THE CYCLOPS PATROL

WILLIAM SPENCER

Industrial espionage is now a highly organised business—in the competitive world of technical development, refined spy devices will soon be the norm rather than the unusual.

* * * *

THE dull grey fly buzzed irritatingly round Floyd’s head as he bent over the computer display. He drew another line with the light pen on the projected micro-circuit, trying to ignore the fly, a wavering dark blur on the fringes of his vision.

Then, his patience snapping, he took a side-swipe at the buzzing creature with his free hand—a clumsy swipe that missed as the fly dodged easily upwards. Floyd muttered a few choice expletives half-audibly.

The fly continued to hover, just out of reach, over his head. It was a big ugly fly, of a breed that Floyd did not recognise. Some mutant form, perhaps, resulting from radiation or the wholesale use of insecticides?

Floyd passed the back of his hand across his damp brow. He had almost finished the working diagram now. The micro-circuit was a new one, a breakthrough in design. But it was a pity that a firm which was a leader in advanced electronics could not provide better airconditioning. Some fault in the system had caused the temperature in Floyd’s design office to rise a shade too high for comfort.

Outside it was excessively hot. The floor-to-ceiling sunscreens tempered the glare and the airconditioning should have done the rest. Floyd supposed he should have complained, but instead he had opened a small window behind the sunscreens. There might be a suspicion of a breeze outside. And a lurking sense of claustrophobia made Floyd anxious to feel some communication with the outside air. An open window—hence the fly. There was a price you had to pay for everything.

The door handle turned and someone came in silently.

Floyd glanced up quickly and saw it was Clone.

Floyd was allergic to security men and especially allergic to this one. Heavy-jowled, unsmiling, padding around like a cat, Clone made one feel vaguely guilty. Faint ghosts of half-forgotten misdemeanours rose in the mind when his expressionless eyes studied one’s exposed face.

Nevertheless, Floyd hated to show that he was disturbed in any way by the security man’s presence. Over-correcting, he had a special brand of false jollity which he reserved for these visits. Swallowing hard, he turned a beaming smile on Clone.

‘Hullo there, old man! How goes the industrial espionage?’ Floyd clapped him on the back with excessive bonhomie.

Clone looked like a man with chronic indigestion.

‘It’s not a joke. The people over the way—you-know-who—will stop at nothing to get information. I may say that the Board of Directors takes security very seriously.’

‘Good for them. But some of us in the lower-income brackets actually soil our hands with work. We don’t have energy to spare to worry about industrial espionage—we leave that sort of thing to you and the Board.’

Clone’s face remained impassive. He did not descend to the trivial level of small-talk or jest. But his eyes were restlessly flickering round the room, inquisitive as a snake’s double-tongue. His colourless eyes were so greedily naked that Floyd always felt he was in the presence of something obscene. Also, there was this background of incipient guilt….

Clone’s sharp glance had penetrated to the open window behind the sunscreens.

He stiffened. ‘The window?’

‘Ye … es?’ Floyd was colouring somewhat and bending over the computer panel to hide his embarrassment.

Clone’s face registered deep disapproval as he marched stiffly over, reached through the sunscreen, and closed the window with just the suspicion of a slam.

The fly, which had been hovering behind Clone’s head, slipped through the window just before it shut.

‘You know that’s against regulations,’ said Clone accusingly.

‘I know. But it’s always so airless in here. The airconditioning is lousy.’

‘It is hot in here. Bound to be, when you have the window open.’

‘I tell you the airconditioning is on the blink.’ Floyd, aggressively defensive, allowed his voice to rise slightly.

‘In that case you should complain,’ said Clone sternly. ‘Get it fixed.’

‘I’m too busy. It’s quicker to set the window ajar. And anyway what does it matter?’

Clone sat heavily in a chair. ‘I’m sorry you take that view,’ he said.

Floyd knew he was in for one of Clone’s pep-talks on security.

‘This firm has a reputation for original thinking. We spend a fortune on research and development to stay one jump ahead of rival concerns. A careless attitude to security can jeopardise that lead.’

‘But how does an open window …?’

‘Somebody might have come in.’

