“Called off? Hah. No such thing,” Skinner said. “Not by a long shot. Not Porter. He’ll take the thing up, and if the Army doesn’t shoot him down, the CAA will see to it that he’s taken back to prison. But that won’t stop him. Malcom Porter is determined to go down in history as a great scientist, and nothing is going to stop him if he can help it.”
“You think his spaceship will work, then?”
“Work? Sure it’ll work. It worked in ’79; it’ll work now. The way that drive is built, it can’t help but work. I just don’t want to stick around and watch him get in trouble again, that’s all.”
Elshawe frowned. All the time that Porter had been in prison, his technicians had been getting together the stuff to build the so-called “spaceship,” but none of them knew how it was put together or how it worked. Only Porter knew that, and he’d put it together after he’d been released on parole.
But if that was so, how come Skinner, who didn’t even work for Porter, was so knowledgeable about the drive? Or was that liquor talking?
“Did you help him build it?” the reporter asked smoothly.
“Help him build it? Why, I—” Then Skinner stopped abruptly. “Why, no,” he said after a moment. “No. I don’t know anything about it, really. I just know that it worked in ’79, that’s all.” He finished his drink and got off his stool. “Well, I’ve got to be going. Nice talking to you. Hope I see you again sometime.”
“Sure. So long, Mr. Skinner.” He watched the man leave the bar.
Then he finished his own drink and went back into the lobby and got a phone. Ten minutes later, a friend of his who was a detective on the Los Angeles police force had promised to check into Mr. Samuel Skinner. Elshawe particularly wanted to know what he had been doing in the past three years and very especially what he had been doing in the past year. The cop said he’d find out. There was probably nothing to it, Elshawe reflected, but a reporter who doesn’t follow up accidentally dropped hints isn’t much of a reporter.
He came out of the phone booth, fired up his pipe again, and strolled back to the bar for one more drink before he went back to Porter’s ranch.
Malcom Porter took one of the darts from the half dozen he held in his left hand and hurled it viciously at the target board hung on the far wall of the room.
Thunk!
“Four ring at six o’clock,” he said in a tight voice.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
The other five darts followed in rapid succession. As he threw each one, Porter snapped out a word. “They…can’t…stop…Malcom…Porter!” He glared at the board “Two bull’s-eyes; three fours, and a three. Twenty-five points. You owe me a quarter, Elshawe.”
The reporter handed him a coin. “Two bits it is. What can you do, Porter? They’ve got you sewed up tight. If you try to take off, they’ll cart you right back to The Rock—if the Army doesn’t shoot you down first. Do you want to spend the next ten years engrossed in the scenic beauties of San Francisco Bay?”
“No. And I won’t, either.”
“Not if the Army gets you. I can see the epitaph now:
Malcom Porter, with vexation,
Thought he could defy the nation.
He shot for space with great elation—
Now he’s dust and radiation.
Beneath it, they’ll engrave a spaceship argent with A-bombs rampant on a field sable.”
Porter didn’t take offense. He grinned. “What are you griping about? It would make a great story.”
“Sure it would,” Elshawe agreed. “But not for me. I don’t write the obituary column.”
“You know what I like about you, Elshawe?”
“Sure. I lose dart games to you.”
“That, yes. But you really sound worried. That means two things. One: You like me. Two: You believe that my ship actually will take off. That’s more than any of those other reporters who have been prowling around and phoning in do.”
Elshawe shrugged silently and puffed at his pipe. Malcom Porter’s ego was showing through. He was wrong on two counts. Elshawe didn’t like him; the man’s arrogance and his inflated opinion of himself as a scientific genius didn’t sit well with the reporter. And Elshawe didn’t really believe there was anything but a rocket motor in that hull outside. A new, more powerful kind of rocket perhaps—otherwise Porter wouldn’t be trying to take a one-stage rocket to the Moon. But a rocket, nonetheless.
