Part 25 (1/2)
”Hold on!” protested Samms. ”You certainly can't do that! Inertia is-must be-a basic attribute of matter, and surely cannot be done away with without destroying the matter itself. Don't start anything like that, Fred-I don't want to lose you and Lyman, too.”
”Don't worry about us, Chief,” Rodebush replied with a smile. ”If you will tell me what matter is, fundamentally, I may agree with you.... No? Well, then, don't be surprised at anything that happens. We are going to do a lot of things that n.o.body on the Three Planets ever thought of doing before.”
Thus for a long time the argument and discussion went on, to be interrupted by the voice of the secretary.
”Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Samms, but some things have come up that you will have to handle. k.n.o.bos is calling from Mars. He has caught the Endymion, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, and he won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that dope line. But k.n.o.bos is on now-what do you want him to do about the Endymion?”
”Tell him to-no, put him on here, I'd better tell him myself,” Samms directed, and his face hardened in ruthless decision as the h.o.r.n.y, misshapen face of the Martian lieutenant appeared upon the screen. ”What do you think, k.n.o.bos? Shall they come to trial or not?”
”Not.”
”I don't think so, either. It is better that a few gangsters should disappear in s.p.a.ce than that the Patrol should have to put down another uprising. See to it.”
”Right.” The screen darkened and Samms spoke to his secretary. ”Put Milton and Fletcher on whenever they come in.” He turned to his guests. ”We've covered the ground quite thoroughly. Goodbye-I wish I could go with you, but I'll be pretty well tied up for the next week or two.”
”'Tied up' doesn't half express it,” Rodebush remarked as the two scientists walked along a corridor toward an elevator. ”He probably is the busiest man on three planets.”
”As well as the most powerful,” Cleveland supplemented. ”And very few men could use his power as fairly-but he's welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned. I'd have the pink fantods for a month if I had to do only once what he's just done-and to him it's just part of a day's work.”
”You mean the Endymion? What else could he do?”
”Nothing-that's the h.e.l.l of it. It had to be done, since bringing them to trial would mean killing half the people of Morseca; but at the same time it's a ghastly thing to order a job of deliberate, cold-blooded, and illegal murder.”
”You're right, of course, but you would ...” he broke off, unable to put his thoughts into words. For while inarticulate, man-like, concerning their deepest emotions, in both men was ingrained the code of the organization; both knew that to every man chosen for it THE SERVICE was everything, himself nothing.
”But enough of that, we'll have plenty of grief of our own right here.” Rodebush changed the subject abruptly as they stepped into a vast room, almost filled by the immense bulk of the Boise-the sinister s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p which, although never flown, had already lined with black so many pages of Triplanetary's roster. She was now, however, the center of a furious activity. Men swarmed over her and through her, in the orderly confusion of a fiercely driven but carefully planned program of reconstruction.
”I hope your dope is right, Fritz!” Cleveland called, as the two scientists separated to go to their respective laboratories. ”If it is, we'll make a perfect lady out of this unmanageable man-killer yet!”
CHAPTER 14
THE SUPER-s.h.i.+P IS LAUNCHED
After weeks of ceaseless work, during which was lavished upon her every resource of mind and material afforded by three planets, the Boise was ready for her maiden flight. As nearly ready, that is, as the thought and labor of man could make her. Rodebush and Cleveland had finished their last rigid inspection of the aircraft and, standing beside the center door of the main airlock, were talking with their chief.
”You say that you think that it's safe, and yet you won't take a crew,” Samms argued. ”In that case it isn't safe enough for you two, either. We need you too badly to permit you to take such chances.”
”You've got to let us go, because we are the only ones who are at all familiar with her theory,” Rodebush insisted. ”I said, and I still say, that I think it is safe. I can't prove it, however, even mathematically; because she's altogether too full of too many new and untried mechanisms, too many extrapolations beyond all existing or possible data. Theoretically, she is sound, but you know that theory can go only so far, and that mathematically negligible factors may become operative at those velocities. We do not need a crew for a short trip. We can take care of any minor mishaps, and if our fundamental theories are wrong, all the crews between here and Jupiter wouldn't do any good. Therefore we two are going-alone.”
”Well, be very careful, anyway. I wish that you could start out slow and take it easy.”
”In a way, so do I, but she wasn't designed to neutralize half of gravity, nor half of the inertia of matter-it's got to be everything or nothing, as soon as the neutralizers go on. We could start out on the projectors, of course, instead of on the neutralizers, but that wouldn't prove anything and would only prolong the agony.”
”Well, then, be as careful as you can.”
”We'll do that, Chief,” Cleveland put in. ”We think as much of us as anybody else does-maybe more-and we aren't committing suicide if we can help it. And remember about everybody staying inside when we take off-it's barely possible that we'll take up a lot of room. Goodbye!”
”Goodbye, fellows!”
The ma.s.sive insulating doors were shut, the metal side of the mountain opened, and huge, squat caterpillar tractors came roaring and clanking into the room. Chains and cables were made fast and, mighty steel rails groaning under the load, the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p upon her rolling ways was dragged out of the Hill and far out upon the level floor of the valley before the tractors cast off and returned to the fortress.