The Foreign Hand Tie

by Randall Garrett

Laboratories. Dr. Sonya BorisovnaMalekrinova would be working late this evening, and he wanted to get asclose as possible in order to pick up as much information as he could.

  Rafe had a great deal of admiration for that woman, he admitted tohimself. She was, granted, as plain as an unsalted _matzoh_. No. That wasan understatement. If it were possible to die of the uglies, SonyaBorisovna would have been dangerously ill.

  Her disposition did nothing to alleviate that drawback. She fanciedherself as cold, hard, analytical, and ruthless; actually she was waspish,arrogant, overbearing, and treacherous. What she considered in herself tobe scientific detachment was really an isolation born of fear and distrustof the entire human race.

  To her, Communism was a religion; "_Das Kapital_" and "_The CommunistManifesto_" were holy writ enshrining the dogmata of Marxism-Leninism, andthe conflict with the West was a _jehad_, a holy war in which God, in Hismanifestation as Dialectic Materialism, would naturally win out in theend.

  All of which goes to show that a scientific bent, in itself, does notnecessarily keep one from being a bigot.

  Rafe's admiration for the woman stemmed solely from the fact that, inspite of all the powerful drawbacks that existed in her mind, she wasstill capable of being a brilliant, if somewhat erratic scientist.

  There was a more relaxed air in Moscow these days. The per capitaproduction of the Soviet Union still did not come up to that of the UnitedStates, but the recent advances in technology did allow a feeling ofaccomplishment, and the hard drive for superiority was softened a trifle.It was no longer considered the height of indolence and unpatriotictime-wasting to sit on a bench and feed pigeons. Nor was food so scarceand costly that throwing away a few bread crumbs could be consideredsabotage.

  So Rafe Poe found himself a quiet corner near the Lenin Soviet People'sLaboratories, took out a small bag of dried breadcrumbs, and was soonsurrounded by pigeons.

  Dr. Malekrinova was carefully calibrating and balancing the electroniccircuits that energized and activated and controlled the output of thenewly-installed beam generator--a ring of specially-made greenish glassthat had a small cylinder of the same glass projecting out at a tangent.Her assistant, Alexis, a man of small scientific ability but a giftedmechanic, worked stolidly with her. It was not an easy job for Alexis;Sonya Borisovna was by no means an easy woman to work with. There was, asthere should have been, a fifty-fifty division in all things--a properstate of affairs in a People's Republic. Alexis Andreyevich did half thephysical work, got all the blame when things went wrong, and none of thecredit when things went right. Sonya Borisovna got the remaining fiftypercent.

  Sonya Borisovna Malekrinova had been pushing herself too hard, and sheknew it. But, she told herself, for the glory of the Soviet peoples, thework must go on.

  After spending two hours taking down instrument readings, she took theresults to her office and began to correlate them.

  _Have to replace that 140-9.0 micromicrofarad frequency control on stagetwo with something more sensitive_, she thought. _And the field modulationcoils require closer adjustment._

  She took off her glasses and rubbed at her tired eyes while she thought._Perhaps the 25 microfarad, 12 volt electrolytic condenser could be usedto feed the pigeons, substituting a breadcrumb capacitor in the sidewalkcircuit._

  She opened her eyes suddenly and stared at the blank wall in front of her."Pigeons?" she said wonderingly. "_Breadcrumb_ capacitor? Am I losing mymind? What kind of nonsense is that?"

  She looked back down at her notes, then replaced her glasses so that shecould read them. Determined not to let her mind wander in that erraticfashion again, she returned her attention to the work at hand.

  She found herself wondering if it might not be better to chuck the wholejob and get out while the getting was good. _The old gal_, she thought,_is actually tapping my mind! She's picking up everything!_

  Sonya Borisovna sat bolt upright in her chair, staring at the blank wallagain. "Why am I thinking such nonsense?" she said aloud. "And why shouldI be thinking in English?" When her words registered on her ears, sherealized that she was actually _speaking_ in English. She was thoroughlyacquainted with the language, of course, but it was not normal for her tothink in it unless she happened to be conversing with someone in thattongue.

  The first whisper of a suspicion began to take form in the mind of Dr.Sonya Borisovna Malekrinova.

  Half a block away, Raphael Poe emptied the last of his breadcrumbs on thesidewalk and began walking away. He kept his mind as blank as possible,while his brow broke out in a cold sweat.

  * * * * *

  "That," said Colonel Julius Spaulding scathingly, "is as pretty a mess asI've seen in years."

  "It's a breadboard circuit, I'll admit," Dr. Davenport said defensively,"but it's built according to the schematics you gave us."

