protect it even when he had no real idea what ‘it’ was all about.
    Carson sighed. Around him the metal benches and structural supports creaked and tinkled faintly as they gave up the heat of the working day. The night-shift at the other end of the section contributed its quiet clangour and the kittens, who were the furry debris of the continuing population explosion among the factory cats, romped among the now safe and silent machinery.
    Security and counter-espionage, so far as Carson was concerned, was far from being an exciting and glamorous job. Security meant checking fire extinguishers and hoses, checking lights and doors left on or open, checking safety precautions during aircraft refuelling, checking pilfering when it began to assume the proportions of grand larceny, checking trespassers on other people’s parking spaces, checking everything everywhere several times a day or week.
    Counter-espionage did not, on the other hand, mean a constant war against industrial or foreign spies who were bending every effort to penetrate the company’s security defences with cuff-link cameras and sub-miniaturised electronic devices. Instead it involved a constant round of checking doors, drawers and lock-up filing cabinets to make sure that classified material was returned to its proper place and not left lying around where any one of the cleaners, night maintenance staff, decorators or telephone repairmen could see it. In short, Carson’s job lay not so much in defending his company’s secrets as to try to prevent them being given away.
    He even had his own Index Expurgatoria of forbidden photographs and subjects which operated in reverse to keep over-enthusiastic sales and publicity people from rushing into print with classified material in the technical journals.
    But security on this special project was tight and professional--the men concerned made none of the usual mistakes and Carson had had to go to a lot of trouble even to satisfy himself that a project actually existed. He was still not completely sure that it did exist. Their planning was superb and when they had to act openly they did so tracelessly by making use of someone like Pebbles, a nice,