First Lensman, page 26
part #2 of Lensman Series
“That all?”
“That’s all.”
“The lunch-box, then, will be slightly special?”
“More or less, although it will look ordinary enough. Now as to the cover-up. How would ‘Director of Research’ sound?”
“I don’t know. Depends on what the researchers are doing. Before I became an engineer I was a pure scientist of sorts; but that was quite a while ago and I was never a specialist.”
“That is one reason why I think you will do. We have plenty of specialists—too many, I often think. They dash off in all directions, without rhyme or reason. What we want is a man with enough scientific training to know in general what is going on, but what he will need mostly is hard common sense, and enough ability—mental force, you might call it—to hold the specialists down to earth and make them pull together. If you can do it—and if I didn’t think you could I wouldn’t be talking to you—the whole force will know that you are earning your pay; just as we could not hide the fact that your two predecessors weren’t.”
“Put that way it sounds good. I wouldn’t wonder if I could handle it.”
The conversation went on, but the rest of it is of little importance here. The plane landed. Isaacson introduced the new Director of Research to Works Manager Rand, who in turn introduced him to a few of his scientists and to the svelte and spectacular redhead who was to be his private secretary.
It was clear from the first that the Research Department was not going to be an easy one to manage. The top men were defiant, the middle ranks were sullen, the smaller fry were apprehensive as well as sullen. The secretary flaunted chips on both shapely shoulders. Men and women alike expected the application of the old wheeze “a new broom sweeps clean” for the third time in scarcely twice that many months, and they were defying him to do his worst. Wherefore they were very much surprised when the new boss did nothing whatever for two solid weeks except read reports and get acquainted with his department.
“How d’ya like your new boss, May?” another secretary asked, during a break.
“Oh, not too bad … I guess.” May’s tone was full of reservations. “He’s quiet—sort of reserved—no passes or anything like that—it’d be funny if I finally got a boss that had something on the ball, wouldn’t it? But you know what, Molly?” The redhead giggled suddenly. “I had a camera-fiend first, you know, with a million credits’ worth of stereo-cams and such stuff, and then a golf-nut. I wonder what this Dr. Olmstead does with his spare cash?”
“You’ll find out, dearie, no doubt.” Molly’s tone gave the words a meaning slightly different from the semantic one of their arrangement.
“I intend to, Molly—I fully intend to.” May’s meaning, too, was not expressed exactly by the sequence of words used. “It must be tough, a boss’s life. Having to sit at a desk or be in conference six or seven hours a day—when he isn’t playing around somewhere—for a measly thousand credits or so a month. How do they get that way?”
“You said it, May. You really said it. But we’ll get ours, huh?”
Time went on. George Olmstead studied reports, and more reports. He read one, and reread it, frowning. He compared it minutely with another; then sent redheaded May to hunt up one which had been turned in a couple of weeks before. He took them home that evening, and in the morning he punched three buttons. Three stiffly polite young men obeyed his summons.
“Good morning, Doctor Olmstead.”
“Morning, boys. I’m not up on the fundamental theory of any one of these three reports, but if you combine this, and this, and this,” indicating heavily-penciled sections of the three documents, “would you, or would you not, be able to work out a process that would do away with about three-quarters of the final purification and separation processes?”
They did not know. It had not been the business of any one of them, or of all them collectively, to find out.
“I’m making it your business as of now. Drop whatever you’re doing, put your heads together, and find out. Theory first, then a small-scale laboratory experiment. Then come back here on the double.”
“Yes, sir,” and in a few days they were back.
“Does it work?”
“In theory it should, sir, and on a laboratory scale it does.” The three young men were, if possible, even stiffer than before. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that a Director of Research would seize credit for work which he was not capable of doing.
