“Could be, Walt. Maybe I’m a worrywart.”
“You’re not used to working with his kind.”
“I quote: ‘Requiring a high-voltage source of considerable current capacity, I hit upon the scheme of making a super-high-capacity condenser and discharging it through my no-arc alloy. To do this it was necessary that I invent a dielectric material of K equals thirteen times ten to the sixth. Unquote.”
“Wes is a pure scientist,” Walt reminded him. “If he were investigating the electrical properties of zinc, and required a solar power magnitude to complete his investigation, he’d invent it and then include it as an incidental to the investigation on zinc. He’s never really understood our recent divergence in purpose over the power tube. That we should make it soak up power from Sol was purely incidental, and useful only as a lever or means to make Terran Electric give us our way. He’d have forgotten it, I’ll bet, since it was not the ultimate goal of the investigation.”
“He knows his stuff, though.”
“Granted. Wes is brilliant. He is a physicist, though, and neither engineer nor inventor. I doubt that he is really interested in the physical aspects of anything that is not directly concerned with his eating and sleeping.”
“What are we going to do about him?”
“Absolutely nothing. You aren’t like him—”
“I hope not!”
“And conversely, why should we try to make him like you?”
“That I’m against,” chimed in a new voice. Arden Channing took each man by the arm and looked up on either side of her, into one face and then the other. “No matter how, why, when, who, or what, one like him is all that the Solar System can stand.”
“Walt and I are pretty much alike.”
“Uh-huh. You are. That’s as it should be. You balance one another nicely. You couldn’t use another like you. You’re speaking of Wes Farrell?”
“Right.”
“Leave him alone,” Arden said sagely. “He’s good as he is. To make him similar to you would be to spoil a good man. He’d then be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. He doesn’t think as you do, but instead proceeds in a straight line from remote possibility to foregone conclusion. Anything that gets needed en route is used, or gadgeteered, and forgotten. That’s where you come in, fellows. Inspect his byproducts. They may be darned useful.”
“O.K. Anybody care for a drink?”
“Yep. All of us,” said Arden.
“Don, how did you rate such a good-looking wife?”
“I hired her,” grinned Channing. “She used to make all of my stenographic mistakes, remember?”
“And gave up numerous small errors for one large one? Uh-huh, I recall. Some luck.”
“It was my charm.”
“Baloney. Arden, tell the truth. Didn’t he threaten you with something terrible if you didn’t marry him?”
“You tell him,” Channing smiled. “I’ve got work to do.”
-
Channing left the establishment known as Joe’s advertised as the “Best Bar in Twenty-Seven Million Miles, Minimum,” and made his way to his office, slowly. He didn’t reach it. Not right away. He was intercepted by Chuck Thomas, who invited him to view a small experiment. Channing smiled and said that he’d prefer to see an experiment of any kind to going to his office, and followed Chuck.
“You recall the gadget we used in order to get perfect tuning with the alloy-selectivity transmitter?”
“You mean that variable-alloy disk all bottled up and rotated with a selsyn?” Don asked, wondering what came next. “Naturally I remember it. Why?”
“Well, we’ve found that certain submicroscopic effects occur with inert objects. What I mean is this: given a chunk of cold steel of goodly mass and tune your alloy disk to pure steel, and you can get a few micro-microamperes output if the tube is pointed at the object.”
“Sounds interesting. How much amplification do you need to get this reading and how do you make it tick?”
“We run the amplifier up to the limit and then sweep the tube across the object sought, and the output meter leaps skyward by just enough to make us certain of our results. Watch!”
Chuck set the tube in operation and checked it briefly. Then he took Don’s hand and put it on the handle that swung the tube on its gimbals. “Sort of paint the wall with it,” he said. “You’ll see the deflection as you pass the slab of tool steel that’s standing there.”
Channing did, and watched the minute flicker of the ultra-sensitive meter. “Wonderful,” he grinned, as the door opened and Walt Franks entered.
“Hi, Don. Is it true that you bombarded her with flowers?”
“Nope. She’s just building up some other woman’s chances. Have you seen this effect?”
“Yeah. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I like about this place,” said Chuck with a huge smile. “That’s approximately seven micro-microamperes output after amplification on the order of two hundred million times. We’re either working on something so small we can’t see it, or something so big we can’t count it. It’s either fifteen decimal places to the left or to the right. Every night when I go home I say a little prayer. I say: ‘Dear God, please let me find something today that is based upon unity, or at least no more than two decimal places,’ but it is no good. If He hears me at all He’s too busy to bother with things that the human race classifies as ‘One.”
“How do you classify resistance, current, and voltage?” asked Channing, manipulating the tube on its gimbals and watching the effect.
“One million volts across ten megohms equals one hundred thousand microamperes. That’s according to Ohm’s Law.”
“He’s got the zero madness, too,” Walt chuckled. “It obtains from thinking in astronomical distances, with interplanetary coverages in watts, and celestial input, and stuff like that. Don, this thing may be handy some day. I’d like to develop it.”
“I suggest that a couple of stages of tube amplification might help. Amplify it before transduction into electronic propagation.”
