But when the area could be observed again, Outsider B was still there. And there it stayed. There they all stayed.
A cyclic, stiffly controlled panic afflicted the world; as a sense of impending doom was covered by humanity’s classic inability to fix its attention for very long to any one thing, the panic alternated to reactive terror, swung away from terror again because life must go on, because you must eat and he must love and they must make a bet on the World Series....
Seven months passed.
Dr. Simmons plodded into his private office and shut the door. He was tired—much more tired than in the days earlier that year, when he was working an eighteen-hour day. The more a man does, the more he can do, he reflected wearily, until the optimum is reached; and the optimum is way up yonder, if he cares about what he’s doing. He sat down at his desk and leaned back. And if he cares just as much as ever, but there just isn’t as much to do, he gets tired. He gets very, very tired...
He palmed his face, blinked his eyes, sighed, and leaning forward flipped the annunciator switch. His night secretary said brightly: “Yes. Doctor?”
“Don’t let anything or anybody in here for two hours. And take care of that cold.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, Doctor, I will.”
A good kid....He rose and went to the washroom which adjoined his office. Stepping into the shower stall, he lifted up the soap dish, which had a concealed hinge, and pressed a stud under it. He counted off four seconds, released the stud, and pulled on the hot water faucet. The back wall of the shower swung toward him. He stepped through into his own private laboratory—the one where no one else ever went.
He kicked the door closed behind him and looked around. I almost wish I could do it all over again. The things that have happened here, the dreams...
His thought cut out in a sudden, numbing shock.
“What are you doing here?”
The intruder accepted the question, turned it over, altered it, and gave it back. “What have you been doing here?” rasped the colonel.
The physicist sank into an easy-chair and gaped at his brother. His pulse was pounding, and for a moment his cheek twitched. “Just give me a second,” he said wryly. “This, is a little like finding someone in your bed.” He took out a handkerchief and touched his dry lips with it. “How did you get in here?”
Leroy Simmons was sitting behind a worktable. He had his hat, with its polished visor, in the crook of his arm, and his buttons were brilliant. He looked as if he were sitting for a particular kind of portrait. The doctor jumped up. “You’ve got to have a drink!” he said emphatically.
The colonel put his hat on the table and leaned forward. The act wrinkled his tunic and showed up his bald spot. “What’s the matter with you, Muscles?”
The doctor shook his head. He doesn’t look like a man of distinction any more, he thought, regretfully. “I feel a little better now,” he said. “What brings you here, Leroy?”
“I’ve been watching you for months,” said the colonel. “I’ve had to do it all myself. This is...it’s too big.” He looked completely miserable. “I followed you and watched you and checked up on you. I took measurements all around these offices, and located this room. I was in here a dozen times, looking for the gimmick on the door.”
“Oh, yes. Always dropping around to see me when I wasn’t around, and saying you’d wait. My secretary told me.”
“Her!” The syllable was eloquent. “She’s no help. I never saw anyone harder to get information from.”
“It’s an unbeatable combination in a secretary,” he grinned. “Infinite tact, and no facts. She’s not in it, Leroy. No one is.”
“No one but you. I notice you’re not denying anything.”
The doctor sighed. “You haven’t charged me with anything yet. Suppose you tell me what you know, or what you think you know.”
The colonel took a somber-backed little notebook out of his pocket. “I have no associates,” he said grimly, “either. It’s all in here. Some of it is Greek to me, but some I understand—worse luck. I wish I didn’t. You have something to do with the Outsiders, don’t you?”
His brother looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded, as if he had asked and answered a question.
“Yes.”
“You know where they come from, what they’re going to do, how they operate—everything about them?”
“That’s right.”
“They have given you—information. They have given you a way to”—he referred to the book, his lips moving as he read; they always had—“expand and concentrate binding energy into a self-sustaining field.”
“No.”
“No? You have all the formulas. You wrote thousands of pages of notes on the subject. Your diary mentions it repeatedly—and as if it was an accomplished fact.”
“It is. I didn’t get it from the Outsiders. They got it from me.”
There was a jolting silence. The colonel turned quite white. “That...does...it,” he whispered. “I knew you were in contact with the enemy, Muscles. I tried my best to believe that you were simply working them for information, so that we could use it against them. A risky game, and you were playing it alone. After I went through your papers here, I just couldn’t believe it any more. You seemed to be working along with-them. And now you tell me that you are actually supplying them with devices we haven’t got!”
The scientist nodded gravely.
The colonel’s hand, under the table, moved to his wrist. He touched a button on the small transmitter there, and pulled a slide over.
Dr. Simmons said thickly, “Leroy. Would you mind telling me how you got on to this?”
“I’ll tell you, all right. It started with a routine check-up of supplies and equipment into these laboratories, for auditing purposes. No production is run without cost accounting, even by the government. Even by a planetary one. It was brought to my attention that certain things came in here that apparently never went out. When I went over the reports and saw they were correct, I wrote a memo which cleared you completely, on my authority, and I killed the investigation. I—picked it up myself.”
