"Don't laugh," said Winstein. "It almost worked."
"What? How?"
"It threw the burden of proof on the Government. They thought they had
him when he admitted that he'd shot the thing off, but when he denied
that it was a rocket, then, in order to prove that he'd committed a
crime, they had to prove that it _was_ a rocket. It wasn't up to Porter
to prove that it _wasn't_."
"Hey," Elshawe said in admiration, "that's pretty neat. I'm almost sorry
it didn't work."
* * * * *
"Yeah. Trouble was that the Army had blown up the evidence. They knew it
was a rocket, but they had to prove it. They had recordings of the radar
picture, of course, and they used that to show the shape and
acceleration of the missile. They proved that he'd bought an old
obsolete Odin rocket from one of the small colleges in the Midwest--one
that the Army had sold them as a demonstration model for their rocket
engineering classes. They proved that he had a small liquid air plant
out there at his place in New Mexico. In other words, they proved that
he had the equipment to rebuild the rocket and the fuel to run it.
"Then they got a battery of high-powered physicists up on the stands to
prove that nothing else but a rocket could have driven the thing that
way.
"Porter's attorney hammered at them in cross-examination, trying to get
one of them to admit that it was possible that Porter had discovered a
new principle of physics that could fly a missile without rockets, but
the Attorney General's prosecutor had coached them pretty well. They all
said that unless there was evidence to the contrary, they could not
admit that there was such a principle.
"When the prosecutor presented his case to the jury, he really had
himself a ball. I'll give you a transcript of the trial later; you'll
have to read it for yourself to get the real flavor of it. The gist of
it was that things had come to a pretty pass if a man could claim a
scientific principle known only to himself as a defense against a crime.
"He gave one analogy I liked. He said, suppose that a man is found
speeding in a car. The cops find him all alone, behind the wheel, when
they chase him down. Then, in court, he admits that he was alone, and
that the car was speeding, but he insists that the car was steering
itself, and that he wasn't in control of the vehicle at all. And what
was steering the car? Why, a new scientific principle, of course."
Elshawe burst out laughing. "Wow! No wonder the jury didn't stay out
long! I'm going to have to dig the recordings of the newscasts out of
the files; I missed a real comedy while I was in Africa."
Winstein nodded. "We got pretty good coverage on it, but our worthy
competitor, whose name I will not have mentioned within these sacred
halls, got Beebee Vayne to run a commentary on it, and we got beat out
on the meters."
"Vayne?" Elshawe was still grinning. "That's a new twist--getting a
comedian to do a news report."
"I'll have to admit that my worthy competitor, whose name et cetera,
does get an idea once in a while. But I don't want him beating us out
again. We're in on the ground floor this time, and I want to hog the
whole thing if I can."
"Sounds like a great idea, if we can swing it," Elshawe agreed. "Do you
have a new gimmick? You're not going to get a comedian to do it, are
you?"
"Heaven forbid! Even if it had been my own idea three years ago, I
wouldn't repeat it, and I certainly won't have it said that I copy my
competitors. No, what I want you to do is go out there and find out
what's going on. Get a full background on it. We'll figure out the
presentation angle when we get some idea of what he's going to do this
time." Winstein eased himself off the corner of Elshawe's desk and
stood up. "By the way--"
"Yeah?"
"Play it straight when you go out there. You're a reporter, looking for
news; you haven't made any previous judgments."
Elshawe's pipe had gone out. He fired it up again with his desk lighter.
"I don't want to be," he said between puffs, "too cagey. If he's got ...
any brains ... he'll know it's ... a phony act ... if I overdo it." He
snapped off the lighter and looked at his employer through a cloud of
blue-gray smoke. "I mean, after all, he's on the records as being a
crackpot. I'd be a pretty stupid reporter if I believed everything he
said. If I don't act a little skeptical, he'll think I'm either a
blockhead or a phony or both."
"Maybe," Winstein said doubtfully. "Still, some of these crackpots fly
off the handle if you doubt their word in the least bit."
"I'll tell you what I'll do," Elshawe said. "He used to live here in New
York, didn't he?"
"Still does," Winstein said. "He has a two-floor apartment on Central
Park West. He just uses that New Mexico ranch of his for relaxation."
"He's not hurting for money, is he?" Elshawe asked at random. "Anyway,
what I'll do is look up some of the people he knows and get an idea of
what kind of a bird he is. Then, when I get out there, I'll know more
what kind of line to feed him."
