by E. E. Smith
Produced by Greg Weeks, V. L. Simpson and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
_The Lensman and the observer helped Storm into his heavily padded armor. Their movements were automatic--the ointment, the devices--_]
_INTRODUCING "Storm" Cloud, who, through tragedy, is destined to become the most noted figure in the galaxy--THE_
VORTEX BLASTER
(_Complete in this issue!_)
by E. E. SMITH, Ph.D.
_Author of "The Skylark," "Skylark Three," "The Skylark of Valeron," the Lensman stories, etc._
Safety devices that do not protect.
The "unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomicand cosmic energy, sank into the waters of the earth.
More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against oneagent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as thearmored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects theelectrical conductors within against accidental external shorts; but,inadequately grounded as it must of necessity be, it may attract andupon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning. Then,fused, volatilized, flaming incandescent throughout the length, breadth,and height of a dwelling, that dwelling's existence thereafter is to bemeasured in minutes.
Specifically, four lightning rods. The lightning rods protecting thechromium, glass, and plastic home of Neal Cloud. Those rods wereadequately grounded, grounded with copper-silver cables the bigness of astrong man's arm; for Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, knew his lightningand he was taking no chances whatever with the safety of his lovely wifeand their three wonderful kids.
He did not know, he did not even suspect, that under certain conditionsof atmospheric potential and of ground-magnetic stress his perfectlydesigned lightning-rod system would become a super-powerful magnet forflying vortices of atomic disintegration.
And now Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sat at his desk in a strained,dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-gray white, his tendoned handsgripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes, hard and lifeless,stared unseeingly past the small, three-dimensional block portrait ofall that had made life worth living.
For his guardian against lightning had been a vortex-magnet at themoment when a luckless wight had attempted to abate the nuisance of a"loose" atomic vortex. That wight died, of course--they almost alwaysdo--and the vortex, instead of being destroyed, was simply broken upinto an indefinite number of widely-scattered new vortices. And one ofthese bits of furious, uncontrolled energy, resembling more nearly ahandful of material rived from a sun than anything else with whichordinary man is familiar, darted toward and crashed downward to earththrough Neal Cloud's new house.
That home did not burn; it simply exploded. Nothing of it, in it, oraround it stood a chance, for in a fractional second of time the placewhere it had been was a crater of seething, boiling lava--a crater whichfilled the atmosphere to a height of miles with poisonous vapors; whichflooded all circumambient space with lethal radiations.
Cosmically, the whole thing was infinitesimal. Ever since man learnedhow to liberate intra-atomic energy, the vortices of disintegration hadbeen breaking out of control. Such accidents had been happening, werehappening, and would continue indefinitely to happen. More than oneworld, perhaps, had been or would be consumed to the last gram by suchloose atomic vortices. What of that? Of what real importance are a fewgrains of sand to an ocean beach five thousand miles long, a hundredmiles wide, and ten miles deep?
And even to that individual grain of sand called "Earth"--or, in modernparlance, "Sol Three," or "Tellus of Sol", or simply "Tellus"--theaffair was of negligible importance. One man had died; but, in dying, hehad added one more page to the thick bulk of negative results already onfile. That Mrs. Cloud and her children had perished was merelyunfortunate. The vortex itself was not yet a real threat to Tellus. Itwas a "new" one, and thus it would be a long time before it would becomeother than a local menace. And well before that could happen--beforeeven the oldest of Tellus' loose vortices had eaten away much of hermass or poisoned much of her atmosphere, her scientists would havesolved the problem. It was unthinkable that Tellus, the point of originand the very center of Galactic Civilization, should cease to exist.
* * * * *
But to Neal Cloud the accident was the ultimate catastrophe. Hispersonal universe had crashed in ruins; what was left was not worthpicking up. He and Jo had been married for almost twenty years and thebonds between them had grown stronger, deeper, truer with every passingday. And the kids.... It _couldn't_ have happened ... fate COULDN'T dothis to him ... but it had ... it could. Gone ... gone ... GONE....
And to Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sitting there at his desk in torn,despairing abstraction, with black maggots of thought gnawing holes inhis brain, the catastrophe was doubly galling because of its cruelirony. For he was second from the top in the Atomic Research Laboratory;his life's work had been a search for a means of extinguishment ofexactly such loose vortices as had destroyed his all.
His eyes focussed vaguely upon the portrait. Clear, honest gray eyes ...lines of character and of humor ... sweetly curved lips, ready to smileor to kiss....
He wrenched his eyes away and scribbled briefly upon a sheet of paper.Then, getting up stiffly, he took the portrait and moved woodenly acrossthe room to a furnace. As though enshrining it he placed the plasticblock upon a refractory between the electrodes and threw a switch. Afterthe flaming arc had done its work he turned and handed the paper to atall man, dressed in plain gray leather, who had been watching him withquiet, understanding eyes. Significant enough to the initiated of theimportance of this laboratory is the fact that it was headed by anUnattached Lensman.
"As of now, Phil, if it's QX with you."
The Gray Lensman took the document, glanced at it, and slowly,meticulously, tore it into sixteen equal pieces.
"Uh, uh, Storm," he denied, gently. "Not a resignation. Leave ofabsence, yes--indefinite--but not a resignation."
"Why?" It was scarcely a question; Cloud's voice was level,uninflected. "I won't be worth the paper I'd waste."
"Now, no," the Lensman conceded, "but the future's another matter. Ihaven't said anything so far, because to anyone who knew you and Jo as Iknew you it was abundantly clear that nothing could be said." Two handsgripped and held. "For the future, though, four words were uttered longago, that have never been improved upon. 'This, too, shall pass.'"
"You think so?"
"I don't think so, Storm--I know so. I've been around a long time. Youare too good a man, and the world has too much use for you, for you togo down permanently out of control. You've got a place in the world, andyou'll be back--" A thought struck the Lensman, and he went on in analtered tone. "You wouldn't--but of course you wouldn't--you couldn't."
"I don't think so. No, I won't--that never was any kind of a solution toany problem."
Nor was it. Until that moment, suicide had not entered Cloud's mind, andhe rejected it instantly. His kind of man did not take the easy way out.
After a brief farewell Cloud made his way to an elevator and was whiskeddown to the garage. Into his big blue DeKhotinsky Sixteen Special andaway.
Through traffic so heavy that front-, rear-, and side-bumpers almosttouched he drove with his wonted cool skill; even though, consciously,he did not know that the other cars were there. He slowed, turned,stopped, "gave her the oof," all in correct response to flashing signalsin all shapes and colors--purely automatically. Consciously, he did notknow where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbedbrain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter
imaging--which,if he had thought at all, he would have known to be a hopeless task. Buthe did not think; he simply acted, dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw,optically; his body reacted, mechanically; his thinking brain wascompletely in abeyance.
Into a one-way skyway he rocketed, along it over the suburbs and intothe transcontinental super-highway. Edging inward, lane after lane, hereached the "unlimited" way--unlimited, that is, except for beinglimited to cars of not less than seven hundred horsepower, in perfectmechanical condition, driven by registered, tested drivers at speeds notless than one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour--flashed hisregistry number at the control station, and shoved his right foot downto the floor.
* * * * *
Now everyone knows that an