Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

  It took me a bit more than three-quarters of an hour to set it up. Because, first, I had to find out if it was possible, and then discover how to set it up. I had to call on Artie Katz again to get some items from the luggage compartment of my Cad, items like plastic cord and handcuffs so I could leave Bludgett alone in my suite, bound and gagged, for half an hour—during which time, among other things, I hunted up Dr. Fretsindler and became for a little while his eager student. After that, I had to remove some of Bludgett’s bonds temporarily so I could walk him from my rooms to another and much larger room at Mountain Shadows.

  There were other problems, but by twenty minutes after seven P.M.—with distant thunder rumbling and lightning beginning to flash outside—both Bludgett and I were in one of Mountain Shadows’ convention halls, with seats for perhaps two hundred and fifty people facing a raised platform or stage. Those seats were empty now, because Bludgett and I were alone in the room; but here, in less than forty minutes, approximately two hundred conventioneers would be gathered to hear and see the first of tonight’s lectures and demonstrations.

  Or, rather, the second. Because the very first lecture and demonstration of the evening was going to be mine. I, the lone professor; Bludgett, the attentive audience of one. At least, I hoped he would be attentive. And it was, I thought, a reasonable hope. We were not only alone but on stage, Bludgett sitting in the heaviest wooden chair I could grab on short notice, ankles securely tied to its legs, but with his hands before him and free, except for the handcuffs around his massive wrists.

  Also on stage was a long wooden table atop which were four items, the two nearest us being a large metal kitchen pot, turned upside down, upon which rested at approximately the level of Bludgett’s head, a rock, a solid hunk of granite about the size of a man’s head—actually, larger than that, since I’d hunted around till I found one the size of Bludgett’s head.

  Already aimed at the rock was—well, the laser.

  It didn’t look like much. The unit, or rather the two components of the unit, somewhat resembled a pair of oversized rectangular black-metal suitcases. Maybe it didn’t look like much, but neither does a bullet unless you know what it can do. And, just as a cartridge case conceals the powder which makes the bullet go, so did the “suitcase” nearest the chunk of granite conceal an extremely powerful light source which provided the “powder” or power for the laser. It was of much the same brilliance as a strobe or flashlight used by photographers, except that it did not pulse but focused a constant beam of light on one end of the active material, the laser rod, which turned ordinary light into the laser’s coherent “bullet.” All of that was hidden, but the rest of the rod projected for two feet from the end of the black-metal box and was aimed at the small boulder because that was where I had aimed it.

  That rod—the real magic or wizardry—looked to me like merely a strangely murky-gray tube of solid but transparent glasslike material. What it actually was, so I’d been told, was YAG.

  I know it sounds like something one might take for an upset stomach, but that is what I had been told by none other than Dr. Fretsindler, one of the world’s foremost scientific authorities on everything from the original ruby laser to molecular gas lasers to the newest of all, the YAG laser. He was, in fact, the world’s foremost authority on such a contraption as now rested on the table before Bludgett and me, since it was his very own experimental laser, designed and built by the doctor himself.

  Dr. Fretsindler had told me a great many things, few of which I fully, or even emptily, understood, since one does not become an expert during the kind of quickie cram course he had so kindly—and, I blush to admit, unsuspectingly—given me. Among other things, he told me that he was the first man to solve the formerly insoluble problem of “growing large rods of multiply-doped Alphabet YAG.” I swear, those were his exact words, for they rang so strikingly in my ear that I shall probably never get them out.

  He also told me that YAG could be described “simply”—again, his word—as Y3Al5O12, or a compound of yttrium aluminum, and oxygen, which he had “doped with various rare-earth ions” and otherwise maneuvered so cleverly that he had not only become the first man ever to produce YAG rods more than a few centimeters long, but had also achieved a remarkable increase in YAG efficiency.

