The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  Fenwick figuratively threw away the textbook the first time the professor's back was turned. Baker, Fenwick thought, never took his eyes from its pages. Fenwick distrusted everything that he could not prove himself. Baker believed nothing that was not solidly fixed in black and white and bound between sturdy cloth covers, and prefaced by the name of a man who boasted at least two graduate degrees.

  Fenwick remembered even now his first reaction to Baker. He had never seen his kind before and could not believe that such existed. He supposed Baker felt similarly about him, and, out of the strange contradiction of their worlds, they formed a hesitant friendship. For himself, Fenwick supposed that it was based on a kind of fascination in associating with one who walked so blindly, who was so profoundly incapable of understanding his own blindness and peril.

  But never before had he realized the absolute danger that rested in the hands of Baker. And there must be others like him in high Government scientific circles, Fenwick thought. He had learned long ago that Baker's kind was somewhere in the background in every laboratory and scientific office.

  But few of them achieved the strangling power that Baker now possessed.

  The Index! Fenwick thought of it and gagged. Wardrobe evaluation! Staff reading index! The reproductive ratio--social activity index--the index of hereditary accomplishment--multiply your ancestors by the number of technical papers your five-year old children have produced and divide by the number of book reviews you attend weekly--

  Fenwick slumped in the seat. We hold these truths to be self-evident--that the ratio of sports coats to tuxedos in a faculty member's closet shall determine whether Clearwater gets to do research in solid state physics, whether George Durrant gives his genius to the nation or whether it gets buried in Dr. William Baker's refuse pile.

  But not only George Durrant. Jim Ellerbee, too. And how many others?

  Something had to be done.

  Fenwick hadn't realized it before, but this was the thought that had been churning in his cortex for the last hour. Something had to be done about Bill Baker.

  But, short of murder, what?

  Getting rid of Baker physically was not the answer, of course. If he were gone, a hundred others like him would fight for his place.

  Baker had to be shown. He had to be shown that high-grading was costing him the very thing he was trying to find. It must be proven to him that flotation methods work as well in mining human resources as in mining metal. That the extra trouble paid off.

  This was known--a long time ago--Fenwick thought. Somewhere along the way things got changed. He glanced toward the Jefferson Memorial. Tom Jefferson knew how it should be, Tom Jefferson, statesman, farmer, writer, and amateur mechanic and inventor. It was not only every gentleman's privilege, it was also his duty to be a tinkerer and amateur scientist, no matter what else he might be.

  Fenwick glanced in the distance toward the Lincoln Memorial. Abe had done his share of tinkering. His weird boot-strap system for hoisting river boats off shoals and bars hadn't amounted to much, but Abe knew the principle that every man has the right to be his own scientist.

  And then there was Ben Franklin, the noblest amateur of them all! He had roamed these parts, too.

  Somewhere it had been lost. The Bill Bakers would have laughed out of existence the great tinkerers like Franklin and Lincoln and Jefferson. And the Pasteurs and the Mendels--and the George Durrants and the Jim Ellerbees, too.

  Fenwick started the car. Something had to be done about Bill Baker.

  * * * * *

  Baker leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. "So it worked, did it? He showed you something that made you think he had a real working device."

  "There was no 'think' about it," said Fenwick. "I saw it with my own eyes. That boy's got something terrific!"

  Baker sobered and thumbed through the Ellerbee file again. "Any freshman math major could poke holes all through this mathematical explanation he offers. Right? Secondly, a device such as he claims to have produced violates all the basic laws of science. Why, it's even against the Second Law of Thermodynamics!"

  "I don't care what it's against," said Fenwick. "It works. I want you to come with me to Ellerbee's and see for yourself. His device will revolutionize communications."

  Baker shook his head sadly. "It's always tougher when they show you something that seems to work. Then you've got to waste a lot of time looking for the gimmick if you're going to follow it through. I just haven't got the time--"

  "You've got to, Bill!"