"That sounds good. But whatever you do, play it on the soft side. My
confidential informant tells me that the only reason we're getting this
inside info is because Malcom Porter is sore about the way our
competition treated him four years ago."
"Just who is this confidential informant, anyway, Ole?" Elshawe asked
curiously.
Winstein grinned widely. "It's supposed to be very confidential. I don't
want it to get any further than you."
"Sure not. Since when am I a blabbermouth? Who is it?"
"Malcom Porter."
* * * * *
Two days later, Terrence Elshawe was sitting in the front seat of a big
station wagon, watching the scenery go by and listening to the driver
talk as the machine tooled its way out of Silver City, New Mexico, and
headed up into the Mogollon Mountains.
"Was a time, not too long back," the driver was saying, "when a man
couldn't get up into this part of the country 'thout a pack mule. Still
places y'can't, but the boss had t' have a road built up to the ranch
so's he could bring in all that heavy equipment. Reckon one of these
days the Mogollons 'll be so civilized and full a people that a fella
might as well live in New York."
Elshawe, who hadn't seen another human being for fifteen minutes, felt
that the predicted overcrowding was still some time off.
"'Course," the driver went on, "I reckon folks have t' live some place,
but I never could see why human bein's are so all-fired determined to
bunch theirselves up so thick together that they can't hardly move--like
a bunch of sheep in a snowstorm. It don't make sense to me. Does it to
you, Mr. Skinner?"
That last was addressed to the other passenger, an elderly man who was
sitting in the seat behind Elshawe.
"I guess it's pretty much a matter of taste, Bill," Mr. Skinner said in
a soft voice.
"I reckon," Bill said, in a tone that implied that anyone whose tastes
were so bad that he wanted to live in the city was an object of pity who
probably needed psychiatric treatment. He was silent for a moment, in
obvious commiseration with his less fortunate fellows.
Elshawe took the opportunity to try to get a word in. The chunky
Westerner had picked him up at the airport, along with Mr. Samuel
Skinner, who had come in on the same plane with Elshawe, and, after
introducing himself as Bill Rodriguez, he had kept up a steady stream of
chatter ever since. Elshawe didn't feel he should take a chance on
passing up the sudden silence.
"By the way; has Mr. Porter applied to the Government for permission to
test his ... uh ... his ship, yet?"
Bill Rodriguez didn't take his eyes off the winding road. "Well, now, I
don't rightly know, Mr. Elshawe. Y'see, I just work on the ranch up
there. I don't have a doggone thing to do with the lab'r'tory at
all--'cept to keep the fence in good shape so's the stock don't get into
the lab'r'tory area. If Mr. Porter wants me to know somethin', he tells
me, an' if he don't, why, I don't reckon it's any a my business."
"I see," said Elshawe. _And that shuts_ me _up_, he thought to himself.
He took out his pipe and began to fill it in silence.
"How's everything out in Los Angeles, Mr. Skinner?" Rodriguez asked the
passenger in back. "Haven't seen you in quite a spell."
Elshawe listened to the conversation between the two with half an ear
and smoked his pipe wordlessly.
He had spent the previous day getting all the information he could on
Malcom Porter, and the information hadn't been dull by any means.
Porter had been born in New York in 1949, which made him just barely
thirty-three. His father, Vanneman Porter, had been an oddball in his
own way, too. The Porters of New York didn't quite date back to the time
of Peter Stuyvesant, but they had been around long enough to acquire the
feeling that the twenty-four dollars that had been paid for Manhattan
Island had come out of the family exchequer. Just as the Vanderbilts
looked upon the Rockefellers as newcomers, so the Porters looked on the
Vanderbilts.
For generations, it had been tacitly conceded that a young Porter
gentleman had only three courses of action open to him when it came time
for him to choose his vocation in life. He could join the firm of
Porter & Sons on Wall Street, or he could join some other respectable
business or banking enterprise, or he could take up the Law.
(Corporation law, of course--_never_ criminal law.) For those few who
felt that the business world was not for them, there was a fourth
alternative--studying for the priesthood of the Episcopal Church.
Anything else was unheard of.
So it had been somewhat of a shock to Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Porter when
their only son, Vanneman, had announced that he intended to study
physics at M.I.T. But they gave their permission; they were quite
certain that the dear boy would "come to his senses" and join the firm
after he had been graduated. He was, after all, the only one to carry on
the family name and manage the family holdings.
