by Van Powell
Chapter 32 SCIENCE FIGHTS CRAFT
Watching, Roger saw and recognized the man who entered. The bio-chemist,Zendt, came in with a film magazine of exposed celluloid in one hand.
"How are my diffusion shots coming along?"
"In the hypo."
Roger watched narrowly.
Zendt was either a master of facial control or he was one of those"innocent bystanders" who manage to intrude when some crucial point of adrama is about to be played.
"Please develop this run from the speed camera. Ellison and Millman havecaught the torque of their erratic motor on film. Sixteen exposures to afoot--a million to the minute. Shooting time, one half minute. Does thattell you the size of reel to wind it on?"
Roger, making mental computation with one side of his mind as he studiedthe situation with the other, nodded.
He would put the ceiling light out, but he would not satisfy Zendt bystaying there. Perhaps the man came prepared to hold him at hisdark-room work in case he had not yet been sufficiently dosed.
"Bring you prints soon," he told Zendt. "I'll get this into a developingtank." He risked a question.
"Is anybody in the cellar? The ventilator seems to be choked. No aircomes in. It's--stuffy."
"Maybe. Millman was down, earlier. Potts hasn't come. Grover has goneout." To let Potts get sleep, to stand guard over Astrovox, Rogerdecided.
"I'll telephone down and see--oh, look. It was shut off."
Clever actor or innocent intruder, Zendt betrayed neither interest nordisappointment. He simply nodded and went out.
Roger considered his position.
He reasoned: if Zendt was blameless, some one else was watching. Fromseeing Zendt emerge the unknown would be sure that Roger was still allright. But if he left, all possibility of detecting who was the culpritmight be gone.
Still, he had no chemicals in assortments that would enable him todetect the possible introduction of some fume through a hole in thewalls, or some other move. Besides, he was open to bodily attack.
He must not be there. No one must see him leave.
He remembered that there were chemicals that he would need, and inasmuchas he was known to be all right, he could easily get them.
He emerged, seeing Doctor Ryder busy with his arrival of white rats,with Toby helping him put them into the glass pen through the trapdoorin the top that prevented them from escaping.
"Got to force-up some underexposed negatives," he remarked as he passedthem. To the stock-room he went, and procured the ingredients he needed;but not for an intensifier for under-exposed film! Returning, he noticedZendt, watching the rats also.
Once more in the dark-room Roger proceeded methodically and carefully toproduce a very businesslike detonating torpedo with crystals of grittyhard iron oxide-rust! to take the place of the gravel usually packed ina commercial torpedo of the sort formerly sold for exploding by contactwith the sidewalk.
The other ingredients he mixed with care as to method, as well asformula, knowing that certain chemicals must be combined in a certainsequence. Wrapped in a fairly good paper taken from a packet of printingpaper, he had his torpedo ready at last.
There was no window from which to fling it, but he knew that by puttinga chair on the developing table by the wall, he could get his hands upto the small outlet around the exhaust fan. The old equipment,discontinued since the laboratory had put in air-conditioning, led tothe open air.
He got to the position carefully, took his torpedo, and adjusting thesmall exhaust fan so that its blades would interfere the least with anopen passage for the missile, he took his chance, against striking theblades, flinging with a quick jerk of his wrist that sent the detonatorstraight through past the fan.
Hurriedly he climbed down and got the chair back in place as he heard,muffled by the drop, a sharp explosion on the pavement in front of thelaboratory.
He was certain that the noise would draw everybody.
In the space between the outer and the inner light door he listened.Doctor Ryder and Toby went with the rest. The way must be free.
Roger, emerging, saw that his guess had been correct.
There, poked up through the skylight coaming, was the long, andlarge-girth telescope of Astrovox.
To an athletic youth, with agility and endurance, to climb the steadilyenlarging, inclined barrel was no hard task. Once at the top he got overonto the roof with skilful swings of his body and flexing musclesdrawing him safely over the coaming.
Then he watched, unseen from below, careful to be on the side facing thesun so as not to let his shadow reveal his position.
There he watched for an hour as Doctor Ryder and Toby returned, andothers came to the stock-room, but went away to await his arrival fromthe dark-room. Their wants must not be urgent.
The vigil was fruitless, though.
No one entered the dark-room, barely visible in his quick glances.
A new idea came. He went up the rainspout of the adjoining roof, usingknees for grip and hands to pull him up from one bracing ring toanother. Down the adjoining fire escape he went, to the top floor of thecandy factory where, to the surprised girls, he whispered, pretending tobe mischievous, "Playing a trick on the folks next door." They all knewhim, from seeing him going to and from work. He accepted some candy, andwent down and out onto the street.
He saw no one watching. The brown mark of the torpedo detonation wasstill on the pavement. He slipped into the laboratory cellar, by way ofits ash-lift, unobserved as far as he could tell.
To the air-conditioning system he made his way, trying to see if any ofits outlets, especially one to the dark-room section, had been removedor tampered with. He saw some signs that a pipe wrench had ground roughbright spots on the piping, and smiled. His idea had been right as towhere the gas had been sent up. A survey among old trash awaiting theattention of Potts revealed a large, empty tank. Some one must havecharged it--whether by purchasing the materials or by injecting theexhaust from a car he never found out.
There, though, was his evidence. He left it as it was.
Grover had been right.
Some person or group, with intentions far more vicious than had been inevidence among the Tibetans, had marked him. Why? What did he know? Notthe place of the lost Eye of Om. For that they would want to take himprisoner, to question him. This attack had been because someone was surethat he knew more than he did.
Could he find out what he was supposed to know?
To try was Roger's immediate intention.