A Spaceship Named: 45 Sci-Fi Novels & Stories in One Volume. Randall Garrett

inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've got to take the cars apart, then do that."

      "Me?" Boyd said. "All by myself?"

      "No," Malone said. "Use your head. There'll be a team working with you. Let me explain it. Every nut, every bolt, every inch of those cars has to be examined thoroughly—got it?"

      "I've got it," Boyd said, "but I don't like it. After all, Malone—"

      Malone ignored him. "The Governor of New York promised his co-operation," he said, "and he said he'd get in touch with the Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut and get co-operation from that angle. So we'll have state and local police working with us."

      "That's a help," Boyd said. "We'll make such a happy team of workmen. Singing as we pull the cars apart through the long day and night and ... listen, Malone, when do you want reports on this?"

      "Yesterday," Malone said.

      Boyd's eyebrows raised, then lowered. "Great," he said dully.

      "I don't care how you get the cars," Malone said. "If you've got to, condemn 'em. But get every last one of them. And bring them over to Leibowitz & Hardin for a complete checkup. I'll give you the address."

      "Thanks," Boyd said.

      "Not at all," Malone said. "Glad to be of help. And don't worry; I'll have other work to do." He paused, and then went on: "I talked to Dr. Isaac Leibowitz, he's the head of the firm out there—and he says...."

      "Wait a minute," Boyd said.

      "What?"

      "You mean I don't have to take the cars apart myself? You mean this Leibowitz & Hardin, or whatever it is, will do it for me?"

      "Of course," Malone said wearily. "You re not an auto technician or an electronics man. You're an agent of the FBI."

      "I was beginning to wonder," Boyd said. "After all."

      "Anyhow," Malone said doggedly, "I talked to Leibowitz, and he says he can give a car a complete check in about six hours, normally."

      "Six hours?" Boyd stared. "That's going to take forever," he said.

      "Well, he can set up a kind of assembly-line process and turn out a car every fifteen minutes. Any better?"

      Boyd nodded.

      "Good," Malone said. "There can't be so many 1972 red Cadillacs in the area that we can't get through them all at that speed." He thought a minute and then added: "By the way, you might check with the Cadillac dealers around town, and find out just how many there are, sold to people living in the area."

      "And while I'm doing all that," Boyd said, "what are you going to be doing?"

      Malone looked at him and sighed. "I'll worry about that," he said. "Just get started."

      "Suppose Leibowitz can't find anything?" Boyd said.

      "If Leibowitz can't find it, it's not there," Malone said. "He can find electronic devices anywhere in any car made, he says—even if they're printed circuits hidden under the paint job."

      "Pretty good," Boyd said. "But suppose he doesn't?"

      "Then they aren't there," Malone said, "and we'll have to think of something else." He considered that. It sounded fine. Only he wished he knew what else there was to think of.

      Well, that was just pessimism. Leibowitz would find something, and the case would be over, and he could go back to Washington and rest. In August he was going to have his vacation, anyway, and August wasn't very far away.

      Malone put a smile carefully on his face and told Boyd: "Get going." He slammed his hat on his head.

      Wincing, he took it off and replaced it gently. The bottle of pills was still in his pocket, but he wasn't due for another one just yet.

      He had time to go over to the precinct station in the West Eighties first.

      He headed outside to get another taxi.

      V

       Table of Contents

      The door didn't say anything at all except "Lt. P. Lynch." Malone looked at it for a couple of seconds. He'd asked the Desk Sergeant for Lynch, shown his credentials and been directed up a set of stairs and around a hall. But he still didn't know what Lynch did, who he was, or what his name was doing in the little black notebook.

      Well, he told himself, there was only one way to find out.

      He opened the door.

      The room was small and dark. It had a single desk in it, and three chairs, and a hatrack. There wasn't any coat or hat on the hatrack, and there was nobody in the chairs. In a fourth chair, behind the desk, a huskily-built man sat. He had steel-gray hair, a hard jaw and, Malone noticed with surprise, a faint twinkle in his eye.

      "Lieutenant Lynch?" Malone said.

      "Right," Lynch said. "What's the trouble?"

      "I'm Kenneth J. Malone," Malone said. "FBI." He reached for his wallet and found it. He flipped it open for Lynch, who stared at it for what seemed a long, long time and then burst into laughter.

      "What's so funny?" Malone asked.

      Lynch laughed some more.

      "Oh, come on," Malone said bitterly. "After all, there's no reason to treat an FBI agent like some kind of a—"

      "FBI agent?" Lynch said. "Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag I've seen since I came on the Force. Who told you to pull it? Jablonski downstairs? Or one of the boys on the beat? I know those beat patrolmen, always on the lookout for a new joke. But this tops 'em all. This is the—"

      "You're a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said tartly.

      "A what?" Lynch said. "I'm not Irish."

      "You talk like an Irishman," Malone said.

      "I know it," Lynch said, and shrugged. "Around some precincts, you sort of pick it up. When all the other cops are ... hey, listen. How'd we get to talking about me?"

      "I said you were a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said.

      "I was a—what?"

      "Disgrace." Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he considered, he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone. Otherwise, Malone didn't have a thing to worry about except a few months of hospitalization.

      Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down at Malone's wallet again and started to laugh.

      "What's so funny?" Malone demanded.

      He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he realized what had happened. He had not flipped it open to his badge at all. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card-case:

      KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE

       PRESENTS THAT Sir Kenneth

       Malone, Knight, is hereby formally

       installed with the title of

       KNIGHT OF THE BATH

       and this card shall signify his right

       to that title and his high and respected

       position as officer in and of

       THE QUEENS OWN F.B.I.

      In a very small voice, Malone said: "There's been a terrible mistake."

      "Mistake?" Lynch said.

      Malone flipped the wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a good long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed at the badge with it. At last he looked up.

      "I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what was with the gag?"

      "It