(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "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 goi
ng 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 blackness 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.

  "You all right?" asked Morgan.

  "I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get plenty of sleep before he wakes up."

  More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.

  Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."

  "Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.

  "Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab. It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous. It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.

  "Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."

  * * * * *

  Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"

  Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We had to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one really believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea that Bern was a saboteur."

  "We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian Taggert.

  "Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this to the President."

  "Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.

  "Something about the number of electrons that--"

  "No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli principle, better known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli Effect is a different thing entirely, a psionic effect.

  "It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.

  "Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it, without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory at the University of Göttingen was the direct result of the Pauli Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped for a short time at the Göttingen railway station."

  The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."

  "Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires always start in his vicinity."

  "But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's always a psychological quirk."

  "Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."

  "How so?"

  "I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about psionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from a different set of precepts. And I didn't even want to think about such an idea!"

  "Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.

  "Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.

  "So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."

  "O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.

  "Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it--your life.

  "Now, what happens if your axioms--not the logic about the axioms, but the axioms themselves--are proven to be wrong?"

  * * * * *

  Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.

  "Oh, sure it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life, his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the drop of a hat. Sure he does."

  "He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per cent of 'em can't and won't and don't. They refuse to look
at anything that suggests changing axioms.

  "Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fit in with the structures based on the old axioms.

  "Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men like Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is their universe!

  "Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to test his theories.

  "But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a new fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist is experiment!"

  Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.

  "Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep those axioms.

  "Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!

  "After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be proved wrong, can it?

  "In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those machines to make them burn out."

  Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"