  I told him that was swell. I didn’t even ask him what a centimeter was. If I’d been going to ask the doctor any irrelevant questions I would have asked him why Y8A15O12 was called YAG instead of YAO, but what I really wanted to know was how you turned the laser-thing on. And he finally told me even that. You pushed a little switch, that was how. You turned it on like you turned anything else on.

  Fortunately he also told me the laser produced such heat inside the black box that it was necessary to cool it with water, which was what the second black “suitcase” contained. From it two copper tubes reached forward and down into the innards of the laser, and finally into a concealed heat-exchanger, and thus—I certainly hoped—all was ready to go. I had even remembered to plug the electrical cord into a wall outlet. Just like you plug in anything else. I was learning.

  Thus, with everything in readiness, and Bludgett still looking phlegmatic, calm and composed, even bored, I turned to him and began the lecture.

  “Bludgett,” I said, “behold. Do you see this magical instrument before you?”

  He was quite cooperative, as long as the conversation was general. “Yah,” he said. “I see a bunch of junk and a rock.”

  “That’s what you think,” I said. “Before you is an instrument capable of the most fiendish torture devised by man.”

  “You are full of beans,” he said. He didn’t say beans; but whenever he said what he said I shall report it as beans.

  “That, Mr. Bludgett—by the way, is Bludgett your first or last name?”

  “It’s all you get.”

  “All right, Bludgett. Before the torture begins, I will—because at heart I’m not a cruel man—give you a chance to tell me all I wish to know. First, who were the seven individuals present about two A.M. this morning at a meeting held at Henry Yarrow’s house in Sunrise Villas? Where is Fred Jenkins, and is he dead, and if so who murdered him? What do you know about Pete “The Letch” Lecci, and his grandson Joe Civano—and is it not only certain but damned certain that Crazy Joe is truly deceased—”

  “Knock off this beans, Scott. I ain’t gonna tell you nothin’ and you know it.”

  “Well, you had your chance. Later, I will give you one more chance. But only one, Bludgett. First, let me explain what we have here. This instrument is a laser, the name being an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation—”

  “You’re pullin’ my leg.”

  “No, but soon I may do worse than that. This is, in fact, a very powerful experimental laser which emits, from the end of this YAG here”—I pointed to the end of the rod near the head-sized rock—“light beams in the spectrum which we call infrared. Now, you probably know that infrared light is invisible.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, now you do. To be really scientific—which is what we are going to be here, Bludgett—we should speak not solely of light but of heat, because the laser achieves its astonishing effects by means of high thermal shock, or heat akin to that of the sun itself. Focused heat, really big heat, such hot heat you would not believe—”

  “I don’t, at that.”

  “I said the same thing once myself, in my innocence. For ease of expression, we shall speak of light. Now, this light, though invisible, because it is all in phase, of one wavelength, coherent, not scattered—like that—is capable of transforming the hardest rock, or skull, into, well, practically into its component molecules.”

  “What’s component molec—whatever you said?”

  “No matter. Leave us say that, if this invisible light can cause a granite rock to crumble, then surely it can also, if aimed at a man’s head, turn his marbles into little marblecules. Is that clear
?”

  “It ain’t to me. Is it to you?”

  I wished he hadn’t asked that question.

  I hadn’t absorbed all Dr. Fretsindler had told me. But I had learned enough to be convinced that what Paul had told me last night in the cocktail lounge—when discussing another experiment with a laser and a rock—was not, after all, the blatherings of a drunk. For one thing, he hadn’t been drunk. There had not been time to take up with Paul the very serious matter of that drink check, but there would be later. I hoped.

  That hope was in part predicated upon what Bludgett—if he had any sense—was going to tell me.

  “No matter,” I said. “Chinese say, one picture worth ten thousand words. If so, one demonstration worth ten thousand pictures, ah so? You don’t have to answer that.”

