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

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Intrigued by the apparent mystery he travels to Los Angeles and is appalled to find that the office belongs to an obscure amateur organisation known as the American Society for Space Flight. He meets Mr. Friml, the Secretary, and Mr. MacIlheny the President, who assure him that the Society has a progressive programme of development, plus laboratories and a proving ground and unlimited capital, but refuse to disclose where their funds are obtained. Sceptical but still intrigued, Novak goes with Friml to the Society’s launching ground and is amazed to find a full scale steel mock-up of a space ship standing on the field.

  He is introduced to Clifton the engineer in charge of construction and Friml explains that the one thing lacking is a suitable fuel. He has already been to see Daniel Holland, chief of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, in Washington, but the Government were not interested in producing a fuel for the Society. Their plan, states Friml, is to complete the ship and then the Government would be forced to do something about the propulsion unit before any other World power became too interested in the project.

  Novak accepts the position, is assigned a workshop and laboratory, and commences work on the firing chambers and throat linings for the Prototype, as the rocket had been named. He soon finds out that most of the ‘technicians’ working on the project are part-time enthusiasts, and meets Amelia Stuart, daughter of the chief of Western Aircraft, who, apart from being attractive, also holds numerous scientific degrees.

  Studying the plans for the fuel chambers, Novak gets the idea that the Society is being financed by foreign backers and tells his suspicions to Clifton. The two of them make a report to Anheier of the A.E.C. Security Office in the local Federal Building, who seems to know more about everyone concerned in the space project than could be expected. He infers that they mind their own business.

  Later that same day Clifton is murdered while attending a meeting of the Rocket Society, his assailant escaping during the showing of a science fiction film. Overcome by the shock of his death his wife Lilly is taken to the Beverly Hills home of Amelia Stuart where Novak visits them and informs the two girls that he has accepted the position left vacant by Clifton’s death. While there he meets Wilson Stuart, Amelia’s father, and sharp words are passed between them—Stuart apparently thinking that Novak’s project was typical of cranks.

  Meanwhile, in Washington, Daniel Holland of AEC is apparently being singled out by political opponents for public attack—treason is hinted at.

  Proto nears completion, both Amy and Lilly assisting Novak in his final work. One afternoon, following a series of unsuccessful tests, Novak goes into Town for relaxation and calls up Friml. The two have a few drinks and Novak becomes suspicious of the little Secretary. He feels sure that he knows something about Clifton’s death. He arranges with Lilly to use her feminine wiles upon Friml and leaves him at her home and returns to the field.

  Soon after this, work is completed on Proto and Novak leaves for Los Angeles with the final equations for computing. He is confronted by a changed Friml—pugnacious and bullying.

  XIII.

  “Somebody’s been feeding you raw meat, Friml. And I think I know who.” Friml looked smug for a moment. “EBIC is I.B.M.’s Electronic—Binary—Integrating—Calculator. Get it? It’s the only major electronic calculator available to the private citizen or firm, thanks to I.B.M.’s generosity and sense of public relations.”

  The secretary-treasurer said petulantly: “You might have made your request clear, Novak.”

  “Doctor Novak to you,” said the engineer, suddenly very sick of the new Friml. It was such a stinking, messy thing to run into after such a beautiful spell of research work. “Now just get me lined up for a crack at EBIC. It’s I.B.M., New York. One hundred and thirty-two partial differential equations. Just get it done and stay out of my hair until then.”

  He walked out of the office, boiling, and picked up a pint of bourbon at a drugstore before he went to his hotel. Swear to God, he thought, this deal’s as lousy as A.E.C. and you don’t get a pension either.

  There were several slips in his pigeonhole at the hotel mail desk. They all said to call Miss Wynekoop at such and such a number as soon as he could, please. He had never heard of Miss Wynekoop, and the phone number didn’t ring any bells. He took off his shoes when he got to his room, had a drink of the bourbon, and called the number.

  A woman’s brightly noncommittal voice said: “Hello?”

  “This is Michael Novak, Miss Wynekoop?”

  “Oh, Dr. Novak. I wonder if I might see you this evening about employment?”

  “I’m not hiring.”

  She laughed. “I meant employment for you. I represent a firm which is adding to its technical and executive staff.”

  “I have a job. And a one-year contract with options.”

  “The contract would be our legal department’s worry,” she said cheerfully. “And if you meet our firm’s standards, I think you’d hesitate to turn down our offer. The pay is very, very good.” Then she was crisp and businesslike. “Are you free this evening? I can be at your hotel in fifteen minutes.”

  “All right,” he said. “Why not? I suppose from the way you’re putting all this that you’re not going to tell me the name of your firm?”

  “Well, we do prefer to keep such things quiet,” she apologized. “There’s speculation and wasted time and broken hearts for the people who think they’re going to get it and don’t. I’m sure you understand. I’ll see you very soon, Dr. Novak.” She hung up and he stood for a moment at the phone, undecided. More funny business? Wait and see.

