Craven shook his head. "Just a guess. I tried to figure out what I would
do if I were Page and Manning and had the things they had. That's all."
"And what would you do?"
Craven smiled dourly. "I'd be using that television right in this
office," he said. "I'd keep you and me under observation all the time.
If what I think is true, Manning is watching us now and has heard every
word we said."
Chambers' face was a harsh mask of anger. "I don't believe it could be
done!"
"Doctor Craven is right," said a quiet voice.
Chambers swung around in his chair and gasped. Greg Manning stood inside
the room, just in front of the desk.
"I hope you don't mind," said Greg. "I've been wanting to have a talk
with you."
Craven leaped to his feet, his eyes shining. "Three dimensions!" he
whispered. "How did you do it?"
Greg chuckled. "I haven't patented the idea, Doctor. I'd rather not tell
you just now."
"You will accept my congratulations, however?" asked Craven.
"That's generous of you. I really hadn't expected this much."
"I mean it," said Craven. "Damned if I don't." Chambers was on his feet,
leaning across the desk, with his hand held out. Greg's right hand came
out slowly.
"Sorry, I really can't shake hands," he said. "I'm not here, you know.
Just my image."
Chambers' hand dropped to the desk. "Stupid of me not to realize that.
You looked so natural." He sat back in his chair again, brushed his gray
mustache. A smile twisted his lips. "So you've been watching me?"
"Off and on," Greg said.
"And what is the occasion of this visit?" asked Chambers. "You could
have held a distinct advantage by remaining unseen. I didn't entirely
believe what Craven told me, you know."
"That isn't the point at all," declared Greg. "Maybe we can get to
understand one another."
"So you're ready to talk business."
"Not in the sense you mean," Greg said. "I'm not willing to make
concessions, but there's no reason why we have to fight one another."
"Why, no," said Chambers, "there's no reason for that. I'll be willing
to buy your discovery."
"I wouldn't sell it to you," Greg told him.
"You wouldn't? Why not? I'm prepared to pay for it."
"You'd pay the price, all right. Anything I asked ... even if it
bankrupted you. Then you'd mark it down to loss, and scrap material
energy. And I'll tell you why."
* * * * *
A terrible silence hung in the room as the two men eyed one another
across the table.
"You wouldn't use it," Greg went on, "because it would remove the
stranglehold you have on the planets. It would make power too cheap. It
would eliminate the necessity of your rented accumulators. The Jovian
moons and Mars could stand on their feet without the power you ship to
them. You could make billions in legitimate profits selling the
apparatus to manufacture the energy ... but you wouldn't want that. You
want to be dictator of the Solar System. And that is what I intend to
stop."
"Listen, Manning," said Chambers, "you're a reasonable man. Let's talk
this thing over without anger. What do you plan to do?"
"I could put my material engines on the market," said Greg. "That would
ruin you. You wouldn't move an accumulator after that. Your
Interplanetary stock wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on.
Material energy would wipe you out."
"You forget I have franchises on those planets," Chambers reminded him.
"I'd fight you in the courts until hell froze over."
"I'd prove convenience, economy and necessity. Any court in any land, on
any planet, would rule for me."
Chambers shook his head. "Not Martian or Jovian courts. I'd tell them to
rule for me and the courts outside of Earth do what I tell them to."
* * * * *
Greg straightened and backed from the desk. "I hate to ruin a man.
You've worked hard. You've built a great company. I would be willing, in
return for a hands-off policy on your part, to hold up any announcement
of my material energy until you had time to get out, to save what you
could."
Hard fury masked Chambers' face. "You'll never build a material energy
engine outside your laboratory. Don't worry about ruining me. I won't
allow you to stand in my way. I hope you understand."
"I understand too well. But even if you are a dictator out on Mars and
Venus, even if you do own Mercury and boss the Jovian confederacy,
you're just a man to me. A man who stands for things that I don't like."
Greg stopped and his eyes were like ice crystals.
"You talked to Stutsman today," he said. "If I were you, I wouldn't let
Stutsman do anything rash. Russ Page and I might have to fight back."
Mockery tinged Chambers' voice. "Am I to take this as a declaration of
war, Mr. Manning?"
"Take it any way you like," Greg said. "I came here to give you a
proposition, and you tell me you're going to smash me. All I have to say
to you, Chambers, is this--when you get ready to smash me, you'd better
have a deep, dark hole all picked out for yourself to hide in. Because
I'll hand you back just double anything you hand out."
_CHAPTER TEN_
"One of us will have to watch all the time," Greg told Russ. "We can't
take any chances. Stutsman will try to reach us sooner or later and we
have to be ready for him."
He glanced at the new radar screen they had set up that morning beside
the bank of other controls. Any ship coming within a hundred miles of
the laboratory would be detected instantly and pinpointed.
The board flashed now. In the screen they saw a huge passenger ship
spearing down toward the airport south of them.
"With the port that close," said Russ, "we'll get a lot of signals."
"I ordered the Belgium factory to rush work on the ship," said Greg.
"But it will be a couple of weeks yet. We just have to sit tight and
wait. As soon as we have the ship we'll start in on Chambers; but until
we get the ship, we just have to dig in and stay on the defensive."
He studied the scene in the screen. The ship had leveled off, was
banking in to the port. His eyes turned away, took in the laboratory
with its crowding mass of machinery.
"We don't want to fool ourselves about Chambers," he said. "He may not
have the power here on Earth that he does on the other planets, but he's
got plenty. Feeling the way he does, he'll try to finish us off in a
hurry now."
Russ reached out to the table that stood beside the bank of controls and
picked up a small, complicated mechanism. Its face bore nine dials, with
the needles on three of them apparently registering, the other six
motionless.
"What is that?" asked Greg.
"A mechanical detective," said Russ. "A sort of mechanical shadow. While
you were busy with the stock market stunt, I made several of them. One
for Wilson and another for Chambers and still another for Craven." He
hoisted and lowered the one in his hand. "This one is for Stutsman."
"A shadow?" asked Greg. "Do you mean that thing will trail Stutsman?"
"Not only trail him," said Russ. "It will find him, wherever he may be.
Some object every person wears or carries is made of iron or some other
magnetic metal. This 'shadow' contains a tiny bit of that ridiculous
military decoration that Stutsman never allows far away from him. Find
that decoration and you find Stutsman. In another one I have a chunk of
Wilson's belt buckle, that college buckle, you know, that he's so proud
of. Chambers has a ring made of a piece of meteoric iron and that's the
bait for another machine. Have a tiny piece off Craven's spectacles in
his machine. It was easy to get the stuff. The force field enables a man
to reach out and take anything he wants to, from a massive machine to a
microscopic bit of matter. It was a cinch to get the stuff I needed."
Russ chuckled and put the machine back on the table. He gestured toward
it.
"It maintains a tiny field similar to our television field," he
explained. "But it's modified along a special derivation with a magnetic
result. It can follow and find the original mass of any metallic
substance it may contain."
"Clever," commented Greg.