The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Hell, I should think so,” grinned Clifton.

  Anheier went on: “Now they recruit whatever they can, and get technical people whenever possible. This is because your typical state secret nowadays is not a map or code or military agreement but an industrial process.

  “The Manhatten District under General Groves and the British wartime atomic establishment were veritable sieves. The Russians learned free of charge that calutron separation of U-235 from U-238 was impractical and had to be abandoned. They learned, apparently, that gaseous diffusion is the way to get the fissionable isotope. They learned that implosion with shaped charges is a practical way to assemble a critical mass of fissionable material. They were saved millions of dead-ended man-hours by this information.

  “Security’s taken a nice little upswing since then, but we still have secrets and there are still spies, even though the penalty is death. Some do it for money, some are fanatics—some, I suppose, just don’t realize the seriousness of it. Here are your depositions, gentlemen.”

  They read them and signed them.

  Anheier shook their hands and said: “I want to thank you both for doing your patriotic duty as you saw it. I assure you that your information will be carefully studied and appropriate action will be taken. If you learn of anything else affecting national security in the atomic area in your opinion, I hope you won’t hesitate to let us know about it.” Clearly it was a speech he had made hundreds of times—or thousands. The brush-off.

  “Mr. Anheier,” Novak said, “what if we take this to the F.B.I.? They might regard it more seriously than you seem to.”

  The big, calm man put his palms out protestingly. “Please, Dr. Novak,” he said. “I assure you that your information will be thoroughly processed. As to the F.B.I., you’re perfectly free to go to them if you wish, but it would be wasted motion. Cases in the atomic area that come to the F.B.I. are automatically bucked to us—a basic policy decision, and a wise one in my opinion. Technical factors and classified information are so often involved—”

  In the street Novak said disgustedly: “He didn’t ask us any questions. He didn’t ask us whether we were going to quit or not.”

  “Well—are we?”

  “I guess I am—I don’t know, Cliff. Maybe I’m wrong about the whole business. Maybe I’m as crazy as Anheier thinks I am.”

  “Let’s go to my place,” Clifton said. “We oughtta go to the A.S.F.S.F. membership meeting tonight after we eat.”

  “Cripes, I’m supposed to make a speech!”

  “Just tell ’em hello.”

  They got into Clifton’s car, the long, tall, 1930 Rolls with the lovingly maintained power plant, and roared through Los Angeles. Clifton drove like a maniac, glaring down from his height on underslung late models below and passing them with muttered fusillades of curses. “Me, I like a car with character,” he growled, barreling the Rolls around a ’56 Buick.

  His home was in a pretty, wooded canyon dotted with houses. Gravel flew as he spun into the driveway.

  “Come and meet Lilly,” he said.

  Outside, the Clifton house was an ordinary five-room bungalow. Inside it was the dope-dream of a hobbyist run amuck. Like geologic strata, tools and supplies overlaid the furniture. Novak recognized plasticene, clay, glazes, modeling tools and hooks, easels, sketch boxes, cameras, projectors, enlargers, gold-leaf burnishers, leather tools, jeweller’s tools and the gear of carpenters, machinists, plumbers, electricians and radio hams. Lilly was placidly reading an astrology magazine in the middle of the debris. She was about thirty-five: a plump, grey-eyed blonde in halter and shorts. The sight of her seemed to pick Clifton up like a shot of brandy.

  “Mama!” he yelled, kissing her loudly. “I’m sick of you. I brought you this here young man to run away with. Kindly leave without making no unnecessary disturbance. His name is Mike.”

  “Hallo,” she said calmly. “Don’t pay him no attention; he alvays yokes. Excuse how I talk; I am a Danish. How many letters you got in your full complete name?”

  “Uh—twelve.”

  “Good,” she dimpled. “I am twelve also. We will be friends, it means.”

  “I’m very glad,” Novak said faintly.

  “Mike, you’ve been factored?”

