The Vortex Blaster

by Edward E Smith

  “Oh! Yes, we understand.”

  “Pull yourselves together, then. Act unconcerned, casual; particularly when we get to the Administration Building. Talk about the weather—or, better yet, about the honeymoon you are going to take on Chickladoria.”

  Thus there was nothing visibly unusual about the group of three which strolled into the building and into Graves’ private office. The fat man raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m taking them to the private laboratory,” Fairchild said, as he touched the yellow button and led the two toward the private elevator. “Frankly, young folks, I am a scared—yes, a badly scared man.”

  This statement, so true and yet so misleading, resolved the young couple’s inchoate doubts. Entirely unsuspectingly, they followed the Senior Radiationist into the elevator and, after it had stopped, along a corridor. They paused as he unlocked and opened a door; they stepped unquestioningly into the room at his gesture. He did not, however, follow them in. Instead, the heavy metal slab slammed shut, cutting off Jackie’s piercing shriek of fear.

  “You might as well cut out the racket,” came from a speaker in the steel ceiling of the room. “Nobody can hear you but me.”

  “But Mr. Graves, I thought… Dr. Fairchild told us…we were going to tell him about…”

  “You’re going to tell nobody nothing. You saw too much and know too much, that’s all.”

  “Oh, that’s it!” Ryder’s mind reeled as some part of the actual significance of what he had seen struck home. “But listen! Jackie didn’t see anything—she had her eyes shut all the time—and doesn’t know anything. You don’t want to have the murder of such a girl as she is on your mind, I know. Let her go and she’ll never say a word—we’ll both swear to it—or you could…”

  “Why? Just because she’s got a face and a shape?” The fat man sneered. “No soap, Junior. She’s not that much of a…” He broke off as Fairchild entered his office.

  “Well, how about it? How bad is it?” Graves demanded.

  “Not bad at all. Everything’s under control.”

  “Listen, doctor!” Ryder pleaded. “Surely you don’t want to murder Jackie here in cold blood? I was just suggesting to Graves that he could get a therapist…”

  “Save your breath,” Fairchild ordered. “We have important things to think about. You two die.”

  “But why?” Ryder cried. He could as yet perceive only a fraction of the tremendous truth. “I tell you, it’s…”

  “We’ll let you guess,” said Fairchild.

  Shock upon shock had been too much for the girl’s overstrained nerves. She fainted quietly and Ryder eased her down to the cold steel floor.

  “Can’t you give her a better cell than this?” he protested then. “There’s no…it isn’t decent!”

  “You’ll find food and water, and that’s enough.” Graves laughed coarsely. “You won’t live long, so don’t worry about conveniences. But keep still. If you want to know what’s going on, you can listen, but one more word out of you and I cut the circuit. Go ahead, Doc, with what you were going to say.”

  “There was a fault in the rock. Very small, but a little of the finest smoke seeped through. Barney must have been a sniffer before to be able to smell the trace of the stuff that was drifting down the hill. I’m having the whole cave tested with a leak-detector and sealed bottle-tight. The record can stand it that Barney—he was a snake-tender, you know—died of snake-bite. That’s almost the truth, too, by the way.”

  “Fair enough. Now, how about these two?”

  “Um…m. We’ve got to hold the risk at absolute minimum.” Fairchild pondered briefly. “We can’t disintegrate them this month, that’s sure. They’ve got to be found dead, and our books are full. We’ll have to keep them alive—where they are now is as good a place as any—for a week.”

  “Why alive? We’ve kept stiffs in cold storage before now.”

  “Too chancey. Dead tissues change too much. You weren’t courting investigation then; now we are. We’ve got to keep our noses clean. How about this? They couldn’t wait any longer and got married today. You, big-hearted philanthropist that you are, told them they could take their two weeks vacation now for a honeymoon—you’d square it with their department heads. They come back in about ten days, to get settled; go up the valley to see the vortex; and out. Anything in that set-up we can’t fake a cover for?”

