"Curt isn't much on poetry," said the President, "but he's really jet-propelled where rockets are concerned."
"And creatures in skirts," put in Christine drily. "But if you must meet him, Elly, I'll arrange it."
Her brashness paid off. Not only did she meet the dark and gallant General Curtis when she returned to the big house for dinner but, surprisingly, she was seated next to him at table. To her further surprise he proved quite serious when she suggested that there might be a big poem in a man's efforts to escape from his planet. His hazel eyes grew thoughtful as he considered it.
"I only hope both of us get a chance to know space at first hand before we die," he told her. He sighed, shook his head. "But we have a lot of bridges yet to cross, Miss Marriner."
"You sound awfully discouraged, General," said Elspeth with what she hoped was something approaching dimpled charm. "Perhaps, if you're not too busy tomorrow, you'll come to the cottage for a cocktail before lunch—you and Christine. I might have something that would help you to cross bridges."
"That, Miss Marriner, you definitely have," said the general, smiling back. He was unexpectedly youthful in appearing, only the faint weathered lines of his neck and his prematurely gray temples hinting at his age. He was almost too handsome but there was steel in him. To her surprise, Elspeth liked him. She wondered if she were retrogressing to the point where she would fall for anything in uniform. First Marshal Henry, now General Curtis.
The date was arranged with Christine's full approval after dinner. A movie was to be shown in the projection room which her host, Gardienne, had built in his basement, but before the party moved downstairs a servant approached Elspeth with a message on a tray. It was from Juana, asked her to come to the cottage at once.
Elspeth made her apologies, reconfirmed tomorrow's date and slipped out and across the lawn. The moon was out already and the entire magnificent estate seemed tipped with silver and splashed with shadows of lampblack. It had been a pleasant evening, glamorous if not thrilling. Elspeth decided she was getting blasé. Interworld travel seemed to involve some pretty high life.
SHE forgot about high life once she was back with Mack and Juana. The brunette was smoking a cigarette tensely, and Mack was again checking the working of his pistol. Before explaining what she had done, Juana asked Elspeth to tell her what had happened at the big house.
"So far—excellent," she said when the poet had finished. "I only hope my end went as well." She scowled, threw her smoke into the fireplace and crossed to a table at one side of it on which stood a small leather-covered dialed device that might have been a portable radio—but was obviously more complex.
"We know only one thing," she said, working the dials and studying the wavering of a needle indicator. "Your friend van Hooten—and he seems to be a prime heel of heels—has not turned in that fuel sample to his principals— yet."
"How can you be sure?" Mack asked suspiciously.
Juana indicated the leather box with the dials. "This is a very special device," she said. "We call it the transferometer."
"What is it, Juana?" Elspeth inquired.
"Just that. It's a detector of sorts. I'm not going to give you an involved explanation—I couldn't if I wanted to, kids, and there isn't time. But each different world in each tangential universe has its own atomic scale. You might say that each exists in the holes in the other's quantum rhythms.
"When you undergo a transfer you are actually undergoing an atomic change. Otherwise no transfer would be possible—you'd be keyed to one world only. Now this transferometer can be keyed to sensitivity to any of the atomic scales of any of the known worlds. They are all listed, numbered and scaled, of course."
"I think I get it," said Mack, once again slapping his gun back into place. "By tuning that thing to the world we just left you can get some idea of any object from that world in this one—like van Hooten, for instance."
"It's not quite that simple," said Juana. "Remember, both your friend van Hooten and the fuel sample took the transfer process with us. However, they are both native to the Columbian world. And this indicator registers the fact."
"How does that help us find them?" Mack asked dubiously. "If Elly has this General Muck-a-muck due here tomorrow for cocktails, we've got to have that fuel sample ready."
"Come here, Mack," said Juana, crooking a finger. "You too, Elly." They moved up beside her and she showed them a perpendicular white line across the dial. She said, "This line represents this very spot—on an axis vertical to the Earth.