[Illustration]
But Vanneman Porter not only stuck to his guns and went on to a Ph.D.;
he compounded his delinquency by marrying a pretty, sweet, but not
overly bright girl named Mary Kelley.
Malcom Porter was their son.
* * * * *
When Malcom was ten years old, both his parents were killed in a smashup
on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the child went to live with his widowed
grandmother, Mrs. Hamilton Porter.
Terry Elshawe had gathered that young Malcom Porter's life had not been
exactly idyllic from that point on. Grandmother Porter hadn't approved
of her son's marriage, and she seemed to have felt that she must do
everything in her power to help her grandson overcome the handicap of
having nonaristocratic blood in his veins.
Elshawe wasn't sure in his own mind whether environment or heredity had
been the deciding factor in Malcom Porter's subsequent life, but he had
a hunch that the two had been acting synergistically. It was likely that
the radical change in his way of life after his tenth year had as much
to do with his behavior as the possibility that the undeniably brilliant
mental characteristics of the Porter family had been modified by the
genes of the pretty but scatter-brained wife of Vanneman Porter.
Three times, only his grandmother's influence kept him from being
expelled from the exclusive prep school she had enrolled him in, and his
final grades were nothing to mention in polite society, much less boast
about.
In her own way, the old lady was trying to do her best for him, but she
had found it difficult to understand her own son, and his deviations
from the Porter norm had been slight in comparison with those of his
son. When the time came for Malcom to enter college, Grandmother Porter
was at a total loss as to what to do. With his record, it was unlikely
that any law school would take him unless he showed tremendous
improvement in his pre-law courses. And unless that improvement was a
general one, not only as far as his studies were concerned, but in his
handling of his personal life, it would be commercial suicide to put him
in any position of trust with Porter & Sons. It wasn't that he was
dishonest; he simply couldn't be trusted to do anything properly. He had
a tendency to follow his own whims and ignore everybody else.
The idea of his entering the clergy was never even considered.
It came almost as a relief to the old woman when Malcom announced that
he was going to study physics, as his father had done.
The relief didn't last long. By the time Malcom was in his sophomore
year, he was apparently convinced that his instructors were dunderheads
to the last man. That, Elshawe thought, was probably not unusual among
college students, but Malcom Porter made the mistake of telling them
about it.
One of the professors with whom Elshawe had talked had said: "He acted
as though he owned the college. That, I think, was what was his trouble
in his studies; he wasn't really stupid, and he wasn't as lazy as some
said, but he didn't want to be bothered with anything that he didn't
enjoy. The experiments he liked, for instance, were the showy,
spectacular ones. He built himself a Tesla coil, and a table with hidden
AC electromagnets in it that would make a metal plate float in the air.
But when it came to nucleonics, he was bored. Anything less than a
thermonuclear bomb wasn't any fun."
The trouble was that he called his instructors stupid and dull for being
interested in "commonplace stuff," and it infuriated him to be forced to
study such "junk."
As a result, he managed to get himself booted out of college toward the
end of his junior year. And that was the end of his formal education.
Six months after that, his grandmother died. Although she had married
into the Porter family, she was fiercely proud of the name; she had been
born a Van Courtland, so she knew what family pride was. And the
realization that Malcom was the last of the Porters--and a failure--was
more than she could bear. The coronary attack she suffered should have
been cured in a week, but the best medico-surgical techniques on Earth
can't help a woman who doesn't want to live.
Her will showed exactly what she thought of Malcom Porter. The Porter
holdings were placed in trust. Malcom was to have the earnings, but he
had no voice whatever in control of the principal until he was fifty
years of age.
* * * * *
Instead of being angry, Malcom was perfectly happy. He had an income
that exceeded a million dollars before taxes, and didn't need to worry
about the dull details of making money. He formed a small corporation of
his own, Porter Research Associates, and financed it with his own money.
It ran deep in the red, but Porter didn't mind; Porter Research
Associates was a hobby, not a business, and running at a deficit saved
him plenty in taxes.
By the time he was twenty-five, he was known as a crackpot. He had a
motley crew of technicians and scientists working for him--some with
Ph.D.'s, some with a trade-school education. The personnel turnover in
that little group was on a par with the turnover of patients in a
maternity ward, at least as far as genuine scientists were concerned.