  “It looks perfect to me. We’ll let ’em enjoy life for ten days, right where they are now. Hear that, Ryder?”

  “Yes, you pot-bellied…”

  The fat man snapped a switch.

  It is not necessary to go into the details of the imprisonment. Doggedly and skillfully though he tried, Ryder could open up no avenue of escape or of communication; and Jacqueline, facing the inevitability of death, steadied down to meet it. She was a woman. In minor crises she had shrieked and had hidden her face and had fainted; but in this ultimate one she drew from the depths of her woman’s soul not only the power to overcome her own weaknesses, but also an extra something with which to sustain and fortify her man.

  Chapter IV

  “STORM” CLOUD ON DEKA

  IN THE VORTEX CONTROL LABORATORY on Tellus, Cloud had just gone into Philip Strong’s office.

  “No trouble?” the Lensman asked, after greetings had been exchanged.

  “Uh-uh. Simple as blowing out a match. You quit worrying about me long ago, didn’t you?”

  “Pretty much, except for the impossibility of training anybody else to do it. We’re still working on that angle, though. You’re looking fit.”

  He was. He carried no scars—the Phillips treatment had taken care of that. His face looked young and keen; his hard-schooled, resilient body was in surprisingly fine condition for that of a man crowding forty so nearly. He no longer wore his psychic trauma visibly; it no longer obtruded itself between him and those with whom he worked; but in his own mind he was sure that it still was, and always would be, there. But the Lensman, studying him narrowly—and, if the truth must be known, using his Lens as well—was not sure, and was well content.

  “Not bad for an old man, Phil. I could whip a wildcat, and spot him one bite and two scratches. But what I came in here for, as you may have suspected, is—where do I go from here? Spica or Rigel or Canopus? They’re the worst, aren’t they?”

  “Rigel’s is probably the worst in property damage and urgency. Before we decide, though, I wish you’d take a good look at this data from Dekanore III. See if you see what I do.”

  “Huh? Dekanore III?” Cloud was surprised. “No trouble there, is there? They’ve only got one, and it’s ’way down in Class Z somewhere.”

  “Two now. It’s the new one I’m talking about. It’s acting funny—damned funny.”

  Cloud went through the data, brow furrowed in concentration; then sketched three charts and frowned.

  “I see what you mean. ‘Damned funny’ is right. The toxicity is too steady, but at the same time the composition of the effluvium is too varied. Inconsistent. However, there’s no real attempt at a gamma analysis—nowhere near enough data for one—this could be right; they’re so utterly unpredictable. The observers were inexperienced, I take it, with medical and chemical bias?”

  “Check. That’s the way I read it.”

  “Well, I’ll say this much—I never saw a gamma chart that would accept half of this stuff, and I can’t even imagine what the sigma curve would look like. Boss, what say I skip over there and get us a full reading on that baby before she goes orthodox—or, should I say, orthodoxly unorthodox?”

  “However you say it, that’s my thought exactly; and we have a good excuse for giving it priority. It’s killing more people than all three of the bad ones together.”

  “If I can’t fix the toxicity with exciters I’ll throw a solid cordon around it to keep people away. I won’t blow it out, though, until I find out why it’s acting so—if it is. Clear ether, chief, I’m practically there!”

  It did not take long to
load Cloud’s flitter aboard a Dekanore-bound liner. Half-way there however, an alarm rang out and the dread word “Pirates!” resounded through the ship.

  Consternation reigned, for organized piracy had disappeared with the fall of the Council of Boskone. Furthermore, this was not in any sense a treasure ship; she was an ordinary passenger liner.

  She had had little enough warning—her communications officer had sent out only a part of his first distress call when the blanketing interference jammed his channels. The pirate—a first-class superdreadnought—flashed up and a visual beam drove in.

  “Go inert,” came the terse command. “We’re coming aboard.”

  “Are you completely crazy?” The liner’s captain was surprised and disgusted, rather than alarmed. “If not, you’ve got the wrong ship. Everything aboard—including any ransom you could get for our passenger list—wouldn’t pay your expenses.”

