They looked at the crystal in horror.
It was the horror of the serpent, or of the Gorgon's head. They were
fascinated; in that moment not one of them could have torn his gaze
away. All work ceased. The noises in the concrete-walled room died
until the whish of breathing and the thumping of hearts could be
heard.
Then panic caught them, and fought against training. Panic cried,
_Run!_ and training said, _Remove yourself quickly._
With the motion-saving efficiency of the emergency drill, each man
turned from his position and walked rapidly towards whichever exit was
nearest.
Actually, they could not outrun the danger any more than one can duck
a rifle bullet or outrace the atomic bomb. But they went, five men and
one woman, out through the zigzag corridors towards a mirage of safety.
One man remained.
Dave Crandall stepped forward and picked the crystal from its place
in the evaporation dish. He turned, doused hand and crystal under
a faucet, and then dropped the crystal on an anvil. He hit it with
a heavy hammer. Anvil and crystal rang musically, and the crystal
rebounded and flew through the air unharmed.
Cursing under his breath, Dave Crandall darted, picked it up again, and
looked around wildly.
There were vats of acid handy; an electronic furnace glowed white-hot
through its slit; a tunnel gaped unexcitingly but in its depths were
the invisible radiations of the atomic pile. None of these would work
soon enough.
Dave turned to the desk. He flipped open the end of the pneumatic
message tube and popped the crystal into the chamber. There was the
_whroooom!_ of pumped air, a few tinkles as the crystal hit the sides
of the tube on its way down.
Then from somewhere outside the concrete-walled room came the awesome
blast. The wave-front traveled down the zigzag passages and Dave
thought he could almost see it. The roar deafened him.
Dave went out through the zigzag passage.
A mile across the plain, a billowing white cloud was rising.
Claverly greeted Dave. Claverly was a bit shaken, and more than a
little abashed. "The relay station," he said, pointing at the rising
cloud.
"Oh?" remarked Crandall. He asked, frowning, "Anybody in there?"
"No."
Crandall smiled wryly. "That's a relief," he said. "But I didn't
have time to ask where that tube went. I might have blown up the
administration building."
Claverly laughed. "About all you've done is to cut a large hole in the
coast-to-coast pneumo," he said. "No jury in the world would convict
you."
DeLieb came around from the other side of the building. "There," he
said, "but for the Grace of God--" pointing at the billowing pillar of
smoke. "Thanks, Dave. This makes you unique, you know."
"Unique?"
"You are the only living man who has seen one of those devils' rocks in
operation."
"We were all there," objected Dave, "and how about the Manhattan
Crystal?"
"In the first place, the Manhattan Crystal is furnishing New York with
electrical power--from a generating plant twenty miles outside New
York, telemeter-controlled, and completely unattended. Montrose and
Crowley and their associates who first made the crystal went up trying
to reproduce it at Brookhaven. So did Brookhaven. Harvard, Purdue,
Caltech, and Argonne went up trying to make one, too."
"But you were there, too, and you've seen it."
DeLieb nodded. "It is a six-sided crystal about three inches long, with
a pyramidal point at either end, and about three-quarters of an inch
across the hexagonal flats. It is clear with a trace of blue tint. So
much we know, Dave. _But what shape was it when you tossed it into the
tube?_"
"Cubical, and full of flashing red glints," said Dave.
"And why were we suddenly scared bright green?"
"Because it began to change shape before our eyes," said Dave.
"And it was still fluid when we--left."
"I think so," said Dave uncertainly.
DeLieb turned and went into the laboratory again, with the others
following. He inspected the anvil and straightened up with a wry smile.
There was the dent on the soft iron, made by the crystal under Dave's
blow. "That," said DeLieb, "is the impact of a hexagonal crystal
slightly distorted. A hexagonal form half-changed to a cubical shape.
So, Dave Crandall, you are the only man alive to have seen such a
crystal. Who knows the shape of the Manhattan Crystal by now?"
* * * * *
Steps clicked along the other zigzags. Phelps came in through one.
