Unto Him That Hath

by Lester Del Rey

  UNTO HIM THAT HATH By Lester Del Rey

  The lunch room was half-filled, and Captain Michael Dane stopped at the door, feeling like a fool. The almost-as-good substitute they'd given him for his right leg suddenly dragged, and the worn, faded uniform felt out of place here among the trim flying officers and men. Lambert Field had been home before he went off to the front; but he'd been whole and in fashion then.

  Now he was attracting attention by just standing there. He moved up to the counter, selecting the old seat at the end. He sank down tiredly. There had been too many planes, too many flights, too long a time in the hospital, and now too much mystery and haste in getting him back.

  "Coffee—just coffee," he ordered as a waitress came up to him. "Black and hot." He shouldn't have come into the place; it was silly to expect things to stay the same while he was gone—stupid to waste time on a whim, when he should have been reporting to the Dane Aircraft buildings down at the end of the field.

  The coffee was suddenly in front of him, and he reached for it. But a hand was in his way. "Still three lumps, Mike?"

  He looked up at that. Molly was four years older, but those years had done well by her. She'd filled out a bit, and had learned to use her brown hair as a setting for her oval face, instead of looking like a tousled tomboy. Now she lifted the end of the counter and came around to sit beside him. There were no rings on the left hand she dropped over his. "Been a long time, Mike—too long for no letters."

  He pretended not to hear the last. There was nothing he could say. He'd told her he wouldn't write and wouldn't let her be tied down to a man who might not come back. He'd kept his word. Now he shrugged,

  and turned his palm up to meet hers. "Too long, kid. I thought you'd be in school, instead of here."

  "I'm helping out while I'm back. Be here a few weeks before the position I took with Caltech is ready for me."

  "Caltech?" He shook his head in admiration. "I suppose that means you're a Ph.D. physicist now, with gravity all figured out, and fields doing dances at your whim. You promised you'd let me see your doctorate thesis."

  She grimaced. "Not when they mark it Ultra Top Secret. But you'll see it on the planes one of these days. I found something—a whole new field of physics. I told you I would, and I did. . . . How's it feel to be back?"

  "Lousy." He jerked his thumb back toward a table where a pink-faced major was declaiming on how they had to dig out their H-bombs and use them against Pan-Asia. Dane had heard little else since he'd been back, and there was no way of convincing the natural fools that it would be world suicide. Somehow, up to now both sides had managed to avoid turning it into an all-out fatal atomic war.

  Pan-Asia was afraid the American Alliance had too many such bombs for them, and the Alliance knew how little it could do with bombs against the decentralized enemy, whose one great manufacturing center had somehow remained undiscoverable. But the Alliance was losing, now.

  In five grinding years of technological warfare, the despised Pan-Asians had proved themselves technologically modern, and with heavier manpower. The Alliance had been retreating across the Dnieper when Mike was wounded, and were now fighting a slow retreat through central Europe. And the fools here were braying for their favorite horror weapon, to kill off everyone!

  Then Mike shrugged and tightened his grip on Molly's hand. "And good," he added. "How's Dad?"

  She shook her head uneasily. "I've barely seen him, Mike. He looks happy in a feverish way—and worried. And he wants you back, pretty badly. Something funny is going on, and everything's wrapped tight in a blanket of hush-hush. You'd better report in—but come back, Mike!"

  Mike nodded and got up to leave, glad to get away from the smug stupidity of the major who thought he could end war by using something so ugly neither side had dared to touch it. He'd probably been one of the fools who had once thought they could lick Pan-Asia with a single hand, because everyone knew the enemy didn't have the Alliance's technical know-how. Some would never learn better, though the Pan-Asian jets and tanks were rolling forward month by month.

  Mike went down the walk, and the weariness was heavier in him. His leg ached, and the toes he no longer had felt cramped. He caught himself limping, and forced himself to stop that. It was only habit; the prosthetic device was completely serviceable. He could even tap-dance with it, if he'd been of a mind to try it.

