"Lensman 07 - Masters of the Vortex (The Vortex Blaster)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

At the confluence of creek and river, just inside the city limits of Newspoke-originally New Spokane-there reared and sprawled the Company's headquarters buildings; offices, processing and synthesizing plants, laboratories, and so on. In one of the laboratories, three levels below ground, two men faced each other. Works Manager Graves was tall and fat; Fenton V. Fairchild, M.D., Nu.D., F.C.R., Consultant in Radiation, was tall and thin.
'Everything set, Graves?' t
'Yes. Twelve hours, you said.'
'For the full cycle. Seven to the point of maximum yield.'
'Go ahead.'
'Here are the seeds. Trenconian broadleaf. For the present you will have to take my word for it that they did not come from Trenco. These are standard hydroponics tanks, size one. The formula of the nutrient solution, while complex and highly critical, contains nothing either rare or unduly expensive. I plant the seed, thus, in each of the two tanks. I cover each tank with a plastic hood, transparent to the frequencies to be used. I cover both with a larger hood-so. I align the projectors-thus. We will now put on armor, as the radiation is severe and the atmosphere, of which there may be leakage when the pollenating blast is turned on, is more than slightly toxic. I then admit Trenconian atmosphere from this cylinder ...'
'Synthetic or imported?' Graves interrupted.
'Imported. Synthesis is possible, but prohibitively expensive and difficult. Importation in tankers is simple and comparatively cheap. I now energize the projectors. Growth has begun.'
In the glare of blue-green radiance the atmosphere inside the hoods, the very ether, warped and writhed. In spite of the distortion of vision, however, it could be seen that growth was taking place, and at an astounding rate. In a few minutes the seeds had sprouted; in an hour the thick, broad, purplish-green leaves were inches long. In seven hours each tank was full of a lushly luxuriant tangle of foliage.
'This is the point of maximum yield,' Fairchild remarked, as he shut off the projectors. 'We will now process one tank, if you like.'
'Certainly I like. How else could I know it's the clear quill?'
'By the looks,' came the scientist's dry rejoinder. 'Pick your tank.'
One tank was removed. The leaves were processed. The full cycle of growth of the remaining tank was completed. Graves himself harvested the seeds, and himself carried them away.
Six days, six samples, six generations of seed, and the eminently skeptical Graves was convinced.
'You've got something there, Doc,' he admitted then. 'We can really go to town on that. Now, how about notes, or stuff from your old place, or people who may have smelled a rat?'
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Tm perfectly clean. None of my boys know anything important, and none ever will. I assemble all apparatus myself, from standard pans, and disassemble it myself. I've been around, Graves.'
'Well, we can't be too sure.' The fat man's eyes were piercing and cold. 'Leakers don't live very long. We don't want you to die, at least not until we get in production here.'
'Nor then, if you know when you're well off,' the scientist countered, cynically. 'I'm a fellow of the College of Radiation, and it took me five years to learn this technique. None of your hatchetmen could ever learn it. Remember that, my friend.'
'So?'
'So don't get off on the wrong foot and don't get any funny ideas. I know how to run things like this and I've got the manpower and equipment to do it. If I come in I'm running it, not you. Take it or leave it.'
The fat man pondered for minutes, then decided. 'I'll take it. You're in, Doc. You can have a cave-two hundred seventeen is empty-and we'll go up and get things started right now.'
Less than a year later, the same two men sat in Graves' office. They waited while a red light upon a peculiarly complicated deskboard faded through pink into pure white.
'All clear. This way, Doc.' Graves pushed a yellow button on his desk and a section of blank wall slid aside.
In the elevator thus revealed the two men went down to a sub-basement. Along a dimly-lit corridor, through an elaborately locked steel door, and into a steel-lined room. Four inert bodies lay upon the floor.
Graves thrust a key into an orifice and a plate swung open, revealing a chute into which the bodies were dumped. The two retraced their steps to the manager's office.
'Well, that's all we can feed to the disintegrator,' Fairchild lit an Alsakanite cigarette and exhaled appreciatively.
'Why? Going soft on us?'
'No. The ice is getting too thin.'
'Whaddya mean, "thin"?' Graves demanded. 'The Patrol inspectors are ours-all that count. Our records are fixed. Everything's on the green.'
'That's what you think,' the scientist sneered. 'You're supposed to be smart. Are you? Our accident rate is up three
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.'