  “I don’t think I understand—”

  “It’s biomat’ematics. You know? You go to a biomat’ematicist and he finds the mat’ematical for-moola of you subconscious and he factors out the traumas. It’s va-a-ary simple.” Her face fell a little. “Only I got a Danish-speaking subconscious of course, so vit’ me it goes a liddle slow. Funny”—she shook her head—“same t’ing happened to me years ago vit’ di’netics. Cliff, you gonna give Mike a drink or is he like the other young feller you had here last month? Feller that broke the big mirror and you nineteen-inch cat’ode-ray tube and my Svedish pitcher—”

  “How the hell was I supposed to know?” he roared. In an aside: “That was Friml, Mike. He got pretty bad.”

  “Friml?” asked Novak incredulously. “The ice-water kid?”

  “He should go to a biomat’ematicist,” sighed Lilly. “If ever a boy needed factoring, it’s him. Make me only a liddle one please; I don’t eat yet today.”

  She had a little Martini and Clifton and Novak had big ones.

  “We all go to the meeting tonight I guess? First I want biftek aux pommes de terre someplace.”

  “What the hell, Mama!” Clifton objected. “This time yesterday you was a vegetarian for life.”

  “I change my mind,” she said. “Go get shaved up and dress you’self and we go someplace for biftek.”

  When Clifton appeared—shaved, dressed, and subdued—Lilly was still in the bedroom, putting on finishing touches. The two men had another martini apiece.

  “What about the contracts?” Novak asked.

  Clifton understood. “If they try to hold us to them we could just lie down on the job and let them pay us. Hate to work it like that, though. It’d be dull.”

  “It’s still the craziest business I ever heard of.”

  Lilly appeared, looking sexy in a black dinner dress with a coronet of blonde hair swept up from her creamy neck. Clifton let out a long, loud wolf-howl and said: “The hell with the beefsteaks and the meeting. Let’s—”

  “Later,” said Lilly firmly.

  As the maroon Rolls thundered down the canyon, Clifton said casually: “I may quit the space hounds, Mama.”

  “So what you gonna do for a yob?”

  “Buy you a red dress and turn mack, I guess. Nah, ya too old and ugly. Maybe I’ll open a radio shop or ship out again for an electrician; I guess I still got my card. I kinda hate to leave my best girl out there in the desert, but the whole thing’s a joke. She’s pretty, but she’ll never amount to a damn.”

  Novak knew why he was lying about the reason. I understand in these cloak-and-dagger things they kill you if you find out too much.

  VI.

  They had dinner at a downtown restaurant and were at the A.S.F.S.F. meeting hall by 8.30. Novak was alarmed when the building turned out to be the Los Angeles Slovak Sokol Hall, rented for the occasion.

  “Foreigners!” he exclaimed. “Does the A.S.F.S.F. go around looking for jams to get into?”

  “Relax, Mike,” Clifton told him. “The Sokol’s strictly American by now. They got a long anti-Communist record.”

  Still, fretted Novak, foreigners—Slavic foreigners. The building was in the same run-down area that housed the Society’s business office. It was liberally hung with American flags and patriotic sentiments. Inconspicuous on the lobby walls were a few photographs of group calisthenics and marchers in Czech national costumes, from decades ago.

  A well-worn placard on an easel said that the A.S.F.S.F. meeting was being held at 8.30 in the main hall, straight ahead and up the stairs.

  About a score of
people in the lobby were having final smokes and talking. Novak could divide them easily into two types: juvenile space hounds and employed hobbyists. The hobbyists were what you’d see at any engineers’ convention: pipe-smokers, smiling men, neat, tanned. The space hounds were any collection of juvenile enthusiasts anywhere—more mature than an equal number of hot-rod addicts, perhaps, but still given to nervous laughter, horse-play, and catchwords.

  Their entrance had been the signal for the younger element to surround Clifton and bombard him with questions.

  “Cliff, how she coming?”

  “Mr. Clifton, need a good carpenter at the field?”

  “How’s the acceleration couch coming, Cliff?”

  “Could we get that boring mill at South Bend?”

  “Shaddap!” said Clifton. “Leave a man breathe, will ya!” They loved him for it. “What’s the movie tonight?”

  “A stinker,” one girl told him. “Pirates of the Void, with Marsha Denny and Lawrence Malone. Strictly for yocks.”