  The Dane Aircraft buildings had spread since he had seen them. They now occupied the whole end of the field, and spread out, enclosing a small helicopter field of their own. He should have guessed it. His father had always been a whizz when he really tried, and the Dane planes had been the only ones to consistently meet the best that Pan-Asia could throw at them.

  A guard snapped up smartly. "Haiti Captain, this is restricted. You'll have to get a pass."

  "Don't be a damned fool," Mike told him, with the military formality typical on the real front. "Crank your little phone and tell Dane or Enright that Mike's reporting in."

  The guard gulped, unused to facing men who were bored by the authority of a gun. He fumbled, and half-turned toward his box. But before he could reach it, a heavy baritone let out a yell. Enright hadn't changed.

  He was still a small man, with shoulders that were too big for him, and a wild mop of black hair that fell across his steel-rimmed glasses. Now he came running out, rubbing grease off his hands against his coveralls. Mike noticed there were oak-leaves on his collar. But there was nothing military about him.

  He came up, sticking out a callused hand. "Mike, we've been waiting for you for hours! What happened?"

  "A general overrode my priority—claimed he had a sick baby here. So I hitched with a supply ship." Enright had been foreman since Mike could first remember. Mike thumped him on the back, and snapped his finger against the insignia. "Brass!"

  Enright seemed embarrassed, but he grinned. "Needed them here. Anybody who can use a wrench on anything half secret gets drafted as an officer. I hear they've got eagles waiting for you. You're looking good, Mike!"

  Mike knew it was a lie, but he grinned politely. "Thanks. What's it all about, anyhow? I can guess that Dad wanted me back as soon as I was off the active lists. But why the big fuss about rushing me here, getting me secrecy clearance, and everything else?"

  "Big times, I guess," Enright answered, and his voice was a little bitter. "I know your father and Custer have some superdooper plan on called Project Swipe, but I don't know what it's all about. Anyhow, the Dane works are big enough for your father to throw his weight around now, so maybe he just felt like doing that."

  They were back in the first hangar Dane Aircraft had used for its original plant. Now it seemed to be the experimental building and administration offices. Enright led back through a maze of elaborate machinery. "Built the first atomic athodyd right here," he said. "Now we're supposed to be finished with development on the robots, and everything's laid off until Project Swipe comes through."

  The athodyds were a bitter memory; they'd been developed by Mike's father and one of the leading nuclear physicists, and should have given the Alliance the complete air mastery, replacing the jets with a much more powerful drive.

  But somehow, the Pan-Asians had managed to get the secret in advance, and it had been all the more in their favor. They'd never found the spy, either. He knew very little of robots, beyond the fact that they were a fantastically" improved version of the automatic pilot and bomb-sight combined.

  There were rumors that Pan-Asia already had a model of it.

  They went back through the silent hangar toward the offices built at the rear. Then Mike caught sight of his father's back, and he mounted the few steps more briskly. Dane was bent over a complicated chart, pointing out to a man wearing soiled fat
igues and an Air Force cap with two stars on it.

  He swung around at the sound of Mike's steps. "Hi, Mike! Let's have a look at you . . . and you look rotten, boy. Should have pulled you back before they made a useless wreck of you."

  But his face flicked from worry to the old smile Mike remembered, and his handshake was hard and eager. After all the false pleasantness, his words were pure relief. The gray in big Bruce Dane's hair had spread a bit, and there were new lines in his face, but he looked about the same as Mike remembered him. Then he turned quickly.

  "General Custer, this is my son, Mike. You two know about each other."

  Mike found the other's handclasp almost like his father's, and his liking for the general was instantaneous. Custer had been head of an engineering department at one of the major colleges until he was drafted into a commission. He'd gone up rapidly, then, but he'd still considered himself a scientist, rather than a big brass. His somewhat heavy body had none of the false erect-ness of a typical military attempt at pretending first-class condition, and the grin on his sharp-featured face met Mike's eyes without hesitating over the fact he was a mere captain.