  "I'll tell you what I'll do. You go out there and look over his setup. If you can't find his gimmick in half a day, I'll come out and show it to you. But I warn you, some of these things are very tricky--like the old perpetual motion machines. You've got to have your wits about you. Is that fair enough?"

  "Fair enough," Fenwick agreed.

  Baker smiled broadly. "I'll do even more. If this Ellerbee device should prove to be on the level, I'll give you the research grant you want for Clearwater."

  "I'm not so sure I want it on those terms," said Fenwick.

  "Well, it's a purely academic matter. You won't have to worry about it. But, on the other hand, I'll expect you to agree that when Ellerbee is exposed you'll not persist in your request to this office."

  "Well, now--"

  "That's a fair offer. I'm giving you a chance to prove I'm wrong in setting up the Index to screen out people like Ellerbee--"

  "--And institutions like Clearwater."

  "And institutions like Clearwater," Baker agreed.

  "All right," said Fenwick. "I'll gamble with you--for one more stake: If Ellerbee's device is on the level, you'll make a grant to Clearwater and other institutions of like qualifications, and you'll scrap that insane Index--"

  Baker tapped the desk placatingly. "The grant to Clearwater, yes. As for the Index, if it should fail in its applicability to this clear-cut Ellerbee case I would be the first to want to know why. But I assure you there is no flaw in the Index. It has been tried too many thousands of times."

  * * * * *

  Ellerbee's place was in Virginia, in a dairying area in the hills. The last ten miles of the road were not the kind to attract visitors. The road was steep and narrow in places that turned sharply around the hillsides. No guardrails blocked the descent into the steep gullies. It was definitely a region for people who liked solitude. The farms that lay in the valleys of the hills were neat and well-cared for, however. The people Fenwick passed on the road didn't look like the recluse type.

  Ellerbee's farm was one of the best looking in the vicinity. It had the look of being cared for by a man who could do everything. The huge barn and the corrals were as neat as a garden, and the large white frame farmhouse stood out like a monument against the green pasture.

  A woman and two children were in the garden beside the house as Fenwick drove up. "May I help you? I'm Mrs. Ellerbee," the woman said.

  Fenwick explained who he was and his purpose in coming. "Jim's been expecting you," the woman said. "His laboratory is the long white building back of the house. He's out there now."

  Jim Ellerbee met him at the door. "You didn't bring Dr. Baker," he said almost accusingly.

  "Later," said Fenwick. "I came, as I promised. Dr. Baker wants my report on your facilities and production methods. Then he will come up to make his own inspection."

  There was doubt in Ellerbee's eyes, as if he was used to such stories. "Maybe it would be best if I marketed the crystals in any form I can," he said.

  He led Fenwick through a number of rooms of expensive, precision electronic equipment. Then they passed through a set of double doors, which Fenwick observed acted as a thermal lock between the crystal growing room and the rest of the building. It reminded him of George Durrant's laboratory at Clearwater.

  "This is where the crystals are grown," said Ellerbee. "I suppose you're familiar with such processes. Here we must use a very precisely controlled sequence of co-crystallization to get lay
ers of desired thickness--"

  Fenwick wasn't listening. He had suddenly observed the second man in the room, a rather small, swarthy man, who moved with quiet precision among a row of tanks on the far side of the room. There was a startling quality about the man that Fenwick was unable to define, a strangeness.

  Ellerbee caught the direction of his glance. "Oh," he said. "You must meet my neighbor, Sam Atkins. Sam is in this as deep or even deeper than I am. I think perhaps he's more responsible for the communicator crystals."

  The man turned as his name was mentioned, and came toward them. "You were the one who developed the crystals," he said in a soft, persuasive voice, to Jim Ellerbee.