Porter concocted theories and hypotheses out of cobwebs and became
furious with anyone who tried to tear them down. If evidence came up
that would tend to show that one of his pet theories was utter hogwash,
he'd come up with an _ad hoc_ explanation which showed that this
particular bit of evidence was an exception. He insisted that "the basis
of science lies in the experimental evidence, not in the pronouncements
of authorities," which meant that any recourse to the theories of
Einstein, Pauli, Dirac, Bohr, or Fermi was as silly as quoting
Aristotle, Plato, or St. Thomas Aquinas. The only authority he would
accept was Malcom Porter.
Nobody who had had any training in science could work long with a man
like that, even if the pay had been high, which it wasn't. The only
people who could stick with him were the skilled workers--the welders,
tool-and-die men, electricians, and junior engineers, who didn't care
much about theories as long as they got the work done. They listened
respectfully to what Porter had to say and then built the gadgets he
told them to build. If the gadgets didn't work the way Porter expected
them to, Porter would fuss and fidget with them until he got tired of
them, then he would junk them and try something else. He never blamed a
technician who had followed orders. Since the salaries he paid were
proportional to the man's "ability and loyalty"--judged, of course, by
Porter's own standards--he soon had a group of technician-artisans who
knew that their personal security rested with Malcom Porter, and that
personal loyalty was more important than the ability to utilize the
scientific method.
Not everything that Porter had done was a one-hundred-per cent failure.
He had managed to come up with a few basic improvements, patented them,
and licensed them out to various manufacturers. But these were purely an
accidental by-product. Malcom Porter was interested in "basic research"
and not much else, it seemed.
He had written papers and books, but they had been uniformly rejected by
the scientific journals, and those he had had published himself were on
a par with the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and George Adamski.
And now he was going to shoot a rocket--or whatever it was--to the moon.
Well, Elshawe thought, if it went off as scheduled, it would at least be
worth watching. Elshawe was a rocket buff; he'd watched a dozen or more
moon shots in his life--everything from the automatic supply-carriers to
the three-man passenger rockets that added to the personnel of Moon Base
One--and he never tired of watching the bellowing monsters climb up
skywards on their white-hot pillars of flame.
And if nothing happened, Elshawe decided, he'd at least get a laugh out
of the whole episode.
* * * * *
After nearly two hours of driving, Bill Rodriguez finally turned off the
main road onto an asphalt road that climbed steeply into the pine forest
that surrounded it. A sign said: _Double Horseshoe Ranch--Private
Road--No Trespassing_.
Elshawe had always thought of a ranch as a huge spread of flat prairie
land full of cattle and gun-toting cowpokes on horseback; a mountainside
full of sheep just didn't fit into that picture.
After a half mile or so, the station wagon came to a high metal-mesh
fence that blocked the road. On the big gate, another sign proclaimed
that the area beyond was private property and that trespassers would be
prosecuted.
Bill Rodriguez stopped the car, got out, and walked over to the gate. He
pressed a button in one of the metal gateposts and said, "Ed? This's
Bill. I got Mr. Skinner and that New York reporter with me."
After a slight pause, there was a metallic click, and the gate swung
open. Rodriguez came back to the car, got in, and drove on through the
gate. Elshawe twisted his head to watch the big gate swing shut behind
them.
After another ten minutes, Rodriguez swung off the road onto another
side road, and ten minutes after that the station wagon went over a
small rise and headed down into a small valley. In the middle of it,
shining like bright aluminum in the sun, was a vessel.
_Now I know Porter is nuts_, Elshawe thought wryly.
Because the vessel, whatever it was, was parallel to the ground, looking
like the fuselage of a stratojet, minus wings and tail, sitting on its
landing gear. Nowhere was there any sign of a launching pad, with its
gantries and cranes and jet baffles. Nor was there any sign of a rocket
motor on the vessel itself.
As the station wagon approached the cluster of buildings a hundred yards
this side of the machine, Elshawe realized with shock that the thing
_was_ a stripped-down stratojet--an old Grumman _Supernova_, _circa_
1970.
"Well, Elijah got there by sitting in an iron chair and throwing a
magnet out in front of himself," Elshawe said, "so what the hell."
"What?" Rodriguez asked blankly.
"Nothing; just thinking out loud. Sorry."
Behind Elshawe, Mr. Skinner chuckled softly, but said nothing.
When the station wagon pulled up next to one of the cluster of white
prefab buildings, Malcom Porter himself stepped out of the wide door and
walked toward them.
