"Leinster, Murray - The Mole Pirate v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

Something like a dozen armed policement and half a dozen bank officials stood helplessly by, hearing the sounds from within the vault. They went on for half an hour. Then the Mole backed comfortably out of the vault wall, a ghost in being, went through the side wall of the bank, and swam off into the utter unreachability of its peculiar state of existence.
When the time locks permitted the vault to be opened, the worst fears of the bank's officers were realized. The contents of the vault had been leisurely sorted over. Currency, negotiable bonds, the contents of the safe-deposit boxes - everything was gone. And the furnishings of the vault were wreckage.
They went to Jack Hill next morning and found him haggard from four days and nights of work to cope with the catastrophe whose ultimate possibilities he foresaw. He was in the machine shop of the American Electronic laboratories again.
Gail Kennedy was with him, trying to persuade him to stop and rest. The visitors were an impressive lot. Police officials, banking potentates, and representatives of liability insurance companies. They regarded Jack with profound hostility.
'Mr. Hill,' said an eminent banker, in a voice that quivered with indignation, 'I suppose you realize what you have done?'
'Thoroughly!'
'Now what are you going to do about it? Every bank in the country is at the mercy of this Durran, through the hellish contrivance you made. No man's property is safe.'
'Rather more important,' observed Jack, 'no man's life is safe, either, if Durran wants to kill him.'
'But how can this menace, this pirate, be handled?' Again the eminent banker spoke. As if of old habit, his voice took on an oratorical intonation. 'When the arsenals of our government furnish him with explosives, our prisons with men, and the devil with ideas -'
'Oh, it's bad,' said Jack, 'It's very bad. But I'm working now to stop it. I'd like to know if he's changed the Mole about any, though. What's he done?'
They told him about the Newburgh robbery - more than fifty thousand dollars in currency gone, the contents of the safe deposit boxes -
'That doesn't help me!' insisted Jack. 'The Mole is pretty big. As I built it, that robbery would have been impossible. It couldn't be materialized inside a bank vault. There'd be no room.'
So far they'd told him only the results of the robbery. Now they told him the details of their helplessness while it went on.
Jack nodded in satisfaction. 'I see! He's improved the ship. But for those screws you saw revolve, the Mole would drop straight through the earth to its centre, as a block of brass did here. And, of course, if a man stepped out of the Mole while it was dematerialized, he'd drop too, without some device to hold him up.'
There were protests that men had been heard at work inside the vault.
'I know,' agreed Jack. 'But they weren't phantoms! Durran has fitted up an extra force-field apparatus. He can materialize a part of the Mole without materializing the whole. He drove the ship so its bow stuck out into clear space inside the vault. Then he materialized that part, and that part only.
'There were a couple of men in it. They got out, gathered up their loot, and stored it in that part of the ship, and then Durran dematerialized that part again so that it was like the rest of the ship. And then he swam away.'
'But what can we do to stop this - this ghastly performance? demanded the banker agitatedly. 'He can rob any bank in the country! He can steal any treasure, any security, any record!'
'You can hide your treasures,' replied Jack meditatively. 'Until he starts kidnapping people and forcing them to tell where valuables are, he'll be stopped. And - well - the screws of the ship are coated with a thin film of thorium alloy. That is partly real in both states of existence. You can make bullets and bombs of radioactive substances. Anything that's radioactive will find the Mole substantial You can puncture it with radioactive bullets or shatter it with bomb fragments, if they happen to be radioactive, too.'
'You suggest,' said the banker in almost hysterical indignation, 'that we shoot Durran with radium bullets? Think of the cost!'
'It's more important to think of results, just now,' said Jack dryly. 'But thorium will do instead of radium, and that isn't too expensive to use in gas mantles. It'll be cheap enough.
'I have, though, one really comforting thing to tell you. The Mole was built for underground exploration, to find veins of mineral and for geological study generally. It isn't designed for the use to which Durran is putting it.
'And the entire resources of American Electric are now put into the building of a new Mole which will be designed for offensive warfare underground. As soon as our new ship is complete - and it should not be long, working as we are -we'll find the original Mole and destroy it.'
Gail Kennedy said something to him in a low tone.
