Mark Kingman was surprised by the tapping on his window pane. He
thought that the window was unreachable from the outside--and then
he realized that it was probably someone throwing bits of dirt or
small stones. But who would do that when the doorway was free for any
bell-ringer?
He shrugged, and went to the window to look out--and became crosseyed
as his eyes tried to cope with a single circle not more than ten
inches distant. He could see the circle--and the lands on the inside
spiralling into the depths of the barrel--and a cold shiver ran up his
spine from there to here. Behind the heavy automatic, a dark complected
man with a hawklike face grinned mirthlessly.
Kingman stepped back and the stranger swung in and sat upon the
windowsill.
"Well?" asked the lawyer.
"Is it well?" asked the stranger. "You know me?"
"No. Never saw you before in my life. Is this a burglary?"
"Nope. If it were, I'd have drilled you first so you couldn't describe
me."
Kingman shuddered. The stranger looked as though he meant it.
"In case you require an introduction," said the hard-faced man. "I'm
Allison Murdoch."
"Hellion?"
"None other."
"You were in jail--"
"I know, I've been there before."
"But how did you escape?"
"I'm a doctor of some repute," said Hellion. "Or was, until my darker
reputation exceeded my reputation for neural surgery. It was simple.
I slit my arm and deposited therein the contents of a cigarette. It
swelled up like gangrene and they removed me to the hospital. I removed
a few guards and lit out in the ambulance. And I am here."
"Why?" Kingman then became thoughtful. "You're not telling me this for
mutual friendship, Murdoch. What's on your mind?"
"You were in the clink, too. How did you get out?"
"The court proceedings were under question for procedure. It was
further ruled that--"
"I see. You bought your way out."
"I did not--"
"Kingman, you're a lawyer. A smart one, too."
"Thank you--"
"But you're capable of buying your freedom, which you did.
Fundamentally, it makes no difference whether you bribe a guard to look
the other way or bribe a jury to vote the other way. It's bribery in
either case."
Kingman smiled in a superior way. "With the very important difference
that the latter means results in absolute freedom. Bribing a guard is
freedom only so long as the law may be avoided."
"So you did bribe the jury?"
"I did nothing of the sort. It was a ruling over a technicality that
did me the favor."
"You created the technicality."
"Look," said Kingman sharply. "You didn't come here to steal by your
own admission and your excellent logic. You never saw me before, and
I do not know of you save what I've heard. Revenge for something
real or fancied is obviously no reason for this visit. I was charged
with several kinds of larceny, which charges fell through and I
was acquitted of them--which means that I did not commit them. I,
therefore, am no criminal. On the other hand, you have a record. You
were in jail, convicted, and you escaped by some means that may have
included first-degree murder. You came here for some reason, Murdoch.
But let me tell you this: I am in no way required to explain the
workings of my mind. If you expect me to reveal some legal machination
by which I gained my freedom, you are mistaken. As far as the solar
system is concerned, everything was legal and above board."
"I get it," smiled Murdoch. "You're untouchable."
"Precisely. And rightfully so."
"You're the man I want, then."
"It isn't mutual. I have no desire to be identified with a criminal of
your caliber."
"What's wrong with it?" asked Murdoch.
"It is fundamentally futile. You are not a brilliant criminal. You've
been caught."
"I didn't have the proper assistance. I shall not be caught again.
Look," he said suddenly, "how is your relationship with Venus
Equilateral?"
Kingman gritted his teeth and made an animal noise.
"I thought so. I have a score of my own to settle. But I need your
help. Do I get it?"
"I don't see how one of your caliber is capable--"
"Are you or aren't you? Your answer may decide the duration of your
life."
"You needn't threaten. I'm willing to go to any lengths to get even
with Channing and his crowd. But it must be good."
"I was beaten by a technical error," explained Murdoch. "The coating on
my ship did it."
"How?"
"They fired at me with a super-electron gun. A betatron. It hit me and
disrupted the ship's apparatus. The thing couldn't have happened if the
standard space-finish hadn't been applied to the _Hippocrates_."
"I'm not a technical man," said Kingman. "Explain, please."
