The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 179
"Oh, yes. Mandle's nearest prototype is Professor Mandle."
Armstrong gazed patiently at the screen while Norton gazed back; then he rumbled, "Say that again."
"His sister. Her hair has squared roots. If she condescends to listen to a wolf whistle, it's solely to study the Doppler effect."
"Hmmm," contributed Armstrong, impressed.
Norton became earnest again. "But Fergie insists she's as good an authority as was her brother; in fact the only better one he can think up is a mighty-domed old dodderer named Horowitz, who lives in Vienna. This Horowitz, affirms Fergie with enormous awe, actually weighed a photon to the one hundred twentieth place of decimals by juggling a lot of mathematics around a chlorophyll reaction—whatever that may mean. D'you know what it means?"
"Since one of my gadgets employs photosynthesis, I ought to have a faint idea," Armstrong told him dryly.
"Good for you! Me, I'm so ignorant I think colonization is personal hygiene. Want any more info?"
"I guess that's all I need. Thank's a lot, Bill."
He cut off, brooded until the instrument woke up and nagged at him again. It was the captain this time.
"The medic pronounced it cardiac thrombosis," he informed. "In real language that means a blood clot in the heart."
"A natural cause?"
"Of course!" The police captain showed signs of irritation. "Why not?"
"I just wondered, that's all," Armstrong soothed. "It's a case of a little knowledge being worse than none. I happen to know that blood can be made to clot by employing the diluted venom of Russell's viper. From that fact I jumped no place."
The captain's irritation increased and he waxed officious. "If you know anything which gives you cause for suspicion, no matter how remote, it's your duty to tell us."
"All I know is that rocket-shots have a hoodoo on them. So when the first guy likely to get us some place promptly turns up his toes, it makes me wonder whether there's more to it than a mere hoodoo."
"Such as what?" the captain riposted.
"You've got me there!" Armstrong confessed. "I'm playing blind man's buff."
"Mind you don't break your neck over a chair," the other advised.
"Not if I can help it."
After the captain had switched off, he pondered the problem of interviewing Claire Mandle. This would be a poor time to pester her, with a funeral on her hands. Better wait a bit. Better give her at least a week. That would allow plenty of time for a trip to New Mexico and a useful check-up on progress down there. Besides, the journey might help him get rid of his elusive obsession, his silly notion that rocket number eighteen would get nowhere if he left undone those things which ought to be done—without knowing what things.
Chapter Two
THE NEW Mexico construction and launching site lay some fifty miles north of Gallup. From the viewpoint of those operating it the only thing to be said in its favor was that it had come cheap. Rocket number two had taken off from here and when it burst in space, like a monster squib, its saddened builders had abandoned the site. Better financed, partly with government funds, the constructors of rocket number nine had taken it over, improved it, extended it, then discarded it. Now number eighteen was hoping for better luck.
Armstrong found the place strangely quiet. Laconic guards let him through the big, triple-locked steel gate and he met Quinn when halfway to the administrative block.
Looking up at him from shoulder height, Quinn said, "Hello, Shorty! What brings you here?"
"You never write to your benefactor," Armstrong pointed out.
Quinn grinned. "Benefactor my foot! Now that Lawson isn't playing around with his eternal mathematics, I got him to calculate your rake-off. He says that if the film runs no more than ten minutes, it should bring you ten million frogskins."
"Of which the government takes seventy per cent, and you get fifteen." His answering smile wiped off as he continued, "What d'you mean, Lawson's not working? What's going on around here? Is it the local saint's day?"
"All work ceased yesterday because Washington has cut the dollar flow until some question of high policy gets settled. There's a trickle coming in which is sufficient to meet the weekly payroll, but that's all. On top of this, Ribera Steel is held up lay lack of beryllium for body plates." He grinned again. "Hence the siesta."
"This is tough."
"I don't agree. The longer it goes on, the longer my lease on life."
Armstrong eyed him carefully. "You don't have to go, George. You can step out of it any time you want."