“I don’t want to go back to prison,” Porter continued, “but I’ll risk that if I have to. But I won’t risk death just yet. Don’t worry; the Army won’t know I’m even gone until I’m halfway to the Moon.”
“Foo!” said Elshawe. “Every radar base from Albuquerque to the Mexican border has an antenna focused on the air above this ranch. The minute you get above those mountains, they’ll have a fix on you, and a minute after that, they’ll have you bracketed with Cobras.
“Why don’t you let the Government inspectors look it over and give you an O.K.? What makes you think they’re all out to steal your invention?”
“Oh, they won’t steal it,” Porter said bitterly. “Heaven’s-to-Betsy no! But this invention of mine will mean that the United States of America will be in complete control of the planets and the space between. When the Government wants a piece of property, they try to buy it at their price; if they can’t do that, they condemn it and pay the owner what they think it’s worth—not what the owner thinks it’s worth. The same thing applies here; they’d give me what they thought I ought to have—in ten years or so. Look what happened to Fermi.
“No, Elshawe; when the Government comes begging to me for this invention, they can have it—on my terms.”
“Going to keep it a secret, eh? You can’t keep a thing like that secret. Look what happened with atomic energy after World War Two. We kept it a secret from the Russians, didn’t we? Fine lot of good that did us. As soon as they knew it was possible, they went to work on it. Nature answers any questions you ask her if you ask her the right way. As soon as the Government sees that your spaceship works, they’ll put some of their bright physicists to work on it, and you’ll be in the same position as you would have been if you’d showed it to them in the first place. Why risk your neck?”
Porter shook his head. “The analogy isn’t valid. Suppose someone had invented the A-bomb in 1810. It would have been a perfectly safe secret because there wasn’t a scientist on Earth who included such a thing as atomic energy in his philosophy. And, believe me, this drive of mine is just as far ahead of contemporary scientific philosophy as atomic energy was ahead of Napoleon’s scientists.
“Suppose I told you that the fuel my ship uses is a gas lighter than hydrogen. It isn’t, but suppose I told you so. Do you think any scientist today could figure out how it worked? No. They know that there’s no such thing as a gas with a lighter atomic weight than hydrogen. They know it so well that they wouldn’t even bother to consider the idea.
“My invention is so far ahead of present-day scientific thought that no scientists except myself could have even considered the idea.”
“O.K.; O.K.,” Elshawe said. “So you’re going to get yourself shot down to prove your point.”
Porter grinned lopsidedly. “Not at all. You’re still thinking in terms of a rocket. Sure—if I used a rocket, they’d knock me down fast, just as soon as I lifted above the mountains. But I don’t have to do that. All I have to do is get a few feet of altitude and hug the ground all the way to the Pacific coast. Once I get out in the middle of the Pacific, I can take off straight up without being bothered at all.”
“All right. If your machine will do it,” the reporter said, trying to hide his skepticism.
“You still think I’ve got some kind of rocket, don’t you?” Porter asked accusingly. He paused a moment, then, as if making a sudden decision, he said: “Look, Elshawe, I trust you. I’m going to show you the inside of that ship. I won’t show you my engines, but I will prove to you that there are no rocket motors in he
r. That way, when you write up the story, you’ll be able to say that you have first-hand knowledge of that fact. O.K.?”
“It’s up to you,” the reporter said. “I’d like to see it.”
“Come along,” said Malcom Porter.
Elshawe followed Porter out to the field, feeling rather grateful that he was getting something to work on. They walked across the field, past the two gun-toting men in Levis that Porter had guarding the ship. Overhead, the stars were shining brightly through the thin mountain air. Elshawe glanced at his wrist watch. It was a little after ten p.m.
He helped Porter wheel the ramp up to the door of the ship and then followed him up the steps. Porter unlocked the door and went inside. The Grumman had been built to cruise in the high stratosphere, so it was as air-tight as a submarine.
Porter switched on the lights. “Go on in.”
