Crayley was enjoying the scene immensely. Both of the men were
distinctly uncomfortable.
"I'm afraid I would have been--uh, well--afraid."
"Perhaps I was," Klythe said softly. "But I don't know. That whole year
of my life is gone. That's why they call it the Big Gamble, you know;
you bet one year of your life against the chance that you'll get an
additional century or two. I don't know whether I was frightened or
not."
"I'm very happy for you," said the major, closing the subject.
Crayley held out his cup for another drink.
The Big Gamble had paid off for Berin Klythe. The year-long physical
reconstruction had not resulted in his death, as it had for so many.
But Klythe's gamble hadn't paid off for Lewis Crayley.
Klythe held the Directorship. Crayley was in line for the position.
Klythe would never leave of his own accord. It came out as a simple
equation in symbolic logic.
Before Klythe had been offered the chance for the Big Gamble, Crayley
had been content to wait. At sixty, Klythe had been thirty years
older than Crayley. Normally, he would have retired at seventy-five.
He would have another forty years of life to go, but they would not
be productive years. But if you survived the Big Gamble, you were in
better health, both physically and mentally, than you had been at
twenty-five. By the time Klythe was ready to retire, Crayley would be
dead.
Therefore, Klythe had to go.
* * * * *
The three men finished their drinks; the major shook hands all around,
and left quietly.
Klythe's eyes narrowed as he looked at the door through which the Space
Force officer had departed. "Running in their own recording technicians
on us, eh, Lew? Well, by God, we'll see about that! They'll be working
under me; I'll make 'em jump!"
"Jump it is, Berin." Crayley's voice was quiet, but his blood was
singing.
The Space Force Research Command team delivered the original two days
later. It was obvious that the thing was not a drive generator. The
sub-nucleonic converter had been elongated along the acceleration axis
and reduced a bit in diameter. Evidently the Space Force wanted a
high-velocity beam without much actual volume of energy.
The thing looked like an over-decorated length of sewer pipe instead of
having the normal converter's barrel shape.
Crayley himself had accepted delivery of the original. He wanted to
have a good look at it before Klythe did. He prowled around it, a
handful of schematic prints in his hand, checking the symbols on the
schematic against the reality of the converter before him.
For the first time in his life, he wished he knew the theory behind a
converter. That wasn't his job, of course, but he had a hunch it would
be useful knowledge.
He knew _what_ a standard converter did, but he didn't know _how_.
Therefore, he only knew approximately what this new modification would
do.
The Space Force technicians stood off to one side, waiting respectfully
for Crayley to finish his examination. Crayley could feel their eyes
on him, and he knew full well that the respectful attitude was only
superficial; a Space Force man has respect only for the officers above
him.
When he was thoroughly satisfied that he could learn nothing more from
a superficial examination of the machine, he turned to the technicians.
"All right, let's go upstairs. Mr. Klythe wants to talk to you."
It was the incident in the hall of the executive offices that decided
Lewis Crayley once and for all that he now had not only a motive but a
method for murdering Berin Klythe.
As the recording technicians were filing into the briefing room, Berin
stepped out of the lift tube and headed toward the door. Several other
engineering executives of North American Sub-nucleonics followed him.
Klythe started to walk in through the door of the conference room, and
one of the Space Force techs stepped on his toe. It wasn't painful,
and it wasn't done on purpose; the tech was quite polite when he said,
"Excuse me, sonny."
Klythe said nothing, but his eyes blazed with sudden anger, and his
face grew crimson as he tried successfully to suppress it.
Behind his face, Crayley grinned gleefully. He rubbed his nose with a
concealing hand.
Inside the room, as they all seated themselves in the chairs, Crayley
watched the face of the man who had done the toe-mashing. He was
solidly-built, young, good-looking in an ugly sort of way, sensitive
and intelligent, as a waldo recorder had to be. When Klythe walked up
behind the desk and said: "Good morning, gentlemen: I'm Berin Klythe,"
the tech's eyes opened a little wider for a fraction of a second, but
there was no further reaction. Crayley was satisfied; he turned to
watch Klythe.
Klythe was furious, but there was nothing he could do about it. The
crimson in his face had died, to be replaced by the faint pallor of
anger.
"You may ask me questions later," he said bluntly. "Right now, I'd like
to ask you one. Which one of you is co-ordinator here?" One of the men
stood. "Your name? Russ? Mr. Russ, may I ask why the Space Force felt
that our recording men were not capable of doing this job?"
