Gone Fishing
Page 4
he hadbeen literal about going on a fishing trip. Barney accompanied the oldphysicist into the living room, and watched him open a small but verysturdy wall safe. Immediately behind the safe door, an instrumentpanel had been built in the opening.
Peering over the spectacles, McAllen made careful adjustments on twosets of small dials, and closed and locked the safe again.
"Now, if you'll follow me, Mr. Chard--" He crossed the room to a door,opened it, and went out. Barney followed him into a small room withrustic furnishings and painted wooden walls. There was a single,heavily curtained window; the room was rather dim.
"Well," McAllen announced, "here we are."
It took a moment for that to sink in. Then, his scalp pricklingeerily, Barney realized he was standing farther from the wall than hehad thought. He looked around, and discovered there was no door behindhim now, either open or closed.
He managed a shaky grin. "So that's how your matter transmitterworks!"
"Well," McAllen said thoughtfully, "of course it isn't really a mattertransmitter. I call it the McAllen Tube. Even an educated layman mustrealize that one can't simply disassemble a living body at one point,reassemble it at another, and expect life to resume. And there areother considerations--"
"Where are we?" Barney asked. "On Mallorca?"
"No. We haven't left the continent--just the state. Look out thewindow and see for yourself."
McAllen turned to a built-in closet, and Barney drew back the windowhangings. Outside was a grassy slope, uncut and yellowed by the summersun. The slope dropped sharply to a quiet lakefront framed by darkpines. There was no one in sight, but a small wooden dock ran out intothe lake. At the far end of the dock an old rowboat lay tethered.And--quite obviously--it was no longer the middle of a brightafternoon; the air was beginning to dim, to shift towards evening.
Barney turned to find McAllen's mild, speculative eyes on him, and sawthe old man had put a tackle box and fishing rod on the table.
"Your disclosures disturbed me more than you may have realized,"McAllen remarked by way of explanation. His lips twitched in theshadow of a smile. "At such times I find nothing quite so soothing asto drop a line into water for a while. I've got some thinking to do,too. So let's get down to the dock. There ought to be a little baitleft in the minnow pail."
* * * * *
When they returned to the cabin some time later, McAllen was in apensive mood. He started a pot of coffee in the small kitchen, thenquickly cleaned the tackle and put it away. Barney sat at the table,smoking and watching him, but made no attempt at conversation.
McAllen poured the coffee, produced sugar and powdered milk, andsettled down opposite Barney. He said abruptly, "Have you had anysuspicions about the reason for the secretive mumbo jumbo?"
"Yes," Barney said, "I've had suspicions. But it wasn't until _that_happened"--he waved his hand at the wall out of which they appeared tohave stepped--"that I came to a definite conclusion."
"Eh?" McAllen's eyes narrowed suddenly. "What was the conclusion?"
"That you've invented something that's really a little too good."
"Too good?" said McAllen. "Hm-m-m. Go on."
"It doesn't take much power to operate the thing, does it?"
"Not," said McAllen dryly, "if you're talking about the kind of powerone pays for."
"I am. Can the McAllen Tube be extended to any point on Earth?"
"I should think so."
"And you financed the building of this model yourself. Not veryexpensive. If the secret leaked out, I'd never know who was going tomaterialize in my home at any time, would I? Or with what intentions."
"That," McAllen nodded, "is about the size of it."
Barney crushed out his cigarette, lit a fresh one, blew out a thinstreamer of smoke. "Under the circumstances," he remarked, "it'sunfortunate you can't get the thing shut off again, isn't it?"
McAllen was silent for some seconds. "So you've guessed that, too," hesaid finally. "What mistake did I make?"
"None that I know of," Barney said. "But you're doing everything youcan to keep the world from learning about the McAllen Tube. At thesame time you've kept it in operation--which made it just a questionof time before somebody else noticed something was going on, as I did.Your plans for the thing appear to have gone wrong."
McAllen was nodding glumly. "They have," he said. "They have, Mr.Chard. Not irreparably wrong, but still--" He paused. "The first timeI activated the apparatus," he said, "I directed it only at twopoints. Both of them within structures which were and are my property.It was fortunate I did so."
"That was this cabin and the place on Mallorca?"
"Yes. The main operational sections of the Tube are concealed about myCalifornia home. But certain controls have to be installed at any exitpoint to make it possible to return. It wouldn't be easy to keep thosehidden in any public place.
"It wasn't until I compared the actual performance of the Tube with mytheoretical calculations that I discovered there was an unforeseenfactor involved. To make it short, I could not--to use yourphrasing--shut the Tube off again. But that would certainly involvesome extremely disastrous phenomena at three different points of ourglobe."
"Explosions?" Barney asked.
"Weee-ll," McAllen said judiciously, "implosions might come a littlecloser to describing the effect. The exact term isn't contained in ourvocabulary, and I'd prefer it _not_ to show up there, at least in mylifetime. But you see my dilemma, don't you? If I asked for help, Irevealed the existence of the Tube. Once its existence was known, theresearch that produced it could be duplicated. As you concluded, itisn't really too difficult a device to construct. And even with thepresent problem solved, the McAllen Tube is just a little toodangerous a thing to be at large in our world today."
"You feel the problem can be solved?"
"Oh, yes." McAllen took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Thatpart of it's only a matter of time. At first I thought I'd haveeverything worked out within three or four years. Unfortunately Ibadly underestimated the expense of some of the requiredexperimentation. That's what's delayed everything."
"I see. I had been wondering," Barney admitted, "why a man withsomething like this on his mind would be putting in _quite_ so muchtime fishing."
McAllen grinned. "Enforced idleness. It's been very irritating really,Mr. Chard. I've been obliged to proceed in the most inexpensive mannerpossible, and that meant--very slowly."
Barney said, "If it weren't for that question of funds, how long wouldit take to wind up the operation?"
"A year--perhaps two years." McAllen shrugged. "It's difficult to betoo exact, but it certainly wouldn't be longer than two."
"And what would be the financial tab?"
McAllen hesitated. "A million is the bottom figure, I'm afraid. Itshould run closer to a million and a half."
"Doctor," Barney said, "let me make you a proposition."
* * * * *
McAllen looked at him. "Are you thinking of financing the experiments,Mr. Chard?"
"In return," Barney said, "for a consideration."
"What's that?" McAllen's expression grew wary.
"When you retired," Barney told him, "I dropped a nice piece of moneyas a consequence. It was the first beating I'd taken, and it hurt. I'dlike to pick that money up again. All right. We're agreed it can't bedone on the McAllen Tube. The Tube wouldn't help make the world asafer place for Barney Chard. But the Tube isn't any more remarkablethan the mind that created it. Now I know a company which could be topof the heap in electronics precision work--one-shot specialties iswhat they go in for--if it had your mind as technical advisor. I canbuy a controlling interest in that company tomorrow, doctor. And youcan have the million and a half paid off in not much more time thanyou expect to take to get your monster back under control and shutdown. Three years of your technical assistance, and we're clear."
McAllen's face reddened slowly. "I've considered hiring out, ofcourse," he sa
id. "Many times. I need the money very badly. But aren'tyou overlooking something?"
"What?"
"I went to considerable pains," said McAllen, "to establish myself asa lunatic. It was distasteful, but it seemed necessary to discourageanyone from making too close an investigation of some of my morerecent lines of research. If it became known now