‘Hardly—when I’m here.’

‘Don’t you ever go out of the room?’

‘Yes. But if I do, I close the window.’

‘And if you forget?’

Floyd began to get angry, thought better of it, and turned his open palms upwards.

‘Oh, all right, then, I’ll keep the window closed in future.’

‘Please try to see that security is vital.’ Clone paced round the room slowly, his face set in a mask of disapproval, then padded silently out of the door.

Floyd breathed out a long sigh when the security man had left. Putting the finishing touches to the micro-circuit, he smouldered inwardly with words left unsaid.

* * * *

Three weeks later, Floyd found himself in the Managing Director’s office.

It was a vast, low room, the expensive muted furnishings set off with carefully-sited electronic sculptures. Floyd did not relish his rare visits to this sanctum. They tended to coincide with moments Of crisis in his career. And today there seemed to be an oppressive silence in the huge room.

Despite the soft lighting and the plushy carpet into which you sank toe-deep, it was clear that the ambience was unfriendly.

Floyd fidgeted while the MD pretended to be reading some papers on his desk. Clone was hovering obsequiously in the background, like a well-trained-butler eager to anticipate his master’s needs.

‘Ah, Floyd!’ said the MD at length, as though Floyd had just walked into the room.

Floyd shifted his weight to the other foot.

‘Take a close look at that.’ The MD swivelled a heavy-barrelled microscope and pushed it across the plastic desk top.

Floyd bent forward and pressed his face to the visor, touching the focus controls lightly.

‘One of our latest micro-circuits,’ he said after a moment. ‘The one we…’

‘Take a closer look, Floyd.’ The Managing Director’s voice was edged like a saw. ‘Read the manufacturer’s name.’

‘It says Iota ... but… !’

‘But it looks exactly like one of ours. That, Floyd, is a Chinese copy of our most advanced circuit. It could only have been obtained as a result of industrial espionage.’

The Managing Director paused and looked solemnly at Floyd.

‘Naturally we’re checking everyone who had access to the circuit. As you know, this particular job was entrusted to a mere handful of our most senior people.’

Floyd nodded. So stone-faced Clone had something to worry about after all.

‘Now I’m not suggesting that you are unreliable, Floyd. We’ve known each other a long time. But you may have been careless. Clone here tells me that he found a window open in your room on one occasion.’

He’d expected the accusation to come up. But now, confronted by it, he found nothing to say. Floyd became aware of Clone and the Managing Director looking directly at him, waiting for some kind of explanation or apology.

‘I, er … yes … that’s true.’

‘Really, Floyd, I should have thought a man of your experience, working with a piece of top-secret new circuitry, would have known better.’

Floyd gulped. ‘But I was there all the time. No one could have got in.’

The Managing Director glanced round at Clone. ‘Perhaps when the sunscreens were parted momentarily to open or close the window, Iota could have managed a shot with a telephoto lens or laser scanner.’

‘No, sir, that’s not possible,’ blurted Floyd. ‘The drawing board is turned so that no part of it is visible from the window. Mr. Clone, here, made a special point of having the drawing board turned that way.’ Give old misery a bit of credit, thought Floyd, though it’s hardly possible to sweeten the old sourpuss.

‘Good thinking. Clone,’ said the MD, beaming a warm ray of approval at the security man. ‘Well, Floyd, I accept your statement. There’s nothing we can do about it, now that the circuit has been copied. But I want you to be very much more careful in the future. We cannot afford another security leak like this. Understand?’

Floyd mumbled something placatory and bowed himself out, trudging soundlessly over the deep carpet.

* * * *

The security scare passed off quietly enough. Indeed, only a few senior people were aware of the exact circumstances. Floyd had retained the confidence of the Board of Directors sufficiently to be entrusted with further top-secret work. Next summer found him engaged on another major development in the company’s micro-circuitry. He felt in good spirits that morning as he left his car in the parking lot and walked across the lawns to the block where he worked.

The lawns were laid out with beds of flowers, formal pools, and a few trees here and there. His way took him under one of the trees, and its shadow covered him for a moment. A blundering dark-grey fly dropped out of the foliage and winged down towards Floyd, unnoticed. It settled on the back of his coat, over the left shoulder blade.

