The Vortex Blaster

by Edward E Smith

  “Ho, chief. Glad to see somebody. Sit down.”

  “You’re the most-wanted man in the galaxy, not excepting Kimball Kinnison. Here’s a spool of tape, which you can look at as soon as Lacy will let you have a scanner. It’s only the first one. As soon as any planet finds out that we’ve got a sure-enough-vortex-blower-outer who can really call his shots—and that news gets around mighty fast—it sends in a double-urgent, Class A Prime demand for you.

  “Sirius IV got in first by a whisker, but it was a photo finish with Aldebaran II and all channels have been jammed ever since. Canopus, Vega, Rigel, Spica. Everybody, from Alsakan to Zabriska. We announced right off that we wouldn’t receive personal delegations—we had to almost throw a couple of pink-haired Chickladorians out bodily to make them believe we meant it—that our own evaluation of necessity, not priority of requisition, would govern. QX?”

  “Absolutely,” Cloud agreed. “That’s the only way to handle it, I should think.”

  “So forget this psychic trauma… No, I don’t mean that,” the Lensman corrected himself hastily. “You know what I mean. The will to live is the most important factor in any man’s recovery, and too many worlds need you too badly to have you quit now. Check?”

  “I suppose so,” Cloud acquiesced, but somberly, “and I’ve got more will to live than I thought I had. I’ll keep on pecking away as long as I last.”

  “Then you’ll die of old age, Buster,” the Lensman assured him. “We got full data. We know exactly how long it takes to go from fully inert to fully free. We know exactly what to do to your screens. Next time nothing will come through except light, and only as much of that as you like. You can wait as close to a vortex as you please, for as long as is necessary to get exactly the conditions you want. You’ll be as safe as if you were in Klono’s hip pocket.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “Absolutely—or at least, as sure as we can be of anything that hasn’t happened yet. But your guardian angel here is eyeing her clock a bit pointedly, so I’d better do a flit before she tosses me out on my ear. Clear ether, Storm!”

  “Clear ether, chief!”

  Thus “Storm” Cloud, nucleonicist, became the most narrowly-specialized specialist in the long annals of science; became “Storm” Cloud, the Vortex Blaster.

  And that night Lensman Philip Strong, instead of sleeping, thought and thought and thought. What could he do—what could anybody do—if Cloud should get himself killed? Somebody would have to do something…but who? And what? Could—or could not—another Vortex Blaster be found? Or trained?

  And next morning, early, he Lensed a thought.

  “Kinnison? Phil Strong. I’ve got a high-priority problem that will take a lot of work and a lot more weight than I carry. Are you free to listen for a few minutes?”

  “I’m free. Go ahead.”

  Chapter III

  CLOUD LOSES AN ARM

  TELLURIAN PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., was Civilization’s oldest and most conservative drug house. “Hide-bound” was the term most frequently used, not only by its younger employees, but also by its more progressive competitors. But, corporatively, Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc., did not care. Its board of directors was limited by an iron-clad, if unwritten, law to men of seventy years or more; and against the inertia of that ruling body the impetuosity of the younger generation was exactly as efficacious as the dashing of ocean waves against an adamantine cliff—and in very much the same fashion.

  Ocean waves do in time cut into even the hardest rock; and, every century or two, TPI did take a forward step—after a hundred years of testing by others had proved conclusively that the “new” idea conformed in every particular with the exalted standards of the Galactic Medical Association.

  TPI’s plant upon the planet Deka (Dekanore III, on the charts) filled the valley of Clear Creek and the steep, high hills on its sides, from the mountain spring which was the creek’s source to its confluence with the Spokane River.

  The valley floor was a riot of color, devoted as it was to the intensive cultivation of medicinal plants. Along both edges of the valley extended row after row of hydroponics sheds. Upon the mountains’ sides there were snake dens, lizard pens, and enclosures for many other species of fauna.

  Nor was the surface all that was in use. The hills were hollow; honeycombed into hundreds of rooms in which, under precisely controlled environments of temperature, atmosphere, and radiation, were grown hundreds of widely-variant forms of life.