Elshawe recognized the man from his pictures--tall, wide-shouldered,
dark-haired, and almost handsome, he didn't look much like a wild-eyed
crackpot. He greeted Rodriguez and Skinner rather peremptorily, but he
smiled broadly and held out his hand to Elshawe.
"Mr. Elshawe? I'm Malcom Porter." His grip was firm and friendly. "I'm
glad to see you. Glad you could make it."
"Glad to be here, Dr. Porter," Elshawe said in his best manner. "It's
quite a privilege." He knew that Porter liked to be called "Doctor"; all
his subordinates called him that.
But, surprisingly, Porter said: "Not 'Doctor,' Mr. Elshawe; just
'Mister.' My boys like to call me 'Doctor,' but it's sort of a nickname.
I don't have a degree, and I don't claim one. I don't want the public
thinking I'm claiming to be something I'm not."
"I understand, Mr. Porter."
Bill Rodriguez's voice broke in. "Where do you want me to put all this
stuff, Doc?" He had unloaded Elshawe's baggage from the station wagon
and set it carefully on the ground. Skinner picked up his single
suitcase and looked at Porter inquiringly.
"My usual room, Malcom?"
"Yeah. Sure, Sam; sure." As Skinner walked off toward one of the other
buildings, Porter said: "Quite a load of baggage you have there, Mr.
Elshawe. Recording equipment?"
"Most of it," the reporter admitted. "Recording TV cameras, 16mm movie
cameras, tape recorders, 35mm still cameras--the works. I wanted to get
good coverage, and if you've got any men that you won't be using during
the take-off, I'd like to borrow them to help me operate this stuff."
"Certainly; certainly. Come on, Bill, let's get this stuff over to Mr.
Elshawe's suite."
* * * * *
The suite consisted of three rooms, all very nicely appointed for a
place as far out in the wilderness as this. When Elshawe got his
equipment stowed away, Porter invited him to come out and take a look at
his pride and joy.
"The first real spaceship, Elshawe," he said energetically. "The first
real spaceship. The rocket is no more a spaceship than a rowboat is an
ocean-going vessel." He gestured toward the sleek, shining, metal ship.
"Of course, it's only a pilot model, you might say. I don't have
hundreds of millions of dollars to spend; I had to make do with what I
could afford. That's an old Grumman _Supernova_ stratojet. I got it
fairly cheap because I told 'em I didn't want the engines or the wings
or the tail assembly.
"But she'll do the job, all right. Isn't she a beauty?"
Elshawe had his small pocket recorder going; he might as well get all
this down. "Mr. Porter," he asked carefully, "just how does this vessel
propel itself? I understand that, at the trial, it was said that you
claimed it was an antigravity device, but that you denied it."
"Those idiots!" Porter exploded angrily. "Nobody understood what I was
talking about because they wouldn't listen! Antigravity! _Pfui!_ When
they learned how to harness electricity, did they call it
anti-electricity? When they built the first atomic reactor, did they
call it anti-atomic energy? A rocket works against gravity, but they
don't call _that_ antigravity, do they? My device works _with_ gravity,
not against it."
"What sort of device is it?" Elshawe asked.
"I call it the Gravito-Inertial Differential Polarizer," Porter said
importantly.
Elshawe was trying to frame his next question when Porter said: "I know
the name doesn't tell you much, but then, names never do, do they? You
know what a transformer does, but what does the name by itself convey?
Nothing, unless you know what it does in the first place. A cyclotron
cycles something, but what? A broadcaster casts something abroad--what?
And how?"
"I see. And the 'how' and 'what' is your secret, eh?"
"Partly. I can give you a little information, though. Suppose there were
only one planet in all space, and you were standing on its surface.
Could you tell if the planet were spinning or not? And, if so, how fast?
Sure you could; you could measure the so-called centrifugal force. The
same thing goes for a proton or electron or neutron or even a neutrino.
But, if it _is_ spinning, what is the spin relative to? To the particle
itself? That's obvious nonsense. Therefore, what is commonly called
'inertia' is as much a property of so-called 'empty space' as it is a
property of matter. My device simply utilizes spatial inertia by
polarizing it against the matter inertia of the ship, that's all."
"Hm-m-m," said Elshawe. As far as his own knowledge of science went,
that statement made no sense whatever. But the man's manner was
persuasive. Talking to him, Elshawe began to have the feeling that
Porter not only knew what he was talking about, but could actually do
what he said he was going to do.