Floyd crossed another sunlit lawn. Then he entered the electronic doors, showed his pass, and nodded to the uniformed doorman. The doorman pushed a button which swung aside the armoured glass doors leading to the top security wing. The doors closed noiselessly as soon as Floyd was through.

Thinking of nothing in particular, Floyd paced along the corridor to the door of his own room. He was whistling some kind of tune as he entered, closed the door carefully, and moved over to a block of cupboards.

Floyd did not see the fly detach itself from the back of his coat just before he took it off.

The fly slipped across the room out of Floyd’s line of vision and hid under the knee-hole of his desk.

Floyd put his coat in one of the cupboards. Then he rolled up his sleeves, took out his notes of the day before, and began to switch on the equipment.

He was working on a modification of the new micro-circuit. Deftly he put the circuit under the microscope, studied it, and sketched with his light pen on the computer panel.

The fly emerged from its hiding place stealthily, rose upwards, and began to patrol back and forth behind Floyd’s head. Floyd went on with his work, unaware of what was happening.

Presently he took the micro-circuit from under the lens with fine tweezers and laid it carefully in a plastic dish on the table next to some test equipment.

Out of the corner of his eye, disbelieving, he saw the fly swoop down like a hawk, gather the micro-circuit up in its grappling legs, and make off with it. Floyd stared, immobile, gulping down his astonishment, as the fly winged its way across the room and disappeared on top of a high cupboard.

Floyd went after it with a heavy ruler. He had to get a chair to stand on so as to be able to see where the thing had settled. When he clambered up, he could see the fly sitting quietly on top of the cupboard.

He brought the heavy ruler smashing down, but the fly darted sideways. Before he could strike again, the thing had clung to his forearm and he felt a sharp jab like a needle point being thrust into his flesh.

With a feeling of sickened revulsion he flung the ugly grey fly off his arm. For a second or two he stood bemused, unable almost to comprehend what had happened. Then his knees crumpled, his vision darkened, and he went crashing unconscious to the floor.

When he regained consciousness he was lying awkwardly at the foot of the chair. His head swam. For a moment he could not analyse the situation: what had happened ? Then he remembered the fly.

A fly whose sting caused unconsciousness!

Warily he looked around him, but there was no sign of the insect. His first impulse was to rush out of the door, in a kind of panic, calling for help.

But on second thoughts, very possibly that was what the fly wanted him to do. He found himself assuming that the thing possessed a kind of intelligence, for it had acted with considerable cunning so far. As he went out of the door, the fly would go out of the door too and could hide itself anywhere in the building.

Floyd saw that the only hope of getting the micro-circuit back was to keep the insect trapped in his room. He couldn’t risk having it escape and disappear. He needed it as evidence. Who would believe his story that a big fly had stolen the micro-circuit—unless he was able to produce the insect in question ? He would be written down as suffering from delusions, and his security rating would decline to zero.

Security. That was the operative word. This was a security problem. A job for Clone. He would ring him up and get him to come and trap the fly. But first Clone would have to install a wire mesh cage outside the door so that the creature could not get out as he got in.

Floyd edged over to the phone. There was no sign of the fly. But was it watching him from some hiding-place and was it intelligent enough to see the threat to its safety posed by Floyd making a phone call ? And if so, could it sting him again ?

Floyd remembered reading somewhere of insects that could only sting once and others that needed to recover before they could sting a second time. At any rate he would have to take that chance.

He was at his desk now.

He picked up the phone and dialled Clone’s number.

Clone’s voice crackled over the line, crisp and impersonal as ever.

‘Security here.’

‘Floyd. I have a security problem in Room 208.’

‘Yes?’

‘Bring a butterfly net.’

‘A butterfly net? Did I hear you right?’

‘But first you must…Floyd felt the sharp jab in his right forearm again. A dark object was sitting on his flesh. He tried, clumsily, to crush it.

‘Fly got me again….’ said Floyd indistinctly, slumping forward on to the desk.

* * * *

Floyd came round again to find himself lying on his back on the carpet, his collar undone, and Clone bending over him.

