He went on thinking. His eyes narrowed to slits and the glow deepened.
Railton came. "You called me?" he asked. He was a slickie, a front man.
College, teck school. Knew all about electricity, and what made the
wheels go round. Knew how to talk it. Well dressed, smart.
"Go call on Lee Garth," Tompkins said. "You will find his address
in the files. Ask him if he will accept a ten day extension on the
delivery date of certain items of his order. That is your excuse for
getting in to see him."
"Lee Garth? He's a big shot theoretical physicist," Railton said.
"Worth a mint. Made his money on a bunch of inventions. The papers
call him another Einstein, but I personally think they over-rate him.
What has he been ordering from us and what am I to find out?"
"Find out why he needs solid copper bus-bars twenty-four inches in
diameter, but don't let him find out that's what you want to know."
"What?" Railton recovered his composure. "Yes sir."
"Get going."
Railton left. When the chief used that tone, he wanted results, and to
hell with expense and everything else that stood in the road of what
was wanted.
* * * * *
Dawn or dusk? And which roads lead to the future? Or is there no
future? Is there only the present and the past, and is the present only
the husk of dying life?
Again and yet again and yet again the ancient yellow sun went down the
sky, and night, ever growing bolder, came each evening out of the east.
Again and yet again the darkness crept around the huge ball that rested
on the nearer hill.
The ball did not lift again, did not move, did not stir or struggle.
Like a huge stratosphere balloon made out of some strange metal, it
rested there, unmoving.
Animals ranged through the night. In the darkness lonely dogs howled
for lost masters. There was never an answer to the howling of the dogs.
* * * * *
Scoop Martin's index fingers moved so rapidly they almost blurred. He
only used two fingers on the keyboard. Two were all he needed. The
typewriter carriage almost ran over itself getting across the paper. It
stopped abruptly and Martin read his lead.
"Secrecy shrouds new scientific development at Valley Park, where Lee
Garth, the world's outstanding physicist, has a large crew at work on
the construction of a large steel and concrete--"
Martin swore at himself, ripped the paper out of the typewriter. What a
hell of a lead for a story. It didn't tell anything. Vague, ambiguous.
But where in the hell could he start this story?
He remembered that steam shovel, ripping the earth down to bed rock.
Gangs of men, drilling into the rock and driving reinforcing steel into
it. Other gangs setting up forms for the concrete that was to come.
A concrete tower going up, a huge mixer being blocked into position,
lines of trucks dumping gravel and cement.
Floodlights overhead so when night came the work could go on.
Twenty-four hour a day schedule. Over the whole job the sense of
desperate urgency.
Martin tried to think what that urgency might be. That would be his
lead. A darned good one too. But he couldn't figure it out. All he
could say was that out at Valley Park men were tumbling over each other
getting done a job of work. They didn't walk. They ran. If a worker
gave out, he stepped back out of place, and a fresh man took over his
job while he rested.
It was costing a fortune. That didn't matter much. Lee Garth had a
fortune. He was spending it.
Martin thought of Lee Garth. In getting in he had practically forced
himself past an overworked secretary. Once in, he had found Garth in
front of a desk covered with papers.
Garth was not a big man, not an impressive-looking man. You had to
think twice to realize the reputation he had won for himself. Pale blue
eyes and thin black hair. He looked like a dreamer, or a poet. Not very
efficient. Or so he looked.
"Mr. Garth, I'm Martin of the _Globe_. We would like to have a story
about you and about the construction work going on out here. What are
you building? A new observatory, a laboratory, a workshop, or what?"
Scoop had smiled in his most winning manner. He had a nose for news and
a way of getting it.
Garth blinked at him. He seemed to withdraw his mind from a vast
distance to meet the problem presented by the newspaper man. He
hesitated.
When he spoke, he gave a hint of the man he was. "Sorry, but I am not
interested in publicity."
"Not interested in publicity!" Martin found that hard to believe, even
from Lee Garth.
"But why all this construction work? What are you building?"
"There is a need for it. I am not quite certain I know everything about
that need, that I really know anything about it, except that it exists."
"What is this need?" Martin insisted. "You've got twice as many men as
you can really use. You're working your crews twenty-four hours a day.
What is it you need? What are you doing?"