"The average ship is coated with a complex metallic oxide which among
other things inhibits secondary emission. Had we been running a ship
without this coating, the secondary emission would have left the
_Hippocrates_ in fair condition electrically, but Venus Equilateral
would have received several times the electronic charge. But the
coating accepted the terrific charge and prevented the normal urge of
electrons to leave by secondary emission--"
"What is secondary emission?"
"When an electron hits at any velocity, it drives from one to as high
as fifty electrons from the substance it hits. The quantity depends
upon the velocity of the original electron, the charges on cathode and
anode, the material from which the target is made, and so on. We soaked
'em in like a sponge and took it bad. But the next time, we'll coat the
ship with the opposite stuff. We'll take a bit of Venus Equilateral for
ourselves."
"I like the idea. But how?"
"We'll try no frontal attack. Storming a citadel like Venus Equilateral
is no child's play, Kingman. As you know, they're prepared for anything
either legal or technical. I have a great respect for the combined
abilities of Channing and Franks. I made my first mistake by giving
them three days to make up their minds. In that time, they devised,
tested, and approved an electron weapon of some power. Their use of it
was as dangerous to them as it was to me--or would have been if I'd
been prepared with a metallic-oxide coating of the proper type."
"Just what are you proposing?" asked Kingman. "I do not understand what
you are getting at."
"You are still one of the officials of Terran Electric?"
"Naturally."
"You will be surprised to know that I handle considerable stock in that
company."
"How, may I ask?"
"The last time you bucked them, you did it on the market. You lost,"
grinned Murdoch. "Proving that you haven't a hundred percent record,
either. Well, while Terran Electric was dragging its par value down
around the twos and threes, I took a few shares."
"How do you stand?"
"I rather imagine that I hold fifteen or twenty percent."
"That took money."
"I have money," said Murdoch modestly. "Plenty of it. I should have
grabbed more stock, but I figured that between us we have enough to do
as we please. What's your holdings?"
"I once held forty-one percent. They bilked me out of some of that. I
have less than thirty percent."
"So we'll run the market crazy again, and between us we'll take off
control. Then, Kingman, we'll use Terran Electric to ruin Venus
Equilateral."
"Terran Electric isn't too good a company now," admitted Kingman. "The
public stays away in huge droves since we bucked Venus Equilateral.
That bunch of electronic screwballs has the public acclaim. They're
now in solid since they opened person-to-person service on the driver
frequencies. You can talk to some one in the Palanortis Country of
Venus with the same quality and speakability that you get in making a
call from here to the house across the street."
"Terran Electric is about finished," said Murdoch flatly. "They shot
their wad and lost. You'll be bankrupt in a year and you know it."
"That includes you, doesn't it?"
"Terran Electric is not the mainstay of my holdings," smiled Murdoch.
"Under assumed names, I have picked up quite a few bits. Look, Kingman,
I'm advocating piracy!"
"Piracy?" asked Kingman, aghast.
"Illegal piracy. But I'm intelligent. I realize that a pirate hasn't
a chance against civilization unless he is as smart as they are. We
need a research and construction organization, and that's where Terran
Electric comes in. Its an old company, well established. It's now on
the rocks. We can build it up again. We'll use it for a base, and set
the research boys to figuring out the answers we need. Eventually we'll
control Venus Equilateral, and half of the enterprises throughout the
system."
"And your main plan?"
"You run Terran Electric, and I'll run the space piracy. Between us
we'll have the system over a barrel. Space craft are still run without
weapons because no weapons are suited for space fighting. But the new
field opened up by the driver radiation energy may exhibit something
new in weapons. That's what I want Terran Electric to work on."
"We'll have to plan a bit more," said Kingman thoughtfully. "I'll cover
you up, and eventually we'll buy you out. Meanwhile we'll go to work
on the market and get control of Terran Electric. And plan, too. It'll
have to be foolproof."
"It will be," said Murdoch. "We'll plan it that way."
"We'll drink on it," said Kingman.
"_You'll_ drink on it," said Murdoch. "I never touch the stuff. I still
pride myself on my skill with a scalpel, and I do not care to lose it.
Frankly, I hope to keep it long enough to uncover the metatarsal bones
of one Donald A. Channing, Director of Communications."
Kingman shuddered. At times, murder had passed through his mind when
thinking of Channing. But this cruel idea of vivisecting an enemy
indicated a sadism that was far beyond Kingman's idea of revenge.