"I know." Quinn's small, pugnacious face lifted as he gazed at the sky. "I was only kidding. Wild horses won't drag me out of that boat once she's flaming to go. The job's mine and nobody else's. Don't you forget it!"
"Whenever she gets completed."
"They'll finish it sometime. There are technical snags and bureaucratic obstructions which slow down the job, but it will get done eventually. I feel it in my bones."
John Armstrong mused a moment. "Maybe you're right," he acknowledged. "I seem restless these days, and my notions shoot out at the queerest tangents."
"The reason is simple," Quinn offered with an assured air. "You worked like nohow to develop some skeezits in time for this ship. You beat your brains around until the job was done. Now you've time on your hands while your mind is still spinning. It gives you the fidgets. You ought to take up something to occupy your think-box, something high-pressured and healthy, such as bank robbery."
"Thanks for the advice, Dr. Quinn," he smiled. "Well, let's go bait friend Fothergill."
They stopped as they came to the partly built rocket, surveyed it silently. It posed within its surrounding framework, a dull black cylinder three hundred feet high. The framework soared another eighty above it, indicative of the total height after the nose got fitted. That meant the shell was half completed, and not much of the innards put in. There was a lot of work yet to be done, a lot of work.
Continuing on to the administrative block, they found Fothergill in his den, a dark, dapper individual who liked flowers on his desk.
"Ah, howdy, John!" He offered a smooth, well-manicured hand. Then he pulled up two chairs, sat carefully in his own, primped his perfectly knotted tie, moved the flower vase an inch to one side. "Well, well, well," he said with unctuous joviality. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"
"I was bored," Armstrong informed. His stare at Fothergill was steady, unblinking.
"Indeed? Fancy that!" He fluttered his hands helplessly. "You couldn't have picked a more unfortunate time. What with supply difficulties and governmental indecision and whatnot, we're all tied up. But it's only temporarily, I hope."
"What's the 'whatnot'?" inquired Armstrong bluntly.
"Eh?"
"You mentioned 'whatnot' as one of the things tying us up."
Fothergill swallowed, looked at the flowers, then the ceiling, then the flowers again.
"Well?" Armstrong rapped. At his side, Quinn eyed him speculatively, but he disregarded it, kept his attention fixed on the other.
"Little things," said Fothergill feebly.
"What little things? Anything which can hamstring a project as big as this can't be little. Who says they're little?"
Flushing, Fothergill sat up. "You can't talk to me like that. I don't like your attitude."
"Go easy, John," warned Quinn anxiously.
Armstrong leaned forward, gray eyes aglow. "Why does Ribera Steel have to keep us waiting for plates when Bethlehem has enough beryllium to sink a battleship?"
Fothergill jerked in his seat and said, "How d'you know that?"
"Because Bethlehem is soliciting beryllium armor plate orders in the advertising columns of all the trade sheets."
"Even so, I can't cancel a contract," Fothergill protested.
"I'm not suggesting that you can. But there's nothing to stop Bethlehem supplying on behalf of Ribera. It's a common trade practice. Who decided that Ribera was to. have the contract in the first place?"
"Womersley."
"Senator Womersley?" Armstrong's bushy eyebrow arched upward.
Shifting the flower vase another inch, Fothergill nodded. His expression was that of one crucified.
"Now, what about the 'whatnot'?" Armstrong persisted.
"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Fothergill's optics made vain appeal to the ceiling. "They switched the atomic fuel from plutonium to thorium on some abstruse grounds of top-velocity controllability. That didn't matter much, seeing the engines aren't finished. But North American Tube was advised of it, looked into the matter, then asked to have the venturis back. They say the silicone plastic linings are no longer good enough. They'll have to be thickened or toughened somehow."
"Anything else?"
"The X-ray scanner went haywire, leaving us unable to examine welding lines as they're completed. We had to order another. It hasn't come yet."
"Is that all?"
"A strike of truck drivers held up supplies for several days, but we got it settled. We settled it by threatening to bring in a railroad spur." Fothergill was beginning to recover. He looked at his questioner. "What's up with you this time? You act like you've been appointed official progress-chaser. You got a diamond mine on Venus?"