"The large dial is keyed to organic substance—so it represents dear Everard. The smaller dial—" she indicated it on the left face of the indicator—"is keyed to inorganic substance. That represents your rocket-fuel sample."
"How wide a radius does it cover?" asked Mack, his interest rising. Juana smiled crookedly.
"Further than you think," she told him. "It cuts the cord of Earth and is not limited, like television without a cable, by the horizon. The radius is close to a thousand miles in the direction tuned."
"How do you know when you're tuned?" Elly asked.
"By this," said the little redhead. She pressed a button under one dial, got a low and rapid beep, got a similar, more highly-pitched beep by turning a switch under the other. "When you get that sound cleanly you're on a direct line—a zero."
"Mighty cute," said Mack, rubbing his chin. "But then what do the needles show?"
"The needle shows closeness and direction. In conjunction with your beam tuner it gives you an exact idea of both."
"Then our friend must be getting mighty warm," said Mack.
"He is," the dark girl told him. "We got our first fixes in the city and I came out here as soon as we found he was headed this way. It's my hunch he has to have both the plans and the fuel sample or else."
"What I don't understand," said Mack, "is why he is lugging the fuel sample around with him."
"Because he doesn't dare part with it and it's neither bulky nor heavy," Juana replied. "He's probably told them—whoever they are—that the elevator attack was a complete bust. He wants to pull the whole deal off on his own."
"But how can he get at us?" Elspeth asked. "The guards—"
"The lake," said the dark redhead, nodding toward the door of the cottage. "He's coming in that way. Don't worry —he or rather his colleagues have this estate thoroughly cased."
"Where are the blueprints?" Elspeth asked anxiously.
"The indicator needles—" began Mack, pointing at it.
He never got a chance to finish. He was interrupted by a drawling pseudo-British voice from the doorway that responded to Elspeth's question with, "Yes, darlings, where are the blueprints? Precisely the question I was going to ask myself."
Everard, clad in dripping shorts only, but wearing a heavy money belt, was standing there. In his hand was an odd-looking weapon that made Elspeth gasp.
"A disintegrator!" she cried. "He's got a disintegrator!"
XIV
YOU'RE so absolutely right, darling," said Everard. "Nothing will please me more than to give you a demonstration. I assure you I shall be devasted if you do tell me where the plans are. Because then I'd have little reason to use it, would I?"
He flipped the vicious weapon casually in his hand, letting its disced and slotted muzzle point first at Elspeth, then at Juana. The dark redhead looked sharply at the transferometer dials, then snapped off the instrument and turned to study Everard.
"You took a risk—leaving your clothes across the lake," she said calmly. "If any of the guards find them—" She shrugged and added. "But I'm glad you brought the fuel sample in your belt. It will save us the trouble of hunting for it."
"My good woman," said Everard haughtily, "the blueprints. I feel certain that our mutual friends"—with a bow toward Mack and Elspeth—"have told you something of the uses of this weapon."
"It was scarcely news to me," said Juana. Defying the tightening of his finger on the trigger, she reached for and lit a c
igarette. "I'm sorry about the rocket plans, Everard, really I am. Unfortunately they are where no one— not even clever you—can get them. I put them in the mail—registered— earlier this evening."
"Then there is nothing to do but wait," said Everard, moving to a chair and sitting down without relaxing his guard.
"It won't work," said Elspeth, coming out of the chill fear which had wrapped her like a coccoon since sighting Everard and the disintegrator. "You can't stay awake that long. And you can't kill us and hope to get the prints. How did you get here ?"
"I swam, of course," said Everard. Then, "Oh, the guards—how stupid of me! This little dis-gun of mine took care of them."
"When their disappearance is noted there will be a search," said Mack solemnly. His eyes had not left Everard since his dramatic entry. "You can't get away with it and you know it."
"Why not give up?" said Juana gently. "Turn over the fuel sample. I have permission to arrange for your transfer to a world more suited to your—um—talents than this one or yours."