  "Doctor," said the colonel, "during the war the British dropped our groupa radio transmitter. It was the only way to get the stuff into Africaquickly. The parachute failed to open. The transmitter fell two thousandfeet, hit the side of a mountain, and tumbled down another eight hundredfeet. When we found it, four days later, its wiring was in better shapethan that thing is in now."

  "It's quite sufficient to test the operation of the device," Davenportsaid coldly.

  Spaulding had to admit to himself that it probably was. The thing was aslapdash affair--the colonel had a strong feeling that Davenport hadassigned the wiring job to an apprentice and gave him half an hour to dothe job--but the soldering jobs looked tight enough, and the componentsdidn't look as though they'd all been pulled out of the salvage bin. Whatirritated Colonel Spaulding was Davenport's notion that the whole thingwas a waste of time, energy, money, and materials, and, therefore, therewas no point in doing a decent job of testing it at all.

  He was glad that Davenport didn't know how the information about thedevice had been transported to the United States. As it was, he consideredthe drawings a hoax on the part of the Russians; if he had been told thatthey had been sent telepathically, he would probably have gone into fitsof acute exasperation over such idiocy.

  The trouble with Davenport was that, since the device didn't make anysense to him, he didn't believe it would function at all.

  "Oh, it will do _something_, all right," he'd said once, "but it won't beanything that needs all that apparatus. Look here--" He had pointed towardthe schematic. "Where do you think all that energy is going? All you'regoing to get is a little light, a lot of heat, and a couple of burned outcoils. I could do the same job cheaper with a dozen 250 watt light bulbs."

  To be perfectly honest with himself, Spaulding had to admit that he wasn'tabsolutely positive that the device would do anything in particular,either. His own knowledge of electronic circuitry was limited to ham radioexperience, and even that was many years out of date. He couldn't beabsolutely sure that the specifications for the gadget hadn't been garbledin transmission.

  The Q-shaped gizmo, for instance. It had taken the better part of a weekfor Raphael Poe to transmit the information essential to the constructionof that enigmatic bit of glass.

  Rafe had had to sit quietly in the privacy of his own room and print outthe specifications in Russian, then sit and look at the paper while Lennycopied the "design." Then each paper had to be carefully destroyed, whichwasn't easy to do. You don't go around burning papers in a crowdedRussian tenement unless you want the people in the next room to wonderwhat you're up to.

  Then the drawings Lenny had made had had to be translated into English andthe piece carefully made to specifications.

  Now here it was, all hooked up and, presumably, ready for action. ColonelSpaulding fervently hoped there would _be_ some action; he didn't like thesmug look on Dr. Amadeus Davenport's face.

  * * * * *

  The device was hooked up on a testing-room circuit and controlled fromoutside. The operation could be watched through a heavy pane ofbulletproof glass. "With all that power going into
it," Davenport said, "Idon't want anyone to get hurt by spatters of molten metal when those fieldcoils blow."

  They went outside to the control console, and Dr. Davenport flipped theenergizing switch. After the device had warmed up on low power, Davenportbegan turning knobs slowly, increasing the power flow. In the testingroom, the device just sat there, doing nothing visible, but the meters onthe control console showed that something was going on. A greenish glowcame from the housing that surrounded the Q-shaped gadget.

  "Where the Russians made their mistake in trying to fool anyone with thatthing was in their design of that laser component," said Dr. Davenport."Or, I should say, the thing that is supposed to look like a lasercomponent."

  "Laser?" said Colonel Spaulding uncomprehendingly.

  "It means 'light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation',"Davenport explained. "Essentially, a laser consists of a gas-filled tubeor a solid ruby bar with parallel mirrors at both ends. By exciting theatoms from outside, light is generated within the tube, and some of itbegins to bounce back and forth between the mirrors at the ends. Thistends to have a cascade effect on the atoms which have picked up theenergy from outside, so that more and more of the light generated insidethe tube tends to be parallel to the length of the tube. One of themirrors is only partially silvered, and eventually the light bouncing backand forth becomes powerful enough to flash through the half-silvered end,giving a coherent beam of light."

  "Maybe that's what this is supposed to be," said the colonel.

  Davenport chuckled dryly. "Not a chance. Not with an essentially circulartube that isn't even silvered."

  Lenny Poe, the colonel noticed, wasn't the only person around who didn'tcare whether the thing he referred to as a "tube" was hollow or not.

  "Is it doing anything?" Colonel Spaulding asked anxiously, trying to readthe meters over Davenport's shoulder.

  "It's heating up," Davenport said dryly.

  Spaulding looked back at the apparatus. A wisp of smoke was rising slowlyfrom a big coil.