  "This is my setup," Ellerbee explained with a wave of his hand to indicate the laboratory surroundings. "But Sam has been working with me for about a year on this thing. When Sam moved in, we found we were both radio hams and electronic bugs. I'd been fooling around with crystal growing, trying to design some new type transistors. Then Sam suggested some experiments in co-crystallization--using different chemicals that will crystallize in successive layers in one crystal.

  "We stumbled on one combination that made a terrific amplifier. Then we found it would actually radiate to a distant point all by itself. Finally, we discovered that its radiation was completely nonelectromagnetic. There is no way we have yet found of detecting the radiation from the crystal--except by means of another piece of the same crystal.

  "I know it's against all the rules in the books. It just doesn't make sense. But there it is. It works."

  Sam Atkins had turned away for a moment to attend to one of the tanks, but Fenwick found himself intensely aware of the man's presence. There was nothing he could put his finger on. He just knew, with such intense certainty, that Sam Atkins was there.

  "What does Mr. Atkins do?" Fenwick asked. "Does he have a dairy farm, too?"

  Ellerbee nodded. "His place is right next to mine. Since we started this project Sam has practically lived here, however. He's a bachelor, and so he takes most of his meals with us."

  "Seems strange--" Fenwick mused, "two men like you, way out here in the country, doing work on a level with that of the best crystal labs in the country. I should think you'd both rather be in academic or industrial work."

  Ellerbee smiled and looked up through the windows to the meadows beyond. "We're free out here," he said.

  Fenwick thought of Baker. "You are that," he said.

  "You said you wanted to investigate the whole production process. We'll start here, if you like, and I'll show you every step in our process. This tank contains an ordinary alum solution. We start building on a seed crystal of alum and continue until we reach a precise thickness. Here is a solution of chrome alum. You'll note the insulated tanks. Room temperature is maintained within half a degree. The solutions are held to within one-tenth of a degree. Crystal dimensions must be held to tolerances of little more than the thickness of a molecule--"

  * * * * *

  The gimmick to fool him and cheat him. Where was it? Fenwick asked himself. Baker was sure it was here. If so, where could it be? There was no trickery in the crystal laboratory--unless it was the trickery of precision refinement of methods. Only men of great mechanical skill could accomplish what Ellerbee and his friend were doing. Genius behind the milking machine! Fenwick could almost sympathize with Baker in his hiding behind the ridiculous Index. Without some such protection a man could encounter shocks.

  The crackpot fringe.

  Where else would credence have been given to the phenomenon of a crystal that seemed to radiate in a nonelectromagnetic way?

  But, of course, it couldn't actually be doing that. All the books, all the authorities, and the known scientific principles said it couldn't happen. Therefore, it wouldn't have happened--outside the crackpot fringe.

  If Ellerbee and Atkins weren't trying to foist a deliberate deception, where were they mistaken? It was possible for such men as these to make an honest mistake. That would more than likely turn out to be the case here. But how could there be a mistake in the production of a phenomenon such as Fenwick had witnessed? How could that be produced through some error when it couldn't even be done by known electronic methods--not just as Fenwick had seen it.

  Throughout the morning Ellerbee led him down the rows of tanks, explaining at each step what was happening. Sometimes Sam Atkins offered a word of explanation also, but always he stayed in the background. The two farmers showed Fenwick how they measured crystal size down to the thickness of a molecule while the crystals were growing.

  A sudden suspicion crossed Fenwick's mind. "If those dimensions are so critical, how did you determine them in the first place?"

  "Initially, it was a lucky accident," said Sam Atkins.

  "Very lucky," said Fenwick, "if you were able to accidentally obtain a crystal of fifteen layers or so and have each layer even approximately correct."

  Sam smiled blandly. "Our first crystals were not so complex, you understand. Only three layers. We thought we were building transistors, then. Later, our mathematics showed us the advantage of additional layers and gave us the dimensions."

  The mathematics that Baker said a kid could poke holes in. Fenwick didn't know. He hadn't checked the math.

  Where was the gimmick?