‘What happened?’ said Clone.

Floyd tried to clear his brain of the vaporous confusion that was coiling there. His head felt as if it was splitting. It was difficult to think straight.

Suddenly he remembered something and craned forward. Forgetting the throbbing pain in his head, he thrust Clone aside and sat bolt upright, pointing a bony finger.

‘The door,’ he said accusingly.

‘What about the door?’

‘It’s open.’

Coming in and seeing Floyd unconscious over the desk, Clone had most unprofessionally left the door ajar.

‘And that’s the last you’ll see of the fly.’

Clone was a sound man, very logical and orderly-minded —except when he made absurd mistakes such as leaving doors open.

It took Floyd a long time to explain about the fly. And about the missing micro-circuit. That called for a great deal of explaining.

They took him seriously enough to search the whole of the security wing from top to bottom. But as Floyd expected, they found nothing. The building had been designed to keep out unwanted human intruders, but not to keep in flies. There were several unsealed crevices and ducts, and unplugged overflow pipes, through which a determined fly could make an escape.

Floyd tried to get the Managing Director to see it that way. But when Iota came out with an exact replica of the missing circuit, Floyd wished he could slink away somewhere and hide.

* * * *

Floyd was still working at his old desk in Room 208. That in itself was something to be thankful for. He’d fully expected to be dismissed, or at least down-graded, after the last episode. But of course they didn’t allow him to work on secret projects any more. At first the work he was put to do was completely routine—the sort of thing any intelligent junior could have coped with. A week or two later he was given a concocted dummy project, designed to mislead Iota if ever they should get hold of it.

Now Floyd was under orders to leave his window open all the time. He sat at his desk in a special protective suit, proof against horse-flies, wasps, hornets, and other forms of airborne menace. Close at hand on the table, was a protective helmet somewhat like those that beekeepers wear, but much tougher and sturdier. It was too ponderous for Floyd to wear all the time, but he had practised putting it on quickly. Clone had timed him with a stop-watch and they had got it down to under five seconds.

So he sat at his desk day after day, chafing in the suit, with the protective helmet at the ready and pretended to work at the trivial tasks on which he was now employed.

The window was triggered so that, the moment an insect flew through, it flipped shut. Just in case there was any malfunction, Floyd had a button under his thumb which could close the window independently of the automatic control.

Concealed behind a screen, invisible from the window, sat Clone, wearing an even tougher protective suit. With grim devotion to duty, Clone insisted on wearing his helmet almost the whole time, though he had provided himself with a special air supply which made the suit a little more tolerable.

Clone also had a button which could close the window, if Floyd should be attacked and incapacitated before he could get his helmet on.

As the days went by and no fly appeared, relations between the two men became strained. Clone’s replies to Floyd’s conversational, bantering sallies became shorter and gruffer, through the swathes of his heavy helmet. In the end Clone pretended not to hear Floyd’s remarks and just sat there stolidly like a clumsily constructed mummy.

What irritated Floyd was the growing sense that Clone had ceased to believe in the fly. He imagined Clone’s eyes through the visor, looking at him strangely, watching for the first sign of hallucinations or paranoid delusions. It was of course a triumph of credulity that Clone and the MD had accepted his story of the fly. There was some hard evidence, true: his loss of consciousness and the two red marks like hypodermic insertions on his arm. But these could easily have been faked, Floyd had to admit. So, at first, he felt a sense of gratitude that the security man had taken his story seriously.

However as day followed day and nothing happened, Floyd sensed Clone’s belief wearing thin. It was being stretched to the limit, while they kept up the absurd pantomime of sitting there in the awkward suits. Had Clone some time-limit in his mind, when Floyd was to be finally discredited ? They could not sit there for ever.

* * * *

Floyd saw the fly first. But that was only to be expected, because Clone’s view was partly obstructed by his screen. Floyd’s finger jerked towards the button. The autocontrol flipped the window shut a fraction of a second before he made contact.

A red warning light indicated to Clone what had happened, while Floyd struggled into his helmet.