“Good. Miss Reed, get me Rand … Rand? Olmstead. Three of my boys have just hatched out something that may be worth quite a few million credits a year to us. … Me? Hell, no! Talk to them. I can’t understand any one of the three parts of it, to say nothing of inventing it. I want you to give ’em a class AAA priority on the pilot plant, as of right now. If they can develop it, and I’m betting they can, I’m going to put their pictures in the Northport News and give ’em a couple of thousand credits apiece and a couple of weeks vacation to spend it in. … Yeah, I’ll send ’em in.” He turned to the flabbergasted three. “Take your dope in to Rand—now. Show him what you’ve got; then tear into that pilot plant.”
And, a little later, Molly and May again met in the powder room.
“So your new boss is a fisherman!” Molly snickered. “And they say he paid over two hundred credits for a reel! You were right, May; a boss’s life must be mighty hard to take. And he sits around more and does less, they say, than any other exec in the plant.”
“Who says so, the dirty, sneaking liars?” the redhead blazed, completely unaware that she had reversed her former position. “And even if it was so, which it isn’t, he can do more work sitting perfectly still than any other boss in the whole Works can do tearing around at forty parsecs a minute, so there!”
George Olmstead was earning his salary.
His position was fully consolidated when, a few days later, a tremor of excitement ran through the Research Department. “Heads up, everybody! Mr. Isaacson—himself—is coming—here! What for, I wonder? Y’don’t s’pose he’s going to take the Old Man away from us already, do you?”
He came. He went through, for the first time, the entire department. He observed minutely, and he understood what he saw.
Olmstead led the Big Boss into his private office and flipped the switch which supposedly rendered that sanctum proof against any and all forms of spying, eavesdropping, intrusion, and communication. It did not, however, close the deeper, subtler channels which the Lensmen used.
“Good work, George. So damned good that I’m going to have to take you out of Department Q entirely and make you Works Manager of our new plant on Vegia. Have you got a man you can break in to take your place here?”
“Including Department Q? No.” Although Olmstead did not show it, he was disappointed at hearing the word “Vegia.” He had been aiming much higher than that—at the secret planet of the Boskonian Armed Forces, no less—but there might still be enough time to win a transfer there.
“Excluding. I’ve got another good man here now for that. Jones. Not heavy enough, though, for Vegia.”
“In that case, yes. Dr. Whitworth, one of the boys who worked out the new process. It’ll take a little time, though. Three weeks minimum.”
“Three weeks it is. Today’s Friday. You’ve got things in shape, haven’t you, so that you can take the weekend off?”
“I was figuring on it. I’m not going where I thought I was, though, I imagine.”
“Probably not. Lake Chesuncook, on Route 273. Rough country, and the hotel is something less than fourth rate, but the fishing can’t be beat.”
“I’m glad of that. When I fish, I like to catch something.”
“It would smell if you didn’t. They stock lunch-boxes in the cafeteria, you know. Have your girl get you one, full of sandwiches and stuff. Start early this afternoon, as soon as you can after I leave. Be sure and see Jones, with your lunch-box, before you leave. Goodbye.”
“Miss Reed, please send Whitworth in. Then skip down to the cafeteria and get me a lunch-box. Sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Provender suitable for a wet and hungry fisherman.”
“Yes, sir!” There were no chips now; the redhead’s boss was the top ace of the whole plant.
“Hi, Ned. Take the throne.” Olmstead waved his hand at the now vacant chair behind the big desk. “Hold it down ’til I get back. Monday, maybe.”
“Going fishing, huh?” Gone was all trace of stiffness, of reserve, of unfriendliness. “You big, lucky stiff!”
“Well, my brilliant young squirt, maybe you’ll get old and fat enough to go fishing yourself some day. Who knows? ’Bye.”
Lunch-box in hand and encumbered with tackle, Olmstead walked blithely along the corridor to the office of Assistant Works Manager Jones. While he had not known just what to expect, he was not surprised to see a lunch-box exactly like his own upon the side-table. He placed his box beside it.
“Hi, Olmstead.” By no slightest flicker of expression did either Lensman step out of character. “Shoving off early?”
