The Armed Forces would undoubtedly suppress my invention. Their lives
are nightmarish enough already--not knowing what they'll find out in
space or how it will affect matters. What's more, they would suppress
_me_! There are certain retroactive clauses in that contract I signed
with the AEC which would do the job with complete legality. A nice
little hideaway, then, with nothing for miles but security guards,
radar traps, trip-wires and electric fences.
But that was the kindest fate I could expect. Quite a number of
assorted big and small dictators might like my head blown off.
The most obvious alternative was to suppress the invention myself. To
destroy all traces of my experiments and forget about it. To convince
myself the world wasn't ready for it.
It's quite possible I might have--if I hadn't kept forgetting to shut
off things--and if not for an unsavory little group.
There is small chance that Big Jake Claggett and his three henchmen
will ever be remembered for their unwitting contribution to science
and the future of mankind. In fact, their contribution can be accepted
as the merest coincidence--unless you discount Big Jake's liking for
foreign sports cars. But that came later.
We always have had criminals and crime, and it just happened that
Claggett's gang were the big news that day. It could as easily have
been some other bunch of crooks.
Anyway, when nine P.M. rolled around, my wall TV burst into
its customary serenade of sound and color, timed for just enough of the
opening commercial to let me settle down to watch Mr. Winkle's news
commentary. It was August 23rd, 1979. At two o'clock that afternoon,
Big Jake Claggett and his gang robbed the Bellefontaine County Savings
Bank and got away with $23,000.
One of the gang clubbed the elderly bank guard senseless with the
barrel of his revolver. The guard was hospitalized for a possible skull
fracture. Witnesses said Big Jake cursed the gunman who struck the
guard, warning him to "get hold of himself!"
That was enough for me. The world had to be given my new weapon. (I'm
even more convinced of it now, after discussing it with Sgt. Falasca.
Practically every professional criminal in this country would give
almost anything for the Cooling gun. Then they could commit armed
robbery with no risk of earning a murder rap!) I could see that both
criminals and police officers would welcome it and for one simple
reason.
It doesn't kill, maim or injure. Even if it should cause a tremendous
increase in robberies and similar crimes, its victims wouldn't be dead.
Better a hundred robberies than one man's death.
Besides, I had a notion that I could discourage its criminal use.
* * * * *
First I had to prevent its suppression. Solve that problem and there
wouldn't be any reason I couldn't manufacture the pistols, advertise
them, and sell them exactly as any firearms company can sell .22
rifles. Except that I should probably do better to arrange for their
manufacture by some established firm.
That was when I began planning to write this. There is just one
condition under which no secret can be suppressed--_when it ceases to
be a secret!_
It took preparation. The roughed-out diagrams and scribbled notes a
man uses in research are hardly suitable for publication. Technical
specifications had to be phrased in clear, understandable terms.
The complete data took nearly two weeks to reach final draft. Also,
it seemed best to establish the importance, and at least imply the
probable consequences, of this publication.
And then, obviously, I had to find a publisher.
That one had me stumped.
Furthermore, I suspect it might still have me stumped if I did not now
have the full support of the Governor and the State Police of Ohio.
_These police officers want Cooling guns!_ But even back then, while
I was still the only man on Earth who knew about it, I managed to
formulate a solution of sorts.
Any publisher would be scared of the thing while only he and I and the
printers knew about it. He'd be risking a Federal injunction, at the
very least, even to consider publishing it.
But if it were no longer a secret and simply not yet _common
knowledge_, most publishers would grab it. If, for example, some
manufacturing firm had already considered it and was planning to put
Cooling guns into production....
Dr. Charles Whitney is currently the president and chief stockholder of
the Cleveland Atomic Equipment Company, which designs and manufactures
special tools and equipment for nuclear power companies, radiation labs
and universities throughout the Midwest. He started the business after
his dismissal from the AEC and built it up gradually over the ensuing
ten years. We have some of his tools at Webster Tech.
Then, too, Whitney and I had maintained a cursory, but friendly contact
through the years, so naturally I thought of him first. He had the
production layout for the job; what's more, he had the guts to go
through with it. All I had to do was sell him on it.