"What's that?" Porter asked sharply, looking up into the sky.
Elshawe followed his gaze. "That" was a Cadillac aircar coming over a
ridge in the distance, its fans making an ever-louder throaty hum as it
approached. It settled down to an altitude of three feet as it neared,
and floated toward them on its cushion of air. On its side, Elshawe
could see the words, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, and beneath that, in
smaller letters, _Civil Aeronautics Authority_.
"Now what?" Porter muttered softly. "I haven't notified anyone of my
intentions yet--not officially."
"Sometimes those boys don't wait for official notification," Elshawe
said.
Porter glanced at him, his eyes narrowed. "You didn't say anything, did
you?"
"Look, Mr. Porter, I don't play that way," Elshawe said tightly. "As far
as I'm concerned, this is your show; I'm just here to get the story. You
did us a favor by giving us advance notice; why should we louse up your
show for you?"
"Sorry," Porter said brusquely. "Well, let's make a good show of it."
The CAA aircar slowed to a halt, its fans died, and it settled to its
wheels.
* * * * *
Two neatly dressed, middle-aged men climbed out. Both were carrying
briefcases. Porter walked briskly toward them, a warm smile on his face;
Elshawe tagged along behind. The CAA men returned Porter's smile with
smiles that could only be called polite and businesslike.
Porter performed the introductions, and the two men identified
themselves as Mr. Granby and Mr. Feldstein, of the Civil Aeronautics
Authority.
"Can I help you, gentlemen?" Porter asked.
Granby, who was somewhat shorter, fatter, and balder than his partner,
opened his briefcase. "We're just here on a routine check, Mr. Porter.
If you can give us a little information...?" He let the half-question
hang in the air as he took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.
"Anything I can do to help," Porter said.
Granby, looking at the papers, said: "In 1979, I believe you purchased a
Grumman _Supernova_ jet powered aircraft from Trans-American Airlines?
Is that correct?"
"That is correct," Porter agreed.
Granby handed one of the papers to Porter. "That is a copy of the
registration certificate. Is the registration number the same as it is
on your copy?"
[Illustration]
"I believe so," Porter said, looking at the number. "Yes, I'm sure it
is."
Granby nodded briskly. "According to our records, the machine was sold
as scrap. That is to say, it was not in an airworthy condition. It was,
in fact, sold without the engines. Is that correct?"
"Correct."
"May I ask if you still own the machine in question?"
Porter gave the man a look that accused Granby of being stupid or blind
or both. He pointed to the hulking fuselage of the giant aircraft.
"There it is."
Granby and Feldstein both turned to look at it as though they had never
noticed it before. "Ah, yes," Granby said, turning back. "Well, that's
about all there is to it." He looked at his partner. "It's obvious that
there's no violation here, eh, Feldstein?"
"Quite," said Feldstein in a staccato voice.
"Violation?" Porter asked. "What violation?"
"Well, nothing, really," Granby said, deprecatingly. "Just routine, as I
said. People have been known to buy aircraft as scrap and then repair
them and re-outfit them."
"Is that illegal?" Porter asked.
"No, no," said Granby hastily. "Of course not. But any ship so
re-outfitted and repaired must pass CAA inspection before it can leave
the ground, you understand. So we keep an eye on such transactions to
make sure that the law isn't violated."
"After three years?" Porter asked blandly.
"Well ... ah ... well ... you know how it is," Granby said nervously.
"These things take time. Sometimes ... due to ... clerical error, we
overlook a case now and then." He glanced at his partner, then quickly
looked back at Porter.
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Porter," Feldstein said in a flat, cold voice,
"in view of your record, we felt that the investigation at this time was
advisable. You bought a scrap missile and used it illegally. You can
hardly blame us for looking into this matter."
"No," said Porter. He had transferred his level gaze to the taller of
the two men, since it had suddenly become evident that Feldstein, not
Granby, was the stronger of the two.
"However," Feldstein went on, "I'm glad to see that we have no cause for
alarm. You're obviously not fitting that up as an aircraft. By the
way--just out of curiosity--what _are_ you doing with it?" He turned
around to look at the big fuselage again.
Porter sighed. "I had intended to hold off on this for a few days, but I
might as well let the cat out now. I intend to take off in that ship
this week end."