  A relay clicked minutely.

  _WHAP!_

  For a confused second, everything seemed to happen at once.

  But it didn't; there was a definite order to it.

  First, a spot on the ceramic tile wall of the room became suddenlyred, orange, white hot. Then there was a little crater of incandescentfury, as though a small volcano had erupted in the wall. Following that,there was a sputtering and crackling from the innards of the deviceitself, and a cloud of smoke arose suddenly, obscuring things in the room.Finally, there was the crash of circuit-breakers as they reacted to theoverload from the short circuit.

  There was silence for a moment, then the hiss of the automatic fireextinguishers in the testing room as they poured a cloud of carbon dioxidesnow on the smoldering apparatus.

  "There," said Davenport with utter satisfaction. "What did I tell you?"

  "You didn't tell me this thing was a heat-ray projector," said ColonelSpaulding.

  "What are you talking about?" Dr. Davenport said disdainfully.

  "Develop the film in those automatic cameras," Spaulding said, "and I'llshow you what I'm talking about!"

  As far as Colonel Spaulding was concerned, the film showed clearly whathad happened. A beam of energy had leaped from the "tail" of the Q-tube,hit the ceramic tile of the wall, and burned its way through in half asecond or so. The hole in the wall, surrounded by fused ceramic, was muteevidence of the occurrence of what Spaulding had seen.

  But Dr. Davenport pooh-poohed the whole thing. Evidence to the contrary,he was quite certain that no such thing had happened. A piece of hot glassfrom a broken vacuum tube had done it, he insisted.

  A piece of hot glass had burned its way through half an inch of tile? Anda wall?

  Davenport muttered something about the destructive effects of shapedcharges. He was more willing to believe that something as wildlyimprobable as that had happened than admit that the device had done whatColonel Spaulding was quite certain it had done.

  Within three hours, Davenport had three possible explanations of what hadhappened, each of which required at least four unlikely things to happencoincidentally.

  Colonel Spaulding stalked back to his office in a state of angry disgust.Just because the thing was foreign to Davenport's notions, he hadeffectively tied his own hands--and Colonel Spaulding's, too.

  "Where's Lenny Poe?" he asked the WAC sergeant. "I want to talk to him."

  She shook her head. "I don't know, sir. Lieutenant Fesner called in halfan hour ago. Mr. Poe has eluded them again."

  Colonel Spaulding gazed silently at the ceiling for a long moment. Then:"Sergeant Nugget, take a letter. To the President of the United States,1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  "Dear Sir. Consider this my resignation. I have had so much experiencewith jackasses lately that I have decided to change my name to Hackenbushand become a veterinarian. Yours truly, et cetera. Got that?"

  "Yes, sir," said the sergeant.

  "Burn it. When Fumblefingers Fesner and his boys find Lenny Poe again, Iwant to know immediately."

  He stalked on into his office.

  * * * * *

  Raphael Poe was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Establishing aclose rapport with another mind can be a distinct disadvantage at times. Aspy is supposed to get information without giving any; a swapping ofinformation is not at all to his advantage.

  It was impossible to keep his mind a perfect blank. What he had to do waskeep his strongest surface thoughts entirely on innocuous things. Thetrouble with that was that it made it extremely difficult to think aboutsome way to get out of the jam he was in. Thinking on two levels at once,while not impossible, required a nicety of control that made wire-walkingover Niagara look easy.

  The thing to do was to make the surface thoughts automatically repetitive.A song.

  "_In a hall of strange description (Antiquarian Egyptian), Figuring his monthly balance sheet, a troubled monarch sat With a frown upon his forehead, hurling interjections horrid At the state of his finances, for his pocketbook was flat._"

  Simultaneously, he kept a picture in his mind's eye. It had to besomething vivid that would be easy to concentrate on. The first thing thatcame to mind was the brilliant necktie that the President had used in histest several months before. He conjured it up in all its chartreuse glory,then he animated it. Mauve satyrs danced with rose-pink nymphs and chasedthem over the yellow-green landscape.

  "_Not a solitary single copper cent had he to jingle In his pocket, and his architects had gone off on a strike, Leaving pyramids unfinished, for their wages had diminished, And their credit vanished likewise, in a way they didn't like._"

  Rafe could tell that Dr. Malekrinova's mind was trying to reject the alienideas that were coming into her mind. She wasn't consciously trying topick up Rafe's thoughts. But the rejection was ineffective because of itsfascination. The old business about the horse's tail. If you see a whitehorse, you'll soon get rich if you can keep from thinking about thehorse's tail until it's out of sight. The first thought that comes to mindis: "I mustn't think about the horse's tail." A self-defeatingproposition.