  "Hi, Mike. They call me Bob around here. We thought you were going to miss Project Swipe." At the mention, worry touched his face, as it did that of Mike's father. He swung to the older man. "Bruce, I still wish you'd let me take it."

  "Not a chance. Who's idea was it, anyhow? Mike, remember those arguments we used to have? Over those magazine stories you started me reading?"

  "The fantasy ones, you mean?" Mike asked, and a touch of a smile began on his face. His father had always detested the use of that name for them, insisting that any-

  thing men who believed in science could do, other men would do.

  "Fantasy, hell! That atomic athodyd will take us right into the era of space flight, once we get this war out of the way. And we'll be building robots here in a month— maybe not quite like men, but able to think. I got you back here to show you you've lost your bet—Bob and I've proved the stuff isn't fantasy!"

  "There's still time travel," Mike told him. He grinned slowly, and felt a touch of bitterness against the two rise in spite of it. While he'd been fighting a war, they'd been playing with the ideas in the magazines, apparently. Maybe they'd done their share, but it sounded like a game, rather than serious business.

  His father had passed across a gadget, and he took it, surprised at its lightness. "It's a tool," Custer explained. "Must be—though we haven't figured out what it's for. Looks like a wrench, but no nut ever looked like that. Try to break it."

  Mike tried, and gasped. It looked and felt fragile enough to be ruined by a child, but he couldn't bend it. He frowned and handed it back. "So?"

  "From the future," his father told him. Then he gathered up his equipment—charts and a huge old pipe —and headed back towards a heavy door at the far end of the hangar. "This time, I'm going to give it full power, Bob. You two keep your eyes on the catcher."

  The door opened, revealing a room beyond, but it shut almost at once. While it was opened, a high whine of dynamos had come in. General Custer pulled Mike to the side, where a heavy window was covered by a shutter. He threw back the shutter, and pointed.

  The big interior of the building was without other openings. At the near end, Mike saw four big gas turbines driving generators, leading into what seemed to be gigantic oil capacitors, and a small control board connected to them. Beyond, he could see only a grid of silver bars at the ceiling and on the flopr, opposed to each other.

  "What nonsense . . . ?" he began.

  Custer shook his head. "No nonsense, Mike. Bruce and I got an idea, and tried it out on a small scale. The government was convinced enough to finance Project Swipe, so it can't be too crazy. We're actually reaching into the future. Look, we're losing the war—we know that. Pan-Asia is matching our technology and beating our manpower. But somewhere ahead, they've got things that Pan-Asia can't have—and we're going to get some of that. The wrench came from a small trial run with the machine. . . . And this time, the two of us—and now you —are the only ones who know what's going on, so Pan-Asia won't get it!"

  "So you get a bunch of junk from the future," Mike began.

  Custer shook his head. "Not if your father's right. He thinks this works best where there's a big explosion of some kind—loosens the time fabric, or something. That should give us at least something technical, where we can rob ideas. Watch—power's about up!"

  The controls were being tested carefully by Bruce Dane, and the man nodded. He began to move them carefully, according to his chart. Finally, he threw a switch. Above the banks of capacitors, a huge relay switched down.

  Even outside, there was a peculiar strain, and the air between the two big silver grids seemed to crackle with invisible fury.

  Something began to form there. At first it seemed far away and tenuous. Then, without seeming to move, it yet appeared to rush in and grow. A corona of bluish fire sprang up around it, and then vanished.

  Bruce Dane was working frantically at the control-board, and now he seemed to be driven by sudden desperation. His hands shot out toward the big switch—Something wrenched at the bank of capacitors, and the generators arced violently. But it was hardly visible before darkness hit the laboratory, to be followed by a. deafening explosion, like the air rushing together to make thunder, after a lightning bolt. The wall where Mike and Custer stood shook.