Russ fumbled uncomfortably. Finally: "Well, sir, this gadget is
of--uh--rather radically new design. Since we, as a team, had built
the various designs that led up to this one, our superiors felt that
we would have a better working knowledge of the piece. They felt it
would save time if we made the recording. I'm sure there was no slight
intended to your own recording staff."
"I see," Klythe said coldly. "Very well." He turned his head a fraction
and looked directly at Crayley. "Lew, what do you think the Space Force
will do next time? Send over their own Director?"
The Space Force men looked embarrassed, and Crayley smiled one-sidedly.
Nobody but Klythe could have gotten away with that crack. Berin Klythe
had been trained by, and had worked under, no less a person than the
great Fenwick Greene, acknowledged Grand Old Man of the profession.
Crayley recalled that Fenwick Greene, too, had been offered and had
survived the Big Gamble.
Klythe began asking questions about the new unit. His tone was
sarcastic, and his manner biting. He spent better than an hour singling
each man out for some remark about his ability or lack of it.
When he was finally through, he leaned forward on his desk, his
knuckles white. "All right, let's get busy and build this thing! But
we'll build it my way, understand?"
None of the technicians said a word.
* * * * *
Klythe turned and headed for the door, followed by Crayley and the
other engineers. Silently, the technicians followed after.
The original model of the generator lay on a work table in one of the
recording rooms. Around it were the recording stations, the seats and
controls each of the techs would occupy.
Klythe waved at the seats. "All right, men--to begin with, each of you
occupy your regular team position. Let's get this thing disassembled. I
want to see how it goes."
The model was just that--a model. It had been built with ordinary
metal and plastic; it could never be energized. The wiring was copper,
the casing of steel. But it had been built as carefully and with as
great precision as if it had actually been constructed of the fiercely
radioactive materials that would go into the production models.
The recorders seated themselves around the hulking object, checking and
rechecking the intricate controls of the waldoes they were to operate.
Finally, they fitted their hands into the glove pickups and waited,
watching Klythe.
"Set?" Klythe asked.
"Set!" they said in one voice.
Klythe tapped his finger on the control board at which he had seated
himself. The technicians began to disassemble the model, stripping it
down to its last essential part, as Klythe watched with a critical eye.
Klythe had tapped the board, but he hadn't actually energized the
gloves. This was to be a dry run; there was no need to record a
disassembly; it was the assembly that would go down on tape.
It took an hour to complete the job, and all that time Klythe said
nothing. He watched the men work, eying each move, each nut removed,
each wire unwound.
When it was over, the men folded their hands in their laps, and Klythe
tapped the control board once more.
"Let's see if we can't assemble it a little faster than that," he said
coldly. He pressed the recording button, and the technicians began
rebuilding the model.
Crayley stepped over to the monitor screen set in one wall of the
recording room and switched it on. Then he cut in the experimental
secondaries, connecting them to the recording primaries. They went
through the same motions, their arms waving and gesticulating oddly in
the air, since there was nothing for them to work on.
Klythe wasn't silent during the rebuilding. The disassembly had taught
him everything he needed to know about the new unit; that was his job
and his genius.
"Seven! Move that plate in straight next time! And you, Four, keep your
guides straighter!" His voice rang clearly and concisely in the huge
room. "Eighty-four! Don't wait so long before you hit that welder! As
soon as Nine moves his left away from the shell, hit it!"
Little things, small savings of time, but they added up to greater
efficiency in the long run. Klythe watched for every wasted motion,
every fumble, every tiny error in timing or spacing, and corrected it
with a whiplash voice.
When they had put the model completely back together, they folded their
hands and looked at Klythe. Klythe jammed his finger down on the stop
button and set the machine to erase the tape they had just made.
He scowled at the men. "I have seen more fumble-fingered recorders," he
said acidly, "but they were trainees." He sighed as though his burden
was too much. "All right. Rip her down and let's try it again."
The next time through, he was even more vituperative. If a man made an
error the second time, Klythe was not above insults--personal ones.
An emergency call came in for Crayley. Something wrong on the second
level. He stepped out the door in the middle of one of Klythe's
high-tension blasts at a technician.
All the way down to the second level, Crayley was happy.
* * * * *
It took three days of hard work to pound all the kinks out of the
recorders' technique. Not all, actually; Klythe still expressed
dissatisfaction.
Crayley was in Klythe's office on the morning of the fourth day,
sitting on Klythe's desk and smoking one of Klythe's cigarettes.