It had been agreed that they would pretend not to see the fly at first, so as to observe its behaviour when unmolested. So Floyd bent over his desk and went through the motions of working on the dummy project, as best he could in the clumsy hood.

The fly patrolled back and forth behind Floyd’s head, sizing up the situation. Presently Floyd went over to the side of the room, on the pretext of checking a figure in a reference book. There was a whir of grey glinting wings as the fly swooped on the dummy micro-circuit and carried it away.

Now Clone emerged from behind his screen, a ponderous white-suited figure, moving awkwardly like a badly synchronised automaton. He advanced towards the fly with a large butterfly net. Floyd too picked up a butterfly net from behind the screen and together they attempted to corner and capture the small invader.

Their attempts were blundering and inaccurate, hampered as they were by stiff protective suits. The fly easily eluded their lunges and sailed over towards the window by which it had entered. It collided with the glass. Bounced off. Buzzed for a moment against the pane. Then, finding itself trapped, darted menacingly towards its assailants.

Clone, who had been leading the chase, was directly in its track. The insect clung to his right forearm and tried to sting him. But the protective material of the suit proved impervious to its barb. The security man stood quite still, his arm extended and Floyd was able to clap his butterfly net over the fly. But the diameter of the mouth of Floyd’s net was considerably greater than that of Clone’s admittedly bulky arm and the fly was able to escape again.

It swung round Floyd’s back and tried to sting him between the shoulder blades. Again the protective suits proved their worth. Floyd shouted to the other man to clap the net over his back. But Clone, moving ponderously in the big suit, was not quick enough. The fly, baffled, made for the top of the cupboard where it had eluded Floyd before.

* * * *

Here it encountered a fine mesh closing in the cavity at the top of the cupboard. They had prepared the room by sealing every cranny and closing off the recesses with panels or wire mesh.

There was nowhere to hide.

The fly turned back from the mesh and circled the room.

‘Keep it on the move,’ Clone shouted, his voice muffled by the folds of his helmet.

This was the plan they had worked out, in the event of the fly proving difficult to capture.

They lunged at the insect repeatedly with the nets, not caring whether or not they caught it. So clumsy were their movements and so agile the fly, that it was hardly in danger of being ensnared. But what they were doing was to compel it to remain constantly airborne.

The absurd battle between two men and a fly went on for what seemed like hours. Floyd’s arm was aching as though it was about to drop off and he was bathed in perspiration. He could barely raise his right arm. He gritted his teeth and managed to keep the butterfly net waving above his head, repeatedly dislodging the fly from resting-places which it tried to find on ceiling or walls.

Ninety minutes after the chase began, the fly plummeted to the floor, its wings twitching uselessly. It dropped the dummy micro-circuit, managed to crawl a few feet, then stopped.

Clone pushed back his helmet, his face red and steamy-looking. Floyd did the same. He saw the other man reverse his butterfly net and delicately nudge the fly with the end of the handle. The creature rolled over on its back, its legs pointing stiffly upwards, immobile.

‘Not shamming, I don’t think,’ said Clone, giving the fly another gentle nudge. There was no response.

Floyd took a pair of tweezers off the desk, very carefully picked up the fly by one leg, and deposited it on a plastic dish.

* * * *

Floyd looked up from the microscope, his face showing incredulity.

‘Astonishing.’

‘You have a look. Clone.’

The security man peered into the instrument.

‘So it is an artifact, as we thought.’

‘Yes, but look at the fantastic detail. It’s beyond belief. Removing the casing is going to be tricky without damaging the internal mechanism. But even from the outside you can see how incredibly small they are working.’

Clone straightened up and gazed through the window towards the Iota factory in the distance, its bulk shimmering grey and featureless through the haze.

‘What I don’t understand,’ he said slowly, ‘is why? If they can work this small they must be several years ahead of us in microminiaturisation.’

‘Ahead in some ways, yes.’ Floyd, out of loyalty to his firm, was grudging. ‘They have Murdoch, who is an acknowledged genius in the field. But he’s curiously unpredictable and something of a prima donna.’

‘Obviously, he can deliver the goods.’

