hundredths; industrial hazard rate and employee turnover about three and a half; and the Narcotics Division alone knows how much we have upped total bootleg sales. Those figures are all in the Patrol’s books. How can you give such facts the brush-off?’
‘We don’t have to.’ Graves laughed comfortably. ‘Even a half of one percent wouldn’t excite suspicion. Our distribution is so uniform throughout the galaxy that they can’t center it. They can’t possibly trace anything back to us. Besides, with our lily-white reputation, other firms would get knocked off in time to give us plenty of warning. Lutzenschiffer’s, for instance, is putting out Heroin by the ton.’
‘So what?’ Fairchild remained entirely unconvinced. ‘Nobody else is putting out what comes out of cave two seventeen— demand and price prove that. What you don’t seem to get, Graves, is that some of those damned Lensmen have brains. Suppose they decide to put a couple of Lensmen onto this job
—then what? The minute anybody runs a rigid statistical analysis on us, we’re done for.’
‘Um … m.’ This was a distinctly disquieting thought, in view of the impossibility of concealing anything from a Lens-man who was really on the prowl. ‘That wouldn’t be so good. What would you do?’
‘I’d shut down two seventeen—and the whole hush-hush end
—until we can get our records straight and our death-rate down to the old ten-year average. That’s the only way we can be really safe.’
‘Shut down! The way they’re pushing us for production? Don’t be an idiot—the chief would toss us both down the chute.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean without permission. Talk him into it. It’d be best for everybody, over the long pull, believe me.’
‘Not a chance. He’d blow his stack. If we can’t dope out something better than that, we go on as is.’
‘The next-best thing would be to use some new form of death to clean up our books.’
‘Wonderful!’ Graves snorted contemptuously. ‘What would we add to what we’ve got now—bubonic plague?’
‘A loose atomic vortex.’
‘Wh-o-o-o-sh!’ The fat man deflated, then came back up, gasping for air. ‘Man, you’re completely nuts! There’s only one on the planet, and it’s … or do you mean … but nobody ever
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touched one of those things off deliberately … can it be done?’
‘Yes. It isn’t simple, but we of the College of Radiation know how—theoretically—the transformation can be made to occur. It has never been done because it has been impossible to extinguish the things; but now Neal Cloud is putting them out. The fact that the idea is new makes it all the better.’
‘I’ll say so. Neat … very neat.’ Graves’ agile and cunning brain figuratively licked its chops. ‘Certain of our employees will presumably have been upon an outing in the upper end of the valley when this terrible accident takes place?’
‘Exactly—enough of them to straighten out our books. Then, later, we can dispose of undesirables as they appear. Vortices are absolutely unpredictable, you know. People can die of radiation or of any one of a mixture of various toxic gases and the vortex will take the blame.’
‘And later on, when it gets dangerous, Storm Cloud can blow it out for us,’ Graves gloated. ‘But we won’t want him for a long, long time!’
‘No, but we’ll report it and ask for him the hour it happens … use your head, Graves!’ He silenced the manager’s anguished howl of protest. ‘Anybody who gets one wants it killed as soon as possible, but here’s the joker. Cloud has enough Class-A-double-prime-urgent demands on file already to keep him busy from now on, so we won’t be able to get him for a long, long time. See?’
‘I see. Nice, Doc. … very, very nice. But I’ll have the boys keep an eye on Cloud just the same.’
At about this same time two minor cogs of TPI’s vast machine sat blissfully, arms around each other, on a rustic seat improvised from rocks, branches, and leaves. Below them, almost under their feet, was a den of highly venomous snakes, but neither man or girl saw them. Before them, also unperceived, was a magnificent view of valley and stream and mountain.
All they saw, however, was each other—until their attention was wrenched to a man who was climbing toward them with the aid of a thick club which he used as a staff.
‘Oh … Bob!’ The girl stared briefly; then, with a half-articulate moan, shrank even closer against her lover’s side.
Ryder, left arm tightening around the girl’s waist, felt with his right hand for a club of his own and tensed his muscles, for
the climbing man was completely mad.