The reporter stepped into the cabin of the ship and looked around. It had been rebuilt, all right; it didn’t look anything like the inside of a normal stratojet.
“Elshawe.”
“Yeah?” The reporter turned to look at Porter, who was standing a little behind him. He didn’t even see the fist that arced upward and smashed into his jaw. All he saw was a blaze of light, followed by darkness.
The next thing he knew, something was stinging in his nostrils. He jerked his head aside, coughing. The smell came again. Ammonia.
“Wake up, Elshawe,” Porter was saying. “Have another whiff of these smelling salts and you’ll feel better.”
Elshawe opened his eyes and looked at the bigger man. “I’m awake. Take that stuff away. What’s the idea of slugging me?”
“I was afraid you might not come willingly,” Porter said apologetically. “I needed a witness, and I figured you’d do better than anyone else.”
Elshawe tried to move and found that he was tied to the seat and strapped in with a safety belt. “What’s this for?” he asked angrily. His jaw still hurt.
“I’ll take that stuff off in a few minutes. I know I can trust you, but I want you to remember that I’m the only one who can pilot this ship. If you try anything funny, neither one of us will get back alive. I’ll let you go as soon as we get up to three hundred miles.”
Elshawe stared at him. “Where are we?”
“Heading out toward mid-Pacific. I headed south, to Mexico, first. We’re over open water now, headed toward Baja California, so I put on the autopilot. As soon as we get out over the ocean, we can really make time. You can watch the sun come up in the west.”
“And then?” Elshawe felt dazed.
“And then we head straight up. For empty space.”
Elshawe closed his eyes again. He didn’t even want to think about it.
“…As you no doubt heard,” Terrence Elshawe dictated into the phone, “Malcom Porter made good his threat to take a spaceship of his own devising to the Moon. Ham radios all over North America picked up his speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil, like the ones used on space stations. Paragraph.
“He announced that the trip was made with the co-operation of the United States Space Force, and that it represented a major breakthrough in the conquest of space. He—”
“Just a sec,” Winstein’s voice broke in. “Is that the truth? Was he really working with the Space Force?”
“Hell, no,” said Elshawe. “But they’ll have to claim he was now. Let me go on.”
“Shoot.”
“…He also beamed a message to the men on Moon Base One, telling them that from now on they would be able to commute back and forth from Luna to Earth, just as simply as flying from New York to Detroit. Paragraph.
“What followed was even more astounding. At tremendous acceleration, Malcom Porter and Terrence Elshawe, your reporter, headed for Mars. Inside Porter’s ship, there is no feeling of acceleration except for a steady, one-gee pull which makes the passenger feel as though he is on an ordinary airplane, even though the spaceship may be accelerating at more than a hundred gravities. Paragraph.
“Porter’s ship circled Mars, taking photographs of the Red Planet—the first close-ups of Mars to be seen by the human race. Then, at the same tremendous rate of speed, Porter’s ship returned to Earth. The entire trip took less than thirty-six hours. According to Porter, improved ships should be able to cut that time down considerably. Paragraph.”
“Have you got those pics?” Winstein cut in.
“Sure. Porter gave me an exclusive in return for socking me. It was worth it. Remember back in the Twenties, when the newspapermen talked about a scoop? Well, we’ve got the biggest scoop of the century.”
“Maybe,” said Winstein. “The Government hasn’t made any announcement yet. Where’s Porter?”
“Under arrest, where’d you think? After announcing that he would land on his New Mexico ranch, he did just that. As soon as he stepped out, a couple of dozen Government agents grabbed him. Violation of parole—he left the state without notifying his parole officer. But they couldn’t touch me, and they knew it.
“Here’s another bit of news for your personal information. A bomb went off inside the ship after it landed and blew the drive to smithereens. The only information is inside Porter’s head. He’s got the Government where the short hair grows.”
“Looks like it. See here, Terry; you get all the information you can and be back here by Saturday. You’re going to go on the Weekend Report.”