  At the confluence of creek and river, just inside the city limits of Newspoke—originally New Spokane—there reared and sprawled the Company’s headquarters buildings; offices, processing and synthesizing plants, laboratories, and so on. In one of the laboratories, three levels below ground, two men faced each other. Works Manager Graves was tall and fat; Fenton V. Fairchild, M.D., Nu.D., F.C.R., Consultant in Radiation, was tall and thin.

  “Everything set, Graves?”

  “Yes. Twelve hours, you said.”

  “For the full cycle. Seven to the point of maximum yield.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Here are the seeds. Trenconian broadleaf. For the present you will have to take my word for it that they did not come from Trenco. These are standard hydroponics tanks, size one. The formula of the nutrient solution, while complex and highly critical, contains nothing either rare or unduly expensive. I plant the seed, thus, in each of the two tanks. I cover each tank with a plastic hood, transparent to the frequencies to be used. I cover both with a larger hood—so. I align the projectors—thus. We will now put on armor, as the radiation is severe and the atmosphere, of which there may be leakage when the pollenating blast is turned on, is more than slightly toxic. I then admit Trenconian atmosphere from this cylinder…”

  “Synthetic or imported?” Graves interrupted.

  “Imported. Synthesis is possible, but prohibitively expensive and difficult. Importation in tankers is simple and comparatively cheap. I now energize the projectors. Growth has begun.”

  In the glare of blue-green radiance the atmosphere inside the hoods, the very ether, warped and writhed. In spite of the distortion of vision, however, it could be seen that growth was taking place, and at an astounding rate. In a few minutes the seeds had sprouted; in an hour the thick, broad, purplish-green leaves were inches long. In seven hours each tank was full of a lushly luxuriant tangle of foliage.

  “This is the point of maximum yield,” Fairchild remarked, as he shut off the projectors. “We will now process one tank, if you like.”

  “Certainly I like. How else could I know it’s the clear quill?”

  “By the looks,” came the scientist’s dry rejoinder. “Pick your tank.”

  One tank was removed. The leaves were processed. The full cycle of growth of the remaining tank was completed. Graves himself harvested the seeds, and himself carried them away.

  Six days, six samples, six generations of seed, and the eminently skeptical Graves was convinced.

  “You’ve got something there, Doc,” he admitted then. “We can really go to town on that. Now, how about notes, or stuff from your old place, or people who may have smelled a rat?”

  “I’m perfectly clean. None of my boys know anything important, and none ever will. I assemble all apparatus myself, from standard parts, and disassemble it myself. I’ve been around, Graves.”

  “Well, we can’t be too sure.” The fat man’s eyes were piercing and cold. “Leakers don’t live very long. We don’t want you to die, at least not until we get in production here.”

  “Nor then, if you know when you’re well off,” the scientist countered, cynically. “I’m a fellow of the College of Radiation, and it took me five years to learn this technique. None of your hatchetmen could ever learn it. Remember that, my friend.”

  “So?”

  “So don’t get off on the wrong foot and don’t get any funny ideas. I know how to run things like this and I’ve got the manpower and equipment to do it. If I come in I’m run
ning it, not you. Take it or leave it.”

  The fat man pondered for minutes, then decided. “I’ll take it. You’re in. Doc. You can have a cave—two hundred seventeen is empty—and we’ll go up and get things started right now.”

  * * * * *

  Less than a year later, the same two men sat in Graves’ office. They waited while a red light upon a peculiarly complicated desk-board faded through pink into pure white.

  “All clear. This way, Doc.” Graves pushed a yellow button on his desk and a section of blank wall slid aside.

  In the elevator thus revealed the two men went down to a sub-basement. Along a dimly-lit corridor, through an elaborately locked steel door, and into a steel-lined room. Four inert bodies lay upon the floor.

  Graves thrust a key into an orifice and a plate swung open, revealing a chute into which the bodies were dumped. The two retraced their steps to the manager’s office.

  “Well, that’s all we can feed to the disintegrator.” Fairchild lit an Alsakanite cigarette and exhaled appreciatively.

  “Why? Going soft on us?”

