[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction May 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_You can and you can't;
You will and you won't.
You'll be damn'd if you do;
You'll be damn'd if you don't._
--LORENZO DOW;
"Definition of Calvinism"
_We've all heard of the wonderful invention that the Big Corporation or
the Utilities suppressed...? Usually, that Wonderful Invention won't
work, actually. But there's another possibility, too...._
The workshop-laboratory was a mess.
Sam Bending looked it over silently; his jaw muscles were hard and
tense, and his eyes were the same.
To repeat what Sam Bending thought when he saw the junk that had been
made of thousands of dollars worth of equipment would not be
inadmissible in a family magazine, because Bending was not particularly
addicted to four-letter vulgarities. But he _was_ a religious man--in a
lax sort of way--so repeating what ran through his mind that gray Monday
in February of 1981 would be unfair to the memory of Samson Francis
Bending.
Sam Bending folded his hands over his chest. It was not an attitude of
prayer; it was an attempt to keep those big, gorillalike hands from
smashing something. The fingers intertwined, and the hands tried to
crush each other, which was a good way to keep them from actually
crushing anything else.
He stood there at the door for a full minute--just looking.
The lab--as has been said--was a mess. It would have looked better if
someone had simply tossed a grenade in it and had done with it. At least
the results would have been random and more evenly dispersed.
But whoever had gone about the wrecking of the lab had gone about it in
a workmanlike way. Whoever had done the job was no amateur. The vandal
had known his way about in a laboratory, that was obvious. Leads had
been cut carefully; equipment had been shoved aside without care as to
what happened to it, but with great care that the shover should not be
damaged by the shoving; the invader had known exactly what he was after,
and exactly how to get to it.
And he--whoever he was--had gotten his hands on what he wanted.
The Converter was gone.
* * * * *
Sam Bending took his time in regaining his temper. He had to. A man who
stands six feet three, weighs three hundred pounds, and wears a
forty-eight size jacket can't afford to lose his temper very often or
he'll end up on the wrong end of a homicide charge. That three hundred
pounds was composed of too much muscle and too little fat for Sam
Bending to allow it to run amok.
At last, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let his tense
nerves, muscles, and tendons sag--he pretended someone had struck him
with a dose of curare. He let his breath out slowly and opened his eyes
again.
The lab still looked the same, but it no longer irritated him. It was
something to be accepted as done. It was something to investigate,
and--if possible--avenge. But it was no longer something to worry about
or lose his temper over.
_I should have expected it_, he thought wryly. _They'd have to do
something about it, wouldn't they?_
But the funny thing was that he _hadn't_ expected it--not in modern,
law-abiding America.
He reached over to the wall switch to turn on the lights, but before his
hand touched it, he stopped the motion and grinned to himself. No point
in turning on the switch when he knew perfectly well that there was no
power behind it. Still--
His fingers touched the switch anyway. And nothing happened.
He shrugged and went over to the phone.
He let his eyes wander over the wreckage as his right index finger spun
the dial. Actually, the room wasn't as much of a shambles as it had
looked on first sight. The--burglar?--hadn't tried to get at anything
but the Converter. He hadn't known exactly where it was, but he'd been
able to follow the leads to its hiding place. That meant that he knew
his beans about power lines, anyway.
It also meant that he hadn't been an ordinary burglar. There were plenty
of other things around for a burglar to make money out of. Unless he
knew what it was, he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of stealing the
Converter.