Armstrong stood up. His smile was large and lopsided. "It may be a case of mischief being found for idle hands to do," he said enigmatically. "Thanks a lot for all the news—and so sorry I got in your hair."
The other's hand went up and smoothed his glossy, well-oiled pate as if to stroke Armstrong out of it. "I've got troubles enough without reciting them to all and sundry," he complained. Then he switched on his most hospitable look. "Glad to have seen you again, anyway."
Outside the block, Armstrong said to Quinn, "You're doing nothing, George, so how about giving me a hand?"
"What d'you want me to do?"
"I'd like you to snoop around and dig me up some names. Mail them to me as soon as you've got them. I want the name of the guy who's in charge of that scanner, also the one who advised changing the fuel, also the one at North American Tube who wrote in asking for the venturis back. If you can manage it, I want to find out who stirred up the truck drivers."
George Quinn gaped at him incredulously, and said, "I think you're nuts!"
"Most of the world thinks you're a darned sight nuttier!" Armstrong retorted. He squeezed the other's arm, making him wince. "We lunatics have got to stick together."
"Oh, all right," Quinn became moody. "If you want to play Sherlock, I'll stooge along."
He patted Quinn on the back by way of approval and encouragement. Then all the purple mood crowded on him again, suddenly, heavily. It was as if some fourth-dimensional pseudopod had reached forth to compress his brain. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he tramped to the gate. Best to get away before Quinn's analytical stare started uncomplimentary comments.
BACK IN New York he settled himself in his apartment and considered matters afresh. In Connecticut he had as nice and as compact a laboratory as any man could desire. There, many of his best hours had been spent in profitable development of some germ of an idea. It was an enticing place providing one hastened to it bursting with idea-generated enthusiasm. It was equally unenticing if one went seeking no more than refuge from the world.
At the present moment he had nothing to develop, nothing in any scientific sense. His record stood at a dozen fruitful notions in as many years, which was good going for any free-lance experimenter. But he couldn't produce a flash of genius to order. He couldn't indulge a burst of laboratory activity without first being fired by inspiration—and such inspirations came as they chose, unforeseen, uninvited. Quinn, therefore, had made a shrewd estimate: his trouble was that he hadn't enough to keep his mind busy.
Defeated by the closure of its natural escape channels, his brain was seeking elsewhere. It was conjuring phantoms for him to chase, summoning nameless specters for him to pursue through the darkness and the night.
Reaching that dismal point of introspection, nine men out of ten would have decided to see a psychiatrist or take a foreign vacation or, at least, join a golf club. Armstrong's reaction was individualistic and typical of himself. If his brain wanted to run after visions, well, let it run! It should be a harmless pursuit and possibly amusing. A change is as good as a rest. Why not try to track down the imaginary dragons? Through the darkling wood might really lurch something with a breath of flame. He decided to give his obsession free rein. To him, such a personal decision verged on the irrevocable. Once made, he stuck by it stubbornly.
Relieved by the prospect of openly enjoying his own eccentricity, he got out the car, drove into New Jersey, called on Eddie Drake.
"Hey," exclaimed Drake to thin air. "Look what's here! The man-mountain! " He made a gesture of welcome. "Take that chair—it's the strongest one in the house. How much d'you want to borrow?"
"I'll borrow a cigarette, seeing you're charitably disposed." He lit up, crossed thick legs, surveyed his big shoes. "Seven years back, Eddie, you worked on rocket ship number nine."
"Don't remind me of it," Drake mourned. "It was also flop number nine."
"That wasn't your fault."
"It wasn't anybody's fault," remarked Drake.
"You sure of that?"
Drake dropped his automatic lighter, scooped it up from the carpet, and protested, "Don't wallop me on the noggin with a sudden one like that!" He examined the lighter for damage, shoved it into his vest pocket. "Number nine went bam! Everyone had made as good a job of it as he knew how. Evidently the job still wasn't good enough. Somebody's best hadn't proved sufficient. Was that his fault?"
"No, of course not. But I'm not so much interested in what happened ultimately. I'm curious about the snags you hit before that, and the nature of them."