“Me? I’m no actor. Let Maxon handle it.”
“No. This is hot. You’re an eye-witness. Maxon will interview you. Understand?”
“O.K.; you’re the boss, Ole. Anything else?”
“Not right now, but if anything more comes up, call in.”
“Right. ’Bye.” He hung up and leaned back in his chair, cocking his feet up on the desk. It was Malcom Porter’s desk and Malcom Porter’s chair. He was sitting in the Big Man’s office, just as though he owned it. His jaw still hurt a little, but he loved every ache of it. It was hard to remember that he had ever been angry with Porter.
Just before they had landed, Porter had said: “They’ll arrest me, of course. I knew that when I left. But I think I can get out of it. There will be various kinds of Government agents all over the place, but they won’t find anything. I’ve burned all my notebooks.
“I’ll instruct my attorney that you’re to have free run of the place so that you can call in your story.”
The phone rang. Elshawe grabbed up the receiver and said: “Malcom Porter’s residence.” He wished that they had visiphones out in the country; he missed seeing the face of the person he was talking to.
“Let me talk to Mr. Terrence Elshawe, please,” said the voice at the other end. “This is Detective Lieutenant Martin of the Los Angeles Police Department.”
“This is me, Marty.”
“Good! Boy, have I had trouble getting to you! I had to make it an official call before the phone company would put the call through. How does it feel to be notorious?”
“Great. What’s new?”
“I got the dope on that Skinner fellow. I suppose you still want it? Or has success gone to your head?”
Elshawe had almost forgotten about Skinner. “Shoot,” he said.
The police officer rattled off Samuel Skinner’s vital statistics—age, sex, date and place of birth, and so on. Then: “He lived in New York until 1977. Taught science for fifteen years at a prep school there. He—”
“Wait a second,” Elshawe interrupted. “When was he born? Repeat that.”
“March fourth, nineteen-thirty.”
“Fifty-three,” Elshawe said, musingly. “Older than he looks. O.K.; go on.”
“He retired in ’77 and came to L.A. to live. He—”
“Retired at the age of forty-seven?” Elshawe asked incredulously.
“That’s right. Not on a teacher’s pension, though. H
e’s got some kind of annuity from a New York life insurance company. Pays pretty good, too. He gets a check for two thousand dollars on the third of every month. I checked with his bank on that. Nice, huh?”
“Very nice. Go on.”
“He lives comfortably. No police record. Quiet type. One servant, a Chinese, lives with him. Sort of combination of valet and secretary.
“As far as we can tell, he has made four trips in the past three years. One in June of ’79, one in June of ’80, one in June of ’81, and this year he made the fourth one. In ’79, he went to Silver City, New Mexico. In ’80 and ’81, he went to Hawaii. This year, he went to Silver City again. Mean anything to you?”
“Not yet,” Elshawe said. “Are you paying for this call, or is the City of Los Angeles footing the bill?”
“Neither. You are.”
“Then shut up and let me think for a minute.” After less than a minute, he said: “Martin, I want some more data on that guy. I’m willing to pay for it. Should I hire a private detective?”
“That’s up to you. I can’t take any money for it, naturally—but I’m willing to nose around a little more for you if I can. On the other hand, I can’t put full time in on it. There’s a reliable detective agency here in L.A.— Drake’s the guy’s name. Want me to get in touch with him?”
“I’d appreciate it. Don’t tell him who wants the information or that it has any connection with Porter. Get—”
“Hold it, Terry…just a second. You know that if I uncover any indication of a crime, all bets are off. The information goes to my superiors, not to you.”
“I know. But I don’t think there’s any crime involved. You work it from your end and send me the bills. O.K.?”
“Fair enough. What more do you want?”
Elshawe told him.
When the phone call had been completed, Elshawe sat back and made clouds of pipe smoke, which he stared at contemplatively. Then he made two calls to New York—one to his boss and another to a private detective agency he knew he could trust.
The Randall Garrett Megapack Page 44