Of course, Kingman never considered that ruining a man financially,
reducing him to absolute dependency upon friends or government, when
the man had spent his life in freedom and plenty--the latter gained by
his ability under freedom--was cruel and inhuman.
And yet it would take a completely dispassionate observer to tell which
was worse; to ruin a man's body or to ruin a man's life.
* * * * *
The man in question was oblivious to these plans on his future. He
was standing before a complicated maze of laboratory glassware and a
haywire tangle of electronic origin. He looked it over in puzzlement,
and his lack of enthusiasm bothered the other man. Wesley Farrell
thought that his boss would have been volubly glad to see the fruits of
his labor.
"No doubt it's wonderful," smiled Channing. "But what is it, Wes?"
"Why, I've been working on an alloy that will not sustain an arc."
"Go on. I'm interested even though I do not climb the chandelier and
scream, beating my manly chest."
"Oil switches are cumbersome. Any other means of breaking contact
is equally cumbersome if it is to handle much power. My alloy is
non-arcing. It will not sustain an arc, even though the highest current
and voltage are broken."
"Now I am really interested," admitted Channing. "Oil switches in a
spaceship are a definite drawback."
"I know. So--here we are."
"What's the rest of this stuff?" asked Channing, laying a hand on the
glassware.
"Be careful!" said Farrell in concern. "That's hot stuff."
"Oh?"
"In order to get some real voltages and currents to break without
running the main station bus through here, I cooked this stuff up. The
plate-grilleworks in the large tubes exhibit a capacity between them
of one microfarad. Empty, that is, or I should say precisely point
nine eight microfarads in vacuuo. The fluid is of my own devising,
concocted for the occasion, and has a dielectric constant of thirteen
times ten to the sixth power. It--"
"Great Howling Rockets!" exploded Channing. "That makes the overall
capacity equal to thirteen _farads_!"
"Just about. Well, I have the condenser charged to three kilovolts, and
then I discharge it through this switch made of the non-arcing alloy.
Watch! No, Don, from back there, please, behind this safety glass."
Channing made some discomforting calculations about thirteen farads at
three thousand volts and decided that there was definitely something
unlucky about the number thirteen.
"The switch, now," continued Farrell, as though thirteen farads was
just a mere drop in the bucket, "is opened four milliseconds after it
is closed. The time-constant of the discharging resistance is such that
the voltage is zero point eight three of its peak three thousand volts,
giving a good check of the alloy."
"I should think so," groused Channing. "Eighty-three percent of three
thousand volts is just shy of twenty-five hundred volts. The current
of discharge passing through a circuit that will drop the charge in a
thirteen farad condenser eighty-three percent in four milliseconds will
be something fierce, believe me."
"That is why I use the heavy busbars from the condenser bank through
the switch."
"I get it. Go ahead, Wes. I want to see this non-arcing switch of yours
perform."
Farrell checked the meters, and then said: "Now!" and punched the
switch at his side. Across the room a solenoid drove the special
alloy bar between two clamps of similar metal. Almost immediately,
four-thousandths of a second later, to be exact, the solenoid reacted
automatically and the no-arc alloy was withdrawn. A minute spark
flashed briefly between the contacts.
"And that is that," said Channing, dazed by the magnitude of it all,
and the utter simplicity of the effects. "But look, Wes, may I ask
you a favor? Please discharge that infernal machine and drain that
electrolyte out. Then make the thing up in a tool-steel case and seal
it. Also hang on busbars right at the plates themselves, and slap a
peak-voltage fuse across the terminals. One that will open at anything
above three thousand volts. Follow me?"
"I think so. But that is not the main point of interest--"
"I know," grinned Channing mopping his forehead. "The non-arc is. But
that fragile glassware makes me as jittery as a Mexican jumping bean."
"But why?"
"Wes, if that glassware fractures somewhere, and that electrolyte
drools out, you'll have a condenser of one microfarad--charged to
thirteen million times three thousand volts. Or, in nice, hollow,
round numbers, forty billion volts! Of course, it won't get that far.
It'll arc across the contacts before it gets that high, but it might
raise particular hell on the way out. Take it easy, Wes. We're seventy
million-odd miles from the nearest large body of dirt, all collected in
a little steel bottle about three miles long and a mile in diameter.