“Yeah. Dropped by to let the Head Office know I won’t be in ’til Monday.”
“OK. So’m I, but more speed for me. Chemquassabamticook Lake.”
“Do you pronounce that or sneeze it? But have fun, my boy. I’m combining business with pleasure, though—breaking in Whitworth on my job. That Fairplay thing is going to break in about an hour, and it’ll scare the pants off of him. But it’ll keep until Monday, anyway, and if he handles it right he’s just about in.”
Jones grinned. “A bit brutal, perhaps, but a sure way to find out. ’Bye.”
“So long.” Olmstead strolled out, nonchalantly picking up the wrong lunch box on the way, and left the building.
He ordered his Dillingham, and tossed the lunch-box aboard as carelessly as though it did not contain an unknown number of millions of credits’ worth of clear-quill, uncut thionite.
“I hope you have a nice weekend, sir,” the yardman said, as he helped stow baggage and tackle.
“Thanks, Otto. I’ll bring you a couple of fish Monday, if I catch that many,” and it should be said in passing that he brought them. Lensmen keep their promises, under whatever circumstances or however lightly given.
It being mid-afternoon of Friday, the traffic was already heavy. Northport was not a metropolis, of course; but on the other hand it did not have metropolitan multi-tiered, one-way, nonintersecting streets. But Olmstead was in no hurry. He inched his spectacular mount—it was a violently iridescent chrome green in color, with highly polished chromium gingerbread wherever there was any excuse for gingerbread to be—across the city and into the northbound side of the superhighway. Even then, he did not hurry. He wanted to hit the inspection station at the edge of the Preserve at dusk. Ninety miles an hour would do it. He worked his way into the ninety-mile lane and became motionless relative to the other vehicles on the strip.
It was a peculiar sensation; it seemed as though the cars themselves were stationary, with the pavement flowing backward beneath them. There was no passing, no weaving, no cutting in and out. Only occasionally would the formation be broken as a car would shift almost imperceptibly to one side or the other; speeding up or slowing down to match the assigned speed of the neighboring way.
The afternoon was bright and clear, neither too hot nor too cold. Olmstead enjoyed his drive thoroughly, and arrived at the turnoff right on schedule. Leaving the wide, smooth way, he slowed down abruptly; even a Dillingham Super-Sporter could not make speed on the narrow, rough, and hilly road to Chesuncook Lake.
At dusk he reached the Post. Instead of stopping on the pavement he pulled off the road, got out, stretched hugely, and took a few drum-major’s steps to take the kinks out of his legs.
“A lot of road, eh?” the smartly-uniformed trooper remarked. “No guns?”
“No guns.” Olmstead opened up for inspection. “From Northport. Funny, isn’t it, how hard it is to stop, even when you aren’t in any particular hurry? Guess I’ll eat now—join me in a sandwich and some hot coffee or a cold lemon sour or cherry soda?”
“I’ve got my own supper, thanks; I was just going to eat. But did you say a cold lemon sour?”
“Uh-huh. Ice-cold. Zero degrees Centigrade.”
“I will join you, in that case. Thanks.”
Olmstead opened a frost-lined compartment; took out two half-liter bottles; placed them and his open lunch-box invitingly on the low stone wall.
“Hm … m … m. Quite a zipper you got there, mister.” The trooper gazed admiringly at the luxurious, two-wheeled monster; listened appreciatively to its almost inaudible hum. “I’ve heard about those new supers, but that is the first one I ever saw. Nice. All the comforts of home, eh?”
“Just about. Sure you won’t help me clean up on those sandwiches, before they get stale?”
Seated on the wall, the two men ate and talked. If that trooper had known what was in the box beside his leg he probably would have fallen over backward; but how was he even to suspect? There was nothing crass or rough or coarse about any of the work of any of Boskone’s high-level operators.
Olmstead drove on to the lake and took up his reservation at the ramshackle hotel. He slept, and bright and early the next morning he was up and fishing—and this part of the performance he really enjoyed. He knew his stuff and the fish were there; big, wary, and game. He loved it.