  “No. The ice is getting too thin.”

  “Whaddya mean, ‘thin’?” Graves demanded. “The Patrol inspectors are ours—all that count. Our records are fixed. Everything’s on the green.”

  “That’s what you think,” the scientist sneered. “You’re supposed to be smart. Are you? Our accident rate is up three hundredths; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how much we have upped total bootleg sales. Those figures are all in the Patrol’s books. How can you give such facts the brush-off?”

  “We don’t have to.” Graves laughed comfortably. “Even a half of one percent wouldn’t excite suspicion. Our distribution is so uniform throughout the galaxy that they can’t center it. They can’t possibly trace anything back to us. Besides, with our lily-white reputation, other firms would get knocked off in time to give us plenty of warning. Lutzenschiffer’s, for instance, is putting out Heroin by the ton.”

  “So what?” Fairchild remained entirely unconvinced. “Nobody else is putting out what comes out of cave two seventeen—demand and price prove that. What you don’t seem to get, Graves, is that some of those damned Lensmen have brains. Suppose they decide to put a couple of Lensmen onto this job—then what? The minute anybody runs a rigid statistical analysis on us, we’re done for.”

  “Um…m.” This was a distinctly disquieting thought, in view of the impossibility of concealing anything from a Lensman who was really on the prowl. “That wouldn’t be so good. What would you do?”

  “I’d shut down two seventeen—and the whole hush-hush end—until we can get our records straight and our death-rate down to the old ten-year average. That’s the only way we can be really safe.”

  “Shut down! The way they’re pushing us for production? Don’t be an idiot—the chief would toss us both down the chute.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean without permission. Talk him into it. It’d be best for everybody, over the long pull, believe me.”

  “Not a chance. He’d blow his stack. If we can’t dope out something better than that, we go on as is.”

  “The next-best thing would be to use some new form of death to clean up our books.”

  “Wonderful!” Graves snorted contemptuously. “What would we add to what we’ve got now—bubonic plague?”

  “A loose atomic vortex.”

  “Wh-o-o-o-sh!” The fat man deflated, then came back up, gasping for air. “Man, you’re completely nuts! There’s only one on the planet, and it’s…or do you mean…but nobody ever touched one of those things off deliberately…can it be done?”

  “Yes. It isn’t simple, but we of the College of Radiation know how—theoretically—the transformation can be made to occur. It has never been done because it has been impossible to extinguish the things; but now Neal Cloud is putting them out. The fact that the idea is new makes it all the better.”

  “I’ll say so. Neat…very neat.” Graves’ agile and cunning brain figuratively licked its chops. “Certain of our employees will presumably have been upon an outing in the upper end of the valley when this terrible accident takes place?”

  “Exactly—enough of them to straighten out our books. Then, later, we can dispose of undesirables as they appear. Vortices are absolutely unpredictable, you know. People can die of radiation or of any one of a mixture of various toxic gases and the vortex will take the blame.”

  “And later on, when it gets dangerous, Storm Cloud can blow it out for us,” Graves gloated. “But we won’t want him for a long, long time!”

  “No, but we’ll report it and ask for him the hour it happens…use your head, Graves!” He silenced the manager’s anguished howl of protest. “Anybody who gets one wants it killed as soon as possible, but here’s the joker. Cloud has enough Class-A-double-prime-urgent demands on file already to keep him busy from now on, so we won’t be able to get him for a long, long time. See?”

  “I see. Nice, Doc…very, very nice. But I’ll have the boys keep an eye on Cloud just the same.”

  * * * * *

  At about this same time two minor cogs of TPI’s vast machine sat blissfully, arms around each other, on a rustic seat improvised from rocks, branches, and leaves. Below them, almost under their feet, was a den of highly venemous snakes, but neither man or girl saw them. Before them, also unperceived, was a magnificent view of valley and steam and mountain.

  All they saw, however, was each other—until their attention was wrenched to a man who was climbing toward them with the aid of a thick club which he used as a staff.

  “Oh… Bob!” The girl stared briefly; then, with a half-articulate moan, shrank even closer against her lover’s side.