I'd hate to stop all interplanetary communications while we scraped
ourselves off of the various walls and treated ourselves for electric
shock. It would--the discharge itself, I mean--raise hell with the
equipment anyway. So play it easy, Wes. We do not permit certain
experiments out here because of the slow neutrons that sort of wander
through here at fair density. Likewise, we cannot permit dangerous
experiments. And anything that includes a dangerous experiment must be
out, too."
"Oh," said Wes. His voice and attitude were altogether crestfallen.
"Don't take it so hard, fella," grinned Channing. "Any time we
have to indulge in dangerous experiments, we always do it with an
assistant--and in one of the blister-laboratories. But take that
fragile glassware out of the picture, and I'll buy it," he finished.
Walt Franks entered and asked what was going on.
"Wes was just demonstrating the latest equipment in concentrated
deviltry," smiled Channing.
"That's my department," said Walt.
"Oh, it's not as bad as your stuff," said Channing. "What he's got here
is an alloy that will break several million watts without an arc. Great
stuff, Walt."
"Sounds swell," said Walt. "Better scribble it up and we'll get a
patent. It sounds useful."
"I think it may bring us a bit of change," said Channing. "It's great
stuff, Wes."
"Thanks. It annoyed me to see those terrific oil-breakers we have here.
All I wanted to do was to replace 'em with something smaller and more
efficient."
"You did, Wes. And that isn't all. How did you dream up that
high-dielectric?"
"Applied several of the physical phenomena."
"That's a good bet, too. We can use several fluids of various
dielectric constants. Can you make solids as well?"
"Not as easily. But I can try--?"
"Go ahead and note anything you find above the present, listed
compounds and their values."
"I'll list everything, as I always do."
"Good. And the first thing to do is to can that stuff in a steel case."
"It'll have to be plastalloy."
"That's as strong as steel and non-conducting. Go ahead."
Channing led Franks from the laboratory, and once outside Channing gave
way to a session of the shakes. "Walt," he said plaintively, "take me
by the hand and lead me to Joe's. I need some vitamins."
"Bad?"
"Did you see that glassblower's nightmare?"
"You mean that collection of cut glass?" grinned Walt. "Uh-huh. It
looked as though it were about to collapse of its own dead weight!"
"That held an electrolyte of dielectric constant thirteen times ten to
the sixth. He had it charged to a mere three thousand volts. Ye gods,
Walt. Thirteen farads at three KV. _Whew!_ and when he discharged it,
the confounded leads that went through the glass sidewalls to the
condenser plates positively glowed in the cherry red. I swear it!"
"He's like that," said Walt. "You shouldn't worry about him. He'll
have built that condenser out of good stuff--the leads will be alloys
like those we use in the bigger tubes. They wouldn't fracture the
glass seals no matter what the temperature difference between them
and the glass was. Having that alloy around the place--up in the tube
maintenance department they have a half ton of quarter-inch rod--he'd
use it naturally."
"Could be, Walt. Maybe I'm a worry wart."
"You're not used to working with his kind."
"I quote: 'Requiring a high voltage source of considerable current
capacity, I hit upon the scheme of making a super-high capacity
condenser and discharging it through my no-arc alloy. To do this it
was necessary that I invent a dielectric material of K equals thirteen
times ten to the sixth.' Unquote."
"Wes is a pure scientist," reminded Walt. "If he were investigating the
electrical properties of zinc, and required solar power magnitudes to
complete his investigation, he'd invent it and then include it as an
incidental to the investigation on zinc. He's never really understood
our recent divergence in purpose over the power tube. That we should
make it soak up power from Sol was purely incidental and useful only
as a lever or means to make Terran Electric give us our way. He'd have
forgotten it, I'll bet, since it was not the ultimate goal of the
investigation."
"He knows his stuff, though."
"Granted. Wes is brilliant. He is a physicist, though, and neither
engineer nor inventor. I doubt that he is really interested in the
physical aspects of anything that is not directly concerned with his
eating and sleeping."
"What are we going to do about him?"
"Absolutely nothing. You aren't like him--"
"I hope not!"
"And conversely, why should we try to make him like you?"
"That I'm against," chimed in a new voice. Arden Channing took each man
by the arm and looked up on either side of her, into one face and then
the other. "No matter how, why, when, who, or what, one like him is all
that the solar system can stand."