  If Sonya Borisovna had been certain that she was receiving the thoughtstelepathically, she might have been able to reject them. But her mindrejected the idea of telepathy instead, so she was susceptible to thethoughts because she thought they were her own.

  The cavorting of the nymphs and satyrs became somewhat obscene, but Rafedidn't bother to correct it. He had more to worry about than offending therather prim mind of Dr. Malekrinova.

  "_It was harder for His Royal Highness than for sons of toil, For the horny-handed workmen only ate three figs per day, While the King liked sweet potatoes, puddings, pies, and canned tomatoes, Boneless ham, and Bluepoint oysters cooked some prehistoric way._"

  What to do now? Should he try to get out of Russia? Was ther
e any quickway out?

  He had all the information he needed on the heat-beam projector that Dr.Malekrinova was building. The theory behind it was perfectly clear; all itneeded was further experimentation. If it worked out according to theory,it would be an almost perfect defense against even the fastestintercontinental ballistic missiles.

  "_As he growled, the Royal grumbler spied a bit of broken tumbler In a long undusted corner just behind the chamber door. When his hungry optics spied it, he stood silently and eyed it, Then he smote his thigh with ecstasy and danced about the floor._"

  Maybe he should try to make a run for the American Embassy. No. No onethere knew him, and they probably couldn't get him out of the country,anyway. Besides, it would take him too long to explain the situation tothem.

  "_'By the wit Osiris gave me! This same bit of glass shall save me! I shall sell it as a diamond at some stupendous price! And whoe'er I ask to take it will find, for his own sweet sake, it Will be better not to wait until I have to ask him twice!'_"

  The theory behind the heat projector was simply an extension of the lasertheory, plus a few refinements. Inside a ring made of the proper material,the light, acted upon by exterior magnetic fields, tended to move in acircle, so that the photon cascade effect was all in one direction insteadof bouncing back and forth between a pair of mirrors. That light could bebent around corners by making it travel through a glass rod was wellknown, and the Malekrinova Q-tube took advantage of that effect.

  In a way, the principle was similar to that of the cyclotron, except thatinstead of spinning ions around in a circle to increase their velocity abeam of coherent light was circulated to increase its intensity.

  Then, at the proper moment, a beam of intense coherent light shot out ofthe tangent that formed the tail of the Q-tube. If the material of the Qwas properly constructed and contained atoms that fluoresced strongly inthe infra red, you had a heat beam that delivered plenty of power. And,since the radiation was linear and "in step," the Q-tube didn't heat upmuch at all. The cascade effect took most of the energy out as radiation.

  "_Then a Royal Proclamation was dispatched throughout the nation, Most imperatively calling to appear before the King. Under penalties most cruel, every man who sold a jewel Or who bought and bartered precious stones, and all that sort of thing._"

  But knowing all that didn't help Raphael Poe or the United States ofAmerica one whit if the information couldn't be gotten out of Russia andinto Colonel Spaulding's hands. Lenny had told him of the trouble thecolonel was having with Dr. Davenport.

  If he could only communicate with Lenny! But if he did, Dr. Malekrinovawould pick up every bit of it, and that would be the end of that. No, hehad to figure out some way to get himself and the information both out ofthe country.

  Meanwhile, he had to keep thinking of an animated necktie. And he had tokeep singing.

  "_Thereupon, the jewelers' nether joints all quaked and knocked together, As they packed their Saratogas in lugubrious despair. It was ever their misfortune to be pillaged by extortion, And they thought they smelled a rodent on the sultry desert air._"

  Lenny Poe shoved open the door of Colonel Spaulding's outer office with aviolence that startled Sergeant Nugget.

  "Is Spaulding in?" he barked.

  "I think he's expecting you," she said. There was no time to buzz thecolonel; Poe was already opening the door.

  "Rafe's in trouble!" Lenny said hurriedly, slamming the door behind him.

  "Where have you been?" snapped the colonel.

  "Never mind that! Rafe's in trouble, I said! We've gotta figure a way toget him out of it!"

  Colonel Spaulding dropped all thought of bawling out Poe. "What'd he say?What's the trouble?"

  "All he's doing is broadcasting that necktie--like an animated cartoon intechnicolor. And he's singing."

  "Singing? Singing what?"

  "_As they faced the Great Propylon, with an apprehensive smile on, Sculptured there in heiroglyphics six feet wide and nine feet high Was the threat of King Rameses to chop every man to pieces Who, when shown the Royal diamond, would dare refuse to buy._"

  Colonel Spaulding blinked. "That's pretty. What does it mean?"