  He put his shoes on again, grunting, and chain-smoked until Miss Wynekoop knocked on his door. She was tall, thirty-ish and engaging in a lantern-jawed way. “Dr. Novak. I could tell you were a scientist. They have a look— It was very good of you to let me see you on a moment’s notice like this. But I hesitated to contact you through the A.S.F.S.F. In a way I suppose we’re trying to steal you from them. Of course our legal people would buy out your contract with them so they’d suffer no financial loss in retraining a man to take your place.”

  “Sit down, please,” he said. “What are these standards your firm wants me to meet?”

  She settled herself comfortably. “Personality, for one thing. Our technical people have looked over your record and decided that you’re the man for the job if you’re available—and if you’ll fit in. Our department head—you’d recognize the name, but of course I can’t tell you yet—our department head would like me to check on some phases of your career. We’re interested, for example, in the events that led up to your separation from A.E.C.”

  “Oh, are you?” he asked grimly. “As far as anybody is concerned, I resigned without notice after a short, hot discussion with Dr. Hurlbut, the director of the Argonne National Lab.”

  She giggled. “I’ll say. You socked him.”

  “Well, what about it? If you people thought that means I’m incurably bad-tempered you wouldn’t be here interviewing me now. You’d be trying the next guy on the list.”

  Miss Wynekoop became serious again. “You’re right. Naturally we don’t want a man who’s going to flying off the handle over a trivial difference of opinion. But we certainly wouldn’t hold it against you if you had actually been pushed to the breaking point by intolerable conditions. It could happen to anybody. If you will, I’d like you to tell me what brought the disagreement about.”

  The thing was sounding more legitimate by the minute—and is there anybody who doesn’t like to tell his grievance? “Fair question, Miss Wynekoop,” he said. “What brought it about was several months of being assigned to a hopelessly wrong job and being stymied every time I tried to get back to my proper work. That’s not just my subjective opinion; it’s not a gripe but a fact. I’m a ceramics engineer. But they put me into nuclear physics theory and wouldn’t let me out. Hurlbut apparently didn’t bother to acquaint himself with the
facts. He insulted me viciously in public. He accused me of logrolling and incompetence. So I let him have it.”

  She nodded. “What are the details?”

  “Details. What details?”

  “Things like, when were you transferred and by whose authority. Your relationship with your superiors generally.”

  “Well, last August, about mid-month, my transfer order came through without warning or explanation. It was signed by the director of the Office of Organization and Personnel—one of the Washington big shots. And don’t ask me about my relationship with him; I didn’t have any. He was too high up. My orders before that had always been cut by my working directors.”

  She looked understanding. “I see. And the working directors: did they ride you? Keep you short of supplies? Stick you on the night-side? That kind of thing?”

  Night-side. He had known reporters, and that was newspaper talk. They said without thinking: day-side, night-side, city-side, sport-side. “Smear us, Novak,” Anheier had grimly said, “and we’ll smear you back.” He tried not to panic. “No,” he said evenly. “There never was anything like that.”

  “What was your relationship with, say, Daniel Holland?”

  Novak didn’t have to fake a bewildered look. “Why, I had nothing at all to do with anybody on his level,” he said slowly. “Maybe there’s been a mistake. Do you have it clear that I was just a Grade 18? I wasn’t in the chain of command. I was just hired help; why should I have anything to do with the general manager?”

  She pressed: “But we understand that your transfer order was put through by the director of the Office of Organization and Personnel on the direct suggestion of Mr. Holland.”

  He shook his head. “Couldn’t be. You’ve been misinformed. Holland wouldn’t have known me from Adam’s off ox.”

  Miss Wynekoop smiled briefly and said: “We were pretty sure of our facts. There’s another matter. Your AEC Personnel Form Medical 11305 was altered by some means or other last September. Were you retested by the psychologists before that happened?”

  “What the deuce is my Personnel Form Medical whatever-it-was?”

  “‘Personality card’ is what they call it unofficially.”

  Oh. Personality cards he knew about; they were an A.E.C. joke. You took a battery of tests during employment processing and a psychologist evaluated the results and filled out the card with attention to such things as “attitudes,” “anxieties,” “responses,” and other items supposed to give your working director an idea of how to handle you. Your personality card went everywhere with you and it was never, never altered. It was a very peculiar question and it was becoming a very peculiar interview. “Yes,” Novak lied. “They ran me through the works again at N.E.P.A. It was some psychologist’s brilliant idea of a controlled experiment.”

  That rocked Miss Wynekoop back on her heels. She smiled with an effort and said, rising: “Thanks very much for your co-operation, Dr. Novak. I’ll call you early next week. Thanks very much.”

  When he saw the elevator door at the end of the corridor close on her, Novak called Information. He asked: “Do you have Directory Service in this city? What I mean is, I have a phone number and I want the name and address of the subscriber.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Information. “Just dial the exchange of the number and then dial 4882.” Same routine as Chicago.

  Directory Service said Miss Wynekoop’s phone was an unlisted number and that was that. He called Miss Wynekoop’s number again and a man with a pleasant voice answered, saying: “Howard here.”

  “Let me talk to the editor, Howard,” Novak said.

  There was a long pause and then: “Who is this, please?”

