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.)I opened the door and stepped out.“Thanks, Tom,” I said.“You’re a real nice guy and I won’t forget this.See you about ten o’clock.Good night.”I walked away quickly.I wanted to be inside the lobby before he could tell me he had changed his mind.* * *I had taken the liberty of carrying Jason Lockyer’s newly arrived mail away in my purse from the Lockyer apartment.After all, Eleanor had just about ordered me to take it away and study it.After two coffees and that conversation with Tom Walton I knew it was going to be difficult to go to sleep (yes, I have a conscience, too).I didn’t even try.I spread out the mail on the kitchen table and began to go through it piece by piece.About half-past eleven I had a breakthrough, courtesy of the U.S.Postal Service.It’s rare to thank the USPS for slow service, but I was ready to do it.Although the letters had all been delivered to Lockyer’s apartment that morning or the day before, one of them had been mailed nearly three weeks earlier.It should have reached Jason Lockyer long before he left for parts unknown, but of course it hadn’t.It bore a first-class postage stamp and a near-illegible postmark.I could make out the date and the letters “CO”—Colorado—at the bottom, but the town name was impossible.The handwritten envelope was addressed to Professor Jason Lockyer.Inside was a second envelope, this time with nothing written on it—but there was a golliwog stamp in the upper right corner.And inside that was the following typed message:I think it’s time to give you another progress report, even though it’s sooner than I said.Seven and Eight are running along so-so, nothing much different from what you heard about in my last report.But Nine—you’d never believe Nine if you didn’t see it for yourself.It’s still changing, and no one can estimate an end-point.The crew are supposed to go inside in another week.Marcia says we’ll be in no danger and she wants us to stay there longer than usual.She’s done something new on the DNA splicing, and she believes that Nine is moving to a totally different limit, one with a Strange Attractor we’ve never seen before.She thinks it may be the one we’ve been searching for all along.Me, I’m afraid it may be the ultimate boss system—the real Mega-Mother.Certainly the efficiency of energy utilization is fantastic—more than double any of the others, and still increasing.I tell you frankly, I’m scared, but I’ll have to go in there.No way out of it.You told me that if I ever wanted advice you’d give it.I think that’s what we all need here, a new look without any publicity.Any chance you can arrange to come? I’ll write again or telephone in the next few days to keep you up-to-date.Then maybe you can tell me it’s all my imagination.The one-page letter was unsigned and undated, but I had the date on the postmark.And I had the log of Jason Lockyer’s incoming long-distance phone calls at the university and at each apartment.It should be straightforward to find out who had written the cryptic note.By half-past one I had changed my ideas about that.The incoming log showed nothing from Colorado anywhere near the right dates.As a final act of desperation I at last went to the log of Jason Lockyer’s outgoing calls, ones he had placed himself.I had looked at this log before, but he made so many calls to so many places that I had not been able to see anything significant.Sweet success.It jumped out at me in the first ten seconds of looking.Six days after this letter had been mailed, Lockyer had placed a series of four phone calls in one day to Nathrop, Colorado.One call had lasted for over forty minutes.I checked in my National Geographic atlas.Nathrop was a small town about seventy miles west of Colorado Springs.It lay on the Arkansas River with the Sawatch Range of the High Rockies rearing up to over fourteen thousand feet just to the west.Nathrop, Colorado.For the first time, I had a place to look for Jason Lockyer that was smaller than the continental United States.Within two minutes I knew I would be going to Nathrop myself
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