Complete Short Fiction, page 116
He must have slept at that point. Because he woke up at 3:00 a.m., sweating with fear, he was out in the night and clawing open the door of the garage-stable—before realization penetrated that he had had a bad dream.
The engine was still there, the foot-long piece of piping in its force field. In the beam of his flashlight the piping glinted as it turned, shone with a brown glow that was hard to reconcile with the dirty, rusted, extruded metal thing he had ransacked out of his basement.
It struck Pendrake after a moment, and for the first time, that the pipe was turning far more slowly than had the piece of wood, not a quarter so fast, not more than fourteen or fifteen hundred revolutions per minute. The rate of rotation must be governed by the kind of material—based on atomic weight, or density, or something.
Slowly, conscious that he mustn’t be seen abroad at this hour, Pendrake shut the door and returned to the house. He felt no anger at himself, or at the brief frenzy that sent him racing into the night. But the implications were troubling.
It was going to be hard to give the engine up to its rightful owner. Damned hard!
Forty issues of the weekly Crescentville Clarion yielded exactly nothing. Pendrake read the first two news pages of each edition, missing not a single heading. But there was no report of an air crash, no mention of a great new-engine invention.
He went out, finally, into the hot August morning, a haze of exhilaration tingling along his nerves. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be; and yet—
If this kept on the engine was his.
The bank manager said: “A mortgage on the cottage. It isn’t necessary. You have a large account here.”
“Eh?” Pendrake said.
It was the expression on the man’s smooth-jowled face, the faint, secret, smile that warned him. The manager, whose name Pendrake remembered as Roderick Clay, said easily:
“As you know, when you went to China with the Army Air Force, you signed all your possessions over to your wife, with the exception of the cottage where you now live; and that, as I understand it. was omitted accidentally.” Pendrake nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He knew now what was coming; and the manager’s words only verified his realization. The manager said:
“At the end of the war, a few months after you and your wife separated, she secretly reassigned to you the entire property, including bonds, shares, cash, real estate, as well as the Pendrake estate, with the stipulation that you not be advised of the transfer until you actually inquired, or in some other fashion indicated your need for money.
She further stipulated that, in the interim, she be given a minimum living allowance with which to provide for the maintenance of herself and the Pendrake home.
“I may say”—the man was bland, smug, satisfied with the way he had carried off an interview that he must have planned in his idle moments with anticipatory thrills—“your affairs have prospered with those of the nation. Stocks, bonds and cash on hand total about two hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars. Would you like me to have one of the clerks draw up a check for your signature? How much?”
It was hotter outside. Pendrake walked back to the cottage, thinking: He should have known Eleanor would pull something like that. These passionate, introvert women—Sitting there that day he had called, cold, remote, unable to break out of her shell of reserve—sitting there knowing she had placed herself financially at his mercy.
He’d have to think out the implications, plan his approach, his exact words, actions—meanwhile there was the engine.
It was still there. He glanced cursorily in at it, then padlocked the door again. On the way to the kitchen entrance he patted Dandy, who was staked out on the back lawn.
Inside, he searched for, and found, the name of a Washington patent firm. He’d gone to China with the son of a member. Awkwardly, he wrote his letter. On his way to the post office to mail it, he stopped off at the only machine shop in town and ordered a wheellike gripping device, a sort of clutch, the wheel part of which would whirl with anything it grasped.
The answer to his letter arrived two days later, before the “clutch” was completed. The letter said:
DEAR MR. PENDRAKE: As per your request, we placed the available members of our Research Department on your problem. All patent office records of engine inventions during the past three years were examined. In addition, I had a personal conversation with the director in charge of that particular department of the patent office. Accordingly, I am in a position to state positively that no radical engine inventions have been patented in any field since the war.
For your perusal, we are inclosing herewith copies of ninety-seven recent engine patents, as selected by our staff from thousands.
Our bill is being sent to you by separate mail. Thank you for your advance check for two hundred dollars.
Sincerely yours,
N.V. Hoskins.
P.S.: I thought you were dead. I’ll swear I saw your name in a casualty list after I was rescued, and I’ve been mourning you for three years. I’ll write you a longer letter in a week or so. I’m holding up the patent world right now, not physically—only the great Jim Pendrake could do a stunt like that. However, I’m playing the role of mental Atlas, and I sure got a lot of dirty looks rushing your stuff through. Which explains the big bill. ’By for now. Ned.
Pendrake was conscious of a choking sensation as he read and reread the note. To think how he’d cut himself off from his friends, all those grand fellows—
The phrase “—the great Jim Pendrake” made him glance involuntarily at the empty right sleeve of his sweater.
He smiled grimly; and several minutes passed before he remembered the engine. He thought then: “I’ll order an automobile chassis and an engineless plane, and a bar made of many metals—have to make some tests first, of course, and—”
He stopped, his eyes widening with the possibilities. Life was sure opening up. The only thing was—
It was strangely hard to realize that the engine still had no owner but himself.
“What’s that?” said a young man’s voice behind Pendrake.