"The whole damned crew are butterfingers," Klythe was complaining. "I
think they've all got arthritis. Why, oh, why couldn't they let me use
my own crew?"
"Speed things up, I suppose," Crayley said cautiously.
"Oh, hell yes! Speed things up! Sure, I'll admit that it would have
taken my boys a little time in disassembly to get the hang of this new
generator, but we'd have made it up in recording time. That's the way
the goddam military mind works! Nuts!"
Crayley rubbed the tip of his nose with a finger. "Is the team ready
for recording today?"
Klythe grinned. "As close as they'll ever be. It takes time to get a
team accustomed to my way of doing things. They hate my guts for the
way I've yelled at them. But it's as much my fault as theirs. If their
own engineer were to take over one of my crews, he wouldn't have any
better results. The military just has to do things differently, that's
all."
They recorded that afternoon. This time, when Klythe pressed the
starter, he said nothing. Only his hands and eyes directed the men
through their tasks. And every motion of the men's fingers and arms
sent their special impulses to the recording tape that hummed through
the machinery.
Crayley looked out from behind his face and smiled secretly.
When the recording was finished, Klythe nodded with satisfaction. "I
think we could have shaved a few more seconds off that," he said, "but
it'll do. Now disassemble it and we'll run her through on the tape."
They took the model down below to the radiation-proofed assembly tables
for the test. The thing was pulled to pieces and each piece positioned.
Then Klythe threw the switch that started the waldoes.
The tape purred through the pickup head, transmitting the little bits
of information it had received, squirting little pulses of energy
to the steel-and-plastic arms that jutted out of the domes atop the
pillars. In exact duplication of the men's motions, the waldoes picked
up the pieces and put them in their proper places.
It was like a great four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Each piece not only
had to be located properly in space, but placed there at just exactly
the right time. If there were any bugs in the recording, now was the
time to find out. When the real thing was assembled, mistakes could be
costly.
But there were no flaws in the recording. The model was rebuilt exactly
as the men themselves had rebuilt it. That was Klythe's genius; he
worked for perfection and got it.
Klythe looked at the model after the last pair of hands had fallen
inert, and nodded slowly. Then he climbed all over the model, checking
for errors. The interior circuits were tested electrically, one by one
and in co-ordination with each other. The test machines showed it clear.
Finally, Klythe said: "I think it'll do. But now we'll disassemble it
again by hand--slowly, this time--and see if we've screwed up anywhere."
That night, Crayley went out and got drunk. He sat by himself, grinning
and thinking secret thoughts in a booth at the _Peg & Wassail_,
dropping coins in the slot and dialing one beer after another. He
managed to maneuver himself home at three o'clock in the morning,
singing softly to himself.
He woke up with a horrible headache, but he felt wonderful inside.
* * * * *
Sure enough, Berin was in his usual state of "first-run jitters."
Crayley had been a little afraid that Klythe's enthusiasm wouldn't be
up to par on this project, but it evidently was.
He was rubbing his hands together, a nervous smile playing around his
mouth, coming and going unpredictably.
"Well, we'll see today. Major Stratford will be here with the Space
Force Research Staff at fourteen hundred to watch the first one off. I
hope the bugs aren't too rough on us."
"Nothing will go wrong," Crayley assured him.
"That's easy to say," Klythe grumbled, "but you know how things can go
at the last minute. I'm worried about those tensile differences."
Crayley stroked his mustache and nodded. The material used in
the interior of the model was supposed to approximate the highly
radioactive material in the real thing as closely as possible, but
there might be just enough difference in critical spots to require some
small adjustments in the tape. If a man's hand applied just enough
pressure and torque to twist a piece of copper wire just so, it might
be too much or too little for a radioactive alloy wire that would be
used in the same place in the production piece.
After the suppressor field had been switched on in the hull of the
finished generator, the energy generated by the workings of the
intensely radioactive interior would be compressed to the sub-nucleonic
level, where it could be controlled. Unfortunately, the machine
couldn't be built inside a suppressor field; that would be like trying
to build a ship in a bottle when the bottle's neck was sealed shut.
Crayley said, "I've got a lot of stuff to do on Line Number Two this
morning, but I'd like to see the run-off."
"Sure," said Klythe abstractedly, "come ahead."
Crayley didn't go to Number Two. He headed directly for the recording
room. All he needed was ten minutes alone in there. Provided, of
course, that it was empty.
