"Why do I give it to you? Because it will kill you. You have seen what
the stuff will do. A strand a thousandth of an inch thick, encased in
silon for lubrication purposes, got me out of that filthy hole you
call a prison. You've heard about that?"
Fergus blinked. "You cut yourself out of there with the cable you're
talking about?"
"Not with the cable. With a thin fiber. With one of the hairlike
fibers that makes up the cable. Did you ever cut cheese with a wire?
In effect, that wire is a knife--a knife that consists only of an
edge.
"Or, another experiment you may have heard of. Take a block of ice.
Connect a couple of ten-pound weights together with a few feet of
piano wire and loop it across the ice block to that the weights hang
free on either side, with the wire over the top of the block. The wire
will cut right through the ice in a short time. The trouble is that
the ice block remains whole--because the ice melts under the pressure
of the wire and then flows around it and freezes again on the other
side. But if you lubricate the wire with ordinary glycerine, it
prevents the re-freezing and the ice block will be cut in two."
Tarnhorst nodded. "I remember. In school. They--" He let his voice
trail off.
* * * * *
"Yeah. Exactly. It's a common experiment in basic science. Borazon
fiber works the same way. Because it is so fine and has such
tremendous tensile strength, it is possible to apply a pressure of
hundreds of millions of pounds per square inch over a very small area.
Under pressures like that, steel cuts easily. With silon covering to
lubricate the cut, there's nothing to it. As you have heard from the
guards in your little hell-hole.
"Hell-hole?" Tarnhorst's eyes narrowed and he flicked a quick glance
at Fergus. Morgan realized that Tarnhorst had known nothing of the
extent of Fergus' machinations.
"That lovely little political prison up in Fort Tryon Park that the
World Welfare State, with its usual solicitousness for the common man,
keeps for its favorite guests," Morgan said. His wolfish smile
returned. "I'd've cut the whole thing down if I'd had had the time.
Not the stone--just the steel. In order to apply that kind of pressure
you have to have the filament fastened to something considerably
harder than the stuff you're trying to cut, you see. Don't try it with
your fingers or you'll lose fingers."
Fergus' eyes widened again and he looked both ill and frightened. "The
man we sent ... uh ... who was found in your room. You--" He stopped
and seemed to have trouble swallowing.
"Me? _I_ didn't do anything." Morgan did a good imitation of a shark
trying to look innocent. "I'll admit that I looped a very fine
filament of the stuff across the doorway a few times, so that if
anyone tried to enter my room illegally I would be warned." He didn't
bother to add that a pressure-sensitive device had released and reeled
in the filament after it had done its work. "It doesn't need to be
nearly as tough and heavy to cut through soft stuff like ... er ...
say, a beefsteak, as it does to cut through steel. It's as fine as
cobweb almost invisible. Won't the World Welfare State have fun when
that stuff gets into the hands of its happy, crime-free populace?"