AMBITION
By WILLIAM L. BADE
Illustrated by L. WOROMAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To the men of the future, the scientific
goals of today were as incomprehensible
as the ancient quest for the Holy Grail!
There was a thump. Maitland stirred, came half awake, and opened hiseyes. The room was dark except where a broad shaft of moonlight fromthe open window fell on the foot of his bed. Outside, the residentialsection of the Reservation slept silently under the pale illuminationof the full Moon. He guessed sleepily that it was about three o'clock.
What had he heard? He had a definite impression that the sound had comefrom within the room. It had sounded like someone stumbling into achair, or—
Something moved in the darkness on the other side of the room. Maitlandstarted to sit up and it was as though a thousand volts had shorted hisbrain....
This time, he awoke more normally. He opened his eyes, looked throughthe window at a section of azure sky, listened to the singing of birdssomewhere outside. A beautiful day. In the middle of the process ofstretching his rested muscles, arms extended back, legs tensed, hefroze, looking up—for the first time really seeing the ceiling. Heturned his head, then rolled off the bed, wide awake.
This wasn't his room!
The lawn outside wasn't part of the Reservation! Where the labs andthe shops should have been, there was deep prairie grass, then a greenocean pushed into waves by the breeze stretching to the horizon. Thiswasn't the California desert! Down the hill, where the liquid oxygenplant ought to have been, a river wound across the scene, almost hiddenbeneath its leafy roof of huge ancient trees.
Shock contracted Maitland's diaphragm and spread through his body.His breathing quickened. Now he remembered what had happened duringthe night, the sound in the darkness, the dimly seen figure, andthen—what? Blackout....
Where was he? Who had brought him here? For what purpose?
He thought he knew the answer to the last of those questions. Asa member of the original atomic reaction-motor team, he possessedinformation that other military powers would very much like to obtain.It was absolutely incredible that anyone had managed to abduct him fromthe heavily guarded confines of the Reservation, yet someone had doneit. How?
He pivoted to inspect the room. Even before his eyes could take inthe details, he had the impression that there was something wrongabout it. To begin with, the style was unfamiliar. There were nostraight lines or sharp corners anywhere. The walls were paneled infeatureless blue plastic and the doors were smooth surfaces of metal,half ellipses, without knobs. The flowing lines of the chair and table,built apparently from an aluminum alloy, somehow gave the impressionof arrested motion. Even after allowances were made for the outlandishdesign, something about the room still was not right.
His eyes returned to the doors, and he moved over to study the nearerone. As he had noticed, there was no knob, but at the right of thisone, at about waist level, a push-button projected out of the wall. Hepressed it; the door slid aside and disappeared. Maitland glanced in atthe disclosed bathroom, then went over to look at the other door.
There was no button beside this one, nor any other v