  Novak hung up. “Editor” had meant something to Howard—or maybe Howard just wasn’t a quick thinker.

  Novak had last seen Anheier, agent in charge for the Los Angeles Regional A.E.C. Security and Intelligence Office, at the inquest on Clifton. Novak had woodenly stood and recited his facts while Anheier’s calm eyes were on him, with their threat of instant and total ruin if he voiced his suspicion that Clifton had been murdered in some shadowy atomic intrigue. The verdict had been suicide…

  The engineer hesitated a long minute and called the Security Office in the Federal Building. “Mr. Anheier, please,” he said. “This is Dr. Michael Novak.”

  A man said: “Mr. Anheier’s gone home, sir. I’ll give you his home phone if it’s important, or take a message.”

  Novak said: “It’s important,” and got Anheier’s home phone number.

  The agent in charge was as placid as ever. “Good to hear from you, Dr. Novak. What can I—”

  Novak cut him off. “Shut up. I just want to tell you something. You were afraid of my ideas getting into the papers. You said you’d smear me if I did anything to publicize them. I want you to know that the newspapers are coming to me.” He proceeded to tell Anheier what had been said, as close to verbatim as he could. At the end of the recital he said: “Any questions?”

  “Can you describe this woman?”

  He did.

  Anheier said: “It sounds like somebody who hit town today. I’m going into the Federal Building office now. Will you come down and look at some pictures? Maybe we can identify this Wynekoop.”

  “Why should I?”

  Anheier said grimly: “I want your co-operation, Dr. Novak. I want to be sure you aren’t leaking your story to the papers and trying to avoid retaliation in kind. The more co-operation we get out of you, the less likely that theory will seem. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Novak hung up the phone and swore. He drank again from the bottle of bourbon and took a taxi to the Federal Building.

  There was a long wait in the dimmed hall for the single after-hours elevator. When its door rolled open on the eighth floor, Novak saw that the Security office glass door was the only one on the floor still lit from inside. Twenty-four hours a day, he had heard, with the teletype net always up.

  He gave his name to the lone teletype operator doubling at night as receptionist.

  “Mr. Anheier’s in his office,” said the operator. “You see it there?”

  Novak went in. The tall, calm man greeted him and handed him a single eight-by-ten glossy print.

  “That’s her,” he said without hesitation. “A reporter?”

  Anheier was rocking gently in his swivel chair. “An ex-reporter,” he said. “She’s Mary Tyrrel. Senator Bob Hoyt’s secretary.”

  Novak blinked uncomprehendingly. “I don’t see what I can do about it,” he said, shrugging, and turned to leave.

  “Novak,” Anheier said. “I can’t let you out of here.”

  There was a gun in his hand, pointed at the engineer.

  “Don’t you know who killed Clifton?” Anheier asked. “I killed Clifton.”

  XIV.

  Night of a bureaucrat.

  The bachelor apartment of Daniel Holland was four rooms in an oldish Washington apartment house. After six years in residence, Holland barely knew his way around it. The place had been restrainedly decorated in Swedish modern by the wife of a friend in the days when he’d had time for friends. There had been no changes in it since. His nightly track led from the front door to the desk, and after some hours from the desk to the dressing closet and then the bed. His track in the morning was from the bed to the bathroom to the dressing closet to the front door.

  Holland was there in his second hour of paper work at the desk when his telephone rang. It meant a wrong number or—trouble. His eyes slid to the packed travelling bag he always kept beside the door; he picked up the phone and gave its number in a monotone.

  “This is Anheier in L.A., chief. Let’s scramble.”

  Holland pushed the scrambler button on the phone’s base and asked: “Do you hear me all right?”

  “I hear you, chief. Are you ready for bad news?”


  The general manager felt a curious relief at the words; the moment had arrived and would soon be past. No more night sweats.… “Let me have it.”

  “Hoyt’s got the personnel angle. Tyrrel’s been grilling Novak. The questions showed that she had just about all of it on ice.”

  “What does Novak know?”

  “Too much. I have him here.” The Security man’s voice became embarrassed. “I have a gun on him, chief. I’ve told him I shot Clifton to let him know I mean business. And we can’t leave him wandering around. Hoyt would latch on to him, give him a sugar-tit, listen to all he knows and then—we’re done.”

  “I don’t doubt your judgment, Anheier,” Holland said heavily. “Put him in storage somewhere. I’ll fly out to the coast. I’ve got to talk to him myself.”

  “You can’t fly, chief. It’d be noticed.”

  “Too much has been noticed. It’s a question of time now. Now we must ram it through and hope we’re not too late. Good-bye.” He hung up before Anheier could protest, and went to get his hat and coat.

  * * * *

  Novak listened to the Los Angeles end of the conversation, watching the gun in Anheier’s big, steady hand. It never wavered.

  The Security man put his odd-looking telephone back into his desk drawer. “Get up,” he said. “You won’t be killed if you don’t make any foolish moves.” He draped a light raincoat over the gun hand. If you looked only casually it would strike you as nothing more than a somewhat odd way to carry a raincoat.