It was growing quite dark; and the truck he had hired seemed almost formless in the gathering night. Beside Pendrake the machine shop loomed, a gloomy, unpainted structure. The lights inside the building glimmered faintly through greasy windows.
The machine-shop employees, who had loaded the gripper on the truck for him, were gone through a door, their raucous good nights still ringing in his ears.
Pend rake was alone with his questioner.
With a deliberate yet swift movement he pulled a tarpaulin over the gripper—and turned to stare at the man who had addressed him.
The fellow stood in the shadows, a tall, powerful-looking young man. The light from the nearest street lamp, glinted on high, curving cheekbones, but it was hard to make out the exact contours of the face.
It was the utter lack of casualness in the man that sent a chill through Pendrake. Here was no idler’s curiosity, but an earnestness, a determination that was startling.
With an effort, Pendrake caught himself. “What’s it to you?” he said curtly.
He climbed into the cab: the engine purred. Awkwardly, Pendrake manipulated the right-hand gear shift and rolled off.
He could see the man in his rearview mirror, still standing there in the shadows of the machine shop, a tall, strong figure. The fellow started to walk slowly in the same direction that Pendrake was driving. The next second Pendrake whipped the truck around a comer and headed down a side street.
Roundabout, he thought, take a roundabout course to his cottage, then swiftly return the truck to the man from whom he’d rented it, and then—
Something damp trickled down his cheek. He let go the steering wheel and felt his face. It was covered with sweat.
He sat very still; then: “Am I crazy?” he thought. “It’s impossible that someone can be secretly searching for the engine.”
His jumpy nerves slowly quietened. What was finally convincing was the coincidence of such a searcher standing near a machine shop of a small town at the very instant that Jim Pendrake was there. It was like an old melodrama where the villains were dogging the unsuspecting hero.
Ridiculous!
Nevertheless, the episode emphasized an important aspect of his possession of the engine: Somewhere that engine had been built. Somewhere was the owner.
He must never forget that.
It was darker when he was finally ready. Pendrake entered the garage-stable and turned on the light he had rigged up earlier in the day. The two-hundred-watt bulb shed a sunlike glare that somehow made the small room even stranger than it had been by lantern light.
The engine stood exactly where he had nailed it three nights before. It stood there like a swollen tire for a small, broad wheel; like a large, candied, blue-gray doughnut.
Except for the four sets of flanges and the size, the resemblance to a doughnut was genuinely startling. The walls curved upward from the hole in the center; the hole itself was only a little smaller than it should have been to be in exact proportion. But there the resemblance to anything whatsoever ended.
That hole was the damnedest thing that ever was.
It was about six inches in diameter. Its inner walls were smooth, translucent, nonmetallic in appearance; and in its geometrical center floated the piece of plumber’s pipe. Literally, the pipe hung there in space, held in position by a force that seemed to have no origin, a force, oh—
Pendrake drew a deep slow breath, picked up his hammer and gently laid it over the outjutting end of the pipe. The hammer throbbed in his hand, but grimly he bore the pulsing needles of resuscitated pain—and pressed.
The pipe whirred on, unyielding, unaffected. The hammer brrred with vibration. Pend rake grimaced from the agony and jerked the tool free.
He waited patiently till his hand ceased throbbing, then struck the protruding end of pipe a sharp blow. The pipe receded into the hole, and nine inches of it emerged from the other side of the engine.
It was almost like rolling a ball.
With deliberate aim Pendrake hit the pipe from the far side. It bounced back so easily that eleven inches of it flowed out, only an inch remaining in the hole.
It spun on like the shaft of a steam turbine, only there was not even a whisper of sound, not the faintest hiss.
Thoughtfully, his face dark, Pendrake sagged back and sat on his heels. The engine was not perfect. The ease with which the pipe and, originally, the piece of wood had been pushed in and out meant that gears or something would be needed—something that would hold steady at high speeds under great strains.
Pendrake climbed slowly to his feet, utterly intent now. He dragged into position the device he had had constructed by the machine shop. It took several minutes to adjust the gripping wheel to the right height. But his patience had a mindless quality.
Finally, however, he manipulated the control lever. Fascinated, he watched the two halves of the wheel close over the one-inch pipe, grip and begin to spin.
A glow suffused his whole body. It was the sweetest, purest pleasure that had touched him in three long years. Gently, Pendrake pulled on the gripping machine, tried to draw it toward him along the floor.
It didn’t budge.
He frowned at it. He had the feeling that the machine was too heavy for delicate pressures. Muscle was needed here, and without restraint.
Bracing himself, he began to tug, hard.
Afterward, he remembered flinging himself back toward the door in a frenzy of physical effort. He had a distinct mental picture of the nails that held the engine to the floor pulling out as the engine toppled over toward him.
The next instant the engine lifted, lifted lightly in some incomprehensible fashion right off the floor. It whirled there for a moment slowly, propeller-fashion, then fell heavily on top of the gripping machine.
With a crash the wooden planks on the floor splintered. The cement underneath, the original floor of the garage, shattered with a horrible grinding noise as the gripping machine was smashed against it fourteen hundred times a minute.