  In the afternoon they took him out for field tests again. A rise behind the barn was about a mile from a similar rise on Sam Atkins' place. They communicated across that distance in all the ways, including various kinds of codes, that Fenwick could think of to find some evidence of hoax. Afterwards, they returned to the laboratory and sawed in two the crystals they had just used. Then they showed him the tests they had devised to determine the nature of the radiation between the crystals.

  He did not find the gimmick.

  By the end of the day Ellerbee seemed beat, as if he'd been under a heavy strain all day long. And then Fenwick realized that was actually the case. Ellerbee wanted desperately to have someone believe in him, believe in his communication device. Not only had he used all the reasoning power at his command, he had been straining physically to induce Fenwick to believe.

  Through it all, however, Sam Atkins seemed to remain bland and utterly at ease, as if it made absolutely no difference to him, whatever.

  "I guess we've just about shot our wad," said Ellerbee. "That's about all we've got to show you. If we haven't convinced you by now that our communicator works, I don't know how we can accomplish it."

  Had they convinced him? Fenwick asked himself. Did he believe what he had seen or didn't he? He had been smug in front of Baker after the first demonstration, but now he wondered how much he had been covered by the same brush that had tarred Baker.

  It wasn't easy for him to admit the possibility of nonelectromagnetic radiation from these strange crystals, radiation which could carry sight and sound from one point to another without any transducers but the crystals themselves.

  "You have to step out of the world you've grown accustomed to," said Sam Atkins very quietly. "This is what we have had to do. It's not hard now to comprehend that telepathic forces of the mind can be directed by this means. This is a new pattern. Think of it as such. Don't try to cram it into the old pattern. Then it's easy."

  A new pattern. That was the trouble, Fenwick thought. There couldn't really be any new patterns, could there? There was only one basic pattern, in which all the phenomena of the universe fit. He readily admitted that very little was known about that pattern, and many things believed true were false. But the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That had to be true--invariably true--didn't it?

  If there was a hoax, Baker would have to find it.

  "I'll be back with Dr. Baker in a couple of days," Fenwick said. "After that, the one final evidence we'll need will be to construct these crystals in our own laboratories, entirely on our own, based on your instructions."

  Ellerbee nodded agreement. "That would suit us just fine."

  * * * * *

  "Hypnotism,"
said Baker. "It sounds like some form of hypnotism, and I don't like that kind of thing. It could merit criminal prosecution."

  "There's no possible way I could have been hypnotized," said Fenwick.

  "These crystals--obviously it has something to do with them. But I wonder what their game is, anyway? It's hard to see where they can think they're headed."

  "I don't know," said Fenwick. "But you promised to show me the gimmick if I couldn't find it in half a day. I spent a whole day out there without finding anything."

  Baker slapped the desk in exasperation. "You're not really going to make me go out there and look at this fool thing, are you? I know I made a crazy promise, but I was sure you could find where they were hoaxing you if you took one look at their setup. It's probably so obvious you just stumbled right over it without even seeing it was there."

  "Possibly. But you're going to have to show me."

  "John, look--"

  "Or, I might be willing to take that Clearwater research grant without any more questions on either side."

  Baker thought of the repercussions that would occur in his own office, let alone outside it, if he ever approved such a grant. "All right," he sighed. "You've got me over a barrel. I'll drive my car. I may have to stop at some offices on the other side of town."

  "I might be going on, rather than coming back to town," said Fenwick. "I ought to have my car, too. Suppose I meet you out there?"

  "Good enough. Say one o'clock. I'm sure that will give us more time than we need."

  * * * * *

  Baker was prompt. He arrived with an air of let's-get-this-over-as-quick-as-possible. He nodded perfunctorily as Ellerbee introduced his wife. He scarcely looked at Sam Atkins.

  "I hope you've got your demonstration all set up," he said. He glanced at the darkening sky. "It looks like we might get some heavy rain this afternoon."