  "Nothing; it's a song, that's all. That female Russian scientist can readRafe's mind, and he's broadcasting this stuff to cover up!"

  Quickly, he told Spaulding what the situation was as he had been able topiece it together from Rafe's secondary thoughts.

  "Ye Gods!" Colonel Spaulding slapped at his brow. Then he grabbed for thetelephone and started dialing.

  Lenny dropped into one of the chairs, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

  _Rafe! Rafe! Listen to me! Rafe!_

  "_Then the richest dealer, Mulai Hassan, eyed the gem and coolly Said, 'The thing is but a common tumbler-bottom, nothing more!' Whereupon, the King's Assassin drew his sword, and Mulai Hassan Never peddled rings again upon the Nile's primeval shore._"

  But below the interference came Rafe's thoughts. And the one thing ofprimary importance to him was to get the information on the heat-beamgenerator to the United States.

  No bigotry, no matter how strong, is totally impregnable. Even the mostnarrow-minded racial bigot will make an exception if a person of thedespised race risks his own life to save the life of the bigot or someonethe bigot loves. The bigotry doesn't collapse--not by a long shot. But anexception is made in that one case.

  Lenny Poe made an exception. Any information that was worth his brother'slife was _Important_! Therefore, it was not, could not be, scientificgobbledegook, no matter how it sounded.

  _Rafe, give it to me! Try me! I can copy it!_

  "_Then Abdullah abd Almahdi faintly said the stone was shoddy, But he thought that, in a pinch, he might bid fifty cents himself. There ensued a slight commotion where he could repent the notion, And Abdullah was promoted to the Oriental Shelf._"

  _Rafe! Stop singing that stupid song and give me the stuff! She can'tlearn anything if you just think about that theory stuff. She alreadyknows that! Come on! Give!_

  Lenny Poe grabbed a pencil and a sheaf of paper from the colonel's deskand began writing frantically as the _Song of the Egyptian Diamond_stopped suddenly.

  * * * * *

  Words. Nonsense words. That's all most of the stuff was to Lenny. Itdidn't matter. He spelled them as he thought they should be, and if hemade a mistake, Rafe would correct him.

  Rafe tried to keep a picture of the words as they would look if printedwhile he thought them verbally, and that helped. The information cameacross in the only way it could come across--not as concepts, but assymbols.

  Lenny hardly noticed that the Secretary of Defense and the President hadcome into the room. He didn't even realize that Colonel Spaulding wasfeeding him fresh sheets of paper.

  Lenny didn't seem to notice the time passing, nor the pain in his hand asthe muscles tired. He kept writing. The President left with the DefenseSecretary and came back again after a while, but Lenny ignored them.

  And when it was over, he pushed pencil and paper aside and, massaging hisright hand with his left, sat there with his eyes closed. Then, slowly, asmile spread over his face.

  "Well, I'll be damned," he said slowly and softly.

  "Mr. Poe," said the President, "is there any danger that your brother willbe captured within the next hour?"

  Lenny looked up with a startled grin. "Oh. Hi. I didn't notice you, Mr.President. What'd you say?"

  The President repeated his question.

  "Oh. No. There's nothing to worry about. The little men in white coatscame after Dr. Malekrinova. She started screaming that telepathic spieswere stealing her secret. She smashed all her apparatus and burned all herpapers on top of the wreckage before they could stop her. She keepsshouting about a pink-and-purple orgy and singing a song about glassdiam
onds and Egyptian kings. I wouldn't say she was actually insane, butshe is _very_ disturbed."

  "Then your brother is safe?"

  "As safe as he ever was, Mr. President."

  "Thank Heaven for that," said the President. "If they'd ever captured himand made him talk--" He stopped. "I forgot," he said lamely after amoment.

  Lenny grinned. "That's all right, Mr. President. I sometimes forget itmyself. But it was his handicap, I guess, that made him concentrate ontelepathy, so that he doesn't need his ears to hear what people aresaying. Maybe I could read minds the way he does if I'd been born thatway.

  "Come to think of it, I doubt if the Russians would have believed he was aspy if they'd caught him, unless they really did believe he wastelepathic. A physical examination would show immediately that he was bornwithout eardrums and that the inner ear bones are fused. They wouldn't tryto make a man talk if an examination showed that he really was adeaf-mute."

  The buzzer on the colonel's intercom sounded. "Yes?" said Spaulding.

  "Dr. Davenport is here," said Sergeant Nugget. "He wants to talk to you."

  "Send him in," said Colonel Spaulding gleefully. "I have a nice scientifictheory I want to shove down his throat."

  * * * * *