His breathing was … horrible. Mouth tight-clamped, despite his terrific exertion, he was sniffing—sniffing loathsomely, lustfully, each whistling inhalation filling his lungs to bursting. He exhaled explosively, as though begrudging the second of time required to empty himself of air. Wide-open eyes glaring fixedly ahead he blundered upward, paying no attention whatever to his path. He tore through clumps of thorny growth; he stumbled and fell over logs and stones; he caromed away from boulders; as careless of the needles which tore clothing and skin as of the rocks which bruised his flesh to the bone. He struck a great tree and bounced; felt his frenzied way around the obstacle and back into his original line.
He struck the gate of the pen immediately beneath the two appalled watchers and stopped. He moved to the right and paused, whimpering in anxious agony. Back to the gate and over to the left, where he stopped and howled. Whatever the frightful compulsion was, whatever he sought, he could not deviate enough from his line to go around the pen. He looked, then, and for the first time saw the gate and the fence and the ophidian inhabitants of the den. They did not matter. Nothing mattered. He fumbled at the lock, then furiously attacked it and the gate and the fence with his club—fruitlessly. He tried to climb the fence, but failed. He tore off his shoes and socks and, by dint of jamming toes and ringers ruthlessly into the meshes, he began to climb.
No more than he had minded the thorns and the rocks did he mind the eight strands of viciously-barbed wire surmounting that fence; he did not wince as the inch-long steel fangs bit into arms and legs and body. He did, however, watch the snakes. He took pains to drop into an area temporarily clear of them, and he pounded to death the half-dozen serpents bold enough to bar his path.
Then, dropping to the ground, he writhed and scuttled about; sniffing ever harder; nose plowing the ground. He halted; dug his bleeding fingers into the hard soil; thrust his nose into the hole; inhaled tremendously. His body writhed, trembled, shuddered uncontrollably, then stiffened convulsively into a supremely ecstatic rigidity utterly horrible to see.
The terribly labored breathing ceased. The body collapsed bonelessly, even before the snakes crawled up and struck and
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struck and struck.
Jacqueline Comstock saw very little erf the outrageous performance. She screamed once, shut both eyes, and, twisting about within the man’s encircling arm, burrowed her face into his left shoulder.
Ryder, however—white-faced, set-jawed, sweating—watched the thing to its ghastly end. When it was over he licked his lips and swallowed twice before he could speak.
‘It’s all over now dear—no danger now,’ he managed finally to say. ‘We’d better go. We ought to turn in an alarm ,.. make a report or something.”
‘Oh, I can’t, Bob—I can’t!’ she sobbed. ‘If I open my eyes, I just know I’ll look, and if I look I’ll … I’ll simply turn inside out!’
‘Hold everything, Jackie! Keep your eyes shut. I’ll pilot you and tell you when we’re out of sight.’
More than half carrying his companion, Ryder set off down the rocky trail. Out of sight of what had happened, the girl opened her eyes and they continued their descent in a more usual, more decorous fashion until they met a man hurrying upward.
‘Oh, Dr. Fairchild! There was a …’ But the report which Ryder was about to make was unnecessary; the alarm had already been given.
‘I know,’ the scientist puffed. ‘Stop! Stay exactly where you are!’ He jabbed a finger emphatically downward to anchor the young couple in the spot the occupied. ‘Don’t talk—don’t say a word until I get back!’
Fairchild returned after a time, unhurried and completely at ease. He did not ask the shaken couple if they had seen what had happened. He knew.
‘Bu … buh… but, doctor,’ Ryder began. ‘Keep still—don’t talk at all.’ Fairchild ordered, bruskly. Then, in an ordinary conversational tone, he went on: ‘Until we have investigated this extraordinary occurrence thoroughly— sifted it to the bottom—the possibility of sabotage and spying cannot be disregarded. As the only eye-witnesses, your reports will be exceedingly valuable; but you must not say a word until we are in a place which / know is proof against any and all spy-rays. Do you understand?” ‘Oh! Yes, we understand.’