Unfortunately, by then I was scared silly. I was the furtive, sneaky
little man whose invention would change the world. I contacted Dr.
Whitney with a simple televisor call--but instead of suggesting a
perfectly normal appointment at his office, I had to swear him to
secrecy and arrange a clandestine meeting in the country! I wonder he
didn't consult an almanac to see if there wasn't a full moon that night.
In fact, I wonder that he came at all. It was pouring rain.
* * * * *
At least six hours are still required to reach Indian Lake in dry
weather, even allowing the Federal Freeway's 125 mph speed limit.
Once through the Columbus Turnoff, you have to double back westward
and northward through a hilly, rural country with twisting county
roads. You must have excellent driving ability to average more than 30
mph--and it won't be much more--over that maze of roads. When they're
wet, you need driving ability just to stay on them.
I'd worked late the night before, arranging my material for this
meeting, and didn't arise until noon. One glance at the sky's heavy
overcast told me what to expect. The weather reports confirmed it.
The world proceeded about its own business, of course, thoroughly
indifferent to a worried man eating his belated breakfast. I was
so completely _alone_! If I felt any sense of foreboding, stuffing
articles into my pockets, picking up the guinea pigs' case and going
out to the car, I couldn't distinguish it from my feeling of gloom.
Perhaps I did, since the world's affairs caught up with me quite
forcibly that night.
I met the rain before I was halfway up the Freeway and had to cut
speed clear down to 85.
The old hotel on Indian Lake was my natural choice for a rendezvous,
since it was a gutted ruin in abandoned backwoods--though "abandoned"
isn't exactly true. Local residents still fish the lake and there are a
few homes around the shore area.
Strictly speaking, the region has simply changed with the times. Today,
you can't get past the toll-gate onto a Federal Freeway unless you have
a Federal Driver's License and your Vehicle Inspection sticker is up
to date--which changed more things, I think, than nuclear power and
industrial automation.
* * * * *
When people suddenly couldn't drive across the country in any junkheap
with a nut at the wheel, it became a mark of distinction just to _live_
in the country. That's what made more rural jobs--the small community
shopping centers springing up, products having to be shipped out to
them, the growth of rural power and water systems--when work in the
cities got scarce, with automation taking over the factories.
But it hit the small resort areas especially hard. More people are
vacationing in the cities now than at the seashore or mountains!
I hadn't been out to the lake in years, but I had less trouble finding
my way this time than ever before. The influx of new home-builders has
considerably improved the road signs around there, both in number and
accuracy, and that's all you need in a Porsche Apache. My little blue
speedster takes those narrow, rain-slicked county roads like a Skid Row
bum making the saloon circuit with a brand new ten-dollar bill. The
only real problem is getting around those armor-sided Detroit mastodons
that can't decide which end is the front.
Anyway, driving kept me too busy to think much of anything else. But
I made good time--better than I expected--and it wasn't long after
dark when my headlights cut through the sheeting rain to pick out the
fire-blackened ruin of the hotel.
I jounced the little Porsche around the deep-rutted drive and parked
next to the empty frame building that had once been the restaurant and
bar.
I had plenty of time to think, for Dr. Whitney didn't arrive until two
hours later.
It was sometime during those two hours that the Claggett gang smashed
their way through a police roadblock just outside Lima, their guns
blasting reply to the machine-gun bullets peppering their big sedan.
Two policemen were seriously wounded; one died on the way to the
hospital.
Shortly afterward, the bullet-riddled sedan was found by the roadside,
but only one of the gang was in it. He was dead.
And some time later, a call aroused Sgt. Falasca from a sound sleep.
He didn't even take time to don his State Police uniform, but merely
pulled a trenchcoat on over his pajamas, got his revolver out of the
bureau drawer, and kissed his wife on the way out the front door. He
had three other State Troopers to pick up, off-duty as he was, before
proceeding to the assembly point at Lima.
The Claggett gang had split up, some of them probably wounded, each of
them armed and more dangerous than ever. They were wanted for murder
now.