  From my pocket I took a plain old screwdriver and handed it to Bludgett. I wanted Bludgett to become personally involved in this experiment. It is the same psychological principle that is involved when a high-pressure salesman tries, and usually succeeds, in getting his product into your hands—whether it’s a vacuum cleaner, pot or pan, gardening tool, no matter. The salesman feels, correctly, that when you handle and fondle the thing, your personal participation combined with his artful semihypnosis, which occasionally is not so semi-, helps to hook you, helps to convince you, helps to make a helpless pawn of you. And, of course, I hoped to hook, convince, and make a helpless pawn of Bludgett.

  For that, I needed all the help I could get.

  So I gave him the screwdriver and said, “Chip away at that piece of rock, will you?”

  “What for?”

  “Because I have a surprise for you.”

  With that bait dangling in front of him, though he hesitated, he reached forward, holding the screwdriver in both manacled hands, and hacked away at the hunk of granite.

  Nothing happened, of course.

  Bludgett said, “What’s so surprisin’ about that?”

  “The surprise comes a little later. I simply wanted you to be sure, in your own mind, that on the table before you is a real, genuine, solid chunk of granite. Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Sure it’s a solid chunk of granite.”

  He looked at me with dull eyes. “You really want me to answer that?”

  “Never mind.” It didn’t matter. Obviously, he was convinced. That was the important thing. First stage completed.

  “It’s a cow egg,” he said. “That what you want me to say it is? Something dumb like that?”

  “No, you were right the first time. Bludgett, I’m not joshing with you. This is serious business. It’s a—”

  “It’s a blueberry pancake. I love blueberry pancakes. Pour a little syrup on it and I’ll eat it.”

  He probably would, at that. This was getting out of hand. And when you intend to sell the customer, you’ve got to stay in control all the time. So I looked at him sternly and said, “Bludgett, quit the goddam horsing around. That’s a rock. You know it’s a rock, right?”

  “It’s a lotta bullbeans, you ast me.”

  “It’s a rock!”

  I think he was getting a little confused about that time, because he reached out, still holding the screwdriver, and gave the chunk of granite two or three good digs. “By golly,” he said, “you may be right.”

  “O.K. Now, here’s what I’m going to do.”

  I told him I was merely going to turn on the laser. He wouldn’t see anything or hear anything—except the sound of my throwing the switch to turn the deadly instrument on—but the invisible beams, sort of an infrared death ray, would be squirting against the piece of granite.

  He didn’t seem very impressed yet. But probably that was because I hadn’t done anything except have him dig at a rock with a screwdriver. “Here goes,” I said.

  I stepped to the laser, reached for the switch which would activate it, supplying power from the 110-volt outlet into which it was plugged, and turned it on. At the same time I clicked a cricket in my pants pocket. It was one of those simple metal instruments which make a sharp clicking sound when you squeeze them, and I wanted Bludgett to have no doubt about when the laser was being turned on. The little cricket made a distinctive and clearly audible sound, which I intended he would associate with activation of the laser. Then I stepped near him—not too near—and fired questions at him.

  He refused to answer any questions not merely those concerned with his associates and his life of crime. But he did say, “I don’t get it. I figgered you’d be poundin’ on me by now. Or cookin’ my feet like marshmellers.”

  “That wouldn’t be scientific,” I said. “Besides, it would leave horrible marks on you. And even though you are a bloodthirsty hood, I might get in trouble with the fuzz.”

  “Well, you ain’t gonna get me to talk without you doin’ something like that—and even then you ain’t.”

  “Oh, but I am, Bludgett. But I am going to break you down scientifically.…”

  We had been looking at each other, not the rock, but I could now from merely the corner of one eye detect something of more than passing interest. When I looked at the small granite boulder the face of it was actually glowing. Glowing because it was white-hot. No light could be seen coming from the laser rod, but the stone itself was so hot light was coming from it.

  “I think it has been long enough,” I said.

  I stepped to the laser again, turned it off and simultaneously clicked my cricket, then returned to a point near Bludgett’s chair. He, too, had become aware of an oddness occurring, and his expression underwent a slight change. While I spoke to him, letting a little time pass, he absently reached up with his manacled hands and poked a finger into a nostril. I was almost bemused; I hadn’t thought he could get a finger into his entire nose, much less a single nostril. He eyed the rock suspiciously, but then shrugged. Nothing had happened, after all.