  “They show a space-flight movie,” Clifton explained to Novak. “There ain’t enough business to kill the time and send everybody home in the proper state of exhaustion.” He towed his wife and Novak up the stairs, where a youngster at a card table challenged their membership. They were clamourously identified by a dozen youngsters and went in. The hall seated about four hundred and had a stage with a movie screen and more American flags.

  “Better sit in the back—” began Clifton, and then: “For God’s sake!” It was Anheier, smiling nervously.

  “Hello,” said the Security man. “I thought I’d combine business with pleasure. Marsha Denny’s a great favourite of mine and I understand there’s going to be a preview tonight.”

  “Well, enjoy yourself,” Clifton said coldly. He took Lilly and Novak to the left rear corner of the auditorium and they sat down. He told his wife: “An A.E.C. guy we met. A creep.”

  MacIlheny climbed to the stage and called to stragglers in the back of the hall: “Okay, men. Let’s go.” They found seats.

  Crack went the gavel. “The-meeting-is-called-to-order. The-chair-will-entertain-a-motion-to-adopt-the-standard-agenda-as-laid-down-in-the-organization’s-byelaws.”

  “So move,” said somebody, and there was a ragged chorus of seconds.

  “All-in-favor-signify-by-raising-one-hand-any-opposed? The-motion-seems-to-be-and-is-carried. First-on-the-agenda-is-the-reading-of-previous-meetings-minutes.”

  Somebody stuck his hand up, was recognized, and moved that the minutes be accepted as read. The motion was seconded and carried without excitement. So were motions to accept and adopt reports of the membership, orbit computation, publications, finance, structural problems and control mechanisms committees.

  “Making good time,” Clifton commented.

  Under “good and welfare” a belligerent-looking youngster got recognized and demanded the impeachment of the secretary-treasurer. There was a very mild, mixed demonstration: some applause and some yells of “Sit down!” and “Shuddup!” MacIlheny rapped for order.

  “The motion is in order,” he wearily announced. “Is there a second?” There was—another belligerent kid.

  “In seconding this motion,” he said loudly, “I just want to go over some ground that’s probably familiar to us all. With due respect to the majority’s decision, I still feel that there’s no place for salaried employees in the A.S.F.S.F. But if there has to be a paid secretary-treasurer, I’m damned if I see why an outsider with no special interest in space flight—”

  Friml was on his feet in the front row, clamouring for recognition on a point of personal privilege.

  “Damn it, Friml, I wasn’t insulting you—”

  “That’s for the chair to decide, Mr. Grady! I suggest you pipe down and let him.”

  “Who’re you telling to—”

  MacIlheny hammered for silence. “Chair recognizes Mr. Friml.”

  “I simply want a ruling on the propriety of Mr. Grady’s language. Thank you.”

  “The chair rules that Mr. Grady’s remarks were improper and cautions him to moderate his language.”

  Breathing hard, the youngster tried again. “In seconding this motion to impeach, I want to point out that there are members with much more seniority in the organization than Mr. Friml and with a long-demonstrated record of interest in space flight which he cannot match.”

  MacIlheny called for debate and recognized one of the engineer-types.

  “It should be evident to all of us,” the engineer said soothingly, “that the criterion for the secretary-treasurer’s office ought to be competence. We’re not playing with marbles any more—I’m happy to say. And I for one am very much relieved that we have the services of a man with a B.B.A., an M.B.A., and a C.P.A. after his name.

  “Now, I may have more organizational experience than Mr. Grady, since I’ve been somewhat active in the A.S.M.E. and the aeronautical societies. I name no names—but in one of those groups we were unwise enough to elect a treasurer who, with all the good will in the world, simply didn’t know how to handle the job. We were rooked blind before we knew what hit us, and it took a year to straighten the records out. I don’t want that to happen to the A.S.F.S.F., and I seriously urge that the members here vote against the impeachment. Let’s not monkey with a smooth-running machine. Which is what we’ve got now.”

  There was a lot of applause.

