From a Seed....
Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc., was civilization's oldest and most
conservative drug house. "Hide-bound" was the term most frequently
used, not only by its younger employees but also by its more
progressive competitors. But, corporatively, Tellurian Pharmaceuticals
did not care. Its board of directors, by an iron-clad, if unwritten
law, was limited to men of over three score years and ten.
Against the inertia of that ruling body the impetuosity of the younger
generations was precisely as efficacious as the dashing of waves
against the foot of an adamantine cliff--and in very much the same
fashion. Ocean waves do, in time, cut into even the hardest rock; and,
every century or so, Tellurian Pharmaceutical, Inc., did take a forward
step. However, "Rather than make a mistake, do nothing" was its creed.
To that creed it adhered rigorously.
Thus, it did not establish branches upon other planets until a century
or so of experiment had proved that no unforeseen factor would operate
to lessen the prodigiously high standard of its products. Nor would it
own or operate spaceships, as did other large firms. Its business was
the manufacture of the universe's finest, most carefully standardized
drugs and it would go into no sidelines whatever.
Even the location of its head office; directly under the guns of Prime
Base, bore out the same theme. Originally it had been in the middle
of the city, miles away from the reservation; but as Prime Base had
expanded, the city had moved aside. Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, however,
would not give way. It stolidly refused to sell its holdings even to
the Galactic Patrol; it would not move until the patrol should condemn
its property and compel it by law to vacate.
Into that massive gray building there strode a tall, lean, gray
man; into an old-fashioned elevator, operated by a seventy-year-old
"boy"; into a darkish, severe room whose rock-of-ages furniture had
become pricelessly antique. Without a word he handed a card to the
receptionist, a prim spinster of some fifty summers.
"Ezekiel R. Stonely, M.D., Sc.D., Consultant in Radiation," she read
precisely into a communicator. "By appointment."
"Let him come in, please."
Dr. Stonely entered the private office of a vice-president--a young
man, as T. P.'s executives went--a man scarcely sixty years of age.
"All ready," the consultant reported briefly. "Graves is here, you
said?"
"Yes. He got in from Deka last night. How long will the demonstration
take?"
"Seven hours to the point of maximum yield; twelve for the full life
cycle."
"Very good." The vice-president then spoke into the communicator.
"Please ask Mr. Graves to step in."
Graves, the manager of T. P.'s branch upon the planet
Deka--planetographically speaking, Dekanore III--was a short, fat man;
and he possessed, upon the surface at least, the fat man's proverbial
geniality and good nature.
"Mr. Graves--Dr. Stonely."
"Mighty glad to meet you, Doctor," Graves shook hands effusively.
"Splendid accomplishment. You've been working on it five years or more,
I hear."
"Six years and two months," the scientist said precisely.
"I cannot accompany you, of course," the vice-president interposed
busily, "and you appreciate that the less of communication or contact
hereafter, the better. Good day."
* * * * *
The two went out, took a cab, and soon were in Dr. Stonely's
ultra-private laboratory. It was a large room, artificially lighted,
lined throughout with sheet metal--metal which, when properly charged,
formed a barrier through which no harmful radiation or particle could
pass. The scientist snapped on the wall shield and set to work,
explaining each step to his visitor.
"Here are the seeds. For the present you will have to take my word
for it that I produced them here. I will go through as many cycles as
you please. Here are the containers--miniatures, you will observe, of
the standard hydroponics tanks. The formula of the nutrient solution,
while of course crucial, contains nothing either rare or unduly
expensive. I plant the seed, thus, in each of the two tanks. I cover
each with a bell-jar of plastic--transparent to the frequencies to be
employed. I enclose the whole with a similar envelope--so. I align the
projectors--thus. We will now put on our armor, as the radiation is
severe and the atmosphere, which displaces our own of oxygen--"
"Synthetic or imported?" Graves asked.
"Imported. Synthesis is possible, but prohibitive in cost. Importation
in tank ships is easy, simple, and comparatively cheap. I will now
energize the projectors, and growth will begin."
He did so, and in the glare of blue-green radiance the atmosphere
within the bell-jars, the very ether, warped and writhed. In spite of
the distortion of vision, however, growth could be perceived--growth at
an astonishing rate.
