Tomorrow Is Too Far Read Online Free PDF

simple-minded obliging man who believed everything he was told.
    Quite a lot of people seemed to have a use for Pebbles, Carson thought angrily. He was remembering how proud the man had looked when he said that he could do joined-up writing. Pebbles would have been fired on at least two occasions if someone with influence had not spoken for him. The thought that Pebbles had been kept in the company and used by these people as a sort of organic, unthinking tool did not make Carson feel as the same thought would have made Bill Savage feel, but it made him experience a moment of shame because he was considering making use of him as well, to help him find out something about the purposes of the people who were already using him...
    Carson’s mind froze suddenly in mid-thought. Someone was coming, a dim figure approaching his hiding-place along the aisle between the storeroom outer wall and the ranks of silent machines. In the light which filtered across from the active side of the factory floor he could see that the man wore a cap and overalls. They were not white overalls nor were they the dark blue, green or brown shades worn by inspectors, labourers, apprentices or electricians but some medium colour which he could not identify in the darkness. He kept his eyes on the man while his hand went to the panel of light switches beside him.
    One hundred yards away a group of roof lights blinked on and off several times and a few seconds later a section even farther away was erratically illuminated in similar fashion. The man had stopped dead when the first lights went on, but they were too far away to show Carson his face, and in any case he was merely getting the man used to the idea that lights were being tested in the area. He watched the man hurry silently to the storeroom door and close it behind him.
    An intermittent glow showed in the uncovered window as he used a flashlamp, then disappeared as the sacking which had dropped from the window was replaced. Perhaps ten minutes later the man came out again.
    This time Carson made sure that the lights which flicked on and off again were close enough to make identification positive.
    The face revealed was that of Wayne Tillotson. He was wearing, not overalls but a flying suit of pale grey which was almost the same shade as his face at that moment. Carson switched off the overhead lights and played with the other switches at random until Tillotson had gone.
    In the storeroom a few minutes later he used his own torch to study the pile of ashes. The two scraps of oil-soaked paper which he had copied and replaced earlier had gone and a few of the ashes were again warm.
    Tillotson had been one of the people who had used his influence to keep Pebbles from being fired, although why the company’s chief test pilot should have concerned himself with the fate of a lavatory attendant was something which still required a full explanation. At that moment Carson decided quite definitely that he would get to know, cultivate and as soon as possible use, Pebbles.
    Everyone else seemed to be doing it.
    He was still thinking about the best way of doing so as he went to the area telephone and began ringing round the gatehouses and patrol offices.
     

Chapter Five
     
    The questions were too many and too general to arouse suspicion among his own patrolmen--he had used his fussy, chronic worrier’s voice. But from them he discovered that some kind of meeting was going on in the office of the chief of design on the third floor of the admin building and that the chief test pilot’s unmistakable bone-shaker was parked outside.
    Carson was there ten minutes later, asking more fussy, seemingly unconnected questions.
    ‘I don’t know who is in there or how many, sir,’ the patrolman in charge told him. ‘When Briggs looked in during his early rounds he said the ashtrays were full and the waste-baskets empty. Maybe they are playing cards ...’
    ‘Are you being sarcastic...?’ began Carson, but he was