“Good heavens, why?”
“If I found anything,” the colonel said with difficulty, “I wanted to take care of it myself.”
“Sort of keep the family name sweet and clean?”
“Not that. You’re too clever. You always were. I...I’ll tell you something. I was appointed to the Board because of you. I never could have made it otherwise. The Board figured I’d be an intimate link with you; that I could see you any time, when no one else could.”
Of course I knew that, thought the doctor. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, cut it out,” said the colonel. “You played me for a sucker all along, and through me, the Board.”
Correct again, the physicist thought. He said: “Nonsense, Leroy. I just withheld information from time to time.”
“You gave us tips,” said the colonel bitterly. “You sent us off on goose chase after goose chase. And we pushed the whole world around the way you wanted us to.”
The boy’s real sharp tonight, thought Dr. Simmons, and added to himself, He’s such a swell, sincere character. I hate to see him go through all this. “And why does all this make you squelch the Board’s investigation and pick it up yourself?”
“I know how slick you are,” said the colonel doggedly. “You just might talk a jury or a court-martial out of shooting you. I don’t see how you could, but I don’t see how you could have done any of this either.” He waved a hand around the secret lab. “You won’t talk your way out of it with me.”
“You’re my judge, then, my jury. My executioner, too?”
“I’m...your brother,” said the colonel in a low voice, “and, like always, I want you to get what you deserve.”
“I could puddle up and bawl like a baby,” said Dr. Simmons suddenly, warmly. “Let’s stop playing around, Leroy, and I’ll tell you
the whole story.”
“Is it true you’ve been working with the Outsiders?”
“Yes, you idiot!”
The colonel slumped back and said glumly: “Then that settles it. Go ahead and talk if you want to. It can’t make any difference now.” He looked at his watch.
The scientist rose and went to a wall panel, which he pulled out, revealing a compact tape-recording outfit. From a rack above it he selected a reel, set it on the peg, and drew the end of the tape into the self-threader. Without switching on, he returned to his chair.
“Just a couple of preliminaries, Leroy, and then you can have the whole story. I have done what I have done because of what you used to call my ‘dewy-eyed idealism.’ It has worked. We live now in a unified world. It must remain unified until the threat of the Outsiders is done with; it has no alternative. I don’t think that the Outsiders will be removed for a while yet, and the longer the world lives this way, the harder it will be for it to go back to the old cut-up, mixed-up way of life it has followed for the last fifteen thousand years or so.
“I’ll tell you what will happen from now on. The space station will be completed and put into action. When the point of boredom is reached with that, new fuel will be developed. Shortly afterward, the three Outsiders will put out their hovering bombs again. It’ll throw the world into a panic, but with the station and the new fuel and the whole world working at it, a fighting ship will leave the station—outbound.
“It will sling some torps at the Outsiders, and they won’t go off, or they’ll miss, or they’ll explode prematurely. The Outsiders won’t hit back. The warship will move in close, and when it gets close enough to do real damage, it will get a message.
“This message will be broadcast on the three most likely frequencies, and signals will go out all over the other bands advertising those three frequencies. The message will start like this: ‘Stop and listen. This is the Outsider.’ This will be repeated in English, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, and, for good measure, Esperanto. This is the message.”
He rose again, put his hand on the switch, smiled, and turned to face the colonel. “Funny...this was designed only to speak to the future. And you’re the first to hear it.”
“Why is that funny?”
“You’re the past.” He flipped the switch. “You’ll pardon the tone of it “he said gently. “I had a chance to make a deep purple oration, and I find I ramble on like an old lady over her knitting.”
“You?”
“Me. The Outsider. Listen.”
This is the message, as it came from the tape in Dr. Simmons’ leisurely mellow voice.
I am the Outsider. Do not fear me. There will be no battle. I am your friend. Hear me out.
I am four ships and a noise in the Jansky radiations. The ships are not ships, and they came from Earth, not from outside. The Jansky signals do not come from the stars. Listen.
I am one man, one man only, without helpers, without any collaborators, except possibly thinkers—a little Thoreau, a little Henry George, maybe a smattering of H. G. Wells...you can believe me. Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough, and a place for a fulcrum, and I shall move the earth!” Given the tools, one man can do anything. There’s plenty of precedent for this. Aside from the things which produce a man, aside from the multitude of factors which make his environment, if the man is capable, and if the environment provides tools and a time ripe for action, that man can use his tools to their utmost extent. Hitler did it. John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould did it. Kathleen Winsor did it. Given the tools, mankind can do anything.
I was given the greatest single tool in history. I stumbled on it. I’ll tell you the truth: I worked like a hound dog to find it, once I suspected that it was there.
It’s a theory and a device. The theory has to do with binding energy; the device releases and controls it. It is all completely and clearly explained elsewhere; I’ll come to that in time. Roughly speaking, however, it is a controlled diffusion of matter. Any gas can be rarefied and diffused. So, I have discovered, can any matter. Further, it can be diffused analytically. Binding energy is actually a component of matter. If a close-orbit situation can be induced between the electrons and the nucleus of an atom, its binding energy can be withdrawn, if equally diffused, to form a field around the atom. The field is toroidal, and has peculiar qualities.