  “You wouldn’t know, of course, that you’re carrying a package of Lonabarian jewelry, or would you?” The question was elaborately skeptical.

  “I know damned well I’m not.”

  “We’ll take the package you haven’t got, then!” the pirate snapped. “Go inert and open up, or I’ll do it for you—like this.” A needle-beam lashed out and expired. “That was through one of your holds. The next one will be through your control room.”

  Resistance being out of the question, the liner went inert. While the intrinsic velocities of the two vessels were being matched, the pirate issued further instructions.

  “All officers now in the control room, stay there. All other officers, round up all passengers and herd them into the main saloon. Anybody that acts up or doesn’t do exactly what he’s told will be blasted.”

  The pirates boarded. One squad went to the control room. Its leader, seeing that the communications officer was still trying to drive a call through the blanket of interference, beamed him down without a word. At this murder the captain and four or five other officers went for their guns and there was a brief but bloody battle. There were too many pirates.

  A larger group invaded the main saloon. Most of them went through, only half a dozen or so posting themselves to guard the passengers. One of the guards, a hook-nosed individual wearing consciously an aura of authority, spoke.

  “Take it easy, folks, and nobody’ll get hurt. If any of you’ve got guns, don’t go for ’em. That’s a specialty that…”

  One of his DeLameters flamed briefly. Cloud’s right arm, almost to the shoulder, vanished. The man behind him dropped—in two different places.

  “Take it easy, I said,” the pirate chief went calmly on. “You can tie that arm up, fella, if you want to. It was in line with that guy who was trying to pull a gun. You nurse over there—take him to sick-bay and fix up his wing. If anybody stops you tell ’em Number One said to. Now, the rest of you, watch your step. I’ll cut down every damn one of you that so much as looks like he wanted to start something.”

  They obeyed.

  In a few minutes the looting parties returned to the saloon.

  “Did you get it, Six?”

  “Yeah. In the mail, like you said.”

  “The safe?”

  “Sure. Wasn’t much in it, but not too bad, at that.”

  “QX. Control room! QX?”

  “Ten dead,” the intercom blatted in reply. “Otherwise QX.”

  “Fuse the panels?”

  “Natch.”

  “Let’s go!”

  They went. Their vessel flashed away. The passengers rushed to their staterooms. Then:

  “Doctor Cloud!” came from the speaker. “Doctor Neal Cloud! Control room calling Doctor Cloud!”

  “Cloud speaking.”

  “Report to the control room, please.”

  “Oh—excuse me—I didn’t know you were wounded,” the officer apologized as he saw the bandaged stump and the white, sweating face. “You’d better go to bed.”

  “Doing nothing wouldn’t help. What did you want me for?”

  “Do you know anything about communicators?”

  “A little—what a nucleonics man has to know.”

  “Good. They killed all our communications officers and blasted the panels, even in the lifeboats. You can’t do much with your left hand, of course, but you may be able to boss the job of rigging up a spare.”

  “I can do more than you think—I’m left-handed. Give me a couple of technicians and I’ll see what we can do.”

  They set to work, but before they could accomplish anything a cruiser drove up, flashing its identification as a warship of the Galactic Patrol.

  “We picked up the partial call you got off,” its young commander said, briskly. “With that and the plotted center of interference we didn’t lose any time. Let’s make this snappy.” He was itching to be off after the marauder, but he could not leave until he had ascertained the facts and had been given clearance. “You aren’t hurt much—don’t need to call a tug, do you?”

  “No.” replied the liner’s senior surviving officer.

  “QX,” and a quick investigation followed.

  “Anybody who ships stuff like that open mail ought to lose it, but its tough on innocent bystanders. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Not unless you can lend us some officers, particularly navigators and communications officers.”

  “Sorry, but we’re short there ourselves—four of my best are in sick-bay. Sign this clearance, please, and I’ll get on that fellow’s tail. I’ll send your copy of my report to your head office. Clear ether!”