“We can get four or five stages of sub-electronic amplification, I think. It’ll take some working.”
“O.K., Chuck. Cook ahead. We do not know whither we are heading, but it looks damned interesting.”
“Yeah,” added Walt, “it’s a damn rare scientific fact that can’t be used for something, somewhere. Well, Don, now what?”
“I guess we now progress to the office and run through a few reams of paper work. Then we may relax.”
“O.K. Sounds good to me. Let’s go.”
-
Hellion Murdoch pointed to the luminous speck in the celestial globe. His finger stabbed at the market button, and a series of faint concentric spheres marked the distance from the center of the globe to the object, which he read and mentioned: “Twelve thousand miles.”
“Asteroid?” asked Kingman.
“What else?” asked Murdoch. “We’re lying next to the Asteroid Belt.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Burn it,” said Murdoch.
His fingers danced upon the keyboard, and high above him, in the dome of the Black Widow, a power-intake tube swiveled and pointed at Sol. Coupled to the output of the power-intake tube, a power-output tube turned to point at the asteroid. And Murdoch’s poised finger came down on the last switch, closing the final circuit.
Meters leaped up across their scales as the intangible beam of solar energy came silently in and went as silently out. It passed across the intervening miles with the velocity of light, squared, and hit the asteroid. A second later the asteroid glowed and melted under the terrific bombardment of solar energy directed in a tight beam.
“It’s O.K.,” said Hellion. “But have the gang build us three larger tubes to be mounted turretwise. Then we can cope with society.”
“What do you hope to gain by that? Surely piracy and grand larceny are not profitable in the light of what we have and know.”
“I intend to institute a ‘reign of terror.’ “
“You mean to go through with your plan?”
“I am a man of my word. I shall levy a tax against any and every ship leaving any spaceport. We shall demand one dollar solarian for every gross ton that lifts from any planet and reaches the planetary limit.”
“How do you establish that limit?” asked Kingman interestedly.
“Ironically, we’ll use the Channing Layer,” said Murdoch with dark humor. “Since the Channing Layer describes the boundary below which our solar beam will not work. Our reign of terror will be identified with Channing because of that; it will take some of the praise out of people’s minds when they think of Channing and Venus Equilateral.”
“That’s pretty deep psychology,” said Kingman.
“You should recognize it.” Murdoch smiled. “That’s the kind of stuff you legal lights pull. Mention the accused in the same sentence with one of the honored people; mention the defendant in the same breath with one of the hated people—it’s the same stunt. Build them up or tear them down by reference.”
“You’re pretty shrewd.”
“I am,” agreed Murdoch placidly.
“Mind telling me how you found yourself in the fix you’re in?”
“Not at all. I’ve been interested for years in neurosurgery. My researches passed beyond the realm of rabbits and monkeys, and I found it necessary to investigate the more delicate, more organized, the higher-strung. That means human beings—though some of them are less sensitive than a rabbit and less delicate than a monkey.” Murdoch’s eyes took on a cynical expression at this. Then it passed, and he continued: “I became famous, as you know. Or do you?”
Kingman shook his head.
“I suppose not. I became famous in my own circle. Lesser neurosurgeons sent their complex cases to me; unless you were complex, you would never hear of Allison Murdoch. Well, anyway, some of them offered exciting opportunities. I—frankly—experimented. Some of them died. It was quite a bit of cut-and-try because not too much has been written on the finer points of the nervous system. But there were too few people who were complex enough to require my services, and I turned to clinical work and experimented freely.”
“And there you made your mistake?”
“Do you know how?”
“No. I imagine that with many patients you exceeded your rights once too often.”
“Wrong. It’s a funny factor in human relationship. Something that makes no sense. When people were paying me three thousand dollars an hour for operations, I could experiment without fear. Some died, some regained their health under my ministrations. But when I experimented on charity patients, I could not experiment because of the ‘protection’ given the poor. The masses were not to be guinea pigs. Ha!” laughed Murdoch. “Only the rich are permitted to be subjects of an experiment. Touch not the poor, who offer nothing. Experiment upon those of intellect, wealth, fame, or anything that sets them above the mob. Yes, even genius came under my knife. But I couldn’t give a poor man a fifty-fifty chance at his life, when the chances of his life were less than one in ten. From a brilliant man, operating under fifty-fifty chances for life, I became an inhuman monster that cut without fear. I was imprisoned, and later escaped with some friends.”
“And that’s when you stole the Hippocrates and decided that the Solar System should pay you revenge money?”
“I would have done better if I’d not made that one mistake. I forgot that in the years of imprisonment I fell behind in scientific knowledge. I know now that no one can establish anything at all without technical minds behind him.”
Kingman’s lips curled. “I wouldn’t agree to that.”
“You should. Your last defeat at the hands of the technicians you scorn should have taught you a lesson. If you had been sharp, you would have outguessed them; out-engineered them. They, Kingman, were not afraid to rip into their detector to see what made it tick.”