* * * * *
Dr. Whitney made the trip by helicopter, of course--the head of a
scientific instrument company must keep up appearances. He'd waited as
long as he could, hoping the weather might clear, then had taken off on
instruments and reached the lake by ADF gridmap. He settled to the lake
surface and crept in to shore, his landing lights probing the thick
curtains of rain.
I heard the hollow roar of his turbine, rather than the throb of his
rotor blades, and hurried around the slanting wing of the old hotel
to meet him. The lakefront presented a macabre view that wrenched at
my memory. The desolate, cracked-stucco walls with the black holes of
their windows rising from mounds of rubble beside me, a weed-grown lawn
and a straggle of trees half-masking the lake--stark-looking trees now,
in the 'copter's landing lights--and a small boat-dock leaning half
into the black water.
Once, as a rather obnoxious young high-school student, I had seen
this lakefront on just such a night. A steady rain fell, lightning
flickered, and thunder blasted its anger ... and, for a moment, I saw
it as it had been, with that grand old British pioneer of space flight,
Arthur C. Clarke, standing out there in the pelting rain with his
camera, taking pictures of the lightning!
Dr. Whitney brought his sleek craft over the treetops and settled
neatly into the small space that remained of the lawn, his rotor tips
almost nicking the crumbled walls of the hotel. It was a plexi-nosed,
three-place executive ship--a Bell, I think. A lot of people prefer
flying. They must fly specific air routes and airfield traffic
patterns; and with airfields so crowded, they have trouble finding a
place to park. It's not for me.
But Dr. Whitney had heard the newscasts on the way out. I don't recall
what was said at our meeting. It was rather uncomfortable, under the
circumstances--the more so for me, I think, as those circumstances were
my own making. But when we'd rounded the hotel and entered the old
restaurant-bar, I recall Whitney's jocular approval.
"Well, we're cozy enough here," he said. "So long as the Claggett gang
doesn't drop in on us!"
That was how I heard of the night's happenings. When he saw that his
remark puzzled me, he related the news while I was setting things up
for our conference. We were in the back room, which had once been the
bar--the front section, formerly the restaurant, had had windows all
around, which now formed an unbroken gap with a chill wind whistling
through it. The place was stripped bare of its former fixtures, but
some unsung fisherman had provided the old barroom with a rickety table
and several pressed-board boxes to sit on. I had a Coleman radiant heat
lantern which I swung from a ceiling wire hook, a plastic sheet which
I threw across the table, and a couple of patio chair cushions for the
boxes.
It took some shifting about to get everything out of the way of several
roof leaks, and I had to choose a sturdy box for myself, first testing
a few.
* * * * *
I can well imagine the thoughts and emotions struggling through Dr.
Whitney's mind then, but he showed none of them. It was I, rather, with
my clumsy movements, the pauses to polish my glasses, the lump I kept
trying to swallow, who took so long to face up to it.
But finally we were ready. I took out my notebook and opened it upon
the table before me. Whitney's frosty eyebrows raised. Then he quietly
reached inside his own topcoat, produced his notebook and pen, and laid
the notebook open before him. It was a gesture of an almost-forgotten
past, but a habit neither of us had ever abandoned. Something about
it--the reminder of countless AEC conferences we had both attended--had
a steadying effect on me.
I placed my pistol in the center of the table. The guinea pigs' cage
was on the floor before us. I told what I had to tell.
Then I went to the cage, removed one of the animals and tucked it into
my pocket. Returning to the table, I picked up the pistol and fired at
the cage. The shrill E flat note pierced the rushing sound of the rain.
Whitney rose and went to the cage. Gently removing the little
creature, he felt it a moment, then nodded.
"Asleep," he said, and replaced it in the cage.
Looking over my notes, I see that considerable space would be required
to cover the entire interrogation which followed. Also, I see that
I failed to note down the almost gradual change in my old friend's
demeanor--from his calm, quiet manner at first to the keen-eyed
excitement of his flushed features, his rapid-fire questions at the end.