* * * * *
Granby's eyes opened wide, and Feldstein spun around as though someone
had jabbed him with a needle. "_What?_"
Porter simply repeated what he had said. "I had intended to make
application to the Space Force for permission to test it," he added.
Feldstein looked at him blankly for a moment.
Then: "The _Space_ Force? Mr. Porter, civilian aircraft come under the
jurisdiction of the CAA."
"How's he going to fly it?" Granby asked. "No engines, no wings, no
control surfaces. It's silly."
"Rocket motors in the rear, of course," said Feldstein. "He's converted
the thing into a rocket."
"But the tail is closed," Granby objected. "There's no rocket orifice."
"Dummy cover, I imagine," Feldstein said. "Right, Mr. Porter?"
"Wrong," said Porter angrily. "The motive power is supplied by a
mechanism of my own devising! It has nothing to do with rockets! It's as
superior to rocket power as the electric motor is to the steam engine!"
Feldstein and Granby glanced at each other, and an almost identical
expression of superior smugness grew over their features. Feldstein
looked back at Porter and said, "Mr. Porter, I assure you that it
doesn't matter what you're using to lift that thing. You could be using
dynamite for all I care. The law says that it can't leave the ground
unless it's airworthy. Without wings or control surfaces, it is
obviously not airworthy. If it is not a rocket device, then it comes
under the jurisdiction of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, and if you
try to take off without our permission, you'll go to jail.
"If it _is_ a rocket device, then it will be up to the Space Force to
inspect it before take-off to make sure it is not dangerous.
"I might remind you, Mr. Porter, that you are on parole. You still have
three years to serve on your last conviction. I wouldn't play around
with rockets any more if I were you."
Porter blew up. "Listen, you! I'm not going to be pushed around by you
or anyone else! I know better than you do what Alcatraz is like, and I'm
not going back there if I can help it. This country is still
Constitutionally a democracy, not a bureaucracy, and I'm going to see to
it that I get to exercise my rights!
"I've invented something that's as radically new as ... as ... as the
Law of Gravity was in the Seventeenth Century! And I'm going to get
recognition for it, understand me?" He gestured furiously toward the
fuselage of the old _Supernova_. "That ship is not only airworthy, but
_space_worthy! And it's a thousand times safer and a thousand times
better than any rocket will ever be!
"For your information, Mister Smug-Face, I've already flown her!"
Porter stopped, took a deep breath, compressed his lips, and then said,
in a lower, somewhat calmer tone, "Know what she'll do? That baby will
hang in the air just like your aircar, there--and without benefit of
those outmoded, power-wasting blower fans, too.
"Now, understand me, Mr. Feldstein: I'm not going to break any laws
unless I have to. You and all your bureaucrat friends will have a chance
to give me an O.K. on this test. But I warn you, brother--_I'm going to
take that ship up!_"
* * * * *
Feldstein's jaw muscles had tightened at Porter's tone when he began,
but he had relaxed by the time the millionaire had finished, and was
even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on
his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling
mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin,
magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing past the
recording head.
Feldstein said: "Mr. Porter, we came here to remind you of the law,
nothing more. If you intend to abide by the law, fine and dandy. If not,
you'll go back to prison.
"That ship is not airworthy, and--"
"How do you know it isn't?" Porter roared.
"By inspection, Mr. Porter; by inspection." Feldstein looked
exasperated. "We have certain standards to go by, and an aircraft
without wings or control surfaces simply doesn't come up to those
standards, that's all. Even a rocket has to have stabilizing fins." He
paused and zipped open his briefcase.
"In view of your attitude," he said, pulling out a paper, "I'm afraid I
shall have to take official steps. This is to notify you that the
aircraft in question has been inspected and found to be not airworthy.
Since--"
"Wait a minute!" Porter snapped. "Who are you to say so? How would you
know?"
"I happen to be an officer of the CAA," said Feldstein, obviously trying
to control his temper. "I also happen to be a graduate aeronautical
engineer. If you wish, I will give the ... the ... aircraft a thorough
inspection, inside and out, and--"
"Oh, no!" said Porter. His voice and his manner had suddenly become very
gentle. "I don't think that would do much good, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you'd condemn the ship, no matter what you found inside.
You couldn't O.K. a ship without airfoils, could you?"
"Of course not," said Feldstein, "that's obvious, in the face of--"
"All right, then give me the notification and forget the rest of the
inspection." Porter held out his hand.