The Randall Garrett Omnibus

by Randall Garrett

  "Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.

  "I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."

  "Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.

  "None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind, as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.

  There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.

  "Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."

  Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to test Dr. Nordred's theories.

  MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.

  So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets, Griffin was ready for the words that came next.

  "Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and get it for me, Bill?"

  Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual instructions:

  "Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this stage of the game."

  "Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.

  MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.

  * * *

  David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.

  Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath—really marvelous."

  "I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.

  "I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And then, when the Monster blew—" He stopped and shook his head slowly. "I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of tampering with the equipment I saw."

  "What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.

  MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."

  "Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."

  As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr. Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was there any thought of guilt—at least, as far as sabotage was concerned.

  MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own problem.

  One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not even in the mind of Konrad Bern.

  Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.

  Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile world.

  And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over whatever psionic powers he may have had.

  Unless—

  Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.

  MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over the past years would have to be junked in toto.

  Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches are built, something was trying to form.

  MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might interrupt the formation.

  * * *

  He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were sitting.

  MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."

  "Sure."

  "Go ahead."

  "Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.

  "Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout since you came."

  "Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby smile.

  "Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."

  For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more persistent.

  As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering. Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."

  "It figures," said MacHeath.

  Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.

  "Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."

  "Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."

  Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"

  "Just
had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."

  "Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.

  "Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath. "That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was eating his guts out."

  "Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he can't take that right now."

  Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"

  "He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.

  "We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a Pauli or a Fermi, but he—"

  MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.

  "My God," he said softly, "that's it."

  His hunch had hatched.

  After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there, wait; I have a little prying to do."

  "Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.

  David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned, Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but, unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.

  If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were "opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.

  "You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as MacHeath came through the door.

  "Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."

  "What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.

  "Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."

  "It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around this place stirs up every nerve in him."

  "What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.

  "A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But, first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that far."

  "I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning. He was so happy to see a fellow human being—according to his definition of human being—that he was as easy to read as if you were doing the reading."

  MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to go."

  "What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.

  "Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster went. See the pattern?"

  The other men nodded.

  "You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"

  "Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.

  * * *

  Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who could.

  It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto. A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position. Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through a psychokinetic's mind—the combinations of avid desire and the utter loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift and move the object.

  And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.

  Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be careful you don't overdo it."

  Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"

  The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David MacHeath?"

  "Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his identification.

  "We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the area. He can't get past the gate."

  MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad Bern.

  "There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."

  "What?"

  "Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to the FBI agent as they went.

  "The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building. If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."

  "Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.

  "No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."

  "Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"

  "Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or in the target room.

  MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone down the stairway, but he didn't know why.

  "He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against the doors, and he won't be able to open them."

  Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.

  "Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act in plenty of time.

  * * *

  The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he started down the blacknes
s of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him, in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.

  Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing, since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the advantage of knowing where his opponent was.

  Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit, since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder, drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the fleeing spy.

  A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't possibly get the door open.

  MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen. But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he strained to keep his breath silent.

  He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a hard rabbit punch.

  Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.

  Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow someone to enter the air lock.

  It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and Dr. Kent were with him.