"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these
aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these
days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club
haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums
with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets
going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just
stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my
liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police--" I saw the answer in
his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid
of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and
throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en
route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of
scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies
them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten
it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's
always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An
interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably
in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were
working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that
work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of
wastes--radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any
country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a
small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him
dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the
shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I
said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
* * * * *
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a
neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or
in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or
changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks.
The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning
fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the
problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize
radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et
cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is
easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or
matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But
I didn't let that stop me--any more than I would have let the velocity
of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged
to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand
and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor
such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory
owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of
working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To
this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a
basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system
for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated
water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was
no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of
some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so
precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States
government, I began experimenting.