SCIENCE FIGHTS CRAFT
Watching, Roger saw and recognized the man who entered. The bio-chemist,
Zendt, came in with a film magazine of exposed celluloid in one hand.
"How are my diffusion shots coming along?"
"In the hypo."
Roger watched narrowly.
Zendt was either a master of facial control or he was one of those
"innocent bystanders" who manage to intrude when some crucial point of a
drama is about to be played.
"Please develop this run from the speed camera. Ellison and Millman have
caught the torque of their erratic motor on film. Sixteen exposures to a
foot--a million to the minute. Shooting time, one half minute. Does that
tell you the size of reel to wind it on?"
Roger, making mental computation with one side of his mind as he studied
the situation with the other, nodded.
He would put the ceiling light out, but he would not satisfy Zendt by
staying there. Perhaps the man came prepared to hold him at his
dark-room work in case he had not yet been sufficiently dosed.
"Bring you prints soon," he told Zendt. "I'll get this into a developing
tank." He risked a question.
"Is anybody in the cellar? The ventilator seems to be choked. No air
comes in. It's--stuffy."
"Maybe. Millman was down, earlier. Potts hasn't come. Grover has gone
out." To let Potts get sleep, to stand guard over Astrovox, Roger
decided.
"I'll telephone down and see--oh, look. It was shut off."
Clever actor or innocent intruder, Zendt betrayed neither interest nor
disappointment. He simply nodded and went out.
Roger considered his position.
He reasoned: if Zendt was blameless, some one else was watching. From
seeing Zendt emerge the unknown would be sure that Roger was still all
right. But if he left, all possibility of detecting who was the culprit
might be gone.
Still, he had no chemicals in assortments that would enable him to
detect the possible introduction of some fume through a hole in the
walls, or some other move. Besides, he was open to bodily attack.
He must not be there. No one must see him leave.
He remembered that there were chemicals that he would need, and inasmuch
as he was known to be all right, he could easily get them.
He emerged, seeing Doctor Ryder busy with his arrival of white rats,
with Toby helping him put them into the glass pen through the trapdoor
in the top that prevented them from escaping.
"Got to force-up some underexposed negatives," he remarked as he passed
them. To the stock-room he went, and procured the ingredients he needed;
but not for an intensifier for under-exposed film! Returning, he noticed
Zendt, watching the rats also.
Once more in the dark-room Roger proceeded methodically and carefully to
produce a very businesslike detonating torpedo with crystals of gritty
hard iron oxide-rust! to take the place of the gravel usually packed in
a commercial torpedo of the sort formerly sold for exploding by contact
with the sidewalk.
The other ingredients he mixed with care as to method, as well as
formula, knowing that certain chemicals must be combined in a certain
sequence. Wrapped in a fairly good paper taken from a packet of printing
paper, he had his torpedo ready at last.
There was no window from which to fling it, but he knew that by putting
a chair on the developing table by the wall, he could get his hands up
to the small outlet around the exhaust fan. The old equipment,
discontinued since the laboratory had put in air-conditioning, led to
the open air.
He got to the position carefully, took his torpedo, and adjusting the
small exhaust fan so that its blades would interfere the least with an
open passage for the missile, he took his chance, against striking the
blades, flinging with a quick jerk of his wrist that sent the detonator
straight through past the fan.
Hurriedly he climbed down and got the chair back in place as he heard,
muffled by the drop, a sharp explosion on the pavement in front of the
laboratory.
He was certain that the noise would draw everybody.
In the space between the outer and the inner light door he listened.
Doctor Ryder and Toby went with the rest. The way must be free.
Roger, emerging, saw that his guess had been correct.
There, poked up through the skylight coaming, was the long, and
large-girth telescope of Astrovox.
To an athletic youth, with agility and endurance, to climb the steadily
enlarging, inclined barrel was no hard task. Once at the top he got over
onto the roof with skilful swings of his body and flexing muscles
drawing him safely over the coaming.
Then he watched, unseen from below, careful to be on the side facing the
sun so as not to let his shadow reveal his position.
There he watched for an hour as Doctor Ryder and Toby returned, and
others came to the stock-room, but went away to await his arrival from
the dark-room. Their wants must not be urgent.
The vigil was fruitless, though.
No one entered the dark-room, barely visible in his quick glances.
A new idea came. He went up the rainspout of the adjoining roof, using
knees for grip and hands to pull him up from one bracing ring to
another. Down the adjoining fire escape he went, to the top floor of the
candy factory where, to the surprised girls, he whispered, pretending to
be mischievous, "Playing a trick on the folks next door." They all knew
him, from seeing him going to and from work. He accepted some candy, and
went down and out onto the street.
He saw no one watching. The brown mark of the torpedo detonation was
still on the pavement. He slipped into the laboratory cellar, by way of
its ash-lift, unobserved as far as he could tell.
To the air-conditioning system he made his way, trying to see if any of
its outlets, especially one to the dark-room section, had been removed
or tampered with. He saw some signs that a pipe wrench had ground rough
bright spots on the piping, and smiled. His idea had been right as to
where the gas had been sent up. A survey among old trash awaiting the
attention of Potts revealed a large, empty tank. Some one must have
charged it--whether by purchasing the materials or by injecting the
exhaust from a car he never found out.
There, though, was his evidence. He left it as it was.
Grover had been right.
Some person or group, with intentions far more vicious than had been in
evidence among the Tibetans, had marked him. Why? What did he know? Not
the place of the lost Eye of Om. For that they would want to take him
prisoner, to question him. This attack had been because someone was sure
that he knew more than he did.
Could he find out what he was supposed to know?
To try was Roger's immediate intention.