Metal squealed in torment and broke into pieces in a shattering hail of death. The confusion of sound and dust and spraying concrete and metal was briefly a hideous environment for Pendrake’s stunned mind.
Silence crept over the scene like the night following a day of battle, an intense, unnatural silence. There was blood on Dandy’s quivering flank, where something had struck with gashing effect. Pendrake stood, soothing the trembling horse, assessing the extent of the destruction.
He saw that the engine was lying on its face, apparently unaffected by the violence it had precipitated with such a casual display of stupendous power. It lay, a glinting, blue-gray thing in the light from the miraculously untouched electric bulb.
It took half an hour to find all the pieces of what had been the gripping machine. He gathered the parts one by one and took them into the house.
The first real experiment with the machine was over, successfully.
He sat in darkness in the kitchen, watching. The minutes ticked by, a calm succession; and there was still no movement outside. Pendrake sighed finally. It was clear that no one had noticed or heard the cataclysm in his garage. Or if they had they didn’t give a damn.
The engine was safe.
The easing tension brought a curious awareness of how lonely he was. Suddenly, the very restfulness of the silence oppressed him. He had an abrupt, sharp conviction that his developing victory over the engine wasn’t going to be any fun for one man cut off from the world by the melancholia in his character.
He thought drably: He ought to go and see her.
No—he shook himself—come to think of it, that wouldn’t work. A genuine introvert like Eleanor acquired an emotional momentum in a given direction. Getting her out of that involved forces similar to the basic laws of hypnotism: The more direct the pressure to change her, the greater would be her innate resistance.
Even if she herself willed to be free, the more determined she became about it, the more deeply she would become involved in the morass of emotions that was her psychic prison. Definitely, it wouldn’t do any good to go and see her, but—
Pendrake put on his hat and went out into the night. At the corner drugstore, he headed straight for the phone booth.
“Is Mrs. Pendrake in?” he asked quietly when his call was answered.
“Yes, suh!” The woman’s deep voice indicated that there was at least one new servant at the big white house; it was not a familiar voice. “Just a moment, suh.”
A few seconds later, Eleanor’s rich contralto was saying: “Mrs. Pendrake speaking.”
“Eleanor, this is Jim.”
“Yes!” Pendrake smiled wanly at the tiny change in her tone, the defensive edge that was suddenly in it.
“I’d like to come back, Eleanor,” he said softly.
There was silence, then—
Click!
Out in the night again, Pendrake looked up at the starry heavens. The sky was dark, dark blue; the whole fabric of the universe of Occidental earth was well settled into night. Crescentville shared with the entire Eastern seaboard the penumbral shadows of the great mother planet.
He thought: Maybe it had been a mistake, but now she knew. Her mind had probably gone dead slow on thoughts about him. Now it would come alive again.
He strolled up the back alley to his cottage; and, reaching the yard, suppressed an impulse to climb the tree from which the big white house was visible.
He flung himself on the cool grass of the back lawn, stared at the garage-stable, and—
An engine, he thought shakily, an engine that would spin anything shoved into its force field or, if it resisted, smash it with the ease of power unlimited. An engine through which a shaft could be pushed, but from which it could not be pulled. Which meant that an airplane propeller need only be fastened to a bar of graded metals—graded according to atomic weight and density, and—
Someone was knocking at the front door of the cottage. Pendrake jumped physically and mentally—and then took the telegram from the boy who had disturbed him. The telegram read:
CABIN MODEL PUMA DELIVERED TO DORMANTOWN AIRPORT TOMORROW STOP SPECIAL ENGINE BRACES AND CONTROLS INSTALLED AS REQUESTED STOP MAGNESIUM ALLOY AND AEROGEL PLASTIC CONSTRUCTION
ATLANTIC AIRCRAFT CORP.
Never, never, never had he been in a plane so fast. All the military machines he’d ever flown, the Lightnings, the Mustangs, Pumas, did not compare even remotely to the machine that quivered like vibrating bar steel before the power of the engine of dreams.
The plane seemed to have no connection with earth. It was a creature of the sky, an arrow discharged by Jove—and when he finally brought it down. Pendrake sat in the control seat, eyes closed, tugging his soul down from the upper heavens, where it had roamed a free spirit.
He sat finally, sobered by the tremendous success. Because—what now?
He could take other flights, of course, but sooner or later his machine, in its silent journeyings, would be remarked. And every day that passed, every hour that he clung to this secrecy, his moral position would grow worse.
Somebody owned the engine. Owned it and wanted it. He must decide once and for all whether or not to advertise his possession of it; to do something decisive, to—
He found himself frowning at the four men who were coming toward him along the line of sheds. Two of them were carrying between them a large tool case and one was pulling a small wagon which had other material on it.
The men stopped fifty feet from Pendrake’s plane. The fourth man came forward, fumbling in his pocket. He knocked on the cabin door.
“Something I’d like to ask you, mister!” he yelled.
Pendrake hesitated, cursing silently. He had been told, absolutely assured, that no one else had rented a plane garage at this end of the field, and that the big sheds nearby were empty, for use in future years only.