"Walt and I are pretty much alike."
"Uh-huh. You are. That's as it should be. You balance one another
nicely. You couldn't use another like you. You're speaking of Wes
Farrell?"
"Right."
"Leave him alone," said Arden sagely. "He's good as he is. To make him
similar to you would be to spoil a good man. He'd then be neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl. He doesn't think as you do, but instead proceeds in a
straight line from remote possibility to foregone conclusion. Anything
that gets needed en route is used, or gadgeteered, and forgotten.
That's where you come in, fellows. Inspect his by-products. They may be
darned useful."
"O.K. Anybody care for a drink?"
"Yup. All of us," said Arden.
"Don, how did you rate such a good-looking wife?"
"I hired her," grinned Channing. "She used to make all of my
stenographic mistakes, remember?"
"And gave up numerous small errors for one large one? Uh-huh, I recall.
Some luck."
"It was my charm."
"Baloney. Arden, tell the truth. Didn't he threaten you with something
terrible if you didn't marry him?"
"You tell him," grinned Channing. "I've got work to do."
* * * * *
Channing left the establishment known as Joe's; advertised as the "Best
bar in twenty-seven million miles, minimum," and made his way to his
office, slowly. He didn't reach it. Not right away. He was intercepted
by Chuck Thomas, who invited him to view a small experiment. Channing
smiled and said that he'd prefer to see an experiment of any kind to
going to his office, and followed Chuck.
"You recall the gadget we used to get perfect tuning with the
alloy-selectivity transmitter?"
"You mean that variable alloy disk all bottled up and rotated with a
selsyn?" asked Don, wondering what came next. "Naturally I remember it.
Why?"
"Well, we've found that certain sub-microscopic effects occur with
inert objects. What I mean is this: Given a chunk of cold steel of
goodly mass and tune your alloy disk to pure steel, and you can get a
few micro-microamperes output if the tube is pointed at the object."
"Sounds interesting. How much amplification do you need to get this
reading and how do you make it tick?"
"We run the amplifier up to the limit and then sweep the tube across
the object sought, and the output meter leaps skyward by just enough to
make us certain of our results. Watch!"
Chuck set the tube in operation and checked it briefly. Then he took
Don's hand and put it on the handle that swung the tube on its gimbals.
"Sort of paint the wall with it," he said. "You'll see the deflection
as you pass the slab of tool steel that's standing there."
Channing did, and watched the minute flicker of the ultra-sensitive
meter. "Wonderful," he grinned, as the door opened and Walt Franks
entered.
"Hi, Don. Is it true that you bombarded her with flowers?"
"Nope. She's just building up some other woman's chances. Have you seen
this effect?"
"Yeah--it's wonderful, isn't it?"
"That's what I like about this place," said Chuck with a huge
smile. "That's approximately seven micro-microamperes output after
amplification on the order of two hundred million times. We're either
working on something so small we can't see it, or something so big we
can't count it. It's either fifteen decimal places to the left or to
the right. Every night when I go home I say a little prayer. I say:
'Dear God, please let me find something today that is based upon unity,
or at least no more than two decimal places,' but it is no good. If He
hears me at all He's too busy to bother with things that the human race
classifies as 'One.'"
"How do you classify resistance, current, and voltage?" asked Channing,
manipulating the tube on its gimbals and watching the effect.
"One million volts across ten megohms equals one hundred thousand
microamperes. That's according to Ohm's Law."
"He's got the zero-madness, too," chuckled Walt. "It obtains from
thinking in astronomical distances, with interplanetary coverages in
watts, and celestial input, and stuff like that. Don, this thing may be
handy some day. I'd like to develop it."
"I suggest that couple of stages of tube-amplification might help.
Amplify it before transduction into electronic propagation."
"We can get four or five stages of sub-electronic amplification, I
think. It'll take some working."
"O.K., Chuck. Cook ahead. We do not know whither we are heading, but
it looks darned interesting."
"Yeah," added Walt, "it's a darned rare scientific fact that can't be
used for something, somewhere. Well, Don, now what?"
"I guess we now progress to the office and run through a few reams of
paper work. Then we may relax."
"O.K. Sounds good to me. Let's go."