At noon he ate, and quite openly and brazenly consigned the “empty” box to the watery deep. Even if he had not had so many fish to carry, he was not the type to lug a cheap lunch-box back to town. He fished joyously all afternoon, without getting quite the limit, and as the sun grazed the horizon he started his putt-putt and skimmed back to the dock.
The thing hadn’t sent out any radiation yet, Northrop informed him tensely, but it certainly would, and when it did they’d be ready. There were Lensmen and Patrolmen all over the place, thicker than hair on a dog.
And George Olmstead, sighing wearily and yet blissfully anticipatory of one more day of enthralling sport, gathered up his equipment and his fish and strolled toward the hotel.
XVII
Forty thousand miles from Earth’s center the Chicago loafed along a circular arc, inert, at a mere ten thousand miles an hour; a speed which, and not by accident, kept her practically stationary above a certain point on the planet’s surface. Nor was it by chance that both Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison were aboard. And a dozen or so other craft, cruisers and such, whose officers were out to put space-time in their logs, were flitting aimlessly about; but never very far away from the flagship. And farther out—well out—a cordon of diesel-powered detector ships swept space to the full limit of their prodigious reach. The navigating officers of those vessels knew to a nicety the place and course of every ship lawfully in the ether, and the appearance of even one unscheduled trace would set in motion a long succession of carefully-planned events.
And far below, grazing atmosphere, never very far from the direct line between the Chicago and Earth’s core, floated a palatial pleasure yacht. And this craft carried not one Lensman, or two, but eight; two of whom kept their eyes fixed upon their observation plates. They were watching a lunch-box resting upon the bottom of a lake.
“Hasn’t it radiated yet?” Roderick Kinnison demanded. “Or been approached, or moved?”
“Not yet,” Lyman Cleveland replied, crisply. “Neither Northrop’s rig nor mine has shown any sign of activity.”
He did not amplify the statement, nor was there need. Mason Northrop was a Master Electronicist; Cleveland was perhaps the world’s greatest living expert. Neither of them had detected radiation. Ergo, none existed.
Equally certainly the box had not moved, or been moved, or approached. “No change, Rod,” Doctor Frederick Rodebush Lensed the assured thought. “Six of us have been watching the plates in five-minute shifts.”
A few minutes later, however: “Here is a thought which may be of interest,” DalNalten the Venerian announced, spraying himself with a couple pints of water. “It is natural enough, of course, for any Venerian to be in or on any water he can reach—I would enjoy very much being on or in that lake myself—but it may not be entirely by coincidence that one particular Venerian, Ossmen, is visiting this particular lake at this particular time.”
“What!” Nine Lensmen yelled the thought practically as one.
“Precisely. Ossmen.” It was a measure of the Venerian Lensman’s concern that he used only two words instead of twenty or thirty. “In the red boat with the yellow sail.”
“Do you see any detector rigs?” Samms asked.
“He wouldn’t need any,” DalNalten put in. “He will be able to see it. Or, if a little colane had been rubbed on it which no Tellurian could have noticed, any Venerian could smell it from one end of that lake to the other.”
“True. I didn’t think of that. It may not have a transmitter after all.”
“Maybe not, but keep on listening, anyway,” the Port Admiral ordered. “Bend a plate on Ossmen, and a couple more on the rest of the boats. But Ossmen is clean, you say, Jack? Not even a spy-ray block?”
“He couldn’t have a block, Dad. It’d give too much away, here on our home grounds. Like on Eridan, where their ops could wear anything they could lift, but we had to go naked.” He flinched mentally as he recalled his encounter with Hazel the Hellcat, and Northrop flinched with him.
“That’s right, Rod,” Olmstead in his boat below agreed, and Conway Costigan, in his room in Northport, concurred. The top-drawer operatives of the enemy depended for safety upon perfection of technique, not upon crude and dangerous mechanical devices.