  A thin, dark girl, rather plain, was recognized. Her voice was shrill with neurotic hatred. “I don’t know what’s become of the A.S.F.S.F. In one year I’ve seen a decent, democratic organization turned into a little despotism with half a dozen people—if that!—running the works while the plain members are left in the dark. Who is this Friml? How do we know he’s so good if we don’t know the amount and nature of the contributions he handles? And Mr. August Clifton, whom everybody is so proud of, I happen to know he was fired from Western Aircraft! The fact is, MacIlheny’s got some cash donors in his hip pocket and we’re all afraid to whisper because he might—”

  MacIlheny pounded for silence. “The chair rules Miss Gingrich out of order,” he said. “This is debate on a motion to impeach Mr. Friml and not to reconsider a policy of accepting contributions in confidence, which was approved by the membership as the minutes show. Miss Stuart, you’re recognized.”

  Amy Stuart got up looking grim. “I want to make two statements. First, on a point of personal privilege, that Mr. Clifton was fired from Western because he was too high-spirited to get along in a rather conservative outfit and not for incompetence. More than once I’ve heard my father say that Mr. Clifton was—or almost was—the best man he had working for him.

  “Second, I move to close debate.”

  “Second the motion,” somebody called from the floor.

  Miss Gingrich was on her feet shrilling: “Gag rule! Nobody can open his mouth around here except the Holy Three and their stooges! We were doing all right before MacIlheny—” The rest was lost in shouts of disapproval and the whacking of the gavel. The girl stood silently for a moment and then sat down, trembling.

  “Motion to close debate has been made and seconded. This motion takes precedence and is unamendable. All in favour raise one hand.” A forest of hands went up. “Any opposed?” Maybe twenty. “The motion is carried. We now have before us a motion to impeach Mr. Friml, our secretary-treasurer. All in favour.” The same twenty hands. “Opposed?” The forest of hands rose again, and a few kids cried: “No, no!”

  “The motion is defeated. Unless there are further matters under good and welfare”—he was refusing to let his eye be caught, and half a dozen members were trying to catch it—“we will proceed to the introduction of a new A.S.F.S.F. full-time scientific worker. Dr. Michael Novak comes to us from two years with the United States Atomic Energy Commission. He has been working with high-tensile, refractory ceramic materials—a
vital field in rocketry; I’m sure the application to our work is obvious to all. Dr. Novak.”

  He was on his feet and starting down the aisle to a polite burst of applause. They might be spies or they might not; he might be working for them tomorrow or he might not, but meanwhile there was a certain rigmarole you went through at these things, and he knew it well.

  “Mr. President, members, and guests, thank you.” Now the joke. “My field of work stems from very early times. It was a cave man who founded ceramic engineering when he accidentally let a mud-daubed wicker-basket fall into his campfire and pulled out, after the fire died down, the first earthenware pot. I presume he did not realize that he was also a very important pioneer of space flight.” A satisfactory chuckle.

  Now the erudition. “Basically, my problem is to develop a material which is strong, workable, and heat-resistant. For some years the way to tackle such a job has been to hunt the material among the so-called ‘solid solutions’. An alloy is a familiar example of a solid solution—the kind in which both the solvent and the solute are metals.

  “The substance tungsten carbide is well known to any of you who have machine-shop experience. It is a solid solution with one non-metallic constituent, and its properties have revolutionized industrial production. Dies and tool bits of this fantastically hard stuff have probably increased the productivity of this country by several percent with no other changes being put into effect. Idle time of machine tools has been reduced because tungsten-carbide bits go on, and on, and on without resharpening. Idle time on presses of all sorts has been reduced because tungsten-carbide dies go on, and on, and on without replacement.

  “This is only one example of the way Mother Nature comes up with the answer to your particular problem if you ask her in the right way. She also offers among the solid solutions the chromium and cobalt carbides, which top tungsten carbide for refractory qualities, and the boron carbides with which I intend to work.

  “In the solid solutions there is a situation that rules out dramatic, abrupt crystallizations of one’s problem. An organic chemist trying to synthesize a particular molecule may leap up with a shriek of ‘eureka—I’ve got it!’ And so he may, for an organic molecule either is there or it isn’t: a yes-or-no situation. But in working with solutions rather than compounds, there is continuous variation of solvent to solute. Theoretically, it would take an infinite amount of time to explore the properties of every boron carbide, even if their properties varied simply and continuously with the ratio of constituents alone. But it is more complicated than that.