"No hits," he said, "one run, and the only error was shutting off the
cross-country pneumo. Tough. But the country got along without the
shipment of short-lived radioisotopes before and it'll have to do
without them again until they get the tube put together. Nice going,
Crandall."
Behind him was Jane Nolan--Doctor Jane Nolan. Like her colleagues,
Jane Nolan was often quoted in texts, had made several contributions
to science, and was an authority on several subjects. She was not
a beautiful woman; but her quiet air sometimes permitted a rather
interesting personality to show through. Men forgot her mature thirty
years and her lack of breath-taking beauty and dated her; then found
themselves at once intrigued by her personality and completely baffled
by her quick mind--and then went elsewhere in search of wide-eyed
pulchritude.
Deep interest or honest admiration often lighted up her face and made
it handsome if not beautiful. She looked very attractive now as she
went to Crandall.
"That was brave," she said.
"Self-preservation," he said.
"We have that too," she replied with a slight smile. "And we also know
that we cannot outrun that sort of thing. But we ran."
He smiled at her cheerfully. "I'm not a scientist," he said. "I'm just
a newspaperman, remember? Perhaps I'm just too ignorant to realize the
degree of danger."
Jane Nolan shook her head. "You've either seen the remains or pictures
of them, of the other labs that failed. You know--"
"Look," he chuckled, "let's put it this way. We were dead ducks anyway.
The devil himself couldn't have outrun that explosion without jet
assistance." He turned to Claverly, "If I'd had any sense, I wouldn't
have tried to smash it. I should have known that belting it with a
hammer wouldn't have stopped it--if anything, it should have hastened
the explosion."
"I hardly think so," said Claverly thoughtfully. "Remember that the
crystal is not an explosive in itself. Or so we believe. Anyway--"
"Anyway, thanks to Dave, we still have our lab," said Jane. "Let's get
back to work."
Dave shook his head. There was no point in arguing with them. They
called him brave. Nuts! Nine great laboratories had gone skyward with
their complement of scientists, trying to reproduce the fabulous
Manhattan Crystal which was now furnishing the city of New York with
electrical power. And with the deadly record of nine to nothing against
them, the scientists continued to try. Theirs was the true bravery. It
was a deadly experiment, and one that was not permitted--
Dave looked startled. "I thought the government insisted that these
experiments be run by telemeter control?"
"They are."
"Then what in the hell were we doing here?" demanded Crandall.
"The crystal," said Claverly, "was developed last week. We'd done
everything but taste it by telemeter. It had been tested chemically,
electrically, mechanically, atomically, physically and about any other
way you can think of. We've had it white-hot and down to a half-degree
Kelvin. We've dropped it, hit it, subjected it to electrostatic and
electromagnetic fields, dunked it in everything from aqua to zerone,
looked at it and through it, bombarded it with every radiation possible
from the pile, and let it sit on a glass-topped platform to meditate.
We believed it was safe; that we'd been successful. We came in to hook
it up and test its power output, like the Manhattan Crystal. You came
along."
Dave nodded. The message in his pocket told him that Merion Laboratory
had successfully created a replica of the Manhattan Crystal and if he
so desired, he could be present at its testing.
He said slowly, "It seems as if there might be something important
here."
"What?"
"I hate to suggest it; it sounds silly."
"So do a lot of things," said Claverly. "Go on."
"I'm out of my depth here," said Dave. "But I've read of the so-called
human aura. The sort of thing that gives certain gardeners a 'green
thumb' and makes other men capable of curing a headache by merely
rubbing the head with the fingertips. Is this sort of thing merely
superstition or has it any basis in fact?"
Claverly frowned. "We don't like to answer such questions," he said.
"But I'm being honest with you, Dave. The reason we don't like to
answer is that we are not too certain. The best answer is maybe, and
who knows?"
"So the crystal sat here and took all sorts of radiation, treatment,
investigation, and the like. Then when the group of us assemble,
blooey!"