Jack nodded wearily. 'Something to keep Durran from materializing his ship even in part? Why, yes! My head's tired, Gail. I should have thought of that.'
He turned to the others. 'I have one promising suggestion, due to Miss Kennedy. I've proved that two solid bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. But they can't, in the same state. If there is any matter more solid than air where the Mole materializes, the sudden appearance of extra material in the same space will cause an explosion. So you can stack bars of iron, and grilles, and string wires inside your vaults. Make it impossible for any part of the Mole big enough to hold a man and loot to materialize without including some such extra matter. If Durran tries, he'll blow up the Mole! It's worth trying, anyhow.'
He passed his hand wearily over his forehead when the indignation party went out of the laboratory. Gail smiled anxiously up at him.
'I was stupid,' said Jack tiredly. 'I guess you're right, Gail. The new ship is taking form very nicely. The others can carry on without me. And my head's so tired I'll do better work if I rest.'
Jack took a last look at the partly completed ship that was to take the place of the Mole, in the very spot where the Mole had been. There was a great deal yet to be done to this new ship, but to Jack it already looked promising. He saw past the incomplete framing, the only partly assembled machinery. He visualized the streamlined vessel of the new design, more heavily powered than the Mole.
Its sustaining screws worked on swivels and at full speed would not only sustain but help to propel it. And there was armament. A two-pounder gun with a spotter searchlight. When this ship was dematerialized, it would fire shells that would be utterly unsubstantial to anything but the Mole or radioactive minerals.
The spotter searchlight would emit extraordinarily polarized light, capable of penetrating stone and rock in the state of matter Jack had discovered. This ship should have no trouble overtaking and destroying the Mole.
'Funny,' said Jack suddenly. 'I never thought of it before. This ship's going to be fast. And we could build faster ones yet. Planes, in fact. Earth-planes! They'd carry passengers. No storms. No wind currents. Earth-plane ports in the centre of our biggest cities. Climb in an earth-plane and fly through the earth's core, beneath or through mountains and oceans. And they'd be fast!'
Gail smiled at him. 'Good! You think about that instead of Durran for a while. But I'm going to take you home and make you go to sleep.'
She did take him home. She made him promise to rest at once. But, tired as he was, this new vision of a medium in which the commerce of the world would be carried on in the future, kept him awake for a long time.
It seemed that Jack had just dropped off to sleep when the strident ringing of a telephone beside his bed got him heavily awake. He glanced at a clock. It was after midnight - one o'clock. He picked up the phone.
'Hello?'
'Mr. Hill!' panted a voice at the other end of the wire. 'This's the gate watchman at the lab. There's all hell loose inside! Explosions! I sent for the cops, but it sounds like Durran's back! Listen!'
Over the wire came dull concussions. Then, the extraordinarily distinct sound of running feet, a slamming door. A voice panted, and Jack caught the message before the watchman repeated it:
"The Mole's in there an' Durran is flinging bombs outta a tube in front. They turn to real as they come out. He's blown the new Mole to hell an' he's smashin' the lab!'
A terrific detonation seemed almost to smash the telephone instrument at the other end of the wire.


VI


It was stupidity, of course, that caused the destruction of the American Electric experimental laboratories. Durran made a thorough job of it. It seems that he stopped at a construction job in Schenectady and looted the powder house of explosives to have plenty for his purpose. And it is quite certain how he came to know of the need to blow up the laboratory.
Within an hour after Jack had reassured the committee of bankers and police officials, the newspapers had the whole story. To Jack the need of secrecy was so self evident that he had not thought of mentioning it. But to a banker the self evident necessity was to reassure the public so there would be no runs on banks.
To police officials the self evident necessity was to make a public statement meaning that they had a clue and an arrest would follow shortly. To the newspapers and the broadcasters there was no thought of anything but hot news, to be passed on at once.
In consequence, Jack's assurance and his description of a ship being built to hunt down and destroy the Mole was given to the whole world. And with the world it went to Durran, too.
He acted immediately. He destroyed the laboratory where the Nemesis of the Mole was preparing. And he did more. When Jack got to the scene of the disaster, fire roared among the ruins. The new ship was scrap iron. And plans, apparatus, formulas, everything the laboratories had contained, were gone.