The Lagrangists. Mack Reynolds

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      COPYRIGHT INFO

      The Lagrangists is copyright © 1983 by Mack Reynolds.

      This edition is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC.

      All rights reserved.

      Cover art © 2014 by Andrea Danti / Fotolia.

      Edited by Dean Ing.

      A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

      Wildside Press has been publishing great science fiction and fantasy since 1987. We have continued to grow and expand into many other genres, until today we are one of the largest “small presses” in the world.

      Over the years, we have purchased the estates of a number of classic authors, including Lester del Rey, Mack Reynolds, Carl Jacobi, Reginald Bretnor, and others. We are working hard to digitize their backlists and bring out new editions of their classic works. (Sometimes we work with other publishers to fascilitate it.)

      If you enjoy the work of Mack Reynolds, watch for additional new releases coming soon. (More are definitely on the way!)

      —John Betancourt

      Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidepress.com

      TYPOS

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      DEDICATION

      To Professor Gerard K. O’Neill

      Pioneer in the colonization of space

      ACKNOWLEDGMENT

      The present writer would like to extend his appreciation to Professor Gerard K. O’Neill and his staff for permission to quote directly from his various articles in The Futurist and scientific publications on the projected Lagrange Five space colony endeavor.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Rex Bader’s scalp was crawling. There were eyes upon him; calculating eyes.

      His was a sense inadequately explored by the investigators of ESP. They had spent years in the fields of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and all the rest of it, but Rex Bader had never heard of this particular phenomenon being studied. This ability that some have, to know when they are being watched. It’s an unhappy feeling.

      It was related, in a way, to the instinct known to every combat man who has survived to become an old pro. You are crossing a field in an area that is supposedly cleared. Suddenly, without a moment’s thought, you throw yourself to the ground and roll for the nearest cover. And, crack, crack, crack: slugs tear the air above you. Or, Whoom, a mortar shell explodes not thirty feet away. If it were not for such an instinct, there would be no such thing as an old pro combat man. In combat, without that instinct a man does not last a month.

      Rex was seated in his favorite autobar-club which was located on the tenth floor, above ground level, in the same massive high-rise which housed his miniapartment, which was on the eighth floor below ground. He was drinking pseudo-whiskey and water which was all that he could afford. Even that small luxury stretched his Negative Income Tax budget.

      But eyes were upon him and, he felt, more than one set. It wasn’t as though they were the eyes of a couple of girls calculating his possibilities.

      Not that Rex Bader had too much in the way of possibilities. He was a man in his early thirties, two inches short of six feet tall, about one sixty in weight. Brown of hair, easy going of facial expression, fairly quick to produce a slight, somewhat rueful smile. The eyes seemed to have a vulnerable, almost sad quality. Rex Bader was unaware of the fact but the women who had loved him had invariably thought of this as his most attractive feature.

      Now he let his eyes go casually about the room. There were possibly seventy-five occupants in all, chiefly couples. None of them seemed to be looking in his direction. But he still felt those eyes on him.

      He hadn’t the vaguest idea why he might be under surveillance. He hadn’t had an assignment for months. He was living on Guaranteed Annual Income, or Negative Income Tax, the ‘nit’, call it what you will. Britishers called it the dole, money extended to the unemployed by the State to keep them spending—and Rex Bader was considered one of the unemployables.

      He brought forth his Universal Credit Card and put it in the payment slot of his table with his thumbprint on the identity square of the screen. He returned the credit card to his pocket, finished off his drink and came nonchalantly to his feet. He let his eyes sweep the room again, waved a hand at an acquaintance across the way, and headed for the door to the corridor.

      Outside, he sped up his pace a bit, ducked around a corner in the hall, pressed himself up against the wall, and waited, watching the door to the autobar-club.

      Of the two who shortly emerged, he knew one and grunted mild surprise, one, a young woman, was an unknown to Rex. The two of them headed in his direction and he waited.

      When they rounded the corner, Rex Bader said, “Hello, John. Don’t tell me that the Inter-American Bureau of Investigation is tailing me these days. Shucks, whatever it is, I didn’t do it. I’m innocent. I’ll swear to it on a stack of Korans.”

      John Mickoff said, “Younger brother, are you being elusive? What’s the big idea of ambushing us like this? Meet Doctor Susie Hawkins.”

      The girl was small, pert; and if she’d gone to the trouble she would have been more than normally pretty with equipment such as cerulean blue eyes, a smallish though classic nose, very dark hair contrasting with the eyes, and the most perfectly shaped ears Rex Bader could ever remember having seen. However, she obviously refrained from going to the trouble of “doing the ‘girl’ bit.” In fact, her figure couldn’t be appraised very well in view of the tweeds she wore. The aspect she projected, was strictly business.

      “Doctor?” Rex said. “You don’t look like a doctor.”

      “What does a doctor look like?” she said crisply, extending a hand to be shaken. “It’s a Ph.D. in Physics, not an M.D.” Her handshake was businesslike but pleasant. She had a small, soft hand, quite as innocent of nail polish as her face was of cosmetics.

      “Damned if I know,” Rex said, holding onto the hand for a fraction longer than was called for. “I’m an old buff of these revival movies. I always think in terms of Doctor Kildare. You’ve got to have a white smock and a stethoscope.”

      John Mickoff said, “Holy Jumping Zen, what an inane conversation.”

      Rex ignored him and said to the girl, “Did anybody ever tell you that you looked like Jean Simmons?”

      “Who’s Jean Simmons?”

      “An actress of yesteryear that I still dream about.”

      She said crisply, “Very gallant of you to say so, I’m sure. However, can we get to business?”

      Mickoff said, “Younger brother, let’s go down to your pad. I’m sure it isn’t bugged. Who would bother?”

      Rex led the way toward the elevator banks.

      He looked at Susie Hawkins, who still didn’t look like a doctor to him, Ph.D. or otherwise. “What business?” he said. “It’s been so long since I’ve had any business that I’ve practically forgotten.” He didn’t want to run off a potential client, but on the other hand he didn’t want to give any false impressions.

      She looked at him from the side of those startlingly blue eyes as they waited for the elevator. “Mr. Mickoff tells me that you are the last of the private eyes.”

      “That’s just a gag of his,” Rex told her. “He also