Part 4 (1/2)

Hoddan went out. He paced up and down the other room into which he was shown. Darth wouldn't be in a Golden Age! He was wiser now than he'd been this same morning. He recognized that he'd made mistakes. Now he could see rather ruefully how completely improbable it was that anybody could put across a technical device merely by proving its value, without making anybody want it. He shook his head regretfully at the blunder.

The amba.s.sador sent for him.

”I've had a pleasant time,” he told Hoddan genially. ”There was a beautiful row. You've really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.”

”Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. ”I've--”

”The planetary government,” said the amba.s.sador with relish, ”insists that you have to be locked up with the key thrown away. Because you know how to make deathrays. I said it was nonsense, and you were a political refugee in sanctuary. The Minister of State said the Cabinet would consider removing you forcibly from the Emba.s.sy if you weren't surrendered. I said that if the Emba.s.sy was violated no s.h.i.+p would clear for Walden from any other civilized planet. They wouldn't like losing their off-planet trade! Then he said that the government would not give you an exit-permit, and that he would hold me personally responsible if you killed everybody on Walden, including himself and me. I said he insulted me by suggesting that I'd permit such shenanigans. He said the government would take an extremely grave view of my att.i.tude, and I said they would be silly if they did. Then he went off with great dignity--but shaking with panic--to think up more nonsense.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

”Evidently,” said Hoddan in relief, ”you believe me when I say that my gadget doesn't make deathrays.”

The amba.s.sador looked slightly embarra.s.sed.

”To be honest,” he admitted, ”I've no doubt that you invented it independently, but they've been using such a device for half a century in the Cetis cl.u.s.ter. They've had no trouble.”

Hoddan winced.

”Did you tell the Minister that?”

”Hardly,” said the amba.s.sador. ”It would have done you no good. You're in open revolt and have performed overt acts of violence against the police. But also it was impolite enough for me to suggest that the local government was stupid. It would have been most undiplomatic to prove it.”

Hoddan did not feel very proud, just then.

”I'm thinking that the cops--quite unofficially--might try to kidnap me from the Emba.s.sy. They'll deny that they tried, especially if they manage it. But I think they'll try.”

”Very likely,” said the amba.s.sador. ”We'll take precautions.”

”I'd like to make something--not lethal--just in case,” said Hoddan. ”If you can trust me not to make deathrays, I'd like to make a generator of odd-shaped microwaves. They're described in textbooks. They ionize the air where they strike. That's all. They make air a high-resistance conductor. Nothing more than that.”

The amba.s.sador said:

”There was an old-fas.h.i.+oned way to make ozone....” When Hoddan nodded, a little surprised, the amba.s.sador said: ”By all means go ahead. You should be able to get parts from your room vision-receiver. I'll have some tools given you.” Then he added: ”Diplomacy has to understand the things that control events. Once it was social position. For a time it was weapons. Then it was commerce. Now it's technology. But I wonder how you'll use the ionization of air to protect yourself from kidnapers!

Don't tell me! I'd rather try to guess.”

He waved his hand in cordial dismissal and an Emba.s.sy servant showed Hoddan to his quarters. Ten minutes later another staff man brought him tools such as would be needed for work on a vision set. He was left alone.

He delicately disa.s.sembled the set in his room and began to put some of the parts together in a novel but wholly rational fas.h.i.+on. The science of electronics, like the science of mathematics, had progressed away beyond the point where all of it had practical applications. One could spend a lifetime learning things that research had discovered in the past, and industry had never found a use for. On Zan, industriously reading pirated books, Hoddan hadn't known where utility stopped. He'd kept on learning long after a practical man would have stopped studying to get a paying job.

Any electronic engineer could have made the device he now a.s.sembled. It only needed to be wanted--and apparently he was the first person to want it. In this respect it was like the receptor that had gotten him into trouble. But as he put the small parts together, he felt a certain loneliness. A man Hoddan's age needs to have some girl admire him from time to time. If Nedda had been sitting cross-legged before him, listening raptly while he explained, Hoddan would probably have been perfectly happy. But she wasn't. It wasn't likely she ever would be.

Hoddan scowled.

Inside of an hour he'd made a hand-sized, five-watt, wave-guide projector of waves of eccentric form. In the beam of that projector, air became ionized. Air became a high-resistance conductor comparable to nichrome wire, when and where the projector sent its microwaves.

He was wrapping tape about the pistol grip when a servant brought him a scribbled note. It had been handed in at the Emba.s.sy gate by a woman who fled after leaving it. It looked like Nedda's handwriting. It read like Nedda's phrasing. It appeared to have been written by somebody in a highly emotional state. But it wasn't quite--not absolutely--convincing.

He went to find the amba.s.sador. He handed over the note. The amba.s.sador read it and raised his eyebrows.