* * * * *
Hellion Murdoch pointed to the luminous speck in the celestial globe.
His finger stabbed at the marker button, and a series of faint
concentric spheres marked the distance from the center of the globe to
the object, which Murdoch read and mentioned: "Twelve thousand miles."
"Asteroid?" asked Kingman.
"What else?" asked Murdoch. "We're lying next to the Asteroid Belt."
"What are you going to do?"
"Burn it," said Murdoch. His fingers danced upon the keyboard, and
high above him, in the dome of the _Black Widow_, a power intake
tube swiveled and pointed at Sol. Coupled to the output of the power
intake tube, a power output tube turned to point at the asteroid. And
Murdoch's poised finger came down on the last switch, closing the final
circuit.
Meters leaped up across their scales as the intangible beam of solar
energy came silently in and went as silently out. It passed across
the intervening miles with the velocity of light squared, and hit the
asteroid. A second later the asteroid glowed and melted under the
terrific bombardment of solar energy directed in a tight beam.
"It's O.K.," said Hellion. "But have the gang build us three larger
tubes to be mounted turretwise. Then we can cope with society."
"What do you hope to gain by that? Surely piracy and grand larceny are
not profitable in the light of what we have and know."
"I intend to institute a reign of terror."
"You mean to go through with your plan?"
"I am a man of my word. I shall levy a tax against any and every ship
leaving any spaceport. We shall demand one dollar solarian for every
gross ton that lifts from any planet and reaches the planetary limit."
"How do you establish that limit?" asked Kingman interestedly.
"Ironically, we'll use the Channing Layer," said Murdoch with dark
humor. "Since the Channing Layer describes the boundary below which
our solar beam will not work. Our reign of terror will be identified
with Channing because of that; it will take some of the praise out of
people's minds when they think of Channing and Venus Equilateral."
"That's pretty deep psychology," said Kingman.
"You should recognize it," smiled Murdoch. "That's the kind of stuff
you legal lights pull. Mention the accused in the same sentence with
one of the honored people; mention the defendant in the same breath
with one of the hated people--it's the same stunt. Build them up or
tear them down by reference."
"You're pretty shrewd."
"I am," agreed Murdoch placidly.
"Mind telling me how you found yourself in the fix you're in?"
"Not at all. I've been interested for years in neurosurgery. My
researches passed beyond the realm of rabbits and monkeys, and I found
it necessary to investigate the more delicate, more organized, the
higher-strung. That means human beings--though some of them are less
sensitive than a rabbit and less delicate than a monkey." Murdoch's
eyes took on a cynical expression at this. Then it passed and he
continued: "I became famous, as you know. Or do you?"
Kingman shook his head.
"I suppose not. I became famous in my own circle. Lesser neuro-surgeons
sent their complex cases to me; unless you were complex, you would
never hear of Allison Murdoch. Well, anyway, some of them offered
exciting opportunities. I--frankly, experimented. Some of them died. It
was quite a bit of cut and try because not too much has been written
on the finer points of the nervous system. But there were too few
people who were complex enough to require my services, and I turned to
clinical work, and experimented freely."
"And there you made your mistake?"
"Do you know how?"
"No. I imagine that with many patients you exceeded your rights once
too often."
"Wrong. It is a funny factor in human relationship. Something that
makes no sense. When people were paying me three thousand dollars an
hour for operations, I could experiment without fear. Some died, some
regained their health under my ministrations. But when I experimented
on charity patients, I could not experiment because of the 'Protection'
given the poor. The masses were not to be guinea pigs. Ha!" laughed
Murdoch, "only the rich are permitted to be subjects of an experiment.
Touch not the poor, who offer nothing. Experiment upon those of
intellect, wealth, fame, or anything that sets them above the mob.
Yes, even genius came under my knife. But I couldn't give a poor man
a fifty-fifty chance at his life, when the chances of his life were
less than one in ten. From a brilliant man, operating under fifty-fifty
chances for life, I became an inhuman monster that cut without fear. I
was imprisoned, and later escaped with some friends."
"And that's when you stole the _Hippocrates_ and decided that the solar
system should pay you revenge money?"
"I would have done better if I had not made that one mistake. I
forgot that in the years of imprisonment I fell behind in scientific
knowledge. I know now that no one can establish anything at all without
technical minds behind him."