  Ryder, left arm tightening around the girl’s waist, felt with his right hand for a club of his own and tensed his muscles, for the climbing man was completely mad.

  His breathing was…horrible. Mouth tight-clamped, despite his terrific exertion, he was sniffing—sniffing loathsomely, lustfully, each whistling inhalation filling his lungs to bursting. He exhaled explosively, as though begrudging the second of time required to empty himself of air. Wide-open eyes glaring fixedly ahead he blundered upward, paying no attention whatever to his path. He tore through clumps of thorny growth; he stumbled and fell over logs and stones; he caromed away from boulders; as careless of the needles which tore clothing and skin as of the rocks which bruised his flesh to the bone. He struck a great tree and bounced; felt his frenzied way around the obstacle and back into his original line.

  He struck the gate of the pen immediately beneath the two appalled watchers and stopped. He moved to the right and paused, whimpering in anxious agony. Back to the gate and over to the left, where he stopped and howled. Whatever the frightful compulsion was, whatever he sought, he could not deviate enough from his line to go around the pen. He looked, then, and for the first time saw the gate and the fence and the ophidian inhabitants of the den. They did not matter. Nothing mattered. He fumbled at the lock, then furiously attacked it and the gate and the fence with his club—fruitlessly. He tried to climb the fence, but failed. He tore off his shoes and socks and, by dint of jamming toes and fingers ruthlessly into the meshes, he began to climb.

  No more than he had minded the thorns and the rocks did he mind the eight strands of viciously-barbed wire surmounting that fence; he did not wince as the inch-long steel fangs bit into arms and legs and body. He did, however, watch the snakes. He took pains to drop into an area temporarily clear of them, and he pounded to death the half-dozen serpents bold enough to bar his path.

  Then, dropping to the ground, he writhed and scuttled about; sniffing ever harder; nose plowing the ground. He halted; dug his bleeding fingers into the hard soil; thrust his nose into the hole; inhaled tremendously. His body writhed, trembled, shuddered uncontrollably, then stiffened convulsively into a supremely ecstatic rigidity utterly horrible to see.

  The ter
ribly labored breathing ceased. The body collapsed bonelessly, even before the snakes crawled up and struck and struck and struck.

  Jacqueline Comstock saw very little of the outrageous performance. She screamed once, shut both eyes, and, twisting about within the man’s encircling arm, burrowed her face into his left shoulder.

  Ryder, however—white-faced, set-jawed, sweating—watched the thing to its ghastly end. When it was over he licked his lips and swallowed twice before he could speak.

  “It’s all over, dear—no danger now,” he managed finally to say. “We’d better go. We ought to turn in an alarm…make a report or something.”

  “Oh, I can’t, Bob—I can’t!” she sobbed. “If I open my eyes I just know I’ll look, and if I look I’ll… I’ll simply turn inside out!”

  “Hold everything, Jackie! Keep your eyes shut. I’ll pilot you and tell you when we’re out of sight.

  More than half carrying his companion, Ryder set off down the rocky trail. Out of sight of what had happened, the girl opened her eyes and they continued their descent in a more usual, more decorous fashion until they met a man hurrying upward.

  “Oh, Dr. Fairchild! There was a…” But the report which Ryder was about to make was unnecessary; the alarm had already been given.

  “I know,” the scientist puffed. “Stop! Stay exactly where you are!” He jabbed a finger emphatically downward to anchor the young couple in the spot they occupied. “Don’t talk—don’t say a word until I get back!”

  Fairchild returned after a time, unhurried and completely at ease. He did not ask the shaken couple if they had seen what had happened. He knew.

  “Bu…buh…but, doctor,” Ryder began.

  “Keep still—don’t talk at all.” Fairchild ordered, bruskly.

  Then, in an ordinary conversational tone, he went on: “Until we have investigated this extraordinary occurrence thoroughly—sifted it to the bottom—the possibility of sabotage and spying cannot be disregarded. As the only eye-witnesses, your reports will be exceedingly valuable; but you must not say a word until we are in a place which I know is proof against any and all spy-rays. Do you understand?”