Everard's face stiffened and his eyes lit up with what Elspeth realized, to her surprise, was fear. He said, "Oh, no. How do I know what sort of a world you'd put me in? If I had had any idea when I stowed away on the train that you were going to—to change worlds I—" His voice faded out.
"You wouldn't have come?" said Mack, leaning forward.
"No, I'd have used this—" again indicating his weapon—"before you were able to do whatever it was you did on that train."
Elspeth, shocked, gave a little cry that came from deep within her. That such a man, so obviously educated and civilized and well-bred, could be so utterly brutal in furthering his own selfish ends was something she found it hard to believe. It caused her to spill her bag, which was on the right arm of her chair. She stooped to pick it up.
Through reflection Everard's pale blue eyes followed her motion. Juana chose that moment to shoot through her own handbag with her little automatic. The sharp splat of the shot, deafening in the low-ceiled room, drowned the more sickening thud of lead striking human flesh as the bullet tore its way through Everard's unclad torso.
Her full lips tightly compressed, Juana fired again and again. Her aim was accurate. Jarred as he was by the shock and impact of the bullets, Everard swung his arm toward her, lifting the disintegrator. Mack leapt from his chair with a yell of fury and flung himself at the vicious intruder.
He struck Everard with the violence and ferocity of a charging panther, knocking his chair clean over on its back and jamming the Columbian against the wall beyond it. The ugly looking disintegrator described an arc in the air and hit the carpet with a dull thock. Elspeth scrambled after it and picked it up.
Straightening, she looked around her at a scene of horror. Everard was sitting on the floor against the far wall beyond the overturned chair, his eyes glazed and dull, blood trickling from the two holes in his chest and from the corner of his mouth.
MACK, growling like an enraged animal, was wrenching the heavy belt from around his waist. He was apparently unaware of something that Elspeth noticed first with growing horror. Juana—Juana wasn't. A part of her chair remained and it had a seared look—as if it had been momentarily subjected to incredible heat. Elspeth had a sudden sickening memory of the similar stain in the pavement outside of Bienville House in Baton Rouge.
Mack rose, holding the heavy belt. He saw what had happened, looked at the dis-gun in Elspeth's trembling fist, than back at where Juana had been sitting seconds before. Elspeth nodded, unable to speak.
The photographer turned back to the dying Everard. He took a backward step, then moved forward like a football goal kicker and booted him with all his force, right in the middle of his classic features.
"I only wish he would feel it," he said savagely.
Elspeth found herself agreeing with him and was frightened at her own brutality. She sank into the chair behind her and covered her face to shut out the ghastly vision. Then there were running footsteps outside and she looked up to see a quartet of uniformed officers in the doorway.
Mack did the talking. "This so-and-so," he said, nodding toward Everard's body, for the Columbian was now very dead, "was behind that attack on us in the hotel this afternoon. Elly—Miss Marriner spotted him then."
He went on to explain that the man must have swum the lake after eliminating a couple of guards, had entered the cottage with an incredible new weapon, had been fatally shot by Miss Brooks and in turn had rayed her.
"There's her gun on the floor by the chair she was sitting in," he concluded, nodded toward it, the severed handbag where it lay on the carpet with half-burned handle of Juana's gun protruding from it. "As for our friend's weapon —Miss Marriner is holding it."
After that things happened fast. The transferometer had been destroyed by Everard's blast at Juana, so they did not have to attempt to explain that fantastic instrument or its uses. But when it was found that the guards on the other side of the lake had vanished without trace or explanation, when the disintegrator was examined, and Everard's clothes were found close to the water—they began to be believed.
"It's odd that you should have been selected as the target of this fantastic attack, Miss Marriner." A Major Leach of Army Intelligence was speaking. "I don't mean to decry your poetry or its value but it simly doesn't make sense."
"Of course not, Major," said Elspeth. She had regained a measure of self-control by recalling that Juana had died in order to enable them to complete their assignment, that it was up to her and Mack to make sure that the gallant dark redhead had not died in vain. "This attack tonight has merely precipitated things."