  I was a little worried about that myself. But I said, as seriously and convincingly as I could, “It’s done. That invisible infrared light I told you about has already—right before your eyes, Bludgett—totally changed the molecular, atomic, and even mineral structure of that solid hunk of granite. Stick it with the screwdriver again.”

  He looked at me as if he were sorry for me. He shook his huge bald head. “You really want me to?”

  “I do.”

  He shrugged, looked at the screwdriver still in his paws, then reached out and gave the rock a little chop.

  The screwdriver plunged right through it and clanged on the kitchen pot.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A good third of the granite chunk flopped off and hit the table.

  Hit—and broke into a dozen or more separate pieces.

  I don’t know which of us was more surprised. No, that’s not true. I was surprised, even though I’d been expecting something similar might happen. But Bludgett—

  Well, there was simply no describing Bludgett.

  If I was surprised, he was astonished, flabbergasted, shocked, shaken, and aghast. He simply didn’t believe it.

  “What the beans,” he said. And “What the beans,” again.

  His mouth sagged open, his head bent down, and he looked at the rock with his eyes rolled up toward it. His lower lip hung loosely and, slowly, a bit of saliva gathered there, dripped off. “What the beans,” he said for the third—and last—time.

  Then he reached out, very gingerly, as one might reach when preparing to fondle a poisonous viper, and tapped at the rock with his screwdriver again. With each tap more of it crumbled. It was—even to me—amazing. To Bludgett, God only knows.

  His mouth remained open and his lower lip was still hanging down wetly and his eyes were enormously wide, and he kept poking and poking at the chunk of rock and then the parts of the rock and finally the little bitty bits of the rock.

  When I figured he was ripe, I said, “Now, it’s time to do the same thing to your head, Bludgett.”

  It took a few seconds for my words to penetrate. He pull
ed his eyes off the bits of rock and sandlike particles on the overturned kitchen pot and on the table, and looked at me. “To—what?”

  “You want to spill, Bludgett? All you’ve got to do is tell me—”

  He told me to go to hell, or words to that effect.

  I didn’t say any more, just moved to the far end of the table and pulled it around so the two-foot YAG rod was aimed at Bludgett’s face. Then I said, gently, “I’m really not quite sure what this will do to you, Bludgett. But when I’m through, I’d suggest you don’t scratch your head.”

  Then I pretended to turn on the switch, and at the same time clicked my cricket.

  “Noooo-OOOOO!” he yelled.

  He also jerked aside so vigorously and suddenly that the chair he sat in toppled over and cracked against the floor. That sound was minor compared to the resounding thump of Bludgett’s huge bulk thudding down onto the stage. His ankles were bound to the chair’s legs, but he could move his arms, and he was reaching out with his manacled hands and clawing frantically at the wood, not getting anywhere, but sure as hell trying.

  I clicked my cricket and yelled, “There, it’s off. It’s off, Bludgett!” It was true. I thought it unnecessary to add that it hadn’t been on.

  He clawed for a few more seconds and then became still. He put his head down on one arm, mouth still open, staring, a faraway look in his eyes.

  For just a second, maybe half a second, I wondered if I could go through with this. It was such a humiliating position for a man, especially a big strong brute like Bludgett, to be in. He was, it appeared, also scared at least halfway out of his mind—which he presumed would soon be mindless. Naturally I wouldn’t really fry his brains. But he didn’t know that.…

  My moment of weakness passed. He was ripe; he was ready. I didn’t think I’d even have to use my cricket again.

  I squatted on the floor a yard or so from him and said, “Bludgett, you can stay right there. I’ll simply aim the laser beam down toward your chops, and we’ll see what occurs. I’m really interested to know what’s going to happen to your conk.”