  They were at the big door at once, and Custer had a flashlight, either grabbed up or in his hands all along. He worked the lock frantically. Then the door opened

  ponderously, and they were inside the room.

  At one end, something that might have been either a wingless plane or a guided missile rested between the grids. But most of the power equipment, including the control-board, was completely gone, without a trace. And there was no sign of Bruce Dane.

  It took a week to adjust to it. Captain Dane stayed on while they searched futilely, and gave up. It was Captain Dane who dragged out the only possible answer—that there was a reaction for every action, and that something had been sucked forward to balance what was brought back.

  He helped them inspect the queer thing they had brought back, and he gave the first order that they go to work on it, once he realized that the odd arrangement his father had made in getting the contract left him in charge, with Custer only his second.

  He did what he could with the group of research experts who came flooding down on them, bringing the tools of their sciences. Each evening, he went automatically back to his father's apartment, ate, and went out to a bar to drink himself just tight enough to be sleepy.

  Captain Dane had seen his friends killed for four years on the see-sawing fields of Europe, and he could take it. But he was an automation, created around the flesh of Mike Dane, and sooner or later, Mike had to find it out for himself.

  That came on the seventh night, while he sat in the little bar. He was thinking dully of his father's words: "In a big city, the only place where a man has privacy— real privacy, even from his own habits—is in a bar."

  And suddenly, he realized his father was dead, within all the abilities they had to tell. He lifted the scotch to his lips and drank it slowly, letting Captain Dane sink back, while Mike Dane grew used to the idea. For a while, it was rough, even though his father had gone in a peak of triumph few men could have equalled. Then his mind took the ache and the pain and put them where they should be—as real as ever, but in a corner where they could no longer keep him from continuing his own life.

  He swallowed the drink, and realized that he'd been seeing Molly for at least five minutes without noticing her. She stood at the front of the place, staring uncertainly back toward him, and started back as he looked up and nodded.

  "Sober, Mike?" Her words were nervous, and her fin-gers were doing strange things to the lapels of her little jacket.

  "Reasonably," he answered truthfully. He ordered her old drink automatically, and managed a passabl
e grin. "I was in the lunchroom, but they told me you'd left. Figured you'd gone to Caltech in a hurry."

  Her eyes seemed to shine suddenly at that. "Better, Mike. I rate you, boy. I'm now a full colonel in the Air Forces, Research branch. My doctorate work is now a full project, and I'm in charge! Right near you—they cleared out the old Dowell hangar, rigged it up, and are almost ready to go—will be by the time I get my uniform. I've been looking all over to tell you the news—almost forgot this place."

  "Top Secret, of course?"

  "No higher! I've arrived!"

  He grinned at that. "Me, too, Molly. I may even be more no-higher than you are, now that Dad's . . . gone away. I'm in full charge of the works."

  She finished her drink, and nodded. "I heard he was on some kind of secret mission. And I saw Morley coming out of your place at one ayem—so maybe you do rate my top secret, if he's working for you. No more drinks, Mike. I need coffee more."

  "My place?" he suggested. She nodded, and he felt relief wash over him. It wouldn't be so hard to face the empty apartment and realize his father was gone completely. The ache still lay in his mind, but he had learned that grief must never interfere with living.

  It was afternoon when he went through the main hangar and back to the side building that still housed the Enigma. Now, almost as if for the first time, he shoved his way through the crowd of top-level experts and studied the thing.

  It was no more than twenty feet long, and about half that diameter at its largest. There were no wings or fins, such as any normal plane or even guided missile should have, but he knew now that it had been designed as a fighter plane. The nose swept up bluntly, the upper half covered by a clear bubble of heavy plastic.

  That had been smashed when they had stolen it from the future, and there had been three guns sticking from it, all horribly twisted—as twisted as the body of the young man in the strange, abbreviated uniform inside. He had been dead, even to the cells of his hair and skin. But the machine seemed unharmed except for its cabin, which had now been repaired.