In a few minutes the seeds had sprouted. In an hour the thick, broad,
glossily-green leaves were inches long. In seven hours each jar was
full of a lushly luxuriant tangle of foliage.
"This is the point of maximum yield," Stonely remarked as he shut off
the projectors. "I assume that you will want to take a sample."
"Certainly," the fat man agreed. "How else would I know it's the clear
quill?"
"If you were a scientist, the sight of it would be sufficient," came
the dry rejoinder. "Knowing that you are not, however, I am running two
tanks, as you see. Take either one you like."
The sample tank was removed and the full cycle of growth completed upon
the other. Graves himself harvested the seeds, and himself carried
them away.
Six days, six generations, six samples, and even the eminently
skeptical Graves was convinced.
"You've certainly got something there, Doc," he admitted finally. "We
can really go to town on that. You're absolutely sure that you're
covered--no trace?"
"None whatever," Stonely assured him. "Doctor Stonely will retire and
will gradually drop from sight. I will abandon this disguise, resume my
true identity as Fairchild, which has been kept alive judiciously, and
move openly to Deka."
"Notes? Data? Possible observers? This machinery and stuff?" Graves
insisted.
"No notes or data have ever been written down. The knowledge exists
only in my own brain. You are the first person other than myself ever
to see the inside of this room. This apparatus will be unrecognizable
before it is boxed, and I shall do the packing myself. Why? Are you by
any chance apprehensive that I may slip up?"
"Well, we can't be too sure." The fat man's blue eyes were now neither
genial nor good-natured; they were piercing and cold. "In this game
anybody who permits any leaks dies. And anyone who knows too much dies.
We don't want you to die, at least until after we get started on Deka--"
"Nor then," the scientist interrupted cynically, "if you know when
you're well off. I'm the only man in the universe who can run the
apparatus. It would take a mighty good man three years to learn it
after I get it going. Remember that, my friend."
"So what?" Graves' stare was coldly level.
"Just so you won't develop any funny ideas. I know as well as you do,
however, about leaks and leakers. I don't leak. How long will it take
you to get ready--three months?"
"Um--just about. And you?"
"Any time."
"Make it three months, then."
"Three months it is--on Deka." The interview was ended.
* * * * *
Newspoke--originally New Spokane--was the largest city of Dekanore III.
It lay in the broad valley of the Spokane River, just above the mouth
of Clear Creek, which latter stream meandered along a fertile valley
between mountains lofty and steep. Clear Creek Valley--all of it--and
all its neighboring mountains belonged to Tellurian Pharmaceuticals,
Inc.
The valley floor was a riot of color, devoted as it was to the
intensive cultivation of medicinal plants which could not as yet be
grown economically in tanks. Along both edges of the valley extended
rows of huge hydroponics sheds. Upon the mountains' sides there were
snake dens, lizard pens, and enclosures for many other species of fauna.
Nor was the surface all that was in use. Those mountains were hollow,
honeycombed into a host of rooms in which, under precisely controlled
environments of temperature, atmosphere, and radiation, were grown and
studied hundreds of widely-variant forms of life.
At the confluence of creek and river, just inside the city limits,
there reared and sprawled the company's buildings, the processing
and synthesizing plants, the refineries, the laboratories, the
power-houses, and so on.
In a ground-floor office of the towering Administration Building two
men sat in silence and waited while a red light upon a peculiarly
complicated desk-board faded through pink into pure white.
"All clear. This way, Doctor." Manager Graves pushed a button and a
section of blank wall slid smoothly aside.
The fat man and Doctor Fairchild--unrecognizable now as the man who
had once been known as Doctor Stonely--went down two long flights of
narrow steps. Along a dimly-lit corridor they made their way, through
an elaborately locked steel door, then into a barely-furnished,
steel-lined room upon the floor of which four inert bodies lay.
Graves thrust a key into an inconspicuous orifice and a plate
swung open, revealing a chute into which the four lax forms were
unceremoniously dumped. Then the two men retraced their steps to the
manager's office.
"Well, that's about all that we can feed to the disintegrators."