"What sort of things?" It was a lynx-eyed plainclothesman who asked this question.
Elspeth told him that she was on a secret mission of considerable importance, that she had arranged to explain a portion of it to General Curtis on the morrow, in company with the President's daughter. She suggested that she and Mack should see both General Curtis and the Chief Executive as soon as possible.
"They sure do things different on the other side," she heard one of her questioners mutter. "Imagine—a poet—and a she-poet at that! Well, judging from that dis—dis—whatever it is, she's sure got something. Wonder how many of them the Commies have."
"I can answer that," said Elspeth calmly. "None. This one was stolen. However, I'm glad to be able to turn it over to you."
There was what seemed to be an interminable wait but by a small gilt banjo clock on the wall it was still short of midnight when Elspeth and Mack were ushered into a room assigned to the President.
HE WAS standing before the cold fireplace, his hands behind his back, his gaze questioning, thoughtful, polite. With him were only two others— Christine and General Curtis. The general was holding the dis-gun as if he didn't quite believe it.
"I think you wanted to see us," President Roosevelt said softly. He smiled. "From what I have heard you must have a message of vital importance—at least our enemies seem to think so."
"Mr. President," said Elspeth quietly, "what would you say if we were to bring you the means of mastering space-flight —not ten years from now, not five, but just as soon as you can build according to complete specifications."
"I'd say I'm afraid I can't believe you," said the President. He lifted an eyebrow at General Curtis. "Right, Curt?"
"Five minutes ago I'd have agreed,"said the General, still studying the bizarre weapon. "After looking at this I'm willing to listen. But I'd like to know why we're getting the break—if we are getting it. I'd like to hear more about it."
"My secretary," said Elspeth, nodding toward Mack, "has with him, thanks to the permission of your staff, a sample of the type of fuel that will make space-flight not only possible but compartively cheap."
"Miss Brooks—" for a moment her voice wavered as she thought of that gay dark laughing loveliness so utterly wiped out—"Miss Brooks, in view of the earlier attack in the hotel, has already sent the ship plans here by registere
d mail. She did not have time to tell us whom they were addressed to— but presumably they will arrive with one of our names on the package."
"Let's have a look at this miracle-fuel, Fraser," said General Curtis, stepping forward, still holding the dis-gun. Mack handed him the packet without a word and the general, after receiving nodded permission from the President, retired to a far corner of the room to unwrap it and study the written material with it.
"I don't pretend to understand, Elly," said Christine, coming forward and taking both her hands, "but I know you're a very great person. I know you have done nothing wrong."
"I've done plenty wrong in my day I'm afraid," said the poet ruefully. "But you didn't have a chance to meet the great one among us. It was Juana Brooks that really put this over."
"Would either of you like a drink?" said the President, moving toward a portable bar. "I know I would."
Mack moved to take care of their service, and Elspeth and Christine sat down together, talking trivialities in spurts. It was a time of waiting for all of them.
Suddenly General Curtis gave what sounded like a war whoop, jumped out of his chair and made a motion as if to hurl the papers he was reading to the ground. "Of all the damned idiotic dolts —fools!" he shouted and he might have been doing an Indian dance.
"Something wrong, General?" the President asked sharply.
"Only all of us!" said Curtis, forgetting Presidential courtesies in his fervor. "You know what this is? It's a way of making atomic fuel out of plain sodium. Furthermore it's a way of polarizing and shielding a sodium drive indefinitely. Furthermore, without testing this sample, I think it will work."
"Good Lord!" said the President, sinking slowly into a chair. He stared curiously at Elspeth, then at Mack. "I don't suppose," he said almost wistfully, "that you could tell us more about this? You and it didn't come out of thin air, did you?"
"Hardly, Mr. President," said Elspeth in response to both questions. He studied her for a long moment, then sighed and lifted his drink in a silent toast to both of them.
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