"I see." Drake's regard was keen and understanding. "You're having trouble with number eighteen and are looking for a tip or two?"
"In a way."
"Doesn't surprise me. I'll be glad to give what help I can." He ruminated while his memory searched back. "Our biggest trouble was when the engines cracked. They'd proved topnotch on the test bench. They functioned beautifully at the first tryout after installation in the ship. They cracked at the second test and we had to replace them with a heavier job. That cost us five months and a lot of moola."
"Who built the engines?"
"Southern Atomics."
"D'you know who designed them?"
"I haven't the remotest idea. Probably I could find out."
"I'd be obliged if you would," Armstrong told him. "Any other troubles?"
"Only minor ones."
"Remember them?"
"The auto-controls had to be aligned again. Two tubes burned out on test and had to be replaced. We had a good deal of bother with local civic dignitaries who objected to a bang in their bailiwick and wanted us to go to China."
"Do you remember who supplied the auto-controls and the tubes?"
"Remote Engineering made the controls. North American Tube supplied the venturis."
"Hmmm! One more item—d'you know who started that civic agitation against you or, if not, could you find out?"
"I know," said Drake promptly. He pulled a face. "I had more than one wordy battle with him. He was Mervyn Richards, a hollow-eyed, lantern-jawed busybody from Farmington. He could talk the legs off a running duck, and he scared the local folks plenty."
"He's not bothered us so far."
"I don't think he's likely to, either. Last I heard of him, he was in 'Frisco lording it over some cult which wants to boost its ectoplasmic vibrations, or some such twaddle."
"I see." Armstrong mulled things over a minute. "D'you know where Clark Marshall is these days?"
"Somewhere in Florida, I believe. Want to question him as well?"
"Yes. I'll get hold of him somehow." He got up, shook hands. "See you again, Ed. Don't forget to let me have those names."
DRIVING home he stopped at a Jersey City library, spent some time searching through reference files and several books on rocketry. This gave him nine names, two of which he traced in the Manhattan telephone directory. These two he rang up and cross-examined with a persistency which brought him a shower of wisecracks and friendly abuse. But he extracted reluctant promises to co-operate, and was satisfied.
From the library, he finished the run home, dumped the car, made a written record of all he'd got to that moment. Then he read it through, weighed its worth. Not so much. Just a lot of meaningless stuff. However, there was more to come in as Quinn, Norton, Drake and the others dug up data.
Even if it did get completed, the jigsaw might not present an intelligible picture, and it was a certainty that he couldn't concoct as much as a suggestion of a picture out of these few pieces. He'd have to do a lot more loping around and, in the end, was more than likely to find himself with a crazy pattern compounded of bits of a dozen pictures. Still, as a time-passing occupation it was better than chalking slogans on walls.
What next? There would be the other seven names to chase on the morrow and perhaps the day after, too. After that, the time should be ripe to interview Claire Mandle. Thinking over all possible sources of information, it suddenly struck him that there was nothing to prevent him going the whole hog. If he was determined to practice systematic lunacy, he might as well be thorough about it.
Extracting his typewriter from its case, he hammered it heavily, made up several air-mail letters, four for Britain, three for France. They were clear, cogent, and invited assistance, but he wasn't sanguine about them. Urgency tends to dissolve with distance. Petty troubles look considerably pettier from three or four thousand miles away. Maybe the Europeans would come back with data, maybe they wouldn't, but it was worth a try.
Taking the letters out on his habitual evening walk, he mailed them, strolled downtown. After mingling with the crowds for a while, he stopped in a snack bar for a cup of coffee, drank it while it was still too hot,' and returned home to try and get some sleep.
HE GOT up next morning from a sound, untroubled sleep which contrasted strangely with his daytime meemies, showered, shaved, switched on the morning's Herald recording. A cold, precise voice announced, "Newsflash! A major disaster occurred half an hour ago in the Ural Mountains where Russia's largest atomic fuel plant is located. The shock of the explosion registered on all the world's seismographs and it is feared that the death toll is heavy. Further news will be broadcast as it comes in."