‘When a project interests him, he can. He’ll push things ahead like wild fire. But he’s rather an unworldly person, with something of a contempt for consumer preferences and prejudices. The result is that their stuff doesn’t make money, but ours does. They are simply driven to industrial espionage and to copying our prototypes in order to keep a reasonable share of the market.’

Clone nodded.

Floyd took another look through the microscope and in spite of himself his face wrinkled into a smile of enthusiasm and appreciation. ‘But one has to admire the way they’ve gone about this.’

He kept peering into the microscope as he spoke. ‘My guess is that the eyes operate as TV scanners. The device is steered remotely—possibly by an operator in the Iota factory itself. These long hairs are the radio antennae.’

‘The legs operate as a grab for carrying off specimens of micro-circuitry?’

‘Yes. But even without doing that. Iota can scan diagrams and drawings with the TV eyes and reproduce them electronically in permanent form at the other end.’

The security man in Clone reasserted itself. ‘But this is diabolical. Nothing is going to be safe with devices like this around. The thing could get through a keyhole….’

‘We’ll work out a reply. There is a defence against any form of attack. And meanwhile. Iota have presented us here with a very pretty specimen of their advanced thinking.’

* * * *

Floyd inched the small joystick forward with thumb and finger. On the TV screen in front of him the ground rushed up in exploding perspective. The fly sailed into the picture, a blurred, dancing, dark-grey spot.

With small movements of the stick, Floyd locked on to it. He followed its wild twistings and veerings unerringly.

At each turn the horizon tilted crazily sideways, left or right, to near vertical. But the image of the fly, though it swung and wobbled, never left Floyd’s screen. Despite its speeding wingbeat, it grew steadily larger second by second.

Once he almost lost it. That was when it buzzed against the sheer face of a building. Floyd flicked the joystick sideways, as warning signals rang in his head. But the hours spent flying the simulator paid off (he remembered Clone’s grin getting more and more sardonic as the ‘write-offs’ had piled up on the simulator scoreboard). He brushed a wing-tip and no more.

Then there was no escape.

Floyd followed the fly in its twisting, erratic dive to ground level. This one was doomed.

Now Floyd felt an exultant surge of anticipation as the fly’s image loomed enormous on the screen. A moment later an electronic note sounded. Floyd pushed the lever marked ‘Capture’. He exhaled a sigh of satisfaction and switched to autopilot. Then, beaming round, he gave the thumbs-up sign to colleagues seated at similar control desks on either side of him. They were too busy with their own controls to take much notice.

That was five already this morning.

Multiply that by thirty and at this rate even Iota’s production line was being strained to breaking point.

A hatch opened in the wall opposite and Floyd’s bird fluttered in and alighted on the top of the control desk. The wing action was good, but the wings did not fold when they stopped beating. And instead of two eyes, the creature had a single lens in the front of its head. Still, the overall effect was what counted. From a distance, a passer-by would have noticed nothing unusual.

Floyd jiggled a lever and the beak opened. Out fell the fly, de-activated and safely encapsulated in a block of transparent quick-setting resin. It looked like one of Iota’s standard models, but nevertheless Floyd consigned it to the chute leading to the dissection laboratories. Just as well to be on the safe side.

Now there was a welcome pause while Floyd’s bird got its fuel cell recharged. He stretched himself comfortably in the adjustable chair. Flight duration was only thirty minutes—though the boys in the back room were working on this. But half an hour was ample to make a ‘kill’. His record today was well up to average and it gave him a quiet satisfaction to know that he was the company’s top-scoring pilot. That helped to wipe the slate clean.

Relaxing over a cup of instant coffee, Floyd took time to look round the windowless airconditioned control room. Seated in rows were some thirty other pilots, mostly concentrating on their TV panels, their faces tense with the absorption of the chase, or occasionally registering disgust as the quarry eluded them.

Floyd switched his own TV to a general view of the scene outside the building.

In the airspace between their territory and Iota’s perimeter, the air was alive with the dark shapes of birds. With the black scimitar wings of swifts, the yawning beak and fish tail, and the single eye bulging in their foreheads, the birds fluttered aloft and swept down in screaming dives. Wheeling and turning, they dominated the air, hunting Iota’s spy-flies out of the sky.