  The cruiser shot away. Temporary repairs were made and the liner, with Cloud and a couple of electronics technicians as communications officers, finished the voyage to Dekanore III without more interruption.

  The Vortex Blaster was met at the dock by Works Manager Graves himself. The fat man was effusively sorry that Cloud had lost an arm, but assured him that the accident wouldn’t lay him up very long. He, Graves, would get a Posenian surgeon over here so fast that…

  If the manager was taken aback to learn that Cloud had already had a Phillips treatment, he did not show it. He escorted the specialist to Deka’s best hotel, where he introduced him largely and volubly. Graves took him to supper. Graves took him to a theater and showed him the town. Graves told the hotel management to give the scientist the best rooms and the best valet they had, and that Cloud was not to be allowed to spend any of his own money. All of his activities, whatever their nature, purpose, or extent, were to be charged to Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Graves was a grand guy.

  Cloud broke loose, finally, and went to the dock to see about getting his flitter.

  It had not been unloaded. There would be a slight delay, he was informed, because of the insurance inspections necessitated by the damage—and Cloud had not known that there had been any! When he had learned what had been done to his little ship he swore bitterly and sought out the liner’s senior officer.

  “Why didn’t you tell me we got holed?” he demanded.

  “Why, I don’t know…just that you didn’t ask, is all, I guess. I don’t suppose it occurred to anybody—I know it didn’t to me—that you might be interested.”

  And that was, Cloud knew, strictly true. Passengers were not informed of such occurrences. He had been enough of an officer so that he could have learned anything he wished; but not enough of one to have been informed of such matters as routine. Nor was it surprising that it had not come up in conversation. Damage to cargo meant nothing whatever to the liner’s overworked officers, standing double watches; a couple of easily-patched holes in the hull were not worth mentioning. From their standpoint the only damage was done to the communicators, and Cloud himself had set them to rights. This delay was his own fault as much as anybody else’s. Yes, more.

  “You won’t lose anything, though,” the officer said, helpfully. “Everything’s covered, you know.”

  “It isn’t the money I’m yowling about—it’s the time. That apparatus can’t be duplic
ated anywhere except on Tellus, and even there it’s all special-order stuff. OH, DAMN!” and Cloud strode away toward his hotel.

  During the following days TPI entertained him royally. Not insistently—Graves was an expert in such matters—but simply by giving him the keys to the planet. He could do anything he pleased. He could have all the company he wanted, male or female, to help him to do it. Thus he did—within limits—just about what Graves wanted him to do; and, in spite of the fact that he did not want to enjoy life, he liked it.

  One evening, however, he refused to play a slot machine, explaining to his laughing companion that the laws of chance were pretty thoroughly shackled in such mechanisms—and the idle remark backfired. What was the mathematical probability that all the things that had happened to him could have happened by pure chance?

  That night he analyzed his data. Six incidents; the probability was extremely small. Seven, if he counted his arm. If it had been his left arm—jet back! Since he wrote with his right hand, very few people knew that he was left-handed. Seven it was; and that made it virtually certain. Accident was out.

  But if he was being delayed and hampered deliberately, who was doing it, and why? It didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, the idea would not down.

  He was a trained observer and an analyst second to none. Therefore he soon found out that he was being shadowed wherever he went, but he could not get any really significant leads. Wherefore:

  “Graves, have you got a spy-ray detector?” he asked boldly—and watchfully.

  The fat man did not turn a hair. “No, nobody would want to spy on me. Why?”

  “I feel jumpy. I don’t know why anybody would be spying on me, either, but—I’m neither a Lensman nor an esper, but I’d swear that somebody’s peeking over my shoulder half the time. I think I’ll go over to the Patrol station and borrow one.”

  “Nerves, my boy; nerves and shock,” Graves diagnosed. “Losing an arm would shock hell out of anybody’s nervous system, I’d say. Maybe the Phillips treatment—the new one growing on—sort of pulls you out of shape.”