* * * * *
It was. Crayley took a quick look up and down the corridor and stepped
inside. He locked the door behind him. If anyone tried to come in, he'd
be able to cover. It was better to have someone wonder why the door was
locked than to be caught messing with the tapes when he shouldn't be.
Of course, if someone did try the door, it would mean that his chance
of getting Klythe this time would be gone. But there would always be
another time.
First, the tape. He flipped open the cover to the receiving reel. Sure
enough, it was still there from yesterday's trial run, a huge reel of
foot-wide blue plastic ribbon. Good enough.
He punched the "fast" button and ran it through to the last few minutes
of the recording. He glanced at the monitor screen. The model was still
on the assembly table in the tunnel deep underground.
He cut off the current to the secondaries and switched on the manual
controls. Then he put his hands into one set of gloves and wiggled his
fingers. The secondaries in the room below remained motionless.
Number Nineteen Experimental ought to be empty. He withdrew his hand
and turned the selector knob on the monitor screen to Nineteen. No one
there. He switched on the power, letting the last few minutes of the
taped recording feed into the secondaries in Nineteen.
The waldoes in the screen went through the motions of finishing the
assembly--meaningless gestures in the empty air--then fell into the
"ready" position. Crayley hit the stop button, then switched back to
the tunnel where the model lay.
He took a deep breath. Now came the touchy part. He hadn't handled a
pair of primary waldoes for years, and this thing had to be done just
right.
He had already decided which of the positions he would have to use and
what he would have to do. Now, if only his timing was good. It didn't
have to be perfect; that was the beauty of the plan. But it did have to
be pretty close.
He turned on the waldoes without turning on the recorder and slipped
his hands into the gloves. Then, using the foot switch, he kicked on
the close-up screen for the position he was occupying. The screen
showed the secondaries of the hands he was using. He wiggled his
fingers. The secondaries wiggled theirs.
Then he reached out and gingerly touched the model. The secondaries
touched the steel plate, and the feedbacks sent back a signal.
Crayley's gloves felt the resistance just as though the model were
right there in the room.
Several times, he reached out his right hand to one particular spot on
the model, practicing to make sure he could hit it every time. Fine,
fine.
Then he took his left hand out of the glove, eyed the wall clock, and
turned on the recorder. The tape began to move through the recording
heads. For five minutes he waited.
Then, suddenly, he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the
regulator coil housing on the side of the model. As soon as his fingers
touched it, he hit the cut-off for the secondaries, knowing the
primaries would continue to record. He didn't want to ruin the model.
Simultaneously, he punched the high-power switch.
His right hand, in the primary, grasped at mid-air and jerked down
violently.
The thing was done. Had he forgotten anything? He thought for a moment.
No. All was well.
He cut off the recorder and started to shut off the primaries when his
eyes went to the screen. The secondary arm was still frozen where he
had left it, grasping the regulator coil housing!
He shuddered. If he'd missed that....
Quickly, he lowered the secondary to the "ready" position.
Had he forgotten anything? Anything at all?
He thought not, but he went over the whole thing in his mind again,
step by step, to make sure.
Nothing wrong, nothing missing. Fine. He wiped out the inside of the
primary gloves and walked to the door. No need to worry about any other
prints; he had been in that room often, and it might look funny if the
whole place was wiped clean. As a matter of fact, he really didn't need
to worry about the primaries; the grid inside them probably wouldn't
take a print anyway. Still, there was nothing like being cautious.
He opened the door and stepped out as if he had every right to be
there. No use peeking around corners; that would only rouse suspicion.
He strolled on down the corridor to the tube lift. He felt wonderful.
He actually grinned with his face. There was no one around to see it.
* * * * *
The job he had to do in Number Two kept him busy until well after
fourteen hundred, as he intended it should. He didn't want to get
there early, but he wanted to have a good excuse for being late.
He actually walked into the monitor room for Number Nine Production
Tunnel at fifteen-twenty. The Space Force officers were gathered around
the screen watching the unit take shape under the deft, mindless
fingers of the waldoes. The weird blue glow of radioactivity obscured
the finer details a little, but the operation was worth watching.
Major Stratford turned as he came in. "Hello, Mr. Crayley. I thought
you were down below with Mr. Klythe."
Crayley stroked his mustache and smiled a little. "I had some work to
do," he said apologetically. "I didn't get through until a few minutes
ago. I figured this would be as good a place to watch from as down
below."