Fairchild lit an Alsakanite cigarette and exhaled thoughtfully.
"Why? Going soft on us?" Graves sneered.
"No," the scientist replied calmly. "The ice is getting thin."
"Whaddya mean 'thin'?" the manager demanded. "The Patrol inspectors are
ours--enough of them, anyway. Our records are fixed. Faked identities,
trips, all that stuff, you know. Everything's on the green."
"That's what you think," Fairchild countered cynically. "Our accident
rate, in spite of everything we have been able to do, is up three
hundredths of one percent; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover
about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how
much we have upped total bootleg sales. Those figures are all in the
Patrol's files. How can you give such facts the brush-off?"
"We don't have to," Graves laughed comfortably. "Even a half of one
percent would not excite suspicion, and our distribution is so uniform
throughout the galaxy that they can't center it. They can't possibly
trace anything back to us. Besides, they wouldn't suspect us. With
our reputation, other firms would get knocked off in time to give
us plenty of warning. Lutzenschiffer's, for instance, is putting out
heroin by the ton."
"Again I say that's what _you_ think." Fairchild remained entirely
unconvinced. "Nobody else is putting out the stuff that comes out of
Cave Two Seventeen--demand and price prove that. What you don't seem to
get, Graves, is that some of those damned Lensmen have brains. Suppose
they put Worsel of Velantia, Tregonsee of Rigel IV, or even Kinnison
himself onto this job--then what? The minute that anybody decides to
run a rigid statistical analysis of our records, we're done."
"Um--" This was a distinctly disquieting thought, in view of the
impossibility of concealing anything from a Gray Lensman who was really
on the prowl. "That might not be so good. What would you advise, then?"
"Shut down Two Seventeen--and preferably the whole hush-hush end--until
we can get our records absolutely honest and our death rates down to
the old-time ten-year average," the scientist insisted. "In that way
only can we make ourselves really safe."
"Shut down? The way they're pushing us for production?" Graves sneered.
"You talk like a fool. The chief would toss us both down the chute and
put somebody in here that _would_ really produce."
"Oh, I don't mean without permission. Talk him into it. It's best for
him, as well as everybody else, over the long pull."
"He couldn't see it. I can't either, really," grunted the manager. "If
we can't dope out something better than that, things have got to go on
as is."
"I suspected so--but you asked me. The next best thing is to use some
new form of death, openly explainable, to clean up our books."
"Wonderful!" Graves snorted contemptuously. "What can we possibly add
to what we are using right along?"
"A loose atomic vortex."
"Whoooosh!" The fat man deflated in an exclamation of profound
surprise, then came back up for air, gasping. "Man, you're nuts.
There's only one on the planet, and it's--or do you mean--but nobody
ever touched one of those things off deliberately! Can it be done?"
"Yes. It isn't simple, but we Fellows of the College of Radiation
know how--theoretically--the transformation can be made to occur. The
fact that it is a new idea makes it all the better. It has never been
done because it has been impossible to extinguish the things. But now
'Storm' Cloud is putting them out."
"I see. Neat, very neat." Graves' agile and cunning brain was going
over the possibilities. "Certain of our employees, I take it, will be
upon a picnic in the upper end of the valley when this unfortunate
occurrence is to take place?"
"Exactly--and enough mythical ones to straighten out our bookkeeping.
Then, later, we can dispose of suspects as they appear. Vortices are
absolutely unpredictable, you know. People we don't like can die of
radiation or of any one or a mixture of various toxic gases and vapors
and the vortex will take the blame."
"And later, when it gets dangerous, Storm Cloud can blow it out for
us," Graves gloated. "But we'll not want him for a long, long time!"
"No, but we'll report it and ask for him the hour it happens--"
Fairchild silenced the manager's expostulations. "Use your head,
Graves! Anybody who has a vortex go out of control wants it killed as
soon as possible. But here's the joker--Cloud has enough Class A prime
urgent demands on file right now to keep him busy for the next ten or
fifteen years. Therefore we won't be able to get him--see?"
"I see. This is nice, Fairchild, very, very nice. But the head office
had better keep an eye on Cloud, just the same."