For one thing, it does crazy things to the apparent center of gravity of the mechanism producing the field. Any seeking device which tends to locate mass directs itself at the e.g. But on approaching a field of this sort, the closer it gets, the harder it becomes for it to find the e.g., since the apparent center of mass is out at the edges. When directed at the actual center of the device, your seeker veers violently to the edge—hard enough, generally, to make it pass the mechanism altogether.
The field distorts and reflects radio and light waves in an extremely complex fashion. These waves are led powerfully to follow the outlines of the toroid; but since the field is a closed one—closed as tightly as only binding energy can close anything—light and radio cannot penetrate, no matter how strong the temptation. And so they are thrown back, rather than reflected in reflection’s ordinary sense, and return to their detectors—receivers, photographic plates, or what have you—in a rather distorted pattern.
The field also has a strange effect on valence, making it possible to build chemical compounds out of elements of similar valence. The atomic situation within the toroid—in the hole of the doughnut, as it were—is weird, and is the place where such compounding can be done. Exact data on this will also be given you.
Now, here is exactly what was done. Having found the way to generate this field, I debated the wisdom of giving it to a world on the verge of war. I contemplated destroying all my evidence, but could not; the thing was too big; humanity needed it too much. But it was too big for even a unified humanity on one planet. It’s big enough for all of space, and needs a humanity big enough to control it. I felt that if humanity were big enough to unify, it would be big enough for this device. It is, now, or you spacemen would not be listening to me.
After having developed the binding-energy field, I invented another device—the Spy-Eye. I knew that the little eavesdroppers would be produced by the thousands, so that a few would not be missed. A half-dozen were launched with their selector circuits altered and some of their equipment replaced. Their fueling was different, too; there is a reaction-formula using the b.-e. field which will be found with the rest of these things.
My half-dozen Spy-Eyes, powered vastly beyond any of their little brothers and sisters, went outside and took up their positions in space.
They are the Outsiders.
The noise in the Jansky radiation was pure propaganda, and its execution was simple—practically primitive. It was a trick once used by illegal radio stations during one of the wars, I forget which. Three of them, widely separated and synchronized, sent out the same signal, beamed to an Earth diameter. Direction-finders on Earth obediently pointed out their resultant—a direction in which they did not exist! The Spy-Eyes themselves were too small and too far away to be detectable, unless one knew exactly what to look for and where to look. The amplitude of the signals was raised gradually until it reached a preselected volume. Then one of the Spy-Eyes set up a b.-e. field and dropped toward Earth. It looked strange and huge. It came in close and circled Earth twice at a high velocity. I think I had more trouble there than at any other point, but I managed, finally, to wangle the Board of Strategy into firing on it. Their shell hit nothing; the b.-e. field disrupted its atomic warhead, for in the presence of a hard-radiation source, the field increases the effective critical mass. The Spy-Eye itself is what fell on Japan; it was armed, of course, and was mistaken for a little bomb. What made the explosion so intense was the fact that the field held the disrupting matter together for a fraction of a millisecond longer than it had ever been done before. The object which fell near Minsk was a, piece of stage-proppery I ha
d made earlier. It, too, had a b.-e. field generator on its back. Again it exhibited its exclusiveness and its penetrating power; it acted like a thing of great mass when it hit the ground. The generator was, of course, blown to dust on impact, leaving only the supposed specimen.
The other three Outsider ships were Spy-Eyes, b.-e. field-equipped. The bombs were real bombs, however. They were supplied by Satellite 18, which, if examined, will be found inexplicably empty of its interceptors. I put guiding heads on them, and sent one to each of my “Outsider” Spy-Eyes.
I think that explains everything. If you question my motives, regard Earth as you deep-spacemen see it today—unified, powerful, secure within and without. Humanity is ready, now, to take the first steps toward greatness. Therefore:
Send my name—Simmons—in the old International Morse Code on 28.275 meters, from a distance of ten statute miles from any of the three Outsider ships, at one thousand watts power. Repeat the name four times. The field will break down; you may then locate the Spy-Eyes and pull them in. Dismantle them; inside you will find this recording and certain papers, which contain everything I know about the binding-energy field. Use it well.
Colonel Simmons leaned back in his chair. His face was gray. “Muscles—is this all true?”
“You know it is. You’ve seen it in action.”
“Now what have I done?” muttered the colonel.
“Jumped to conclusions,” said the doctor easily.
The colonel’s mouth opened and closed spasmodically. Then in violent reaction, he swore. “You couldn’t ’ve done it! he roared. “You set the timetable for this whole thing and built it into those Spy-Eyes. Well, what about all that was done here—the interceptors from White Sands, and the development of the satellites, and all that?”
“Leroy, old horse, take it easy, will you? Who had charge of all that development? Who had the final say on design? Who outlined the exact use of each piece of equipment—by way, of course, of using it to its greatest efficiency?”
A Way Home Page 5