"Now," said Claverly, peering through the television hookup that
brought him an image of the crystal, "we are ready." His voice came
over the speaker tinnily.
"It's been checked?"
"Definitely. We're all ready."
DeLieb manipulated the controls as the rest of them watched through the
large projection screen. Clawed arms came from the side of the screen
and picked the crystal out of the dish. They carried it over to the
mouth of a pneumatic tube, where it was dropped into a carrier. There
was a _whoosh!_ and the carrier disappeared.
The scene on the television screen switched abruptly to Claverly, who
opened the end of the tube and removed the crystal. He held it up for
them to see.
"So here we are," said Claverly. "The crystal and myself, removed from
the critical mass of human radiation--if that means anything. Watch me
closely. I am going to test this crystal for power output."
Claverly turned aside and clamped the crystal in a holder. He turned
away, then, and--
There was a flash that filled the telescreen. It did not blind the
onlookers, for the total output of the projection system would not
furnish so much light. But the flash at the transmitting end paralyzed
the orthicon, and once the phosphor of the receiving tube ceased to
glow, the screen went dark. The orthicon at the far end of the line was
no longer working. There was no roar of sound from the speaker. Just an
electric crackle, and then the hiss of the live circuit.
"Gone!" said DeLieb explosively.
Phelps turned from the mounted telescope and said, "I saw a flicker
from the windows, but the building is still there."
"Then it didn't blow," said Jane Nolan.
Crandall caught a faint flicker on the telescreen. The bare highlights
were there, just coming up above the black level. "Claverly!" said Dave.
They turned. The tall scientist was visible, standing still as they had
seen him before. Motionless, like a strobo-flashed picture.
Dave raced down, out of the building and into the parked jeep. He
shoved the jeep into gear and took off with a roar. His tires threw
dust as he raced across the intervening three miles to the remote
laboratory.
Claverly was there. A phantom Claverly; a three-dimensional image,
unmistakable as the man himself. Transparent, however; the bricks of
the far wall could be distinguished through it.
The image was fading, but so very gradually that Dave had to watch
carefully to be certain.
* * * * *
"The crystal is still here," said Dave. "It seems unchanged."
"We see," replied DeLieb. "The video is working again."
"So--what was Claverly's next move to be?"
"Wait!" cried Jane. "Be careful; Claverly--"
"Someone has to do it," said Dave. "If you'll give me directions--?"
Phelps shook his head at the rest and said: "Dave, if we could
manipulate that thing from here through these last few motions,
Claverly wouldn't have been there."
"Forgot that," said Dave unhappily. "So now what?"
"I'm coming over. You leave."
"Check--but don't like it."
Dave was less than a thousand yards away from the building when Phelps
entered. His jeep was not equipped with radio or telephone so he did
not know what went on. All he knew was a swift burst of brightness,
perceptible against the bright sky. Dave stopped the jeep in half its
length and turned it to go racing back.
Phelps was there, too. A phantom image standing near the image of
Claverly, but apparently more solid. Claverly was fading; Phelps was a
fresh image.
"Same damned thing!" cried Crandall into the microphone.
"I'm coming--" started DeLieb, but Dave stopped him with a firm "No!"
Then he ran the jeep back to the main buildings, thinking furiously. By
the time he arrived, he had an idea....
* * * * *
"This is no random thing," he said. "This is malicious."
"Malicious?" asked Jane. "What do you mean?"
"How many nuclear laboratories have we lost, trying to reproduce this
crystal?"
"Nine."
"And how many top-flight scientists?"
"Almost forty."
"The forty we can least afford to lose," added Dave. "Can you think of
an easier way to sap the scientific strength of a country than to give
it something that performs miracles--and also kills?"
"Ah," said Jane, shaking her head. "But there's a hole in that
reasoning. No one gave us anything. We discovered the Manhattan Crystal
by accident--in a restricted laboratory and under the most rigid
supervision."
"Accident, hell! No doubt a young and innocent mouse thinks it's
an accident when he finds a piece of cheese. The crystal is the
cheese--and the trap. Kids, we're being taken for a ride. Give 'em a
chance to lop off a gang of you and a lab at the same time and they
do it. Give them no chance to get the lab, and they'll wait to get a
scientist. Offer 'em a cluck of a newsman, of no scientific learning,
and they wait until they have a chance at an important scientist. The
crystal is still there."
"I'll go--"
"DeLieb, sit still. Claverly went, Phelps went. You go, and the next
will be Nolan or Howes."
"So what do you suggest?"
"I'm no scientist. Teach me what to do. I'll do it."
"You'll die."
"I'll prove a point," said Dave. "And I won't die! I'll prove to you
that anybody but a top scientist can tinker all day with that thing
without danger. If you think I'm wrong, remember that I was there once
and came back. Now--what do I do?"
Howes laughed bitterly. "If that were as simple as winding an alarm
clock or grinding the valves on a gas engine, we'd have no problem,
Dave."
"You can tell me the motions; you can tell me what to do. You can coach
me at the job, and with training--hell, fellers, you don't have to know
organic chemistry to mix a cake and men have performed operations with
a jackknife at sea, with directions by radio. I'm checked out in a
B-108, and any man who can keep his eyes on seventy meters, a hundred
and twelve switches, forty levers, sixty-seven pushbuttons, and drive
the damned thing with his free hand at the same time ought to be able
to learn whatever this job requires." He looked around him. "And in the
meantime, we'll let that crystal sit there and simmer, waiting for a
nice, ripe physicist to come and get stuck!"
"It will take days," said Jane thoughtfully.
"Better days than lives," said Dave sharply.
"Okay," said DeLieb. "You certainly can do no harm. You may do some
good. We'll try it your way."
For the next ninety-six hours, Dave Crandall got a total of nine hours
of sleep. He worked in another replica of the remote lab, using similar
instruments. He had not the foggiest notion of what he was doing, but
he learned the manual dexterity necessary to do it. He didn't know
what the meters meant, but he learned how to read them. He couldn't
understand why he must do thus and so when such and such a meter read
to a certain value, but he learned that, too. He became a trained human
primate, an animal who knew that four raps plus four raps equalled
eight raps; a chimpanzee trained to drive an automobile.
Not that Dave was ignorant, unintelligent, or untutored. Dave was
college, postgrad, and a writer. Dave knew as much present-day science
as any layman. He wrote science articles for his paper, was constantly
exposed to science, and a lot of it took. But this science was as far
beyond the kind he knew as the jet plane is beyond the Wright Brothers'
original model.