“But I had only the one—”
“They know one simple thing about the universe. That rule is that if anything works once, it may be made to work again.” He held up his hand as Kingman started to speak. “You’ll bring all sorts of cases to hand and try to disprove me. You can’t. Oh, you couldn’t cause a quick return of the diplodocus, or re-enact the founding of the solar government, or even re-burn a ton of coal. But there is other carbon, there will be other governmental introductions and reforms, and there may be some day the rebirth of the dinosaur—on some planet there may be carboniferous ages now. Any phenomena that are true phenomena—and your detector was definite, not a misinterpretation of effect—can be repeated. But, Kingman, we’ll not be out-engineered again.”
“That I do believe.”
“And so we will have our revenge on Venus Equilateral and upon the System itself.”
“We’re heading home now?”
“Right. We want this ship fitted with the triple turret I mentioned before. Also I want the interconnecting links between the solar intake and the power projectors beefed up. When you’re passing several hundred megawatts through any system, losses of the nature of .000,000,1 % cause heating to a dangerous degree. We’ve got to cut the PR losses. I gave orders that the turret be started, by the way. It’ll be almost ready when we return.”
“You gave orders?” said Kingman.
“Oh, yes,” said Hellion Murdoch with a laugh. “Remember our last bout with the stock market? I seem to have accumulated about forty-seven percent. That’s sufficient to give me control of our company.”
“But—but—” Kingman spluttered. “That took money—”
“I still have enough left,” said Murdoch quietly. “After all, I spent years in the Melanortis Country of Venus. I was working on the Hippocrates when I wasn’t doing a bit of mining. There’s a large vein of platiniridium there. You may answer the rest.”
“I still do not get this piracy.”
Murdoch’s eyes blazed.
“That’s my interest. That’s my revenge! I intend to ruin Don Channing and Venus Equilateral. With the super-turret they‘ll never be able to catch us, and we’ll run the entire System.”
Kingman considered. As a lawyer, he was finished. His last try at the ruination of the Venus Equilateral crowd by means of pirating the interplanetary communications beam was strictly a violation of the Communications Code. The latter absolutely prevented any man or group of men from diverting communications not intended for them and using these communications for their own purpose. His defense that Venus Equilateral had also broken the law went unheard. It was pointed out to him that Venus Equilateral tapped his own line, and the tapping of an illegal line was the act of a communications agent in the interest of the government. He was no longer a lawyer, and, in fact, he had escaped a long jail term by sheer bribery.
He was barred from legal practice, and he was barred from any business transactions. The stock market could be manipulated, but only through a blind—which was neither profitable nor safe.
His holdings in Terran Electric were all that stood between him and rum. He was no better off than Murdoch, save that he was not wanted.
But—
“I’m going to remain on Terra and run Terran Electric like a model company,” he said. “That’ll be our base.”
“Right. Except for a bit of research along specified lines, you‘ll do nothing. Your job will be to act apologetic for your misdeeds. You will grovel on the floor before any authority, and beseech the legal profession to accept you once more. I will need your help, there. You are to establish yourself in the good graces of the Interplanetary Patent Office, and report to me any applications that may be of interest. The research that Terran Electric will conduct will be along innocuous lines. The real research will be in a secret laboratory. The one in the Melanortis Country. Selected men will work there, and the Terran Electric fleet of cargo carriers will carry the material needed. My main failure was not to have provided a means of knowing what the worlds were doing. I�
�ll have that now, and I shall not be defeated again.”
“We’ll say that one together!” said Kingman.
He flipped open a large book and set the autopilot from a set of figures. The Black Widow turned gently and started to run for Terra at two G.
-
Walt Franks frowned at the memorandum in his hand.
“Look, Don, are we ever going to get to work on that deal with Keg Johnson?”
“Uh-huh,” Don answered, without looking up.
“He’s serious. Transplant is getting the edge, and he doesn’t like it.”
“Frankly, I don’t like dabbling in stuff like that either. But Keg’s an old friend, and I suppose that’s how a guy gets all glommed up on projects, big business deals, and so forth. We’ll be going in directly. Why the rush?”
“A bit of personal business on Mars which can best be done at the same time, thus saving an additional trip.”
“O.K.,” said Don idly. “Might as well get it over with. Date with Christine Baler?”
“Sure,” grinned Franks.
Actually, it was less than an hour before the Relay Girl went out of the south end landing stage, turned, and headed for Mars. Packing, to the Channings, was a matter of persuading Arden not to take everything but the drapes in the apartment along with her, while for Walt Franks it was a matter of grabbing a trunkful of instruments and spare parts. Space travel is a matter of waiting for days in the confines of a small bubble of steel. Just waiting. For the scenery is unchanging all the way from Sol to Pluto—and is the same scenery that can be seen from the viewports of Venus Equilateral. Walt enjoyed his waiting time by tinkering; having nothing to do would have bored him, and so he took with him enough to keep him busy during the trip.
At two Terran gravities, the velocity of the Relay Girl built up bit by bit and mile by mile, until they were going just shy of one thousand miles per second. This occurred an hour before turnover, which would take place at the twenty-third hour of flight.
Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC Page 29