Fretfully, Garth answered. "I can't tell you about it. It wouldn't make
sense because it doesn't exist now. It exists two million years from
now."
Two millions years! What the hell? Garth was cracked, he was bugs, he
was off his nut.
Garth punched a button. To that plain secretary he said, "Stella, show
Mr. Martin out. And see that no one else without business here gets in.
Hire guards."
"Yes, Mr. Garth."
There had been a sleek, prosperous-looking chap waiting in the outer
office when Martin went out. He had heard the secretary say, "Mr. Garth
will see you now, Mr. Railton."
* * * * *
Two million years. Scoop Martin twisted at his desk, ran another sheet
of paper into his typewriter. Two million years. Why, recorded history
didn't run back over five thousand years. That guy Garth was nuts. Or
was he? Those scientists talked damned funny at times. What would the
earth look like in two million years? A baked, waterless plain, broken
by jagged mountains? Dead, deserted, lifeless? Man and all of man's
achievements gone?
This was 1940. If you added two million to that, what would the number
be? It would be darned hard to remember that it was 2,001,940.
Two million years. It was a gag, it had to be a gag. Two million years
didn't mean anything, didn't make sense. Yea, it was a gag. Well, he'd
just make it a good one. There was his lead. He'd fix Garth for tossing
him out on his ear.
His index fingers raced over the keyboard, his thin face writhed into a
wolfish grin.
"Prominent Scientist forecast doom of earth in two million years--"
Scoop let his imagination go. It would be a good yarn at that. Might
even make the front pages. No, not likely. Hitler was holding down the
front pages.
* * * * *
Railton came through the front office at a dead run.
Mr. Tompkins swallowed his annoyance at the sight of the young man
leaning against his desk. Mr. Railton was no longer sleek and capable.
He was panting and sweating, actually sweating.
"Chief," he panted, holding his side and gasping for air. "That guy
Garth, he's got--he's got _atomic power_."
It was the first time Railton or anyone else had ever seen Tompkins
show surprise.
"What?" he snapped.
"Atomic power," Railton parroted. "That's why he needed those bus-bars!"
Tompkins settled back into his chair. His face turned faintly purple.
His eyes bored into the disheveled Railton.
"You got a lot of guts," he rasped, "coming back to me with a cock and
bull story like that."
Railton whitened. Doggedly, he persisted in his story. "I'm telling you
just what he told me."
"All right," Tompkins said heavily. "Tell me what happened."
"I went out to see him, and just as you suggested, I asked him if he
would accept a ten day extension on the delivery date of part of his
order. Chief, as sure as we don't make delivery as per contract, that
fellow will sue us for the last dollar in the treasury. He says he has
to have delivery on August 21, without fail. He means it. What the hell
he is working on, I don't know, but that man is in a hurry and he means
business."
"We will make delivery as scheduled unless it is to our interest to do
otherwise," Tompkins interrupted. "Get to the point."
"In order to pacify him, I told him we would guarantee delivery. Then I
went over his whole order with him, to make certain that everything was
right. When we got to those bus-bars, I suggested there must have been
some mistake."
"He said, 'No. No mistake. The specifications are right.'"
"I protested that there wasn't a generator made that needed bars of
that size to carry its load."
"He said, 'No, but there is going to be one. Those cables aren't any
too heavy to carry the power of the bursting atom.' Those are his exact
words. 'The power of the bursting atom.'"
Tompkins leaned back in his chair. Viciously he bit the end off of a
cigar.
"Then Garth is crazy, instead of you!" he said.
Railton's face turned white. "Well--" He made futile noises deep in his
throat. "Well, you may be right. Because, well--if Garth has discovered
atomic power--it--it doesn't mean much to him. He isn't interested in
it. He isn't working on it. He's working on something else, something
bigger, and atomic power is just one of the little things he needs to
reach the goal he wants...."
Railton's voice trailed off. He was a slickie, a smoothie. He knew all
about electricity, and the power industry. He knew all about uranium
235, and why it wouldn't work. He knew what atomic power would do to
the power industry. He was wondering if Garth _was_ crazy. Or what was
Garth trying to do? What purpose was so vast that atomic power was
only incidental to it?
There was silence in the room. The clamor of traffic outside did not
penetrate here. The only sound was the soft whisper of a fan pushing
cool air through the conditioning apparatus.